Final Exam Terms #7: The Abolition and Anti-Slavery Movements

Abolition: An immediate end to slavery.

Anti-Slavery Movement: Leave slavery in the places it is currently in, gradually end it.

Universal (white man) suffrage: let all white men vote in most places, but left out certain groups. Restricted voting for African Americans and women.

Black Disenfranchisement: African Americans lost voting rights after the revolution because prior to the revolution many African Americans did meet the property holding requirements. 

The North Star: Frederick Douglass’ newspaper.

Missouri Compromise: 1820, Maine is admitted on the grounds that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state and slavery would forever be prohibited from expanding above the line marked by the southern border of Missouri.

“The Slave Power”: Abolitionists’ way of referencing southern states voting together. 

Gag Rule (1836-1844): Any motion or proposal that concerned slavery in any way in the House of Representatives would be immediately tabled. 

Personal Liberty Laws (1826-1842): Laws passed at a state level that said people who enforced the fugitive slave act were committing a crime. This was eventually ruled unconstitutional.

Wilmot Proviso: proposed legislation that said no slaves would be allowed in any territory gained from the Mexican war, and it did not pass. 

Free Soil Party (1848): short lived political party focused solely on stopping slavery expansion to the west, ended up merging into the republican party. 

The Compromise of 1850: created a stronger fugitive slave act, admitted California as a free state, organized the Utah and New Mexico territories under the principle of popular sovereignty in regards to slavery, and made the slave trade illegal in Washington D.C.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852): bestselling book in the North that showed slavery as incompatible with Christianity, and caused a lot of northerners to think differently.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854): Judge Douglas proposes an act saying that Kansas and Nebraska would be organized under the rule of popular sovereignty in regards to slavery, but that would directly violate the Missouri Compromise. It also tried to convince the country to start a new railroad in Chicago.

Bleeding Kansas (1856): tons of people migrate to Kansas to try to influence the vote after the Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed, which led to two completely different legislatures, capitals, constitutions, and governors. 

Dred Scott Case (1857): Dred Scott was enslaved in Missouri, and moved when his owner was restationed in Wisconsin (a free state). While there, Scott married his wife in a courthouse, and courthouses only record free marriages. Scott’s wife also gave birth to a child on the border of Illinois and Iowa while on their way back to Missouri, and the child was born free because those states are free. Scott sues for his freedom in court, and after 20 years the case is resolved and Scott loses in the Supreme Court. This gave slaves no right to sue in court and essentially made slavery legal everywhere.