Slavery, Law & Constitutional Conflicts
This 1820 compromise attempted to maintain sectional balance by limiting the expansion of slavery through a geographic boundary.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
The belief articulated by John L. O’Sullivan that U.S. expansion across the continent was divinely ordained.
What is Manifest Destiny?
This president and his supporters championed the expansion of democracy by eliminating restrictions that limited political participation to wealthy citizens.
Who is Andrew Jackson?
This three-day 1863 battle in Pennsylvania ended General Lee’s northern invasion and marked a strategic turning point by boosting Union morale and weakening Confederate offensive capability.
What is the Battle of Gettysburg?
Issued during the Civil War, this executive order declared enslaved people in Confederate-held territories to be free, shifting the war’s purpose toward ending slavery and allowing African Americans to join the Union army.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
According to the Missouri Compromise, slavery was prohibited north of this latitude, except for Missouri.
What is 36°30′ line (except Missouri)?
Completed in 1825, this transportation project linked the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, dramatically lowering shipping costs and accelerating Northern industrial growth while strengthening regional economic connections.
What is the Erie Canal?
This former slave and leading abolitionist continued to advocate for African American civil rights after the Civil War, warning in 1876 that the promises of emancipation were at risk of being undermined by Black Codes as Reconstruction waned.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
The April 1861 attack on this South Carolina fort demonstrated the failure of compromise over secession and forced both the Union and the Confederacy into full-scale war.
What is Fort Sumter?
These post-Civil War laws in Southern states attempted to restrict the freedoms of African Americans, forcing many into exploitative labor contracts and laying the groundwork for federal Reconstruction policies.
What are Black Codes?
This principle allowed settlers in a territory to vote on whether slavery would be permitted there, a policy applied in the Kansas–Nebraska Act that led to violence in “Bleeding Kansas.”
What is popular sovereignty?
This 1862 federal law encouraged westward settlement by granting 160 acres of land to individuals willing to farm it for five years, reflecting free-labor ideology and the goals of westward expansion.
What is the Homestead Act?
Her 1852 novel dramatized the brutality of slavery, shaping Northern antislavery sentiment and leaving a cultural legacy that influenced political debates about freedom and equality even during Reconstruction.
Who is Harriet Beecher Stowe?
Proposed by General Winfield Scott, this Union strategy sought to constrict the Confederacy economically and geographically, demonstrating the use of total war principles before the term existed.
What is the Anaconda Plan?
Ratified in 1868, this constitutional amendment guaranteed citizenship and equal protection under the law to anyone born or naturalized in the United States, forming the legal foundation for civil rights challenges in the decades that followed.
What is the 14th Amendment?
This 1857 Supreme Court decision ruled that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the territories.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford?will accept Dred Scott Decision
This president pursued territorial expansion through the annexation of Texas, the Mexican–American War, and the acquisition of California as part of an aggressive expansionist foreign policy.
Who was James K. Polk?
This Union general and two-term president struggled to enforce Reconstruction policies amid growing Northern fatigue and political corruption, setting the stage for the disputed presidential election of 1876.
Who is Ulysses S. Grant?
Although tactically inconclusive, this 1862 Maryland battle provided President Lincoln the political opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and shift the war’s purpose toward ending slavery.
What is the Battle of Antietam?
Established in 1865, this federal agency provided food, education, and legal assistance to formerly enslaved people, attempting to ease their transition to freedom while facing resistance from Southern states.
What is the Freedmen’s Bureau?
This militant abolitionist’s 1859 raid on a federal arsenal in this Virginia town intensified Southern fears of slave insurrection and convinced many Americans that sectional conflict could no longer be resolved through compromise.
What is John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry?
This 1787 law prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory but allowed for the return of “fugitives” to their owners, a concept later echoed in a mid-19th-century compromise that required escaped enslaved people to be returned to their enslavers.
What is the Compromise of 1850?
Winner of the highly contested 1876 election, this Ohio governor’s ascent to the presidency was part of a compromise that effectively ended federal enforcement of Reconstruction in the South.
Who is Rutherford B. Hayes?
The 1863 siege of this Mississippi stronghold gave the Union complete control of the Mississippi River, effectively splitting the Confederacy and exemplifying the strategic importance of controlling infrastructure.
What is Vicksburg?
This president narrowly avoided removal from office in 1868 after violating the Tenure of Office Act and clashing with Radical Republicans over Reconstruction, highlighting the tension between executive and legislative authority during the postwar era.
Who is Andrew Johnson?