| A | B |
|---|
| Wimot Proviso | proposed that in any territory the US gained from Mexico "neither slavery or involuntary servitude shall ever exist" |
| Lewis Cass | Senator that proposed citizens of each new territory should decide if they wanted slavery or not (popular sovereignty) |
| popular sovereignty | idea that people living in a territory had the right to decide by voting if slavery would be allowed there |
| Conscience Whigs | Northern Whigs which opposed slavery & also opposed their party's candidate for president in 1848-Zachary Taylor |
| Cotton Whigs | Northern Whigs which supported slavery & also supported their party's candidate for president in 1848-Zachary Taylor-voting with Southern Whigs |
| Free-Soil party | political party that opposed slavery in new states added to the Union( the "free soil" of western territories)(made up of Conscience Whigs, antislavery Democrats, and Liberty Party) |
| Forty-Niners | people that came to California to search for gold in 1849 |
| secession | withdrawel from the Union |
| Uncle Tom's Cabin | book written to show that African Americans were real people imprisoned in horrible circumstances which caused pity and outrage in the North |
| Fugitive Slave Act | anyone can claim an African American had escaped from slavery, could take them into custody, slave brought before federal commissioner, sworn statement given claiming that the slave had escaped or testimony of white witness, slave sent back to the South |
| Underground Railroad | a system that helped enslaved African Americans follow a network of escape routes out of the South to freedom in the North |
| Harriet Tubman | runaway slave the risked re-capture by traveling to the South to guide other slaves to freedom along Underground Raliroad |
| transcontinental railroad | a railway system extending across the continent |
| Gadsden Purchase | US bought 30,000 square miles from Mexico in 1853 to build the transcontinental railroad-included southern Arizona & New Mexico-for $10 million |
| Kansas-Nebraska Act | passed in 1854-allowed people in territories to decide whether to allow slavery or not, repealed Missouri Compromise |
| Charles Sumner | Senator from Massachusetts & abolitionist that gave a speech accusing pro-slavery senators of forcing Kansas into the ranks of slave states, he targeted Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina |
| Republican Party | opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and slavery took this popular name for their coalition of Whigs, Free-Soil Party, & antislavery Democrats |
| Know-Nothings | the American Party that opposed immigration, particularly Catholic immigration, into the US because of the fear of these immigrants taking jobs |
| Dred Scott | enslaved man whose Missouri slaveholder took him to live in a free territory before returning to Missouri-he sued for his freedom-case went to the US Supreme Court and he was denied his freedom |
| referendum | the practice of letting voters accept or reject measures proposed by the legislature |
| Lecompton constitution | written in Kansas in 1857 legalized slavery in Kansas-it was rejected by the citizens of Kansas and their statehood was delayed until 1861 |
| Freeport Doctrine | argued people could still keep slavery out by refusing to pass the laws needed to regulate and enforce it |
| insurrection | an act of rebellion against the established government |
| John C. Breckinridge | nominated for president by Southern Democrats-supported the Dred Scott decision and agreed to endorse idea of a federal slave code for western territories |
| John Bell | nominated by a new party, the Constitutional Union Party, that believed in upholding the Constitution of the Union |
| Ctittenden's Compromise | guarantee slavery where it already existed & reinstate the Missouri Compromise line extending it to California border-slavery would be prohibited north of line and protected south of it |
| Confederacy | nation declared to have been formed by the southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860-1861 |
| Jefferson Davis | Mississippi senator that became the president of the Confederacy |
| martial law | the law administered by military forces that is invoked by a government in an emergency |
| Daniel Webster | Senator that supported Compromise of 1850(which was proposed by Henry Clay) in order to preserve the Union of US, later became Secretary of State |
| Compromise of 1850 | consisted of laws passed to deal with the issue of slavery and to keep the US intact |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe | wrote the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" which was published in 1852 |
| Isaac Brandt | used secret signals to communicate with conductors on the Underground Railroad |
| Levi Coffin | Quaker that allowed escaped slaves to stay at his home in Indiana |
| Missouri Compromise | passed in 1820-pairing the admission of free and slave states together to quiet the dispute over the expansion of slavery(slavery prohibited north of latitude 36 degrees 30') |
| Andrew P. Butler | senator from South Carolina & supporter of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that was targeted in a speech saying Butler had "chosen a mistress...the harlot, Slavery" |
| obiter dictum | an incidental opinion not called for by the circumstances in case |
