Union in Crisis (1850-1861) Flashcards
Wilmont Proviso
one of the major events leading to the American Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future
Compromise of 1850
Another stopgap measure along the lines of the Missouri Compromise. This one abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia but bound Congress to create became the Fugitive Slave Law. The Compromise of 1850 also admitted California as a free state and separately organized the territories of Utah and New Mexico without restrictions on slavery.
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
The Fugitive Slave Act was a federal law that allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
1854 Act of Congress that repealed the Missouri Compromise and introduced as the guiding principle behind the incorporation of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories the idea of popular sovereignty–the idea that citizens of newly formed territories could decide when they applied for statehood whether slavery would be allowed in their new state. Lincoln drew distinct differences between the idea of popular sovereignty and the Dred Scott Decision.
“Bleeding Kansas”
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery “Border Ruffian” elements in Kansas between 1854 and 1861.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Lincoln-Douglas debates were a series of formal political debates between the challenger, Abraham Lincoln, and the incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas, in a campaign for one of Illinois’ two United States Senate seats. Although Lincoln lost the election, these debates launched him into national prominence which eventually led to his election as President of the United States.
John Brown and Harpers Ferry
John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was an effort by white abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Brown’s raid, accompanied by 20 men in his party,was defeated by a platoon of U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee, then put on trial and hung. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his formative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness, and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown’s plan would fail.
Election of 1860
The United States presidential election of 1860 set the stage for the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout most of the 1850s on questions of states’ rights and slavery in the territories. In 1860, this issue finally came to a head, fracturing the formerly dominant Democratic Party into Southern and Northern factions and bringing Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to power without the support of a single Southern state.
Hardly more than a month following Lincoln’s victory came declarations of secession by South Carolina and other states, which were rejected as illegal by the then-current President, James Buchanan and President-elect Abraham Lincoln.
