Growing Tensions and Slavery

Flashcards related to growing tensions and slavery before the Civil War.

Wilmot Proviso

Called to ban slavery in the Mexican Cession, but did not pass.

Free Soil Party

Antislavery members formed this party to stop the spread of slavery; made slavery an issue in Congress.

Compromise of 1850

Proposed by Henry Clay to resolve the issue of slavery in new territories; included California becoming a free state, ending the slave trade in D.C., a strict fugitive slave law, and Congress not passing slave laws in new territories.

Fugitive Slave Law

Required Northerners to return runaway slaves or face penalties; denied slaves a trial or warrant.

Popular Sovereignty

The concept that people should decide if a territory is slave or free; applied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Bleeding Kansas

Violence that erupted in Kansas as pro and anti-slavery factions fought for control of the territory.

Sack of Lawrence

Pro-slavery people attacked and burned the town of Lawrence, Kansas.

Pottawatomie Massacre

John Brown and his sons killed 6 pro-slavery people in retaliation for the Sack of Lawrence.

Republican Party

Formed after the Whig Party split over the Kansas-Nebraska Act; comprised of Northern Whigs and supporters of abolition.

Dred Scott Case

Supreme Court case where Dred Scott, a slave, sued for his freedom; Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled Scott was not a citizen and Congress could not ban slavery in territories.

Secede

To break away from the Union, as South Carolina did in Dec. 1860.