United States Vocab Test

Fugitive Slave Act

A law that made it illegal to help runaway slaves; required all slaves to be arrested in areas where slavery was illegal and require their return to rightful slaveholders.

Harper's Ferry

Location of the federal arsenal John Brown raided to steal guns to arm slaves

John Brown

Anti slavery advocate that believed god sent him to abolish slavery. He participated in Harper's Ferry and Bleeding Kansas

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Law the fully ended the Missouri Compromise by instituting popular sovereignty for slavery.

Stephen Douglas

Creator of Kansas Nebraska Act and architect of popular sovereignty

Popular Sovereignty

Belief that led people should have the right to decided whether their state should be a slave or free state.

Bleeding Kansas

A sequence of violent events involving abolitionist and pro-slavery advocates that strained the relationship between the north and south.

Border States

Slave States that did not seceded (Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri)

Union

The northern states that remained part of the United States during the Civil War.

Confederacy

The southern states that seceded from the US during the start of the Civil War (1861)

Dred Scott

American Slave who sued his master for keeping him enslaved in a territory where slavery was banned under the Missouri Compromise

Republican Party

First political party to publicly oppose the spread of slavery in the West

Abraham Lincoln

1) Issued the Emancipation Proclamation 2) Republican Party candidate in Election of 1860s and President of the US during the Civil War 3) Assassinated towards the end of the Civil War

Election of 1860s

South Carolina had threatened to secede if Lincoln won, Event that led to the secession of Southern States

Secession

Formal withdrawal of states or regions from a nation

Fort Sumter

Location where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Federal (US) fort stuck in SC after it seceded

Theatre

Major region of a war

Mobilization

the process of assembling troops and supplies and making them ready for war

Rifiling

The spiral pattern of lands and grooves in the barrel of a firearm. Helped to make guns deadlier in the Civil War

Anaconda Plan

Northern Civil War strategy to starve the South by blockading seaports and controlling the Mississippi River

Emancipation Proclamation

Issued by Lincoln, it freed all slaves in areas still at war with the Union. Did not free slaves in areas conquered by the Union or in border states

Total War

A conflict in which the participating countries devote all their resources to the war effort

General William Tecumseh Sherman

Union general known for his devastating March to the Sea

Ulysses S. Grant

General of the Union Arm during the Civil War, first in the West and then over the entire army. Became President in Election of 1868 as a Republican