7.1 - 7.2 Vocab

Wilmot Proviso

The proposed, but rejected, 1846 bill that would have banned slavery in the territory won from Mexico in the Mexican War.

Free-Soil Party

An antislavery political party in the mid-1800s.

Popular Sovereignty

A principle in which the people are the only source of government power.

Secede

To withdraw formally from a membership in a group or an organization.

Compromise of 1850

Henry Clay - A political agreement that admitted California to the Union as a free state while permitting popular sovereignty in the territories and enacting a stricter fugitive slave law.

Fugitive Slave Act

A law that required all citizens to aid in apprehending runaway slaves; a part of the Compromise of 1850.

Personal Liberty Laws

Laws enacted by northern states to counteract the Fugitive Slave Act by granting rights to escaped slaves and free African Americans.

Underground Railroad

A system that existed before the Civil War in which African American and white abolitionists helped escaped slaves travel to safe areas in the North and Canada.

Harriet Tubman

Born into slavery in Maryland, she escaped and became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, leading hundreds to freedom.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

An American writer and abolitionist best known for her antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

A 1854 law that divided the Nebraska Territory into Kansas and Nebraska, allowing each territory to decide on slavery.

John Brown

An American abolitionist best known for leading a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859.

Bleeding Kansas

A term used to describe the violence between proslavery and antislavery supporters in Kansas from 1854 to 1856.

Nativist

A person who favors native-born inhabitants over immigrants.

Know-Nothings

A political party of the mid-1800s that opposed immigration, officially known as the American Party.

Republican Party

A political party established around an antislavery platform in 1854.

Dred Scott

An African American man who sued for freedom; the Supreme Court ruled against him in Dred Scott v. Sandford.

Roger B. Taney

The fifth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, best known for his decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford.

Abraham Lincoln

The 16th president of the U.S. who led the country during the Civil War and was assassinated in 1865.

Stephen A. Douglas

A U.S. Senator and advocate for popular sovereignty on the question of slavery in new states and territories.

Harpers Ferry

A town where John Brown raided a federal arsenal in 1859.