Slavery
This is a term for legally freeing an enslaved person. Some Southern states made this difficult, placing limits on the number freed, or charging the master extra fees to do it.
What is manumission?
This ideology holds that African Americans are a nation within a nation, deserving self-determination and independence.
What is black nationalism?
This was the term for American colonists who sided with Britain in the Revolutionary War.
What are loyalists?
This system of trade shipped manufactured goods to Africa, enslaved people from Africa to European colonies in the Americas, then transported cash crops from the colonies to Europe.
What is the Transatlantic Slave Trade or the Atlantic Slave Trade?
He escaped from slavery in Maryland and went on to write an autobiography, found an anti-slavery newspaper, and become one of the most prominent black abolitionists in the United States.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
What is chattel slavery?
This organization aimed to facilitate the travel of free black people to Africa. It had support from many white people, including both abolitionists and white supremacists.
What is the American Colonization Society?
This order by Abraham Lincoln did not abolish slavery, but it did several important things, including clearly signaling that a Union victory would almost certainly mean the end of slavery in the US.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
Northern states adopted this policy in the early 1800s. They placed restrictions on slavery, burdensome fees, and made manumission easier.
What is gradual abolition?
This Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in the United States, except as punishment for a crime.
What is the Thirteenth Amendment?
This act declared that "popular sovereignty," a vote by the people, would decide whether slavery would be legal in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It sparked the beginning of a violent period in Kansas.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
This settled the conflict regarding whether or not to count enslaved people in the state population, for the purposes of allocating representatives in Congress.
What is the Three-Fifths Compromise?
This Supreme Court decision declared that African Americans could not be citizens of the US and that no state was allowed to restrict or prohibit slavery.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford? OR the Dred Scott Decision?
This form of forced labor usually meant that a servant would sign a contract and then belong to a master for a term of 4 to 7 years. However, many Africans were kidnapped and forced into it without a contract, also serving a longer term, often around 20 years.
What is indentured servitude?
This was a Christian revival movement in the early 1700s, which led to many new Christian denominations, including the AME Church.
What is the Great Awakening?
This was the name for the difficult voyage from Africa to the Americas, in which many enslaved Africans died of disease and brutal treatment.
What is the middle passage?
This ideology prioritizes individual rights, equality of all people, low or no government intervention, and religious tolerance.
What is liberalism? OR what is the Enlightenment?
This Amendment to the Constitution states that everyone born in the U.S. is a citizen (i.e., regardless of race, national origin, etc.) and must have equal protection of the laws of the U.S.
What is the Fourteenth Amendment?
This collection of bills aimed to maintain the balance between slave and free states in the era before the Civil War. Two new states became part of the US, and a line was drawn west in order to separate slave and free states in the future.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
This device was created in the early 1800s to quickly and efficiently remove seeds from cotton.
What is the cotton gin?
This discussion in the House of Delegates happened after Nat Turner's Rebellion. The representatives ultimately decided not to abolish slavery, and after that focused on defending and preserving it.
What is the Virginia Debate?
This is the idea that differences between racial groups are determined by a fixed and unchanging essence that resides within and defines all members of each racial group.
What is essentialism?
Under this system, people convicted of crimes could not only be forced to work without pay, they could also be "rented out" to companies or individuals.
What is convict lease?
In 1820, this free black man planned a slave revolt for over a year, but the plan was discovered before it could be put into action.
Who is Denmark Vesey?
He became president after Abraham Lincoln, but he did not want to alienate the South, so during Reconstruction he vetoed many civil rights laws that passed Congress.
Who is Andrew Johnson?