APUSH Vocabulary Chapter 18 & 19

Chief Justice Roger Taney

As chief justice, he wrote the important decision in the Dred Scott case, upholding police power of states and asserting the principle of social responsibility of private property. He was Southern and upheld the fugitive slave laws.

Fugitive Slave Law

Enacted by Congress in 1793 and 1850, these laws provided for the return of escaped slaves to their owners. The North was lax about enforcing the 1793 law, which irritated the South to no end. The 1850 law was tougher and was aimed at eliminating the underground railroad.

Freeport Doctrine

Idea authored by Stephen Douglas that claimed slavery could only exist when popular sovereignty said so

Personal Liberty Laws

Laws passed by Northern states forbidding the imprisonment of escaped slaves

Know Nothing Party (American Party)

Political party of the 1850s that was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant. Nativism.

Harriet Tubman

United States abolitionist born a slave on a plantation in Maryland and became a famous conductor on the Underground Railroad leading other slaves to freedom in the North (1820-1913)

Pottawatomie Massacre

When John Brown (abolitionist) and followers murdered 5 pro-slavery settlers in Kansas then mutilated their bodies to scare other slave supporters and to keep slavery supporters from moving into Kansas.

Underground Railroad

abolitionists secret aid to escaping slaves, a system that helped enslaved African Americans follow a network of escape routes out of the South to freedom in the North

Commodore Matthew C. Perry

came with a letter from the president asking for foreign relations between the US and japan, successful

Critteden Compromise

prohibition of slavery north of 36, 30 line in addition to compensation to owners for runaway slaves

Fire-eaters

refers to a group of extremist pro-slavery politicians from the South who urged the separation of southern states into a new nation, which became known as the Confederate States of America.

Lecompton Constitution

supported the existence of slavery in the proposed state and protected rights of slaveholders. It was rejected by Kansas, making Kansas an eventual free state.

The Caning of Charles Sumner

the response senator Preston S. Brooks (SC) had to senator Charles Sumner's insulting speech about the trouble in Kansas

Popular Soveriegnty

to let people in a territory vote to decide if they will be a free or slave