| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Wilmot Proviso | proposal that stated that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude would ever exist in any part of the Mexican Cession |
| sectionalism | devotion to the interests of one region instead of to the country as a whole |
| popular sovereignty | principle that would allow voters in a particular territory to decide whether they wanted to ban or permit slavery |
| Free-Soil Party | endorsed the Wilmot Proviso and chose former president Martin Van Buren of NY as its candidate for President |
| Henry Clay | person who offered a series of proposals to address all of the current issues of sectional disagreement |
| Compromise of 1850 | series of decisions that seemed to be a final settlement of the slavery controversy |
| Fugitive Slave Act | law that made it a federal crime to assist runaway slaves and allowed slaves to be arrested even in areas where slavery was illegal |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | powerful antislavery novel |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe | person who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin |
| Franklin Pierce | man who swore to honor the Compromise of 1850 and enforce the Fugitive Slave Act |
| Kansas-Nebraska Act | 1854, divided rest of Louisiana Purchase into 2 territories in which the slavery question would be decided by popular sovereignty |
| Kansas | area that antislavery and pro-slavery groups competed to determine the slavery question due to popular sovereignty |
| Kansas | had 2 territorial governments, pro-slavery and antislavery |
| free-soilers | antislavery settlers in Kansas |
| Reverend Henry W. Beecher | sent rifles to Kansas in boxes marked Bibles for free-soilers |
| Sack of Lawrence | occurred when pro-slavery posse was sent to arrest free state leaders and burned the town |
| Pottawatomie Massacre | John Brown and associates killed 5 pro-slavery men in Kansas |
| Kansas | collapsed into a state of civil war after Pottawatomie Massacre |
| Senator Charles Sumner | beaten unconscious with a cane by Representative Preston Brooks over slavery opinions |
| Republican Party | formed in 1854 by people opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act |
| Whig Party | fell apart completely because of the Kansas-Nebraska Act |
| Millard Fillmore | presidential candidate in the election of 1856 representing the Know-Nothing Party |
| James Buchanan | Democrat who won the 1856 election; carried 14 of 15 slave states |
| Dred Scott decision | Supreme Court ruling that African Americans were not citizens according to the U.S. Constitution |
| Dred Scott decision | Supreme Court ruling that slaves were property / chattel |
| Lincoln-Douglas debates | held in Illinois in 1858 whose central issues involved slavery and its future in the West |
| Freeport Doctrine | Stephen Douglas' explanation that Congress could allow the citizens of that territory to ban slavery even if Congress could not ban slavery from a federal territory |
| Harpers Ferry | location of raid whose purpose was to aid the abolitionists' cause |
| John Brown! | man who led raid on Harpers Ferry |
| John Brown | tried and sentence to death for the Harpers Ferry raid |
| South Carolina | first state to secede from the Union after Lincoln's election to the Presidency |
| Abraham Lincoln | elected President in the election of 1860 without carrying a single southern state |
| South Carolina | called for a special convention four days after Lincoln's election to consider secession |
| Crittenden Compromise | rejected by every Republican in the Senate |
| Constitutional Union Party | formed during the election of 1860 |
| Confederate States of America | new nation formed from seceding states in 1861 |
| Jefferson Davis.. | elected President of the Confederacy in 1861 |
Combine with other sets
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