The Union in Peril: Lecture Flashcards

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers the political tensions, key legislation, cultural differences, and pivotal events leading up to the American Civil War.

Genteel

Having an aristocratic quality characterized by being stylish, polite, debonair, and respectable, relating to the gentry or upper class.

Cavalier

A term describing Southern culture that displays chivalry, gallantry, and heroism.

The Wilmot Proviso

A proposed amendment to an appropriations bill by PA Democrat David Wilmot that sought to ban slavery in any territory taken from Mexico.

Secession

The formal withdrawal of a state from the Union.

The Compromise of $1850$

A series of measures proposed by Henry Clay that admitted California as a free state and established popular sovereignty for New Mexico and Utah.

Popular Sovereignty

The right of residents in a given territory to decide and vote upon the issue of slavery for themselves.

Fugitive Slave Act of $1850$

A law that denied escaped slaves a trial by jury, prohibited them from testifying, and penalized those who helped or harbored fugitives.

Personal Liberty Laws

Statutes passed by nine Northern states that forbade the imprisonment of runaway slaves and guaranteed them jury trials.

Anthony Burns Case

An $1854$ incident where an escaped slave was forced back to Virginia from Boston, leading to a drastic increase in Northern abolitionist sentiment.

Twelve Years a Slave

An $1853$ memoir by Solomon Northup detailing his kidnapping in Washington City and his subsequent captivity on a Louisiana plantation.

The Underground Railroad

A network of people who aided and transported escaped slaves in their pursuit of freedom.

Harriet Tubman

A famous conductor of the Underground Railroad nicknamed "Moses" who aided $300$ slaves in escaping to freedom.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

An $1852$ novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that depicted the horrors of slavery and had an immense impact on swaying public opinion toward abolitionism.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

An $1854$ law that divided a territory into two parts and allowed the slavery issue to be decided by popular sovereignty, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise.

Border Ruffians

Pro-slavery individuals from Missouri who crossed into Kansas to vote fraudulently for a pro-slavery government in Lecompton.

Pottawatomie Massacre

An event where abolitionist John Brown and his men killed five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek in revenge for the Sack of Lawrence.

Bleeding Kansas

The name given to the Kansas territory because it became a violent battlefield between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces.

Sumner-Brooks Affair

An incident in Congress where Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner with a cane after Sumner delivered an anti-slavery speech.

Know-Nothing Party

Also known as the American Party, a nativist group that opposed immigrants, specifically targeting Irish and Catholic populations.

Nativism

The political policy of favoring native-born Americans over immigrants.

Free-Soil Party

A political party formed in $1848$ that opposed the extension of slavery into unorganized territories.

Republican Party

A party formed in $1854$ by Northern Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, and Free-Soilers who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

An $1857$ Supreme Court case which ruled that African Americans were not citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

Roger B. Taney

The Chief Justice who delivered the Court’s opinion in the Dred Scott case, stating that slaves were categorized as property protected by the Fifth Amendment.

Lecompton Constitution

A pro-slavery constitution for Kansas that was endorsed by President Buchanan but rejected by Kansas Free-Soilers.

Freeport Doctrine

Stephen Douglas’s view that slavery could be excluded from territories by popular vote despite the SCOTUS ruling in the Dred Scott case.

Raid on Harpers Ferry

An $1859$ attempt by John Brown to seize a federal arsenal and arm slaves for an insurrection; Brown was captured by forces led by Robert E. Lee.

Election of $1860$

The presidential election in which Abraham Lincoln was elected as the $16$th President, triggering several Southern states to secede.

Confederate States of America

The government formed by Southern states that seceded from the Union, with Jefferson Davis serving as president.