Unit 6: The Union in Peril - Practice Flashcards

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers key events, laws, and political groups leading up to the U.S. Civil War, as detailed in the Unit 6 lecture notes.

Sectionalism

The focusing on the interests of one's own region or section of the country, rather than to the country as a whole, which contributed to the Civil War through differences over slavery in the North, South, Midwest, and West.

Missouri Compromise

An 1820 agreement where Maine entered as a free state, Missouri entered as a slave state, and slavery was banned north of the line $36^\circ 30'$ while allowed south of it.

Wilmot Proviso

A failed attempt to ban slavery in the new territory won in the Mexican American War.

Compromise of 1850

A series of resolutions intended to appease both North and South, including admitting California as a free state and passing a strict new fugitive slave law.

Popular Sovereignty

The definition that people who live in a state or territory would get to vote on the issue of slavery.

Fugitive Slave Act

A law where alleged fugitives were not entitled to a fair trial or the right to testify, and those helping them faced a $1000$ dollar fine, six months in prison, or both.

Personal Liberty Laws

Northern laws that forbade the imprisonment of runaway slaves and guaranteed that they would have jury trials to increase slave catchers' expenses.

Underground Railroad

A system of safehouses and protection used to help people escape from slavery on the journey to Canada.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

An act to organize Western Territories into states that would use popular sovereignty to decide on slavery, which effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise.

Border Ruffians

Pro-slavery Southerners from Missouri who moved into Kansas to sway the popular sovereignty vote towards slavery.

Free Soil Movement

A group in Kansas that opposed slavery because it took land away from free whites and gave it to rich plantation owners.

Bleeding Kansas

A period of violence triggered by rigged elections where pro-slavery men attacked Free Soil men, burning buildings and destroying printing presses.

Pottawatomie Massacre

An event where abolitionist John Brown and a group of men dragged five pro-slavery men out of their homes and killed them.

Dred Scott Decision

An 1857 Supreme Court ruling that declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, stated that people of African descent were not citizens, and ruled that enslaved people were property.

The Secret Six

A group of six wealthy and influential men who funded John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry.

Harper's Ferry (1859)

A raid led by John Brown on a federal armory in Virginia (now West Virginia) with 18 supporters, which was eventually defeated by the US Marines.

Whigs

A political party divided on slavery that split over the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Democrats (1850s)

A pro-slavery party with support in rural areas; Northern members supported popular sovereignty while Southern members focused on defending the institution.

Republican Party

Formed in 1854, this party was opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and generally opposed the expansion of slavery.

Know-Nothing Party (American Party)

A party that originated from a secret organization and practiced nativism, being anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic.

Secession

The formal withdrawal of a state from the Union; South Carolina was the first to do this in December 1860 following Lincoln's victory.