APUSH 18-20 Simple IDs

Fire-eaters

Hotheaded southern agitators who pushed for southern interests and favored secession from the Union

popular sovereignty

The doctrine that the issue of slavery should be decided by the residents of a territory themselves, not by the federal government

free soil party

Antislavery political party in the election of 1848 that included moral opponents of slavery as well as white workers who disliked black competition

underground railroad

The informal network of people who helped runaway slaves travel from the South to the safe haven of Canada

higher law

Senator William Seward’s doctrine that slavery should be excluded from the territories because it was contrary to a divine morality standing above even the Constitution

Fugitive Slave Act

The provision of the Compromise of 1850 that comforted southern slave-catchers and aroused the wrath of northern abolitionists

Utah and New Mexico

The two territories that were organized under the Compromise of 1850 with the choice of slavery left open to popular sovereignty

Compromise of 1850

A series of agreements between North and South that temporarily dampened the slavery controversy and led to a short-lived era of national good feelings

Whig Party

Political party that fell apart and disappeared after losing the election of 1852

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty

An 1850 treaty between Britain and America stating that neither country would exclusively control or fortify any Central American canal.

Ostend Manifesto

A top-secret dispatch, drawn up by American diplomats in Europe, that detailed a plan for seizing Cuba from Spain

Opium War

British military victory over China that gained Britain’s right to sell drugs in China and colonial control of the island of Hong Kong

Treaty of Wangxia

Treaty of 1844, between the United States and China that opened China to American trade and missionary activity

Gadsden Purchase

Southwestern territory acquired by the Pierce administration to facilitate a southern transcontinental railroad

Republican Party

A new political party organized as a protest against the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Lewis Cass

Democratic presidential candidate in 1848, original proponent of the idea of popular sovereignty

Zachary Taylor

Whig president who nearly destroyed the Compromise of 1850 before he died in office

Martin Van Buren

Former president who became the candidate of the antislavery Free Soil party in the election of 1848

Caleb Cushing

American diplomat who negotiated the Treaty of Wanghia with China in 1844

Harriet Tubman

Famous conductor on the Underground Railroad who rescued more than three hundred slaves from bondage

Daniel Webster

Northern spokesman whose support for the Compromise of 1850 earned him the hatred of abolitionists

William Seward

New York senator who argued that the expansion of slavery was forbidden by a higher law

Millard Fillmore

New Yorker who supported and signed the Compromise of 1850 after he suddenly became president that same year

Franklin Pierce

Weak Democratic president whose pro-southern cabinet pushed aggressive expansionist schemes

Winfield Scott

Military hero of the Mexican War who became the Whigs’ last presidential candidate in 1852

John C. Calhoun

South Carolina senator who fiercely defended southern rights and opposed compromise with the North in the debates of 1850

Matthew Perry

American naval commander who opened Japan to the West in 1854

William Walker

American proslavery filibusterer who seized control of Nicaragua and made himself president in the 1850s

James Gadsden

American minister to Mexico in the 1850s who acquired land for the United States that would enable the building of a southern transcontinental railroad

Stephen A. Douglas

Illinois politician who helped smooth over sectional conflict in 1850, but then reignited it in 1854

Uncle Tom’s cabin

A powerful, evangelical antislavery novel that altered the course of American politics

Impending Crisis of the South

A book by a southern writer that argued that slavery was most oppressive for poor whites

Beecher’s Bibles

Nickname for rifles paid for by New England abolitionists and brought to Kansas by antislavery pioneers

Bleeding Kansas

Term that described the prairie territory where a small-scale civil war between abolitionists and proslavery border ruffians erupted in 1856

Lecompton Constitution

Tricky proslavery document designed to bring Kansas into the Union; blocked by Stephen A. Douglas

Know-Nothing Party

Anti-immigrant party headed by former president Millard Fillmore that competed with Republicans and Democrats in the election of 1856 (either official name or informal nickname)

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Controversial Supreme Court ruling that blacks had no civil or human rights and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories

Panic of 1857

Sharp economic decline that increased northern demands for a high tariff and convinced southerners that the North was economically vulnerable

Freeport Doctrine

Stephen Douglas’s assertion in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that, despite the Dred Scott decision, the people of a territory could block slavery by refusing to pass legislation enforcing it

Constitutional Union Party

Newly formed, middle-of-the-road party of elderly politicians that sought compromise in 1860, but carried only three border states

Harpers Ferry

Western Virginia town where a violent abolitionist seized a federal arsenal in hopes of sparking a widespread slave rebellion

Confederate States of America

A new nation that proclaimed its independence in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861

Crittenden Compromise

A last-ditch plan to save the Union by guaranteeing that slavery would be protected in territories lying south of the line of 36° 30΄

Election of 1860

Four-way race for the presidency that resulted in the election of a sectional minority president

Lame Duck Period

Period between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration, during which the ineffectual President Buchanan passively stood by as seven states seceded

Harriet Beecher Stowe

“The little woman who wrote the book that made this great war” (the Civil War)

Hinton R. Helper

Southern-born author whose book attacking slavery’s effects on whites aroused northern opinion

Henry Ward Beecher

Preacher-abolitionist who funded weapons for antislavery pioneers in Kansas

John Brown

Fanatical and bloody-minded abolitionist martyr admired in the North and hated in the South

James Buchanan

Weak Democratic president whose manipulation by proslavery forces divided his own party

Charles Sumner

Abolitionist senator whose verbal attack on the South provoked a physical assault that severely injured him

Preston Brooks

Southern congressman whose bloody attack on a northern senator fueled sectional hatred

John C. Frémont

Romantic western hero and the first Republican candidate for president

Dred Scott

Black slave whose unsuccessful attempt to win his freedom deepened the sectional controversy

Harpers Ferry, Virginia

Site of a federal arsenal where a militant abolitionist attempted to start a slave rebellion

Stephen A. Douglas

Leading northern Democrat whose presidential hopes fell victim to the conflict over slavery

Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas

Scene of militant abolitionist John Brown’s massacre of proslavery men in 1856

John C. Breckinridge

Buchanan’s vice president, nominated for president by breakaway southern Democrats in 1860

Montgomery, Alabama

Site where seven seceding states united to declare their independence from the United States

Jefferson Davis

Former United States senator who, in 1861, became the president of what called itself a new nation

Kentucky/Maryland/Delaware/Missouri

The four original Border States where secession failed but slavery still survived

Fort Sumter

The federal military installation in Charleston Harbor against which the first shots of the Civil War were fired

Trent

A British ship from which two Confederate diplomats were forcibly removed by the U.S. Navy, creating a major crisis between London and Washington

CSS Alabama

Confederate navy warship built in Britain that wreaked havoc on Northern shipping until it was finally sunk in 1864

Laird rams

Ironclad warships that were kept out of Confederate hands by Minister Adams’s stern protests to the British government

writ of habeas corpus

Constitutional protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment that was suspended by President Lincoln on the grounds that the Union was at risk of destruction

New York City draft riots

Violent protests by largely Irish working-class citizens against being forced to serve in a war against slavery that they opposed

Greenbacks

Popular term for the paper currency that was issued by the wartime Union government to help finance the war

National Banking System

Financial institution set up by the wartime federal government to sell war bonds and issue a stable paper currency

Homestead Act

Federal law of 1862 that offered free land in the West to pioneers willing to settle on it, even during the Civil War

U.S. Sanitary Commission

Union agency organized by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and others to provide field hospitals, supplies, and nurses to U.S. soldiers.

Nursing

New profession that Clara Barton and others first opened to many women during the Civil War

Napoleon III

Slippery French dictator who ignored the Monroe Doctrine by intervening in Mexican politics

Charles Francis Adams

American envoy whose shrewd diplomacy helped keep Britain neutral during the Civil War

Thomas J. Jackson

Robert E. Lee’s brilliant military assistant for much of the Civil War whose nickname symbolized his strength and determination

Maximilian

An Old World aristocrat, manipulated as a puppet in Mexico, who was shot when his puppet master deserted him

Sally Tompkins

Leading organizer of medical services for the South, who was made a captain in the Confederate army for her efforts

Jay Cooke

Head of a major New York bank that marketed war bonds for the Union government at a profit

Abraham Lincoln

An inexperienced leader in war but a genius at inspiring and directing his nation’s cause

Jefferson Davis

Leader whose conflict with states’ rights advocates and rigid personality harmed his ability to mobilize and direct his nation’s war effort

Elizabeth Blackwell

First woman physician, organizer of the United States Sanitary Commission

Clara Barton

Helped transform nursing into a respected profession during the Civil War