Background to the Crisis
In 1820, Congress paired Missouri’s admission as a slave state with the admission of this New England state as a free state.
What is Maine?
In 1859, John Brown and his followers seized the federal arsenal at this Virginia town.
What is Harper's Ferry?
This presidential candidate in the election of 1860 did not even appear on the ballot in most Southern states.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
On December 20, 1860, this state became the first to declare its secession from the United States.
What is South Carolina?
This lame-duck president occupied the White House during the first wave of secession between Lincoln’s election and inauguration.
Who is James Buchanan?
The U.S. acquisition of vast western territories after this 1846–48 war reopened the explosive question of whether slavery could expand westward.
What is the Mexican-American War?
This 1857 Supreme Court case ruled that Congress lacked the power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories.
What is Dred Scott v. Sanford?
At the Republican convention in Chicago in 1860, Abraham Lincoln defeated this prominent New York senator, widely considered the frontrunner for the nomination?
Who is William Seward?
In February 1861, delegates from the seceded states met in this Alabama city to establish the Confederate States of America.
What is Montgomery?
After South Carolina seceded, Major Robert Anderson moved his small federal garrison from Fort Moultrie to this stronger position in Charleston Harbor.
What is Fort Sumter?
This term described the belief that slavery should be prevented from expanding into the western territories—and was also the name of a political party that helped form the Republican Party in the 1850s.
What is Free Soil?
This Illinois politician championed popular sovereignty and faced Abraham Lincoln in a famous series of debates in 1858.
Who is Stephen Douglas?
The Democratic Party fractured in 1860 largely over whether the federal government should protect slavery in the territories. This Illinois senator won the nomination of the party’s Northern wing.
Who is Stephen Douglas?
Between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration, these seven states of the Lower South seceded from the Union: name them.
What are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas?
After Virginia seceded, the Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery to this Virginia city.
What is Richmond?
California entered the Union as a free state as part of this package of measures intended to resolve sectional disputes over slavery and western expansion.
What is the Compromise of 1850?
In his 1858 “Cotton Is King” speech, James Henry Hammond argued that this European country was so dependent on Southern cotton that it could not afford a serious disruption of the cotton trade.
What is England/Great Britain?
This sitting vice president became the presidential nominee of the Southern Democrats after the party split in 1860?
Who is John C. Breckenridge?
The Montgomery Convention selected this former U.S. senator and secretary of war as provisional president of the Confederacy.
Who is Jefferson Davis?
Named for a Kentucky senator, what last-ditch compromise proposal attempted to resolve the secession crisis in part by extending the old Missouri Compromise line westward to the Pacific.
What is the Crittenden Compromise?
This 1854 law overturned the old Missouri Compromise restriction on slavery by leaving the question to settlers in two newly organized western territories.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
According to Charles Eliot Norton, John Brown’s raid and its aftermath had this effect on public opinion in the North.
What is: it increased Northern sympathy for Brown and intensified sectional feeling against the South?
Drawing support from former Whigs and old Know-Nothings, this new party sought to sidestep the slavery controversy in 1860, rally voters around preservation of the Union, and nominated Tennessee’s John Bell for president?
What is the Constitutional Union Party?
In a November 1860 speech opposing immediate secession, this Georgian—who would soon become vice president of the Confederacy—argued that Lincoln’s election did not by itself justify leaving the Union.
Who is Alexander Stephens?
After the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, this action by Lincoln helped trigger the secession of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
What is Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers