Unit 10 vocab Flashcards
Wilmot Proviso
the proposed, but rejected, 1846 bill that would have banned slavery in the territory won from Mexico in the Mexican War
Free soil Party
an antislavery political party in the mid-1800s
Popular sovereignty
people control all political power
Secede
to withdraw formally from a membership in a group or an organization
Compromise of 1850s
a political agreement that admitted California to the Union as a free state while permitting popular sovereignty in the territories and enacting a stricter fugitive slave law
Personal Liberty Laws
the laws enacted by northern states to counteract the Fugitive Slave Act by granting rights to free African Americans and those seeking freedom
Underground Railroad
a system that existed before the Civil War in which African American and white abolitionists helped people trying to escape enslavement travel to safe areas in the North and in Canada
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) was an American writer and abolitionist best known for her antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852. She began writing her novel as a series of stories, which first appeared in the abolitionist newspaper National Era in 1851–1852.
Bleeding Kansas
a term used to describe the violence between proslavery and antislavery supporters in Kansas from 1854 to 1856
Republican Party
a political party established around an antislavery platform in 1854
Harpers Ferry
a town in Virginia (now in West Virginia) where abolitionist John Brown raided a federal arsenal in 1859
