Key Events
This 1820 compromise kept the balance between free and slave states and banned slavery north of 36°30’.
Missouri Compromise
This president enforced the Indian Removal Act and threatened force during the Nullification Crisis.
Who is Andrew Jackson?
These raised prices on imported goods, hurting the South while benefiting Northern manufacturers.
What are protective tariffs?
This term refers to the buying and selling of enslaved people within the United States.
What is the domestic slave trade?
The belief that America was meant to expand coast-to-coast.
What is Manifest Destiny?
This tragic forced relocation of Native Americans resulted in thousands of Cherokee deaths.
What is the Trail of Tears?
This South Carolina senator led the Nullification Crisis and defended states’ rights.
Who is John C. Calhoun?
This law gave President Jackson authority to use the military to enforce tariff collection during the Nullification Crisis.
What is the Force Bill?
These sisters from South Carolina spoke against slavery and supported women’s rights.
Who are the Grimké Sisters?
The U.S. bought land from Mexico for a southern railroad route in this 1853 purchase.
What is the Gadsden Purchase?
Violent clashes between pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups over popular sovereignty happened in this territory.
What is Bleeding Kansas?
Known as the “Great Compromiser,” he helped craft major agreements between free and slave states.
Who is Henry Clay?
This law forced all Americans, even Northerners, to help capture runaway slaves.
What is the Fugitive Slave Law?
This violent event showed growing tensions in Congress when Preston Brooks attacked an antislavery senator.
What is the Caning of Charles Sumner?
This expansionist president helped push the U.S. southwest during the Mexican-American War.
Who is James K. Polk?
This 1803 land deal doubled the size of the U.S. and raised questions about slavery in new territories.
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
This escaped slave became a powerful abolitionist speaker and writer of The North Star.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
This rule banned discussion of anti-slavery petitions in Congress from 1836–1844.
What is the Gag Rule?
This idea says people living in a territory should vote to decide issues like slavery.
What is popular sovereignty?
This internal improvement was built to create cheaper transportation routes across South Carolina.
What is the Columbia Canal?
This planned 1822 slave revolt in South Carolina led to harsher slave codes after being discovered.
What is the Denmark Vesey Insurrection?
This abolitionist believed violence was necessary to end slavery and attacked Harpers Ferry.
Who is John Brown?
This Supreme Court case said enslaved people were property and African Americans could not be citizens.
What is the Dred Scott Decision?
This political movement opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories.
What is the Free Soil Movement?
Loyalty to one’s region over the nation, worsened by slavery and economic differences.
What is sectionalism?