Reconstruction and Antebellum Slavery: Key Concepts

Vocabulary flashcards covering major terms and events from the lecture on slavery, expansion, secession, and the road to the Civil War.

Reconstruction

Federal effort to integrate 4,000,000 formerly enslaved people into American society and its political system after the Civil War.

Slavery (national institution)

An institution that was national in scope, not confined to the South; central to economic and political life.

1619

The year the first enslaved Africans were brought to what would become North America.

Emancipation Proclamation

1863 executive order by Lincoln declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held areas to be free.

Missouri Compromise

Legislation to balance free and slave states; admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state; prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel in the Louisiana Purchase.

36°30′ Parallel

The line used by the Missouri Compromise to separate free and slave territories.

Three-Fifths Compromise

Constitutional provision counting three-fifths of enslaved people for representation in Congress.

Indian Removal Act (1830)

Law that forced Native American tribes from the Southeast to lands west of the Mississippi, leading to displacement and the Trail of Tears.

Trail of Tears

Forced relocation of Native Americans resulting in extensive deaths and suffering.

Wilmot Proviso

1846 proposal to ban slavery in territories acquired from Mexico; passed the House but failed in the Senate.

Compromise of 1850

Package of laws admitting California as a free state, ending slave trade in D.C., creating Utah and New Mexico territories with popular sovereignty, resolving Texas–New Mexico border, and strengthening the Fugitive Slave Law.

Popular sovereignty

Principle that residents of a territory should decide whether slavery would be legal there.

Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854)

Law that created Kansas and Nebraska territories and allowed popular sovereignty to decide on slavery, repealing the Missouri Compromise line.

Bleeding Kansas

Period of pro-slavery and anti-slavery violence in Kansas (1854–1859) over the slavery question.

John Brown

Radical abolitionist who led the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry; executed; a polarizing figure before the Civil War.

Second Middle Passage

Massive domestic slave trade within the United States moving enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South and West; shattered families.

Cotton gin

Invented by Eli Whitney; sped cotton processing and intensified the demand for enslaved labor.

Abraham Lincoln (1860 election)

Sixteenth President; Republican; opposed expanding slavery into new territories; his election helped trigger Southern secession.

Secession

Southern states' withdrawal from the United States after Lincoln's election.

Confederate States of America

New government formed by seceding Southern states in 1861, led by leaders like Alexander Stephens.

Cornerstone Speech

Alexander H. Stephens’ 1861 claim that the Confederacy’s cornerstone rested on white supremacy and slavery.