Social Studies

Abolition

The movement to end slavery.

Missouri Compromise

Agreement that kept balance between free and slave states by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.

Compromise of 1850

A group of laws meant to reduce tension over slavery between the North and South.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Law allowing settlers in Kansas and Nebraska decide on slavery by popular sovereignty.

Fugitive Slave Law

Law requiring escaped enslaved people to be returned to owners.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Supreme Court case ruling enslaved people were not citizens and Congress could not ban slavery in territories.

Abraham Lincoln

U.S. president during the Civil War who helped end slavery.

Secession

When Southern states left the Union.

Confederacy

The Southern states that broke away during the Civil War.

Emancipation

The act of freeing enslaved people.

Freedman

A formerly enslaved person who became free after the Civil War.

Sharecropping

Farming system where workers rented land and paid with part of their crops.

Reconstruction Amendments

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that ended slavery and expanded rights after the Civil War.

Jim Crow Laws

Laws enforcing racial segregation in the South.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Supreme Court case that allowed segregation under “separate but equal.”