Antebellum Era Flashcards

Flashcards about the Antebellum Era

Underground Railroad

Network of abolitionists who helped enslaved people escape to freedom

Secede

To leave a membership to a group

Discrimination

When equal rights are denied to certain groups of people

Abolitionist

A person who wanted to end slavery.

Cotton Boom

Era in the mid-1800s South when the cotton industry was growing fast because of inventions like the Cotton Gin; relied on enslaved people

Artisan

A skilled worker.

Compromise of 1850

Agreement over slavery by which California joined the US as a free state and the Fugitive Slave Act was passed.

Fugitive Slave Act (1850)

Law that required all citizens of the US (in the North and South) to help find and capture runaway slaves.

Missouri Compromise (1820)

Agreement reached to keep the number of “slave states” and the number of “free states” equal.

Slave Codes

Laws that controlled the lives of enslaved African Americans and denied them basic rights.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

Law that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska that gave the settlers the right to vote on whether each territory would allow slavery or not; resulted in raids and fighting between pro and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas known as Bloody Kansas.

Sectionalism

Political ideas and beliefs were split between different regions of the country (North, South, West)