US History - Chapter 9

A House Dividing

Economy in the South

• agricultural production

• plantation owners were the main leaders

• relied on slavery

• 9.4 million in population (3.2 million were slaves and 200,000 were free blacks)

Economy in the North

• Consisted of merchants, factory workers, and small farmers

• more industrial

• 40% of the population were farmers

• immigrants moved in for jobs

Nat Turner

a slave and radical preacher who led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, which resulted in the deaths of 60 white people and perhaps a hundred black people.

Northern views on the Constitution

• The government could use its power

• The Constitution is supreme law and is made by the people

Southern views on the Constitution

• Constitution was made by the states

• States had power to overrule matters related to the Constitution

Three ways slaves resisted slavery

• slowed work pace

• faked illness/injured themselves on purpose

• sabotaged machinery

“Fire-eaters”

people who were pro-slavery and threatened to secede from the US

Underground Railroad

• Was developed as a means of hiding fleeing slaves and leading them to safety and freedom in the North or in Canada

• Consisted of a secret network of safe houses and people who assisted slaves

Harriet Tubman

• Most famous member of the Underground Railroad

• Made many trips to the South to help lead dozens of slaves to freedom

• Was nicknamed “Moses” by William Lloyd Garrison

Northern arguments against slavery

• Believed that slavery led to a lack of enterprise and improvement

• Slavery discouraged education

• Slavery kept the south from progressing economically

• Recognized slavery as undemocratic and a violation of the DoI

Defense for slavery

• southerners believed that slavery was a necessary evil but then began to argue that slavery was a positive good for both the masters and the slaves

• slaveholders claimed that slavery promoted peace and prosperity and “civilized” the Africans

• prevented class and racial warfare

Popular sovereignty

the idea proposed by Senator Lewis Cass that the residents of a territory should decide for themselves the status of slavery

Free Soil Party

• consisted of the Conscience Whigs, Northern Democrats, and the abolitionist Liberty Party

• “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men”

• supported the Wilmot Proviso

• nominated Martin Van Buren as its candidate during the campaign of 1848

Compromise of 1850

• California would be admitted as a free state

• trade slave would be abolished in D.C

• stricter fugitive slave law

• protection of existing slavery in D.C

• New Mexico and Utah would have popular sovereignty

Millard Fillmore

• Zachary Taylor’s Vice President who ended up becoming president after Taylor’s death

• signed the Compromise of 1850 into law

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

• established a new process for enforcing the fugitive slave clause

• special federal commissioners would judge fugitive slave cases

  • they were paid ten dollars if they ruled for the slaveowner and five dollars if they ruled against

Franklin Pierce

candidate for the Democrats during the 1852 election

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• written by Harriet Beecher when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850

• a story that captures the wide variety of American experience with slavery—good and bad.

Stephen A. Douglas

• proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which organized the Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory

• returned to the idea of popular sovereignty, concerning the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Know-Nothing Party

• when members were asked about their secret group, they would reply that they knew nothing about it

• the name came from secret societies that were forerunners of the American Party

• arose in reaction to increasing immigration from Europe in the 1840s-1850s

Republican Party

• included abolitionists and Free Soilers who opposed the expansion of slavery

• there were a wide range of beliefs

James Buchanan

• nominated by the Democrats in the election of 1856

• was seen as the safe, sensible alternative to the “extremists,” Fremont and Fillmore

• won the election with 174 electoral votes

“Bleeding Kansas”

• a nickname for Kansas in the 1850s due to the large amount of violent acts that would occur within

• people from Missouri and other states would move into Kansas only to influence the popular vote for slavery, causing much conflicts and bloodshed

Sumner-Brooks Episode

• Senator Charles Sumner gave a heated speech denouncing what was happening in Kansas and verbally attacked his proslavery colleagues

• at a later meeting, while Sumner sat at his desk, Brooks struck him repeatedly with a cane.

John Brown

• an abolitionist from Connecticut who went to Kansas to help win the territory for antislavery forces

• tried to capture the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, but was caught and then executed

Dred Scott v. Sandford

• Black people were not citizens and had no right to sue

• Scott’s residence in a free state did not make him free

• neither Congress nor the territorial governments had the right to prohibit slavery in a territory and that the 5th amendment protected the right to a property, including slaves

• (Dred Scott was a slave who was taken to a free state under his master, but then they went back to the slave state they lived in and then the master died.)

Abraham Lincoln

• a Republican who ran against Stephen Douglas for the US Senate seat from Illinois in 1858

• became the 16th president of the US

• had many debates with Stephen Douglas, known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (mainly about slavery I think)

Confederate States of America

• pro-slavery states that seceded from the US

• elected Jefferson Davis as its President and Alexander Stephens as its vice president

• included South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, and eventually more

Fort Sumter

• the one fort Lincoln refused to give up to the Confederacy

• located in Charleston, South Carolina

Border States

• the four remaining slave states who chose to remain in the Union—Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware

• bordered the Confederate states