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What were the main points of the Compromise of 1850?
California admitted as a free state
The slave trade would be prohibited in Washington, D.C.
A stronger fugitive slave law would be enacted.
The New Mexico territory would have a chance to settle the slavery issue.
How did the Kansas-Nebraska Act raise a storm?
The act proposed to apply popular sovereignty to the Kansas and Nebraska territories.
This meant that the settlers in these territories would be able to decide whether or not to allow slavery.
The act also repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited slavery in these territories.
This provoked a storm of protest in the North, where it was felt that the South had broken a long-standing agreement.
What was the Know-Nothing party?
A new party that gained popularity in the 1850s.
Appealed to evangelical Protestants, who objected to the millions of Catholics immigrating to America.
Also picked up support from former Whigs and Democrats who were disgusted with politics.
Collapsed for reasons that are still unclear.
What was the republican party’s stance on slavery
Emerged as a coalition of former Whigs, Know-Nothings, Free-Soilers, and Northern Democrats.
Emphasized the sectional struggle and appealed strictly to northern voters.
Promised to save the West as a preserve for white, small farmers.
What were some examples of cultural sectionalism in the 1840s?
Cultural and intellectual cleavages surfaced.
Even religion divided the North and South. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians split into northern and southern denominations because of their attitudes toward slaveholding.
Southern literature romanticized life on the plantation.
Northern intellectuals condemned slavery.
What was the Lecompton Controversy?
The pro-slavery faction in Kansas met in a rigged convention at Lecompton to write a constitution and apply for admission as a state.
Free-Soilers in Kansas overwhelmingly rejected the Lecompton constitution.
President Buchanan and Southerners in Congress accepted it and tried to admit Kansas as a state.
The House defeated this attempt.
The Lecompton constitution was referred back to the people of Kansas, who repudiated it.
What was the Dred Scott decision?
A Supreme Court decision in 1857 that crystallized the conflict between free and slave labor.
Dred Scott, a slave from Missouri, sued for his freedom after his master took him to live in Illinois.
The Supreme Court held that Scott was still a slave and did not have the right to sue in court.
The Court also ruled that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional.
The ruling outraged the North and strengthened the Republican Party.
What were the main points of Abraham Lincoln's arguments in the 1858 Illinois Senate race?
Claimed that there was a southern plot to extend slavery throughout the nation.
Promised to take measures that would ensure the eventual extinction of slavery.
Considered slavery a moral problem.
Lost the election but gained a national reputation.
How did events in 1859 and 1860 convince Southerners that the Republicans were a threat?
John Brown tried to capture an arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia to arm slaves.
Brown was executed for treason, but the North mourned him as a martyr.
The white South was disgusted and became convinced that the Republican party would use armed force to abolish slavery
What were the immediate causes of the secession of the south?
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860
Lincoln’s rejection of the Crittenden Compromise, which would have extended the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific.
Lincoln’s decision to resupply Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter.
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