Road to the Civil War

Question 1

What was the Louisiana Purchase?

Answer 1

A significant land acquisition made by the United States from France in 1803, where the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of territory west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. The United States doubled its size and paved the way for western expansion.

Question 2

What is the Lone Star Republic?

Answer 2

An independent sovereignty in North America from 1836 to 1846 as a result of the Texan Revolution. The Annexation of Texas would later be a major factor of the Mexican-American War.

Question 3

Why was the United States hesitant to annex Texas into the country?

Answer 3

It could cause a war with Mexico and increase tensions in the United States over slavery in the West.

Question 4

What is Manifest Destiny?

Answer 4

The 19th-century doctrine that the expansion of the U.S. throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable as it was a God-given” right.

Question 5

What is the American Progress painting about?

Answer 5

The painting depicts a personification of America illuminating the path towards civilization and progress as she moves westward. The painting also displays the consequences of Manifest Destiny doctrine on Native American populations by showing them retreating as they faced displacement, violence, and cultural erasure.

Question 6

What was the Mexican-American War?

Answer 6

A conflict between the United States and Mexico that took place between 1846 and 1848 after the annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its own land despite the Texas Revolution in 1836.

Question 7

What was the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo?

Answer 7

• A peace treaty between the United States and Mexico in 1848 that officially ended the Mexican-American War. Under the terms of the treaty, Mexico ceded 500,000 square miles of its territory to the United States, doubling their territory.
• The war and treaty extended the United States to the Pacific Ocean, and provided many ports, minerals, and natural resources for the growing country.

Question 8

What is the Wilmot Proviso?

Answer 8

An unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. The North, Democrats, and Whigs supported the Wilmot Proviso but nearly all Southerners opposed it. The proposal passed in the Northern majority House, but failed in the more balanced Senate.

Question 9

What is Popular Sovereignty?

Answer 9

The doctrine stating that the sovereign people of a territory should themselves determine the status of slavery within that territory. It was thought it embodied the idea of local self-government and offered a middle ground in the debate between the North and the South.

Question 10

What is the Pro-Slavery Ideology?

Answer 10

A white supremacy ideology stating that African Americans were inherently inferior to Whites Americans and suited only for servitude.

Question 11

What is the Slave Power Conspiracy?

Answer 11

The concept that the South was trying to extend slavery throughout the nation and thus trying to destroy the openness of northern capitalism and replace it with the closed, aristocratic system of the South.

Question 12

What was the California Gold Rush?

Answer 12

Thousands of miners travel to Northern California after news reports of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in January of 1848 had spread around the world. This caused Californians to apply for statehood in 1849 and throw off the balance between slave and free states again.

Question 13

What was the Compromise of 1850?

Answer 13

The compromise proposed by Henry Clay, admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade in Washington D.C., and introduced a more stricter fugitive slave law. Widely opposed in both the North and South, it did little to settle the escalating dispute over slavery.

Question 14

What was the Fugitive Slave Law?

Answer 14

A law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves; allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in areas where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders.

Question 15

What was the Underground Railroad?

Answer 15

An organized system to assist runaway slaves to escape to the North and Canada using a network of secret routes and safe houses. They used different modes of transportation including walking and later used trains to safely and quickly bring slaves to Canada.

Question 16

What was Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

Answer 16

A book by Harriet Beecher Stowe that tells the story of Uncle Tom, a slave depicted as saintly and dignified and showed the problem of slavery and the treatment of humans as property.

Question 17

What was Kansas-Nebraska Act?

Answer 17

Territory that lay in a good part of the nation, directly in the path of westward migration. Slavery was also prohibited under the Missouri Compromise - something Douglas’s act would repeal. Stephen Douglas hoped to satisfy the Southern’s concern over the sectional balance by using Popular Sovereignty, the status of slavery would be determined by the votes of local settlers. He thought it embodied the idea of local self-government and offered a middle ground in the debate between the North and the South.

Question 18

What happened as a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

Answer 18

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act only shattered the unity of the Democratic Party.
• The Act was unpopular in the North and caused protests in the North.
• The Whig Party, which had become extremely divided and couldn’t unify during the political crisis, collapsed.

Question 19

What is the Republican Party?

Answer 19

The disruptive impact of slavery on the traditional parties caused the transformation of politics in the mid-1850s.The rise of the Republican Party reflected underlying economic and social changes, from the competition in the market revolution and the beginning of mass immigration from Europe.

Question 20

Who were the Know-Nothings?

Answer 20

A secret organization that when asked of their existence, the members always responded “I know nothing.” They wanted to reserve political office for native-born Americans and to resist the aggressions of the Catholic Church. Many of the Know-Nothings were anti-slavery and anti-catholic as most Catholics were against the reform movements inspired by evangelical Protestantism, including the Temperance Movement and abolition.

Question 21

What is Bleeding Kansas?

Answer 21

When Kansas held elections in 1854 and 1855, hundreds of pro-slavery supporters from Missouri cross the border to cast fraudulent balots to their favor. Settlers from the North soon established a rival government in retaliation against the South. As a result, a sporadic civil war broke out in the Kansas territory that killed around 200 people.

Question 22

What did Bleeding Kansas prove?

Answer 22

Bleeding Kansas discredited Douglas’s idea of using popular sovereignty to decide the decision of slavery in the new territories. This also came to the aid of the Republicans’ fight against expansionism.

Question 23

What was Scott v Sandford?

Answer 23

A court decision with the goal of settling the slavery controversy permanently. During the 30s, Scott was accompanied by his owner, Dr. John Emerson of Missouri to Illinois, where slavery had been banned by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, by state law, and where the Wisconsin Territory barred the Missouri Compromise. After returning to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom claiming that residence on free territory had made him free.

Question 24

What was The Dred Scott Decision?

Answer 24

• Only white people can be citizens in the United States, and blacks had no rights that they could enjoy or the white man was bound to respect. Therefore, he had no right to sue in federal court. Being a citizen meant freedom from legal discrimination and the full enjoyment of rights specified by the Constitution such as traveling anywhere in the country and bearing arms.
• Illinois law had no effect on him after returning to Missouri.
• Congress possessed no power to bar slavery from a territory.

Question 25

Who was John Brown?

Answer 25

He was a radical abolitionist. In the 1830s and 1840s he befriended fugitive slaves and helped to finance anti-slavery publications despite being chronically in debt. John Brown was a deeply religious man but God was not forgiving, but a vengeful father of the Old Testament. Brown traveled to the Kansas territory during the civil war and he and a few of his followers, killed 5 pro-slavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek.

Question 26

What happened in Harper’s Ferry?

Answer 26

An armed assault by the abolitionist John Brown on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, that furthered sectional tensions between the North and South. On October 16, 1859, with 21 men, 5 of them being black, Brown seized Harpers Ferry. However, the plan was very flawed and John Brown and his men were either captured or killed by Colonel Robert E. Lee’s soldiers. Brown was tried for treason to the state of Virginia and was executed by hanging.

Question 27

What happened in the Election of 1860?

Answer 27

*In the South, the Republicans had no presence and only three candidates contested the election: Douglas, Breckinridge, and John Bell. Lincoln carried the North except New Jersey and won the election to the dismay of the South.
* Lincoln’s devotion to the union appealed to the moderate Republicans and his emphasis on the moral dimension of the sectionist problem also appealed to abolitionists. He also was never associated with the Know-Nothings so he had appeal for the immigrants and natives. He was also capable of winning doubtful states that are needed for victory.

Question 28

Why did the South secede the Union?

Answer 28

*To the southerners, Lincoln’s victory placed their future at the mercy of a party that vowed to destroy their values and interest.
*The Election of 1860 marked a shift in power as it marked a long period of Republican dominance. Since they reflected towards Northern ideals, the antislavery sentiment would cause the downfall of slavery.
* Slaveowners feared that the Republicans would try to extend their party to the South by appealing to non-slave owners. Many white Southerners felt like the opportunity for economic independence through owner land and slaves was eroding.