Terms
What do we call a person who wanted to end slavery?
An abolitionist
Under the Missouri Compromise, Missouri entered as a slave state. Which state entered as a free state?
Maine
What name describes the violent fighting over slavery in Kansas during the 1850s?
Bleeding Kansas
Which woman helped enslaved people escape through the Underground Railroad?
Harriet Tubman
Who won the presidential election of 1860?
Abraham Lincoln
What does it mean for a state to secede?
To leave or break away from the country
Which state entered the Union as a free state under the Compromise of 1850?
California
Who were the Border Ruffians?
Proslavery Missourians who crossed into Kansas to vote illegally and influence its elections
Was the Underground Railroad an actual railroad? Explain what it was.
No. It was a secret network of routes, people, and safe places that helped enslaved people escape to freedom.
Which state was the first to secede after Lincoln’s election?
South Carolina
What is a free state?
A state that did not allow slavery
Which law required escaped enslaved people to be returned to their enslavers, even if they reached a free state?
The Fugitive Slave Law
Why did Preston Brooks attack Senator Charles Sumner with a cane?
Sumner had given an antislavery speech that also insulted Brooks’s relative, Senator Andrew Butler.
On the Underground Railroad, what were stations?
Safe homes or hiding places
What was the name of the new country formed by the Southern states that seceded?
The Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy
What term means loyalty to your own region rather than to the nation as a whole?
Sectionalism
Who introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Stephen Douglas
Why did Dred Scott believe he should be free?
He had lived with his enslaver in a free state and a free territory.
Who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that helped increase opposition to slavery?
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Who became president of the Confederacy?
Jefferson Davis
How did the main economic activities of the North and South differ?
The North depended more on industry and manufacturing, while the South depended more on agriculture.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act used popular sovereignty. What did this mean for the people living in those territories?
They could vote on whether to allow slavery in their territory.
In the Dred Scott decision, what did the Supreme Court rule about Congress’s power to ban slavery in the territories?
The Court ruled that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories, making the Missouri Compromise’s ban unconstitutional.
Why did John Brown raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry?
He wanted to obtain weapons to help start an uprising against slavery.
What was Lincoln’s position on the expansion of slavery during the election of 1860?
He opposed allowing slavery to spread into the western territories. He did not propose immediately ending it in states where it already existed.