History Secession Vocabulary

Compromise of 1820

Allowed Missouri to enter as a slave state and Maine as a free state, keeping the balance; banned slavery north of the 36°30′ line.

Compromise of 1850

A set of laws admitting California as a free state and strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act, among other changes to ease tensions over slavery.

Fugitive slave act

A law requiring that escaped enslaved people be returned to their owners, even if they were found in free states.

Bleeding kansas

Violent clashes in Kansas between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups after the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Personal Liberty Law

Northern state laws that protected escaped enslaved people and resisted the Fugitive Slave Act.

The confederacy

The group of Southern states that seceded from the U.S. to form their own nation during the Civil War.

The Union

The Northern states that remained loyal to the U.S. government during the Civil War.

Institution

An established system or practice; often refers to slavery as a long-standing system in the South.

Dred scott decision

An 1857 Supreme Court ruling that said enslaved people were property and had no legal rights as citizens.

Justice Taney

The Supreme Court Chief Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision.

⅗ compromise

An agreement stating that each enslaved person would count as three-fifths of a person for representation and taxation purposes.

John Brown’s Raid

A failed 1859 attack on a U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry by abolitionist John Brown, who wanted to start a slave rebellion.

Secession

When a state leaves or withdraws from a country, like Southern states leaving the Union before the Civil War.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

A law that let people in Kansas and Nebraska vote on whether to allow slavery, leading to violent conflict (“Bleeding Kansas”).

Sectionalism

Loyalty to one’s region (North, South, or West) rather than the whole country.

Yeoman farmers

Small landowning farmers who worked their own land, usually without enslaved people.

Abolitionist

A person who wanted to end slavery in the United States.

Popular sovereignty

The idea that people in a territory should vote to decide if slavery would be allowed there.

Antebellum

The time period in the South before the Civil War.

Plantations

Large farms in the South that used enslaved labor to grow crops like cotton and tobacco.

Chattel slavery

A system where enslaved people were treated as property that could be bought, sold, or inherited.