APUSH Chapter 19 Vocabulary

Uncle Tom's Cabin

(1852) Harriet Beecher Stowe's widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery. It heightened Northern support for abolition and escalated the sectional conflict. (396)

The Impending Crisis of the South

(1857) Antislavery tract written by white Southerner Hinton R. Helper, arguing that nonslaveholding whites actually suffered most in a slave economy. (397)

New England Emigrant Aid Company

(founded 1854) Organization created to facilitate the migration of free laborers to Kansas in order to prevent the establishment of slavery in the territory. (398)

Lecompton Constitution

(1857) Proposed Kansas constitution, whose ratification was unfairly rigged so as to guarantee slavery in the territory. Initially ratified by proslavery forces, it was later voted down when Congress required that the entire constitution be put up for a vote. (400)

Bleeding Kansas

(1856-1861) Civil war in Kansas over the issue of slavery in the territory, fought intermittently until 1861, when it merged with the wider national Civil War. (400)

Dred Scott v. Stanford

(1857) Supreme Court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Also declared that slaves, as property, were not citizens of the United States. (403)

Panic of 1857

Financial crash brought on by gold-fueled inflation, overspeculation, and excess grain production. Raised calls in the North for higher tariffs and for free homesteads on western public lands. (404)

Tariff of 1857

Lowered duties on imports in response to a high Treasury surplus and pressure from Southern farmers. (405)

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

(1858) Series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglass during the U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Douglass won the election but Lincoln gained national prominence and emerged as the leading candidate for the 1860 Republican nomination. (406)

Freeport Question

(1858) Raised during one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates by Abraham Lincoln, who asked whether the Court or the people should decide the future of slavery in the territories. (406)

Freeport Doctrine

(1858) Declared that since slavery could not exist without laws to protect it, territorial legislatures, not the Supreme Court, would have the final say on the slavery question. First argued by Stephen Douglass in 1858 in response to Abraham Lincoln's "Freeport Question." (406)

Harpers Ferry

Federal arsenal in Virginia seized by abolitionist John Brown in 1859. Though Brown was later captured and executed, his raid alarmed Southerners who believed that Northerners shared in Brown's extremism. (408)

Constitutional Union Party

(1860) Formed by moderate Whigs and Know-Nothings in an effort to elect a compromise candidate and avert a sectional crisis. (409)

Confederate States of America

(1861-1865) Government established after seven Southern states seceded from the Union. Later joined by four more states from the Upper South. (412)

Crittenden Amendments

(1860) Proposed in an attempt to appease the South, the failed Constitutional amendments would have given federal protection for slavery in all territories south of 36°30' where slavery was supported by popular sovereignty. (413)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Sectional tensions were further strained in 1852, and later, by an inky phenomenon. This wisp of a woman and mother of a half-dozen children, published her heartrending novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Dismayed by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, she was determined to awaken the North to the wickedness of slavery by laying bare its terrible inhumanity, especially the cruel splitting of families. Her wildly popular book relied on powerful imagery and touching pathos. "God wrote it," she explained in later years, a reminder that the deeper sources of her antislavery sentiments lay in the evangelical religious crusades of the Second Great Awakening. The success of the novel at home and abroad was sensational. Several hundred thousand copies were published in the first year, and the totals soon ran into millions as the tale was translated into more than a score of languages. It was also put on the stage in "Tom shows" for lengthy runs. No other novel in American history--perhaps in all history--can be compared with it as a political force. To millions of people, it made slavery appear almost as evil as it really was.

When Mrs. Stowe was introduced to President Lincoln in 1862, he reportedly remarked with twinkling eyes, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war." The truth is that Uncle Tom's Cabin did help start the Civil War--and win it.

Henry Ward Beecher

This man was a preacher-abolitionist who helped raise money for the purchase of deadly new breech-loading Sharps rifles, nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles." The New England Emigrant Aid Company, a famous antislavery organization, had sent about two thousand people, armed with these rifles, to the troubled area of Kansas to forestall the South. This Reverend was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. (398)

James Buchanan

President Pierce had been succeeded by this no-less-pliable Democratic politician, who was also strongly under southern influence. He was the fifteenth president of the United States and he served from 1857 to 1861. Blind to sharp divisions within his own Democratic party, he threw the weight of his administration behind the notorious Lecompton Constitution. By antagonizing the numerous Douglas Democrats in the North, he hopelessly divided the once-powerful Democratic party. Until then, it had been the only remaining national party, for the Whigs were dead and the Republicans were sectional. With the disruption of the Democrats came the snapping of one of the last important strands in the rope that was barely binding the Union together. (400)

Charles Sumner

This senator of Massachusetts, a tall and imposing figure, was a leading abolitionist--one of the few prominent in political life. Highly educated but cold, humorless, intolerant, and egotistical, he had made himself one of the most disliked men in the Senate. Brooding over the turbulent miscarriage of popular sovereignty, he delivered a blistering speech titled"The Crime Against Kansas." He condemned the proslavery men and also referred insultingly to South Carolina and to its senator Andrew Butler, one of the best-liked members of the Senate. Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina resented the insults to the state and to his distant cousin, so he beat the Massachusetts senator with a cane until it broke. The blows rained on Sumner's head were, broadly speaking, among the first blows of the Civil War. (400)

Dred Scott

This black slave had lived with his master for five years in Illinois and Wisconsin Territory. Backed by interested abolitionists, he sued for freedom on the basis of his long residence on free soil. The Supreme Court proceeded to twist a simple legal case into a complex political issue. It ruled, not surprisingly, that he was a black slave and not a citizen, and hence could not sue in federal courts. The tribunal could then have thrown out the case on these technical grounds alone. But a majority decided to go further, under the leadership of emaciated Chief Justice Roger B. Taney from the slave state of Maryland. A sweeping judgement on the larger issue of slavery in the territories seemed desirable, particularly to forestall arguments by two free-soil justices who were preparing dissenting opinions. The prosouthern majority evidently hoped in this way to lay the odious question to rest. A majority of the Court decreed that because a slave was private property, he or she could be taken into any territory and legally held there in slavery. The reasoning was the the Fifth Amendment clearly forbade Congress to deprive people of their property without due process of law.

This slave's long legal battle for his freedom, culminating in the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision in 1857, helped to ignite the Civil War. Widespread publicity about the fate of Scott and his family strengthened antislavery sentiment in the North. (404)

Roger B. Taney

This Chief Justice from the slave state of Maryland led the Supreme Court through the decisions made during the monumental Dred Scott v. Stanford case. They ruled that Dred Scott was a black slave and not a citizen, and hence could not sue in federal courts. The tribunal could then have thrown out the case these technical grounds alone. But a majority decided to go further, under the leadership of this Chief Justice. His thunderclap rocked the free-soilers back on their heels. A majority of the Court decreed that because a slave was private property, he or she could be taken into any territory and legally held there in slavery. The reasoning was the the Fifth Amendment clearly forbade Congress to deprive people of their property without due process of law. The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision in 1857 helped to ignite the Civil War. (404)

Stephen A. Douglas

An American politician from Illinois and the designer of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He was a U.S. Representative, a U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee for President in the 1860 election, losing to Republican Abraham Lincoln. He had previously defeated Lincoln in a Senate contest, noted for the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. He was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short in physical stature, but a forceful and dominant figure in politics. was a leading proponent of democracy, and believed in the principle of popular sovereignty: that the majority of citizens should decide contentious issues such as slavery and territorial expansion. As chairman of the Committee on Territories, Douglas dominated the Senate in the 1850s. He was largely responsible for the Compromise of 1850 that apparently settled slavery issues; however, in 1854 he reopened the slavery question with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened some previously prohibited territories to slavery under popular sovereignty. Opposition to this led to the formation of the Republican Party. (405)

Abraham Lincoln

In the Illinois senatorial election of 1858, the Republicans decided to run this rustic Springfield lawyer against Senator Stephen A. Douglas. He was born in 1809 in a Kentucky log cabin to impoverished parents; he was mainly self-educated. Although defeated in the senatorial election, he had shambled into the national limelight in company with the most prominent northern politicians, and began to emerge as a potential Republican nominee for president. In 1860 he secured the Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing state. With very little support in the slave states, swept the North and was elected president in 1860, he was the sixteenth president of the United States. His election prompted seven southern slave states to form the Confederacy before he took the office. No compromise or reconciliation was found regarding slavery and secession. (405)

John Brown

After studying the tactics of the black rebels Toussaint L'Ouverture and Nat Turner, he hatched a daring scheme to invade the South secretly with a handful of followers, call upon slaves to rise, furnish them with arms, and establish a kind of black free state as a sanctuary. He secured several thousand dollars for firearms from nortehrn abolitionists and finally arrived in hilly western Virginia with some twenty men, including several blacks. At scenic Harpers Ferry, he seized the federal arsenal in October 1859, incidentally killing seven innocent people, including a free black, and injuring ten or so more. But the slaves, largely ignorant of the strike, failed to rise, and the wounded mastermind and remnants of his tiny band were quickly captured by U.S. Marines under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee. Ironically, within two years Lee would become the preeminent general in the Confederate army.

"Old Brown" was convicted of murder and treason after a hasty but legal trial. HIs presumed insanity was supported by affidavits from seventeen friends and relatives, who were trying to save his neck.

John C. Breckenridge

A lawyer and politician from the U.S. state of Kentucky, he represented the Commonwealth in both houses of Congress, and in 1857, became the 14th and youngest-ever Vice President of the United States (1857-1861). He was appointed Confederate Secretary of War late in the war. He was elected as a Democrat to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1849 where he took a states' rights position against legal interference with slavery. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1851, he allied with Stephen A. Douglas in support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He was nominated for vice-president at the 1856 Democratic National Convention to balance a ticket headed by Pennsylvanian James Buchanan, and they won the election. After Southern Democrats walked out of the 1860 Democratic National Convention, the party's northern and southern factions held rival conventions in Baltimore, Maryland that nominated Stephen Douglas and Breckinridge, respectively, for president. Breckinridge carried most of the southern states but no northern states and lost the election. (409)

John Jordan Crittenden

A politician and senator from the state of Kentucky. In December 1860, he authored a new Compromise, a series of resolutions and constitutional amendments he hoped would avert the Civil War, but Congress would not approve them. His proposed amendments to the Constitution were designed to appease the south, they would have given federal protection for slavery in all territories south of 36°30' where slavery was supported by popular sovereignty. These proposals were flatly rejected by President Lincoln.