Economic Undercurrents
This Southern economic strategy relied on the belief that Britain’s textile industry would force intervention due to its dependence on over half of U.S. exports.
Cotton Diplomacy
This group, the majority of Southern whites, supported slavery despite owning no slaves, as it upheld a racial hierarchy.
Non-slave-owning whites
This 1854 act’s proposal to divide the Louisiana Purchase into two territories nullified a prior compromise, igniting violence.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
This 1857 Supreme Court ruling declared African Americans non-citizens and invalidated Congressional power to restrict slavery.
Dred Scott decision
This 1856 attack on an anti-slavery Kansas town by pro-slavery forces marked the first major clash in a “small civil war.”
Sack of Lawrence
The South’s lack of this, due to reliance on slave labor, stifled agricultural advancements compared to the North’s mechanized economy.
Farming innovation
Known as “crackers” or “clay eaters,” this Southern group lived in poverty and competed economically with slave labor.
Poor whites
This party, formed in 1852, capitalized on anti-Catholic sentiment to limit immigrant influence, filling the void left by the Whigs.
Know-Nothing Party
This 1850 law’s biased magistrate system, paying more for ruling someone a slave, eroded Northern trust in federal enforcement.
Fugitive Slave Act
This 1859 raid, funded by prominent abolitionists, aimed to arm a slave rebellion but was thwarted by Robert E. Lee’s forces.
Harpers Ferry
This economic reality, where Southern plantation owners raised land prices, deterred immigrants from settling in the South.
High land value due to plantation farming
This isolated Southern group, critical of slavery, maintained Union loyalty due to their geographic and cultural separation.
Mountain Whites
This failed 1846 proposal to ban slavery in new territories passed the House but stalled in the Senate due to equal sectional representation.
This Southern argument, rooted in the 1820 Missouri Compromise, claimed a fixed line guaranteed slavery’s protection to the Pacific.
Southern Position
This 1856 act of Congressional violence symbolized the collapse of political civility, celebrated in the South but condemned in the North.
Caning of Charles Sumner
The Northeast’s economic dependence on this Southern commodity underpinned Daniel Webster’s plea for unity in his 1850 speech.
Cotton
This small Southern population faced suspicion and re-enslavement risks, navigating a precarious existence on the eastern seaboard.
Free Blacks
This 1861 compromise, proposing dual presidents and an extended 36°30’ line, was rejected by Republicans fearing slavery’s expansion.
Crittenden Compromise
This 1852 novel’s graphic portrayal of slavery’s brutality, despite its author’s lack of direct experience, fueled Northern abolitionist fervor.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
This Kansas election’s fraudulent 6,000 votes, cast by pro-slavery Missourians despite only 1,500 eligible voters, led to rival legislatures.
1855 Kansas territorial election
This 1850s event, sparked by a fraudulent vote and exacerbated by Northern-funded migration, led to the establishment of rival legislatures in Lecompton and Topeka, crystallizing the failure of popular sovereignty and foreshadowing the irreconcilable divide that precipitated Southern secession.
Bleeding Kansas
The numerical imbalance where this group outnumbered plantation owners increased fears of uprisings, shaping Southern social control measures.
Enslaved African Americans
The 1856 election’s exclusion of this Republican candidate from slave state ballots foreshadowed the sectional rift culminating in 1860.
John C. Fremont
Chief Justice Roger Taney’s reasoning in this case, citing property rights, nullified territorial slavery bans, undermining popular sovereignty.
Dred Scott v. Sanford
The New England Emigrant Aid Society’s arming of this group in Kansas escalated Bleeding Kansas, provoking pro-slavery retaliation.
Anti-slavery settlers