Give Me Liberty! Chapter 13 Key Terms

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Series of senatorial campaign debates in 1858 focusing on the issue of slavery in the territories; held in Illinois between Republican Abraham Lincoln, who made a national reputation for himself, and incumbent Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, who managed to hold on to his seat

Tejanos

Texas settlers of Spanish or Mexican descent

The Texas Revolt

The 1830s rebellion of residents of the territory of Texas against Mexican control of the region

Gadsden Purchase

Thirty thousand square miles in present-day Arizona and New Mexico bought by Congress from Mexico in 1853 primarily for the Southern Pacific Railroad's transcontinental route

Fort Sumter

First battle of the Civil War, in which the federal fort in Charleston (South Carolina) Harbor was captured by the confederates on April 14, 1861, after two days of shelling

Know-Nothing Party

Nativist, anti-Catholic third party organized in 1854 in reaction to large-scale German and Irish immigration; the party's only presidential candidate was Millard Fillmore in 1856

Popular Sovereignty

Program that allowed settlers in a disputed territory to decide the slavery issue for themselves; most closely associated with Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois

Wilmot Proviso

Proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican War; it was never passed

Harpers Ferry, Virginia

Site of abolitionist John Brown's failed raid on the federal arsenal, October 16-17, 1859; Brown became a martyr to his cause after his capture and execution

The Slave Power

The Republican and abolitionist term for pro-slavery dominance of southern and national governments

Gold rush

The massive migration of Americans into California territory in the late 1840s and 1850s in pursuit of gold, which was discovered there in 1848

Antonio López de Santa Anna

The military leader who, in 1834, seized political power in Mexico and became a dictator.

Commodore Matthew Perry

U.S. naval officer who negotiated the Treaty of Kanazawa in 1854. That Treaty was the first step in starting a political and commercial relationship between the United States and Japan

"Bleeding Kansas"

Violence between pro- and antislavery settlers in the Kansas Territory, 1856

Compromise of 1850

Complex compromise devised by Senator Henry Clay driven by the belief that by admitting California as a free state, included a stronger fugitive slave law, and delayed determination of the slave status of the New Mexico and Utah territories

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854 law sponsored by Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas to allow settlers in newly organized territories north of the Missouri border to decide the slavery issue for themselves; fury over the resulting repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 led to violence in Kansas and to the formation of the Republican Party

Mexican War

Controversial war with Mexico for control of California and New Mexico, 1846-1848; the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo fixed the border at the Rio Grande and extended the United States to the Pacific coast, annexing more than half-million square miles of Mexican territory

Fugitive Slave Act

1850 law that gave the federal government authority in cases involving runaway slaves; aroused considerable opposition in the North

Dred Scott v. Sandford

1857 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney rules that congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories, on the grounds that such a prohibition would violate the Fifth Amendment rights of slaveholders, and that no black person could be a citizen of the United States

Free Soil Party

Political organization formed in 1848 to oppose slavery in the territory acquired in the Mexican War; nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848. By 1854 most of the party's members had joined the Republican Party