APUSH - Period 5

Important Vocab for Period 5

Wilmot Proviso

Failed 1846 proposal to ban slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico

Popular Sovereignty

The principle that residents of a territory should vote to decide on allowing slavery

Compromise of 1850

Laws that admitted California as a free state and implemented a stricter Fugitive Slave Law

Kansas-Nebraska Act

An 1854 law allowing voters in Kansas and Nebraska to decide on slavery

Dred Scott v. Sanford

A 1857 ruling that African Americans were not citizens and Congress couldn't ban slavery in territories

Habeas Corpus

A legal protection against unlawful imprisonment, suspended by Lincoln during the war

Battle of Antietam

The bloodiest single-day battle in U.S. history, leading to the Emancipation Proclamation

Emancipation Proclamation

An 1863 order declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held territory to be free

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Total War tactics used by Union General William Sherman to defeat the Confederates

13th Amendment

Officially abolished slavery in the United States

Freedman’s Bureau

Agency to aid former enslaved African Americans into society with education and jobs

Radical Republicans

Republicans who pushed for harsh punishment of the South and full rights for freedmen

Sharecropping

A system where farmers worked land owned by others for a share of the crops, often leading to debt

Office of Tenure Act

A law restricting the president's power to remove officials, leading to Johnson's impeachment

Compromise of 1877

An agreement that ended Reconstruction in exchange for making Hayes president