AMSCO United States History 2015 Edition, Chapter 13 The Union in Peril, 1848-1861
8373989598 | Free-soil Movement | Movement did not oppose slavery in the South, but did not want the Western states to allow slavery. | ![]() | 0 |
8373989599 | Free-Soil party | 1848-Northerners organized this party to advocate that new Western states not allow slavery and provide free homesteads. Slogan was, "free soil, free labor, free men". | ![]() | 1 |
8373989600 | Conscience Whigs | Whigs that opposed slavery. | ![]() | 2 |
8373989601 | Barnburners | Antislavery Democrats, whose defection threatened to destroy the the Democratic party. | ![]() | 3 |
8373989602 | New England Emigrant Aid Company | Northern abolitionists and Free-Soilers set up this company to pay for the transportation of antislavery settlers to the Kansas Territory. They did this to shift the balance of power against slavery in this new territory. | ![]() | 4 |
8373989603 | Bleeding Kansas | After 1854, conflicts between antislavery and proslavery forces exploded in the Kansas Territory. | ![]() | 5 |
8373989604 | Pottawatomie Creek | 1856-abolitionist John Brown and his sons attacked this proslavery farm settlement and killed five settlers. | ![]() | 6 |
8373989605 | Lecompton Constitution | 1857-President James Buchanan asked that Congress accept this document and admit Kansas as a slave state. Congress did not accept it. | ![]() | 7 |
8373989606 | Popular Sovereignty | Around 1850, this referred to the idea that each new territory could determine by vote whether or not to allow slavery in that region. | ![]() | 8 |
8373989607 | Lewis Cass | Democratic senator from Michigan-proposed popular sovereignty as the solution to the slavery question in the territories. | ![]() | 9 |
8373989608 | Henry Clay | He proposed the Compromise of 1850. | ![]() | 10 |
8373989609 | Zachary Taylor | 12th president of the U.S. from 1849 to 1850. Was a general and hero in the Mexican War. Elected to the presidency in 1848, representing the Whig party. Died suddenly in 1850 and Millard Fillmore became the president. | ![]() | 11 |
8373989610 | Compromise of 1850 | Henry Clay proposed and it was signed into law by President Millard Fillmore. It proposed: * Admit California to Union as free state * Divide remainder of the Mexican Cession into New Mexico and Utah (popular sovereignty) * Give land in dispute between Texas and New Mexico to federal government in return for paying Texas' public debt of 10 million * Ban slave trade in D. C., but permit slaveholding * New Fugitive Slave Law to be enforced | ![]() | 12 |
8373989611 | Stephen A. Douglas | 1854-devised Kansas-Nebraska Act, which in effect overturned the Missouri Compromise, allowed South the opportunity to expand slavery. 1858-debated Abraham Lincoln in a famous series of seven debates in the campaign for the Illinois senate seat. Won the campaign for reelection to the Senate, but alienated Southern Democrats. 1860-won the Democratic presidential nomination, but Southern Democrats nominated their own candidate, John Breckinridge. Easily defeated by Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election that year. | ![]() | 13 |
8373989612 | Millard Fillmore | 13th president of the U.S., serving from 1850-1853, last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. 2nd Vice President to become president upon the death of a sitting President, when he succeeded Zachary Taylor. As vice president he helped pass the Compromise of 1850. | ![]() | 14 |
8373989613 | Kansas-Nebraska Act | 1854 act, sponsored by Senator Stephen A Douglas, would build a transcontinental railroad through the central United States. In order gain approval in the South, it would divide the Nebraska territory into Nebraska and Kansas and allow voting to decide whether to allow slavery. This increased regional tensions because it effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had already determined that this area would not allow slavery. | ![]() | 15 |
8373989614 | Crittenden compromise | Winter of 1860-1861, Senator John Crittenden proposed a constitutional amendment to appease the South. He proposed that slavery would be allowed in all areas south of the 36 30 line. The Republicans rejected the proposal because it would allow extension of slavery into the new territories. (p. 260) | ![]() | 16 |
8373989615 | Franklin Pierce | 14th President of the United States from 1853-1857. Democrat from New Hampshire, he was acceptable to Southern Democrats b/c he supported the Fugitive Slave Law. | ![]() | 17 |
8373989616 | Know-Nothing party | Political party started in the mid-1850s. Also known as American party, mostly native-born Protestant Americans. Core issue was opposition to Catholics and immigrants who were entering Northern cities in large numbers. | ![]() | 18 |
8373989617 | Republican party | Political party formed in 1854, in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Composed of a coalition of Free-Soilers, antislavery Whigs, and Democrats. Although not abolitionist, sought to block the spread of slavery in the territories. | ![]() | 19 |
8373989618 | John C. Fremont | In the presidential election of 1856, this California senator was the Republican nominee. Republican platform called for no expansion of slavery, free homesteads, and a probusiness protective tariff. Lost election to James Buchanan, but won 11 of the 16 free states, which foreshadowed the emergence of a powerful Republican party. | ![]() | 20 |
8373989619 | James Buchanan | 15th President of the U.S. from 1857 to 1861. Tried to maintain balance between proslavery and antislavery factions, his moderate views angered radicals in both North and South, was unable to forestall the secession of South Carolina to December 20, 1860. During his term: "Bleeding Kansas" (1856), Caning of Senator Sumner (1856), Lecompton Constitution (1857), Dred Scott case (1857). | ![]() | 21 |
8373989620 | Election of 1860 | In this presidential election, the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln won. Lincoln won all the northern states, while John C. Breckinridge, a South Democrat, won all southern states. South felt like it no longer had a voice in national politics and a number of states soon seceded from the Union. | ![]() | 22 |
8373989621 | Sucession | Election of Abraham Lincoln was final event that caused the southern states to leave the Union. In December 1860, South Carolina voted unanimously to secede. Within the next six weeks Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas had all seceded. In February 1861, representatives of seven states met in Montgomery, Alabama to create the Confederate States of America. | 23 | |
8373989622 | Fugitive Slave Law | Congress passed a second version of this law in 1850. Law's chief purpose was to track down runaway slaves who had escaped to a Northern state, capture them, and return them to their Southern owners. Enforcement of the law in the North was sometimes opposed even though there were penalties for hiding a runaway slave or obstructing enforcement of the law. | ![]() | 24 |
8373989623 | Underground Railroad | Network of people who helped thousands of enslaved people escape to the North by providing transportation and hiding places. | ![]() | 25 |
8373989624 | Harriet Tubman | Born a slave, she escaped to the North and became the most renowned conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom. | ![]() | 26 |
8373989625 | Dred Scott v. Sandford | 1857 Supreme Court case, in which Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that African Americans (free or slave), were not citizens of the United States, that Congress could not exclude slavery from any federal territory, and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The ruling delighted Southern Democrats and infuriated Northern Republicans. | ![]() | 27 |
8373989626 | Roger Taney | Southern Democrat and chief justice of the Supreme Court during the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. | ![]() | 28 |
8373989627 | Abraham Lincoln | Elected president of the U.S. in 1860. He was a Republican, who ran on a platform that appealed to those in the North and the West. It called for the exclusion of slavery in the new territories, a protective tariff for industry, free land for homesteaders, and a railroad to the Pacific. | ![]() | 29 |
8373989628 | Lincoln-Douglas debates | 1858-Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln had seven debates in the campaign for the Illinois senate seat. Lincoln was not an abolitionist, but he attacked Douglas's seeming indifference to slavery as a moral issue. Although Lincoln lost the election to Douglas, he emerged as a national figure and leading contender for the Republican nomination for president. | ![]() | 30 |
8373989629 | House-divided Speech | Speech given by Abraham Lincoln when accepting the Republican nomination for the Illinois senate seat. He said, "This government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free". | ![]() | 31 |
8373989630 | Freeport Doctrine | Doctrine developed by Stephen Douglas that said slavery could not exist in a community if the local citizens did not pass laws (slave codes) maintaining it. This angered Southern Democrats. | ![]() | 32 |
8373989631 | Sumner-Brooks incident | Incident took place in 1856, when Congressman Preston Brooks severely beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. The attack occurred in the Senate chamber, after Sumner gave a vitriolic speech, "The Crime Against Kansas". | ![]() | 33 |
8373989632 | John Brown | Led his four sons and some former slaves, in an attack on the federal arsenal, called the Harpers Ferry raid. | ![]() | 34 |
8373989633 | Harpers Ferry raid | October 1859, John Brown led his four sons and some former slaves, in an attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. His impractical plan was to obtain guns to arm Virginia's slaves, whom he hoped would rise up in a general revolt. He and six of his followers were captured and hanged. Southern whites saw the raid as proof of the north's true intentions - to use slave revolts to destroy the South. | ![]() | 35 |
8373989634 | Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin | 1852-she wrote this influential book about the conflict between a slave named Tom, and a brutal white slave owner, Simon Legree. It caused a generation of Northerners and many Europeans to regard all slave owners as cruel and inhuman. Southerners believed it to be proof of Northern prejudice against the Southern way of life. | ![]() | 36 |
8373989635 | Hinton R. Helper, Impending Crisis of the South | 1857-he wrote this nonfiction book, that attacked slavery using statistics to demonstrate to fellow Southerners that slavery weakened the South's economy. Southern states banned the book, but it was widely read in the North. | ![]() | 37 |
8373989636 | George Fitzhugh, Sociology of the South | 1854-he wrote this proslavery book which argued that slavery was a positive good for slave and master alike. He was the boldest and most well known of proslavery authors. He questioned the principle of equal rights for unequal men and attacked the capitalist wage system as worse than slavery. | ![]() | 38 |