Time Period 5 Vocab

King Cotton

It was used in the antebellum south to signify the South's economic and political dominance based on cotton production.

Black Belt

The region of the Deep South with the highest concentration of slaves. It emerged in the 19th century as cotton production became more profitable and slavery expanded south and west.

Nat Turner's Rebellion

A Virginia slave revolt that resulted in the deaths of sixty whites and raised fears among white southerners of further uprisings.

Mason Dixon Line

The geographic boundary that became a symbolic dividing line between the North and the South over slavery. Originally surveyed to settle a land dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland in the 1760s, it became the boundary between free and slave states.

Gag Resolution

A series of House of Representatives resolutions from 1836-1844 that automatically tabled, or postponed indefinitely, all antislavery petitions without allowing them to be debated.

Peculiar Institution

What white southerners used to refer to the system of chattel slavery in the South. It was used to downplay the brutality of slavery and highlight its supposed uniqueness compared to other forms of labor, even though slavery had existed globally for centuries.

Slave Codes

They were laws passed throughout the South to restrict the rights of emancipated blacks, particularly with respect to negotiating labor contracts. It increased northerners' criticisms of President Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction policies.

Manifest Destiny

A belief that the US was destined by God to spread its "empire of liberty" across North America. It served as a justification for mid 19th century expansion.

Spot Resolution

The measure introduced by Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln, questioning President James Polk's justification for war with Mexico. Abraham Lincoln requested that James Polk clarify precisely where Mexican forces had attacked American troops.

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

It ended the war with Mexico. Mexico agreed to cede territory reaching northwest from Texas to Oregon in exchange for $18.25 million in cash and assumed debts.

Mexican Cession

The vast territory of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming that Mexico gave to the US in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.

Liberty Party

An antislavery party that ran candidates in the 1840 and 1844 elections before merging with the Free Soil Party. Supporters of it sought the eventual abolition of slavery, but in the short-term hoped to halt the expansion of slavery into the territories and abolish the domestic slave trade.

Free Soil Party

An 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.

Popular Sovereignty

The notion 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'd promote the spread of slavery into the territories.

Conscience Whigs

They were northern Whigs who opposed slavery on moral grounds. They sought to prevent the annexation of Texas as a slave state, fearing that the new slave territory would only serve to buttress the Southern "slave power".

Barnburners

A progressive, antislavery faction of the Democratic Party in the 1840s. They were opposed to the expansion of slavery into new territories, supported the Wilmot Proviso, and left the Democratic Party to form the Free Soil Party after the 1844 election results.

Compromise of 1850

It admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade in DC, 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.

Kansas Nebraska Act

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

Crittenden Compromise

It was proposed in an attempt to appease the South. The failed constitutional amendments would've given federal protection for slavery in all territories south of 36°30' where slavery was supported by popular sovereignty.

Republican Party

A political party founded in the 1850s with the primary goal of opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Its emergence was a direct result of the political vacuum created by the Kansas Nebraska Act and the decline of the Whig Party.

Fugitive Slave Law

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

Dred Scott vs. Stanford

The Supreme Court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that Congress didn't have the power to prohibit slavery in any territory. It also declared that slaves, as property, weren't citizens of the US. It even ruled that the Compromise of 1820 had been unconstitutional.

Seventh of March Speech

Daniel Webster's impassioned address urging the North to support the Compromise of 1850. Daniel Webster argued that topography and climate would keep slavery from becoming entrenched in Mexican Cession Territory and urged northerners to make all reasonable concessions to prevent disunion.

Harper's Ferry Raid

When John Brown led a raid on a federal arsenal in Virginia in 1859. Though John Brown was later captured and executed, his raid alarmed southerners who believed that northerners shared in John Brown's extremism.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

A series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during the US Senate race in Illinois. Stephen Douglas won the election but Abraham Lincoln gained national prominence and emerged as the leading candidate for the 1860 presidential Republican nomination.

Greenbacks

The paper currency issued by the Union Treasury during the Civil War. Inadequately supported by gold, they fluctuated in value throughout the war, reaching a low of 39 cents on the dollar.

Habeas Corpus

A petition requiring law enforcement officers to present detained individuals before the court to examine the legality of the arrest. It protects individuals from arbitrary state action. It was suspended by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Emancipation Proclamation

It declared all slaves in rebelling states to be free but didn't affect slavery in nonrebelling Border States. It closed the door on possible compromise with the South and encouraged thousands of southern slaves to flee to Union lines.

Copperheads

Northern Democrats who obstructed the war effort by attacking Abraham Lincoln, the draft, and emancipation.

Border States

The five slave states - Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia - that didn't secede during the Civil War. To keep the states in the Union, Abraham Lincoln insisted that the war wasn't about abolishing slavery but rather protecting the Union.

13th Amendment

A constitutional amendment prohibiting all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude. Former Confederate states were required to ratify it prior to gaining reentry into the Union.

14th Amendment

A constitutional amendment that extended civil rights to freedmen and prohibited states from taking away such rights without due process.

15th Amendment

It prohibited states from denying citizens the franchise on account of race. It disappointed feminists who wanted the amendment to include guarantees for women's suffrage.

Redeemers

Southern Democratic politicians who sought to wrest control from Republican regimes in the South after Reconstruction.

Freedmen's Bureau

It was created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support. Its achievements were uneven and depended largely on the quality of local administrators.

10% Plan

It was introduced by President Abraham Lincoln. It proposed that a state be readmitted to the Union once 10% of its voters had pledged loyalty to the US and promised to honor emancipation.

Wade-Davis Bill

It was passed by Congressional Republicans in response to Abraham Lincoln's 10% Plan. It required that 50% of a state's voters pledge allegiance to the Union, and set stronger safeguards for emancipation. It reflected divisions between Congress and the President, and between radical and moderate Republicans, over the treatment of the defeated South.

Scalawags

The derogatory term for pro-Union Southerners whom Southern Democrats accused of plundering the resources of the South in collusion with Republican governments after the Civil War.

Carpetbaggers

The pejorative used by southern whites to describe northern businessmen and politicians who came to the South after the Civil War to work on Reconstruction projects or invest in southern infrastructure.

Ku Klux Klan

An extremist, paramilitary, right-wing secret society founded in the mid 19th century and revived during the 1920s. It was anti-foreign, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-communist, anti-evolutionist, and anti-bootlegger, but pro-Anglo Saxon and pro-Protestant. Its members, cloaked in sheets to conceal their identities, terrorized freedmen and sympathetic whites throughout the South after the Civil War. By the 1890s, Klan-style violence and Democratic legislation succeeded in virtually disenfranchising all southern blacks.