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Aroostook War

Series of clashed between American and Canadian lumberjacks in Maine (1842)

Manifest Destiny

Belief that United States was destined by God to spread across North America

Liberty Party

Anti slavery party that hoped to stop the expansion of slavery into the territories and abolish domestic slave trade

Spot resolutions

Measures introduced by Abraham Lincoln To clarify where Mexican forces had attacked American troops

California Bear Flag Republic

Short-lived California republic, established by local American settlers who revolted against Mexico; eventually abandoned the Republic in favor of joining the United States.

Guadalupe Hidalgo

Ended the war with Mexico. Mexico agreed to cede territory reaching northwest from Texas to Oregon in exchange for $18.25 million in cash and assumed debts.

Conscience Whigs

Northern Whigs who opposed slavery on moral grounds. Conscience Whigs sought to prevent the annexation of Texas as a slave state

Wilmot Proviso

Amendment that sought to prohibit slavery from territories acquired from Mexico

John Tyler

• 1841-1845 President

• Secured the annexation of Texas

James K. Polk

• 1845-1849 President

• Wanted the U.S. to expand

• Started Mexican-American war

• Annexed Texas & settled Oregon

• Stephen W. Kearny

• U.S. Army general in the Mexican American War

• Key figure in fulfilling Manifest Destiny

• John C. Frémont

• Led expeditions that mapped the West, encouraging expansion.

• Played a major role in the Bear Flag Revolt in California

Winfield Scott

• Helped secure the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo outcome by capturing Mexico City

• created the Anaconda Plan for the Civil War that put a naval blockade on southern ports and took control of the Mississippi River

Nicholas P. Trist

• Sent by Polk to negotiate peace with Mexico

• Negotiated and signed the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo

David Wilmot

• Congressman who proposed Wilmot Proviso

  • Never passed but intensified sectional conflict

Fire-eaters

Radical Southern pro-slavery politicians who demanded secession and argued that slavery must expand or the South would be destroyed.

Popular sovereignty

The idea that people living in a territory should vote to decide whether slavery would be allowed there.

Free Soil Party

A political party that opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories, arguing slavery hurt free white labor.

California gold rush

The 1848–49 mass migration of people to California in search of gold, rapidly increasing the population and speeding up California’s push for statehood.

Underground Railroad

A secret network of routes and safe houses used by enslaved people to escape to the North or Canada

• Compromise of 1850

A package of laws that admitted California as a free state, used popular sovereignty in Utah/New Mexico, ended the D.C. slave trade, and created a harsh new Fugitive Slave Act to calm sectional tensions.

• Fugitive Slave Law

Required citizens to help capture escaped enslaved people

Ostend Manifesto

A secret 1854 proposal by U.S. diplomats urging the U.S. to buy Cuba from Spain—and take it by force if refused—which angered the North because it looked like a plan to expand slavery.

• Gadsden Purchase

U.S. bought a small strip of land in southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico to build a southern transcontinental railroad.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Law that opened Kansas and Nebraska to popular sovereignty and effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, leading to violent conflict known as “Bleeding Kansas.”

Lewis Cass

created popular sovereignty, arguing territories should vote on slavery themselves.

Zachary Taylor

Mexican-American War hero and president who opposed the Compromise of 1850 and threatened to use force against secessionists.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel that stirred Northern outrage against slavery and increased sectional tension.

The Impending Crisis of the South

The Impending Crisis of the South: Hinton Helper’s book arguing slavery hurt poor Southern whites, angering Southern leaders.

New England Emigrant Aid Company

Northern group that sent antislavery settlers to Kansas to keep it from becoming a slave state.

Lecompton Constitution

Pro-slavery Kansas constitution pushed by Southerners to force Kansas into the Union as a slave state.

Bleeding Kansas

Violent conflict between pro-slavery and antislavery settlers in Kansas after the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Supreme Court decision ruling enslaved people were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in territories.

Panic of 1857

Economic downturn that hit the North harder, making Southerners claim their cotton economy was stronger.

Tariff of 1857

Reduced tariff rates, pleasing the South but leaving the North feeling economically unprotected.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Series of debates where Lincoln pressed Douglas on slavery expansion, boosting Lincoln’s national profile.

Freeport Doctrine

Douglas’s argument that territories could limit slavery by refusing to pass laws protecting it, angering the South

Harpers Ferry

John Brown’s failed raid to start a slave uprising, which terrified the South and made war seem inevitable.

Constitutional Union Party

1860 party that tried to avoid conflict by focusing on preserving the Union above all else.

Crittenden Amendments

Last-ditch proposal to protect slavery below the Missouri Compromise line to stop secession, rejected by Lincoln.

Confederate States of America

The government formed by the seceding Southern states in 1861

Jefferson Davis

Confederate President

Fort Sumter

Federal fort in South Carolina where the Confederacy fired the first shots of the Civil War in April 1861

James Buchanan

Weak president whose support of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution worsened the sectional crisis.

Charles Sumner

Antislavery senator brutally caned after giving a speech attacking slavery and Southern politicians.

Stephen A. DouglaS

senator behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Freeport Doctrine, promoting popular sovereignty.

Abraham Lincoln

Republican leader who opposed slavery’s expansion and whose 1860 election triggered Southern secession.

John Brown

Radical abolitionist who led the Harpers Ferry raid to spark a slave rebellion, convincing the South that war was coming.

John Jordan Crittenden

Senator who proposed the Crittenden Compromise to extend the Missouri Compromise line and save the Union, rejected by Lincoln