Unit 6

Underground Railroad

a network of routes, safe houses, and resources that helped enslaved African Americans escape to freedom

Mexican American War

a conflict between the United States and Mexico, primarily stemming from a dispute over the annexation of Texas by the U.S., which led to Mexico losing a significant portion of its territory

Free Soil Party

a political party devoted to stopping the expansion of slavery

Compromise of 1850

a series of five laws passed by Congress in September 1850 to address the issue of slavery and territorial expansion

Kansas-Nebraska Act

a law that established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and repealed the Missouri Compromise (both were not slave states)

Popular Sovereignty

the idea that the people are the source of a government's power and legitimacy, and that the government is created and sustained by the consent of the people

Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

a federal law that required all citizens, even those living in free states, to assist in the capture and return of escaped slaves to their owners

Republican Party

an alliance of anti-slavery conscience Whigs

Dred Scott v. Sandford​

a landmark Supreme Court case in 1857 where the court ruled that enslaved people, like Dred Scott, were not considered citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal court, effectively denying them any legal protection and upholding the institution of slavery in U.S. territories

Bleeding Kansas

a period of violence and political conflict in the Kansas Territory from 1854 to 1861, when the territory was plagued by dishonest voting, bloodshed, and guerrilla warfare

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

a series of formal political debates between the challenger, Lincoln and Douglas that focused on issues such as slavery and its expansion into the territories, highlighting the stark differences in their political philosophies

Secession Winter

the period between Abraham Lincoln's election as president in 1860 and his inauguration in 1861, when the Confederacy of eleven Southern states seceded from the United States

Dred Scott

an enslaved Black who sued for his and his wife’s freedom in St. Louis Circuit Court because they claimed that they were free due to their residence in a free territory where slavery was prohibited

Roger Taney

chief justice in Dred Scott case who decided that slaves were not US citizens having no right to sue in federal court, being brought to a free state does not make you free, and any Congress attempt to prevent the expansion of slavery was unconstitutional

Abraham Lincoln

became the United States' 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863

Stephen Douglas

a politician who ran against Lincoln and lost

John Brown

a militant American abolitionist whose raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859 made him a martyr to the antislavery cause