Slavery in America - Key Terms and Events

Flashcards covering key terms, people, and events related to slavery in America, the Civil War, and its aftermath.

Triangular Trade & Middle Passage

Global trade route that brought enslaved Africans to the Americas

Chattel Slavery

People treated as property; slavery becomes racially based in British North America

3/5 Compromise (1787)

Gave slave states more power in Congress by counting 3 out of 5 enslaved people for representation

Frederick Douglass

Former enslaved person, leading abolitionist, powerful writer/speaker

Harriet Tubman

Led hundreds to freedom via the Underground Railroad

William Lloyd Garrison

Radical white abolitionist, published The Liberator

Sojourner Truth

Former enslaved woman, abolitionist and women's rights advocate

John C. Calhoun

Southern politician, staunch defender of slavery as a 'positive good.'

Dred Scott

Enslaved man at the center of a landmark Supreme Court case

Missouri Compromise (1820)

Admitted Missouri as a slave state, Maine as free, and banned slavery above the 36°30 line

Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)

Violent slave uprising in Virginia that led to stricter slave codes

Compromise of 1850

Included the Fugitive Slave Act, enraging Northerners

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

Allowed popular sovereignty in territories, led to 'Bleeding Kansas'

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Supreme Court ruled African Americans were not citizens, invalidated Missouri Compromise

John Brown's Raid (1859)

Attempted to spark a slave uprising at Harpers Ferry; seen as a martyr in the North, terrorist in the South

Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

Declared enslaved people in Confederate states free, shifted Civil War goals

13th Amendment (1865)

Abolished slavery nationwide

14th Amendment (1868)

Granted citizenship and equal protection under the law

15th Amendment (1870)

Prohibited voting discrimination based on race

Black Codes

Southern laws that restricted rights of freedmen

Sharecropping System

Replaced slavery with a cycle of poverty and dependence

Jim Crow Era

KKK, Disenfranchisement- Literacy Tests, Poll Taxes

Civil Rights Movement (1950s-60s)

Legacy of slavery seen in systemic racism and civil rights struggles

Civil Rights Act (1965)

Landmark legislation

Voting Rights Act (1965)

Landmark legislation