| Term | Definition |
|---|
| 4 Main Causes for Civil War | slavery (morality in North, protection in South), constitutional disputes over the nature of the federal Union and states' rights, economic differences between Industrial North and Agricultural South, political blunders and extremism |
| Free soil movement; Free-Soil party | did not want end of slavery but they wanted to keep the West a land of opportunity for whites only so that the white majority would not have to compete with the labor of slaves or free blacks; Free-Soil party in 1848 in North, saying, "free soil, free labor, free men"; advocated free homesteads (public land grants to small farmers) and internal improvements |
| Conscience Whigs | Free-soilers and antislavery Democrats |
| "barnburners" | anti slavery Democrats whose defection threatened to destroy the Democratic party |
| Popular sovereignty | proposed by Democratic Michigan Senator Lewis Cass, proposing a compromise solution where slavery in the territories would be determined by a vote of the people who settled the territory |
| Lewis Cass | Democratic nominee for President in 1848 |
| Zachary Taylor | Whig Democratic nominee in 1848, Mexican War Hero who had no position on slavery in the territories; won |
| Compromise of 1850 | Henry Clay's proposal; California in the Union as a free state; Mexican Cession divided into two territories-Utah and New Mexico-and allow popular sovereignty there; give land disputed by TX and NM to the territories in return for the federal government assuming TX debt of 10 million; Ban slave trade in DC but let whites hold slaves as before; new Fugitive Slave Law to be enforced vigorously |
| William Seward | argued against the compromise saying that there was a "higher law" than the Constitution |
| Millard Fillmore | VP under Taylor, became President in 1850 when he died, was a strong supporter of compromise; signed all of the ideas into law |
| Stephen A. Douglas | politically major senator from Illinois, engineered different coalitions to pass each part of the compromise separately |
| Fugitive Slave Law | persuaded southerners to accept loss of California as a free state; enforcement of the new law was often opposed by anti-slavery northerners; gave federal government sole ability to act on the laws, supposed to return runaway slaves to southern owners and free blacks that were captured had no right to a trial by jury; citizens who hid slaves could face high penalties |
| Underground Railroad | network of conductors and stations to help escaped slaves reach freedom in the North or in Canada |
| Harriet Tubman | escaped slave who made 19 trips into the South to help 300 slaves escape |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin | most influential book about the conflict between a slave named Tom and the brutal white slave owners Simon Legree; moved a generation of northerners as well as many Europeans to regard all slave owners as cruel and inhuman; Southerners believed it to be proof of northern prejudice |
| Hinton R. Helper, Impending Crisis of the South | book of nonfiction that attacked slavery using statistics to demonstrate to fellow southerners (he was from NC) that slavery had a negative impact on the South's economy; Southern states banned the book but used by the North |
| George Fitzhugh, Sociology of the South | boldest and most well known of proslavery authors, questioned the principle of equal rights for unequal men and attacked the capitalist wage system as worse than slavery |
| Franklin Pierce | Democratic Nominee in 1852, a safe compromise candidate from NH; acceptable to southern Dems because of his support of the Fugitive Slave Law; won handily, signaling the death-knell of the Whig party |
| Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) | Stephen Douglas of IL needed to win southern approval for his plan to build a transcontinental railroad through the central US with a major terminal in Chicago, so he introduced a bill proposing that the Nebraska territory be divided into Kansas and Nebraska, and that the settlers use popular sovereignty in those regions; passed in 1854 |
| Know-Nothing party | Nativist hostility to immigrants led to the formation of the American party, or the Know-Nothing party; drew support away from Whigs |
| Republican party | emerged out of the KS-NEB act; membership entirely northern and western; overriding purpose was to express opposition to the spread of slavery in the territories; free-soilers, anti-slavery Whigs and Dems |
| John C. Fremont | 1856 Republican presidential nominee; platform called for no expansion of slavery, free homesteads, and a probusiness protective tariff |
| James Buchanan | Democrat presidential nominee in 1856, won but not without considerable Republican opposition |
| New England Emigrant Aid Company | created by abolitionists and Free-Soilers which paid for transportation of anti-slavery settlers to KS to vote against slavery |
| "bleeding Kansas" | fights that broke out against antislavery and proslavery groups in KS |
| John Brown; Pottawatomie Creek | in retaliation for a proslavery group attack on antislavery outpost Lawrence, KS, Brown, an abolitionist from CT, led sons on an attack of a proslavery farm settlement here, killing 5 settlers |
| Sumner-Brooks incident | Mass Senator in 1856 Charles Sumner verbally attacked the Democratic administration in a vitriolic speech, and his remarks included charges against SC Senator Andrew Butler; Preston Brooks, Butler's nephew, beat Sumner over the head with a cane to defend his uncle's honor |
| Lecompton Constitution | an attempt by proslavery Lecompton to get the president to admit KS as a slave state; failed to pass the House and failed to pass the settlers |
| Dred Scott v. Sandford | Scott was a slave in Missouri and was taken to the free territory of Wisconsin where he lived for two years before going back to Missouri; saying that being on free soil in WI made him a free citizen, Scott went all the way to the Supreme Court to sue for his freedom |
| Roger Taney | Supreme Court Justice who decided against Scott saying that he had no right to sue in a federal court because the Framers did not intend Africans to be US citizens, that Congress could not deprive people of property without "due process" and if slaves were a form of property, Congress could not exclude slavery from federal territories, and because Congress' law (the MS Compromise) excluded slavery from WI and other northern territories, the law was unconstitutional |
| Abraham Lincoln | Congressman in IL who was an unknown compared to the Little Giant (Douglas); moderate who was against the expansion of slavery |
| House-Divided speech | Lincoln's Republican nomination acceptance speech that government can not be half slave and half free; made southerners view Lincoln as a radical |
| Freeport Doctrine | Lincoln questioned how Douglas could reconcile popular sovereignty with Dred Scott, and Douglas said that slavery could not exist in a community if the local citizens did not pass and enforce laws (slave codes) for maintaining it; angered southern Dems |
| Harpers Ferry Raid | Brown's idea to use guns from the arsenal to arm VA slaves whom he expected to rise and revolt; federal troops under Robert E. Lee captured Brown and his band after a two-day siege; Brown and his followers were killed; a martyr to the North, a rebel and radical to the South |
| Election of 1860 | Douglas was Dem candidate, Southern Dems nominated John C. Breckinridge as candidate (platform was unrestricted spread of slavery and annexation of Cuba as another land where slavery could flourish), Repubs chose Lincoln and Seward (VP), Know-Nothings chose John Bell of TN; Lincoln won |
| Secession | December 1860, a special convention in SC voted to secede; FL, GA, AL, MI, LA, TX did the same; the 7 states met in Montgomery, AL and created the Confederate States of America; placed limits on the government's power to impose tarrifs and restrict slavery; President was Senator Jefferson Davis of MI and Alexander Stephens of GA |
| Crittenden Compromise | last ditch effort at Southern appeasement, Senator John Crittenden of KY proposed a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to hold slaves in all territories south of 36, 30; Lincoln could not accept it |
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