The Union in Peril (10) Flashcards
A series of controversial events heightened the sectional conflict that brought the nation to the brink of war.
Jefferson Davis
A former senator from Mississippi who was elected to be the President of the Confederacy.
Abraham Lincoln
The Republican candidate for the Illinois Senate seat.
Harpers Ferry
A town in Virginia where John Brown attempted a raid on the federal arsenal so it could be distribute it to slaves and start a rebellion.
Confederacy
The Confederate States of America, a confederation formed in 1861 by the Southern states after their secession from the Union.
Freeport Doctrine
A proposal made by Douglas that used popular sovereignty to decide on the issue of slavery.
Dred Scott
A slave from Missouri who was taken North but then back South. He sued in court for freedom.
Roger B. Taney
The Supreme Court Chief Justice who decided that slaves were property and therefore did not have rights.
John C. Frémont
The Republican candidate in 1856, who mapped the Oregon trail and led the U.S. troops into California during the war with Mexico.
Horace Greeley
An abolitionist and a founder of the Republican party.
Know-Nothing Party
A nativist formed party that always answered questions with the phrase, “I know nothing.”
Republican Party
The modern political party that was formed in 1854 by the opponents of slavery in the territories.
Free-Soil Party
A party which opposed the extension of slavery into the territories.
James Buchanan
The Democratic candidate who was a considered to be a truly national candidate since he had been out of the country.
Franklin Pierce
The Democratic candidate (and eventual president) of the 1853.
Nativism
The favoring of native-born Americans over immigrants.
Kansas Nebraska Act
A law, enacted in 1854, that established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and gave their residents the right to decide whether to allow slavery.
Bleeding Kansas
A name applied to the Kansas Territory in the years before the Civil War, when the territory was a battleground between proslavery and antislavery forces.
John Brown
An abolitionist who believed God had called on him to fight slavery. He led a number of raids on proslavery settlers in Kansas and a final raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia where he was caught and later hung for treason.
Underground Railroad
A system of routes along which runaway slaves were helped to escape to Canada or to safe areas in the free states.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
An ardent abolitionist and the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A best-selling novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, that portrayed slavery as a great moral evil.
Fugitive Slave Act
A law enacted as part of the Compromise of 1850, designed to ensure that escaped slaves would be returned into bondage.
Personal Liberty Laws
Statues, passed in nine Northern states in the 1850s that forbade the imprisonment of runaway slaves and guaranteed jury trials for fugitive slaves.
Harriet Tubman
One of the most famous conductors of the Underground Railroad.
Popular Soverignty
A system in which the residents vote to decide an issue.
Compromise of 1850
A series of resolutions that would settle the controversy between free and slave states. It would admit California as a free state (for the North) but it would have a new, more effective fugitive slave law (for the South).
Wilmot Proviso
An amendment to an 1846 military appropriations bill, proposing that none of the territory acquired in the war with Mexico would be open to slavery.
Secession
The formal withdrawal of a state from the Union.
Stephan A. Douglas
The Illinois, pro-slavery Senator.
Millard Fillmore
The President after the unexpected death of President Taylor. He was pro-compromise (of 1850).
