MP

History Unit 5 Quiz Study Guide

  • candidates for the Democratic Nominee in 1848 - 

  1. Lewis Cass (nominated)

  2. James Buchanan

  3. John C. Calhoun


  • candidates for the Whig Nominee in 1848 - 

  1. Winfield Scott

  2. Zachary Taylor (nominated)

  3. Henry Clay 


  • Martin Van Buren: third candidate for the presidency in 1848, of the Free Soil Party 

  • gold: why people started to move to California in 1849

  • Compromise of 1850: set of 5 bills introduced to Congress by Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas - 

  1. California admitted as a free state

  2. New Mexico and Utah territories set up with slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty

  3. the slave trade outlawed in Washington D.C., but slavery was still legal there

  4. a new and harsher Fugitive Slave Law

  5. set the northern and western border of Texas


  • Fugitive Slave Act: required that everyone must return a runaway slave to their master; it made them active members in the institution of slavery

  • Underground Railroad: a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to escaped enslaved people from the South

  • Kansas Nebraska Act: created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska where the question of slavery would be determined by popular sovereignty; many people flocked to the new territories so they can determine the future of the territories

  • Bleeding Kansas: pro-slavery militias from Missouri and Antislavery militias from the North fighting in Kansas over the future of slavery

  • Republican Party: was created as an anti slavery party 

  • Charles Sumner and Preston Brooks: congressman who were in a brawl on the Senate floor; Sumner was beaten by Brooks over a speech he made against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the evils of slavery

  • Dred Scott Case: had the impact that Chief Justice Roger Tanney ruled that anybody of African descent could not be a citizen of the United States, and thus had no right to bring a lawsuit and the federal government had no right to restrict slavery from anywhere; thus, old laws like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise were illegal

  • Stephen Douglas: had the view of popular sovereignty on slavery in the territories 

  • Abraham Lincoln: had the view that slavery was immoral, a labor system based on greed and was against its expansion into the territories

  • John Brown: a fanatic abolitionist who had been fighting in Bleeding Kansas, aimed to lead a massive slave revolt throughout the South; raided arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, arrested and charged with treason - found guilty and hanged 

  • candidates in the election of 1860 (this election resulted in South Carolina seceding from the Union) - 

  1. Abraham Lincoln (R)

  2. Stephen Douglas (N-D)

  3. John C. Breckinridge (S-D)

  4. John Bell (CU)


  • Franklin Pierce: worsened the divide in the nation by not wanting to touch slavery, listening to Stephen Douglas and allowing the Kansas Nebraska Act

James Buchanan: worsened the divide in the nation by accepting the minority constitution in Kansas that allowed slavery; he also allowed the South to militarize during his term