APUSH Ch. 17 + 18

Lewis Cass

Veteran of the War of 1812. Father of popular sovereignty and said that the people living in the territory should decide the status of slavery. Many agreed with this claim but had a fatal defect that it might serve to spread the blight of slavery.

Zachary Taylor

General in the Mex-Amer. War who used his success in his campaign. A Whig president and the 13th President of the United States who shoved slavery under the rug and didn’t acknowledge it.

Harriet Tubman

Conductor of the Underground Railroad and illiterate runaway slave. 19 forays into the south reusing more than 300 slaves earning her the title Moses.

Millard Fillmore

The 13th President of the United States, known for passing the Compromise of 1850.

Franklin Pierce

Unknown presidential candidate giving his a leg up when establishing his public figure for the election. Won because the Whig party was split, in a landslide. 

William Walker

Southern adventurer who went to Central America to seize control of Cuba. Was overthrown and Pierce withdrew diplomatic recognition. 

Caleb Cushing

Sent to China by President Taylor to establish diplomatic relations with China through the Treaty of Wanghia

Matthew C. Perry

Commanded a fleet of warships to Japan to establish diplomatic relations with Japan but did so through intimidation and force. Japan signed the Treaty of Kanagawa.

Popular sovereignty

Notion advanced before the Civil War that the sovereign people of a given territory should decide whether to allow slavery. Seemingly a compromise, it was largely opposed by northern abolitionists, who feared it would promote the spread of slavery to the territories. 

Free Soil Party

Antislavery party in the 1848 and 1852 elections that opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, arguing that the presence of slavery would limit opportunities for free laborers

Underground Railroad

Informal network of volunteers that helped runaway slaves escape from the South and reach free-soil Canada. Seeking to halt the flow of runaway slaves to the North, southern planters and congressmen pushed for a stronger fugitive slave law.

Compromise of 1850

Admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in Washington, D.C., and introduced a more stringent fugitive slave law. Widely opposed in both the North and South, it did little to settle the escalating dispute over slavery. 

Fugitive Slave Law

Passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, it set high penalties for anyone who aided escaped slaves and compelled all law enforcement officers to participate in retrieving runaways. Strengthened the antislavery cause in the North.

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty

Signed by Great Britain and the United States, it provided that the two nations would jointly protect the neutrality of Central America and that neither power would seek to fortify or exclusively control any future isthmian waterway. Later revoked by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, which gave the United States control of the Panama Canal.

Ostend Manifesto

Secret Franklin Pierce administration proposal to purchase or, that failing, to wrest militarily Cuba from Spain. Once leaked, it was quickly abandoned due to vehement opposition from the North.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Proposed that the issue of slavery be decided by popular sovereignty in the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, thus revoking the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Introduced by Stephen Douglas in an effort to bring Nebraska into the Union and pave the way for a northern transcontinental railroad.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

American Abolitionist author. Wrote Uncle Tom’s cabin

James Buchanan

15th president, supporter of the Lecompton Constitution

Charles Sumner

American politician and lawyer, abolitionist

Dred Scott

enslaved African American man who unsuccessfully sued for the freedom of himself and his family

Roger B. Taney

fifth chief justice of the United States, best known for the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision

Stephen Douglas

American politician and democratic leader, instrumental in the passing of the Compromise of 1850

Abraham Lincoln

16th president of the United States, issues emancipation proclamation, assassinated in 1865

John Brown

American evangelist and abolitionist, participated in the Underground Railroad

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery. It heightened northern support for abolition and escalated the sectional conflict

The Impending Crisis of the South 

Antislavery tract, written by white southerner Hinton R. Helper, arguing that nonslaveholding whites actually suffered most in a slave economy. 

Lecompton Constitution

Proposed Kansas constitution, whose ratification was unfairly rigged so as to guarantee slavery in the territory. Initially ratified by proslavery forces, it was later voted down when Congress required that the entire constitution be put up for a vote.

Bleeding Kansas

Civil war in Kansas over the issue of slavery in the territory, fought intermittently until 1861, when it merged with the wider national Civil War.

Dred Scott v. Sanford

Supreme Court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Also declared that slaves, as property, were not citizens of the United States.

Tariff of 1857

Lowered duties on imports in response to a high Treasury surplus and pressure from southern farmers

Freeport Doctrine

Declared that since slavery could not exist without laws to protect it, territorial legislatures, not the Supreme Court, would have the final say on the slavery question. First argued by Stephen Douglas in 1858 in response to Abraham Lincoln’s “Freeport question.”

Harpers Ferry

Federal arsenal in Virginia seized by abolitionist John Brown in 1859. Though Brown was later captured and executed, his raid alarmed southerners, who believed that northerners shared in Brown’s extremism.

Crittenden Constitution

Failed constitutional amendments that would have given federal protection for slavery in all territories south of 36°30’ where slavery was supported by popular sovereignty. Proposed in an attempt to appease the South.