Unit 7 Test Review

Frederick Douglass

A prominent American abolitionist, author and orator. Born a slave, escaped at age 20 and went on to become a world-renowned anti-slavery activist.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

A novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Showed northerners and the world the horrors of slavery while southerners attack it as an exaggeration, contributed to the start of the Civil War.

Republican Party

A spontaneous outpouring of anger following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Large public meetings were held in numerous Northern communities, some of which used the term "Republican."

Gadsden Purchase

Acquired additional land from Mexico for $10 million to facilitate the construction of a southern transcontinental railroad.

Compromise of 1850

Admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in Washington, D.C., and introduced a more stringent fugitive slave law. Widely opposed in both the North and South, it did little to settle the escalating dispute over slavery.

Wilmot Proviso

Amendment that sought to prohibit slavery from territories acquired from Mexico. Introduced by Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot, the failed amendment ratcheted up tensions between North and South over the issue of slavery.

Mexican War

An armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States from 1846 to 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war.

Nativism

Anti-foreignism. Viewed the eastern and southern Europeans as culturally and religiously exotic hordes and often gave them a rude reception. The "Know-Nothing Party"

Free Soil

Antislavery party in the 1848 and 1852 elections that opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, arguing that the presence of slavery would limit opportunities for free labourers.

The Impending Crisis of the South

Antislavery tract, written by white Southerner Hinton R. Helper, arguing that nonslaveholding whites actually suffered most in a slave economy.

Sectionalism

As the United States moved closer to civil war, the country divided more and more. This is the loyalty to a part of a nation, but not the nation as a whole. Americans saw themselves as Southerners or Northerners.

Fugitive Slave Clause

Passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, it set high penalties for anyone who aided escaped slaves and compelled all law enforcement officers to participate in retrieving runaways. Strengthened the antislavery cause in the North.

The logic and reasoning employed by Southerners in seceding from the Union borrowed heavily from the

Declaration of Independence.

Southern critics of slavery most often asserted that

the plantation economy made the South a colony of the North.

Treaty of Kanagawa

Ended Japan's two-hundred year period of economic isolation, establishing an American consulate in Japan and securing American coaling rights in Japanese ports.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Ended the war with Mexico. Mexico agreed to cede territory reaching northwest from Texas to Oregon in exchange for $18.25 million in cash and assumed debts.

Panic of 1857

Financial crash brought on by gold-fueled inflation, overspeculation, and excess grain production. Raised calls in the North for higher tariffs and for free homesteads on western public lands.

Gradualists vs. Immediatists

Immediatists demanded immediate, complete, and uncompensated emancipation, dominant strand of abolitionism. Gradualists proposed gradual emancipation

Bleeding Kansas

In response to Kansas-Nebraska Act (Popular Sovereignty). Proslavery and free-state settlers flooded into Kansas to try to influence the decision. Violence soon erupted as both factions fought for control. Abolitionist John Brown led anti-slavery fighters in Kansas before his famed raid on Harpers Ferry.

California Gold Rush

Inflow of thousands of miners to Northern California after news reports of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in January of 1848 had spread around the world by the end of that year. The onslaught of migrants prompted Californians to organize a government and apply for statehood in 1849.

Underground Railroad

Informal network of volunteers that helped runaway slaves escape from the South and reach free-soil Canada. Seeking to halt the flow of runaway slaves to the North, Southern planters and congressmen pushed for a stronger fugitive slave law.

Prior to the Civil War, a transformation occurred in the workforce of the New England textile mills as New England farm girls were replaced by

Irish immigrants

The first attempt to apply the doctrine of popular sovereignty in determining the status of slavery occurred in

Kansas

Tariff of 1857

Lowered duties on imports in response to a high Treasury surplus and pressure from Southern farmers.

The Republican party originated in the mid-1850's as a sectional party committed to

Opposition to the further extension of slavery into the territories

Brooks-Sumner

Preston Brooks beats Charles Sumner with a cane. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an avowed Abolitionist and leader of the Republican Party.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Proposed that the issue of slavery be decided by popular sovereignty in the Kansas and Nebraska territories, thus revoking the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Introduced by Stephen Douglas in an effort to bring Nebraska into the Union and pave the way for a northern transcontinental railroad.

1860 Election

Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and the Constitutional Union candidate John Bell.

Ostend Manifesto

Secret Franklin Pierce administration proposal to purchase or, that failing, to wrest militarily Cuba from Spain. Once leaked, it was quickly abandoned due to vehement opposition from the North.

Lincoln-Douglas

Series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during the U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Douglas won the election but Lincoln gained national prominence and emerged as the leading candidate for the 1860 Republican nomination.

Treaty of Wanghia

Signed by the U.S. and China, it assured the United States the same trading concessions granted to other powers, greatly expanding America's trade with the Chinese.

Dred Scott

Supreme Court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Also declared that slaves, as property, were not citizens of the United States.

5th Amendment

The Fifth Amendment forbade Congress from depriving people of their property without the due process of law

Manifest Destiny

The belief that the United States was destined by God to spread its "empire of liberty" across North America. Served as a justification for mid-nineteenth-century expansionism.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania

The court held that the federal Fugitive Slave Act precluded a Pennsylvania state law, which prohibited blacks from being taken out of Pennsylvania into slavery. The court ruled that states did not have to enforce the return of fugitive slaves.

"Popular Sovereignty"

The notion that the sovereign people of a given territory should decide whether to allow slavery. Seemingly a compromise, it was largely opposed by Northern abolitionists who feared it would promote the spread of slavery to the territories.

Mexican Cession

The region in the modern-day southwestern United States that Mexico ceded to the U.S. in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The question of extending slavery into newly acquired territories had become the leading national political issue.

"Fifty-four forty or fight"

The slogan adopted by mid-nineteenth century expansionists who advocated the occupation of Oregon territory, jointly held by Britain and the United States. Though President Polk had pledged to seize all of Oregon, to 54° 40', he settles on the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise with the British

What best describes the position on slavery of most northerners during the sectional crises of the 1850s?

They were willing to accept slavery where it existed but opposed further expansion to the territories.

Opium War

War between Britain and China over trading rights, particularly Britain's desire to continue selling opium to Chinese traders. The resulting trade agreement prompted Americans to seek similar concessions from the Chinese.

"Let Southern oppressors tremble... I shall strenuously contend for immediate enfranchisement... I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice."

William Lloyd Garrison

In 1840 the American Antislavery Society split into factions because

William Lloyd Garrison's advocacy of women's rights and pacifism alienated some members

In the antebellum period, free African Americans were

able to accumulate some property in spite of discrimination

The Election of 1848 is significant because it

demonstrated the power of the free soil idea to disrupt the political party system.

Southern slave owners viewed Abraham Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860 as a threat to slavery because he

opposed the extension of slavery