Slavery
The South's economy depended heavily on this labor system, especially for growing cotton.
What is slavery?
Southern states believed they had the right to make their own laws under this broad principle.
What are states' rights?
The North's economy was based on this type of system involving factories and paid workers.
What is an industrial economy?
As the U.S. expanded west, this became the central question about new states and territories.
What is whether slavery would be allowed to spread?
His election as president in 1860 alarmed the South and directly triggered secession.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
The North increasingly opposed the spread of slavery into these newly acquired lands.
What are new territories (or western territories)?
The South felt this branch of government was overstepping its authority by limiting slavery.
What is the federal government?
The South's economy depended on growing these two major crops.
What are cotton and tobacco?
This 1820 agreement tried to balance slave and free states using the 36°30' latitude line.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
This growing sense of regional identity — North vs. South — made compromise nearly impossible.
What is sectionalism?
This 1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe shifted Northern public opinion against slavery.
What is Uncle Tom's Cabin?
Southern states took this drastic action after Lincoln's election, believing the federal government threatened their way of life.
What is secession?
These two regions had fundamentally different economies, making compromise on national policy very difficult.
What are the North and the South?
This 1850 agreement tried to settle debates over new land gained after the Mexican-American War.
What is the Compromise of 1850?
The Civil War officially began when Confederate forces attacked this U.S. military fort in South Carolina.
What is Fort Sumter?
This abolitionist and formerly enslaved man became one of the most powerful voices against slavery.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
This Confederate document actually placed heavy restrictions on states' rights when it came to slavery.
What is the Confederate Constitution?
The South exported cotton primarily to this country, creating a powerful economic dependency.
What is Britain?
This 1854 law overturned the Missouri Compromise and allowed settlers to vote on slavery themselves.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
These 11 states left the Union to form the Confederate States of America.
What are the Southern (Confederate) states?
This term describes the movement to completely end the practice of slavery in the United States.
What is abolitionism
This 1798 idea argued states could nullify federal laws they deemed unconstitutional.
What is nullification?
This system, where enslaved people were the primary labor force on large farms, is called this.
What is the plantation system?
Violence broke out in this territory after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, earning it a bloody nickname.
What is Kansas (Bleeding Kansas)?
This 1857 Supreme Court ruling declared that enslaved people were not citizens and had no right to sue for freedom.
What is the Dred Scott decision?