Political Causes
This issue over expansion into new territories increased North–South tensions.
What is the expansion of slavery into new territories?
This 1820 agreement admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
This novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe increased Northern opposition to slavery.
What is Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
The South’s economy relied mainly on this type of agriculture and labor system.
What is plantation agriculture and enslaved labor?
These agreements attempted to maintain a balance between free and slave states.
What are compromises like the Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850?
Southern leaders argued this principle justified resisting federal interference.
What are states' rights?
This 1854 law allowed Kansas and Nebraska to decide slavery by popular vote.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
His 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry intended to spark a slave uprising.
Who is John Brown?
The North’s growing reliance on these two things contrasted with Southern agriculture.
What are industry and wage labor / manufacturing and wage labor?
The result of several Southern states after Lincoln’s election.
What is secession?
Fear that this institution would be restricted under the new 1860 administration pushed states to secede.
What is slavery?
This 1857 Supreme Court case said enslaved people were not citizens.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford?
He was elected president in 1860, prompting Southern secession.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
This cash crop made slavery particularly profitable in the South.
What is cotton?
Name the government formed by seceding Southern states.
What is the Confederate States of America / the Confederacy?
Name the political system where residents vote to decide if a territory allows slavery.
What is popular sovereignty?
Part of the 1850 package, this law required citizens to help return escaped enslaved people.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act?
Name the nickname for the South’s economic dominance in cotton production.
What is the Cotton Kingdom?
Name one social effect in the North that made many people more willing to oppose slavery’s expansion.
What is increased abolitionist sentiment or greater urbanization/industrialization?
This 1857 decision outraged Northerners and emboldened Southerners; it related to slavery in the territories.
What is the Dred Scott decision
This concept described the South’s claim that each state could nullify or ignore national laws it opposed.
What is nullification?
This compromise package admitted California as a free state and included the Fugitive Slave Act.
What is the Compromise of 1850?
This violent period in Kansas resulted from conflict over slavery’s expansion.
What is "Bleeding Kansas"?
Explain in one sentence how economic differences affected political power before the war.
Southern dependence on slavery/cotton to defense of slaveholding power vs. Northern industrial interests and political positions.
In one sentence, explain how the Compromise of 1850 tried to reduce conflict but also increased tensions.
admitted California as free but strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, angering Northerners and making enforcement contentious