DCUSH 0.4-0.5 Vocab

Wilmot Proviso

a call for a ban on slavery in any territory that the United States gained from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War

Free Soil Party

a political party formed in 1848 dedicated to preventing the spread of slavery into the western territories

Compromise of 1850

several acts of Congress that included California's admission to the Union as a free state, passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, and a law allowing territories acquired from Mexico to decide the issue of slavery themselves as they entered the Union

popular sovereignty

people control all political power

Fugitive Slave Act

a law requiring any state, whatever its laws on slavery, to assist in the return of people trying to escape enslavement to their owners

Harriet Beecher Stowe

was an abolitionist author who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin to show the human impact of slavery.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

an act of Congress allowing Kansas and Nebraska to decide the issue of slavery themselves as they entered the Union

John Brown

was an abolitionist who led a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry hoping to spark a rebellion of enslaved people.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

an 1857 Supreme Court ruling that declared that enslaved African Americans had no constitutional rights and that Congress could not decide the issue of slavery for new states

Roger Taney

was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from the 1830s through the 1860s; he wrote the Court’s Dred Scott ruling.

Abraham Lincoln

was an Illinois statesman who served as the 16th President of the United States; his term of office included the Civil War period.

John C. Breckinridge

was a Kentucky statesman who served as Vice President under President James Buchanan; he won the presidential nomination of the southern Democratic Party in 1860.

Confederate States of America

A government set up in 1861 by seven states that seceded from the United States; four other states later joined them.

Jefferson Davis

was a Mississippi statesman who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America.

Crittenden Compromise

a proposed constitutional amendment introduced in 1860 that would have allowed slavery in western territories south of the Missouri Compromise line

Fort Sumter

a Union-held fort in South Carolina that was the site of the first battle of the Civil War

Robert E. Lee

was a Virginia military leader who commanded the Confederate army during the Civil War.

Anaconda Plan

the Union military strategy for winning the war

Emancipation Proclamation

a presidential order that freed enslaved African Americans in Union-held territory in states that had seceded from the Union

draft law

an act of Congress giving the government authority to enlist men in the army without those men’s consent

habeas corpus

a constitutional guarantee that no one can be held in prison without specific charges filed against them

inflation

rising prices; general increase in prices; a general rise in the price of goods and services.

Ulysses S. Grant

was a military leader and statesman who served as the final commander of the Union army during the Civil War and later as the 18th President.

Battle of Gettysburg

a Civil War battle that took place in southern Pennsylvania; a Union victory, it marked the last major Confederate attempt to invade the North

William T. Sherman

was a general in the Union army whose “March to the Sea” left a wide path of destruction through the South.

total war

channeling of a nation’s entire resources into a war effort

Thirteenth Amendment

a constitutional amendment, ratified in December 1865, that abolished slavery in the United States.

freedmen

formerly enslaved people who were now emancipated