| A | B |
|---|
| Kansas-Nebraska Act | Allowed settlers in the western territories to decide whether to allow slavery; pushed through Congress by Stephen Douglas |
| Jefferson Davis | Chosen by the South to be president of its new nation, the Confederate States of America |
| Roger B. Taney | Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the controversial decision in Dred Scott case that Dred Scott was not free while living in a free state |
| Fugitive Slave Law (or Act) | Allowed and/or required escaped slaves in the North to be recaptured and returned to their owner |
| South Carolina | The first state to secede from the Union |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe | Wrote the antislavery novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; an abolitionist writer |
| Civil War | War that began after the Confederacy's attack on Fort Sumter |
| Abraham Lincoln | Republican Party candidate for US Senate from Illinois in 1858 and for president in 1860; elected President in 1860; his election led the South to secede |
| secede | to withdraw from the nation or leave the Union |
| Montgomery, Alabama | Southern leaders met to form a new nation in this location |
| John Brown | Fiery abolitionist who led attacks on proslavery settlers in Kansas; led attack on Harper's Ferry; captured and hung for treason |
| Wilmot Proviso | A proposal that slavery be banned in all territory gained from Mexico; never became a law |
| Henry Clay | Proposed the Compromise of 1850 to deal with the crisis over slavery; known as the Great Compromiser |
| Senator Charles Sumner | Denounced the ideas of elderly Senator whose nephew then attacked him and beat him with a cane while on the Senate floor in 1855 |
| Free-Soil Party | Made up of antislavery Whigs and Democrats; did not want the land gained in the Mexican Cession to allow slavery in the late 1840s and early 1850s |
| John C. Fremont | The first Presidential candidate from the Republican Party in 1856 |
| "Uncle Tom's Cabin" | Important book; persuaded many people that slavery was morally wrong; angered the South as an inaccurate view of slavery |
| popular sovereignty | The idea that the people of a territory or a state vote directly on issues such as slavery |
| Henry Clay & Daniel Webster | Statesmen who wanted to compromise on the issue of slavery |
| Confederate States of America (CSA) or (Confederacy) | Name used by the states that had seceded and set up a new nation |
| Fort Sumter | The first battle of the Civil War was the Confederate attack on this location |
| John C. Calhoun | rejected Clay's proposal to compromise over slavery; wrote a speech that the only way for South to preserve slavery was constitutional amendment for states' rights or secession |
| Dred Scott decision | Stated that the US Constitution protected the rights of slaveholders but not slaves; slaves are not free while in a free state |
| Stephen Douglas | Closely associated with popular sovereignty; pushed teh Kansas-Nebraksa Act through Congress; debated Abe Lincoln in 1858 |
