Key People & Events
She wrote a widely read 1852 novel that increased Northern sympathy for abolition and reportedly moved Abraham Lincoln.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
This 1854 law let settlers in Kansas and Nebraska decide on slavery and effectively repealed part of the Missouri Compromise.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
This 1861 battle in Virginia was the first major land battle of the Civil War and showed both sides the war would be longer and bloodier than expected.
What is the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas)?
An enslaved man whose 1857 Supreme Court case ruled that African Americans were not U.S. citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories
Who is Dred Scott?
The specific name for the 1850 law that required the return of escaped enslaved people to their owners.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act?
This Illinois politician debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858 and later ran for president; he supported popular sovereignty
Stephen Douglas
This 1857 Supreme Court ruling said African Americans were not U.S. citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
In 1862, this battle near Antietam Creek in Maryland became the single bloodiest day in American history.
What is the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg)?
He was elected president of the United States in 1860 and his victory prompted several Southern states to secede.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
The idea that the U.S. should expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific, connected to debates over whether new lands would allow slavery.
What is Manifest Destiny?
Name the abolitionist who led the Pottawatomie Massacre and later led a raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown
Under the Fugitive Slave Act, what happened to people who helped runaway enslaved people?
They could be fined or imprisoned; helping runaways was a crime under the Fugitive Slave Act
This 1863 three-day battle in Pennsylvania ended Lee's invasion of the North and is often called the war's turning point.
What is the Battle of Gettysburg?
This word means loyalty to one region of the country instead of the whole nation
What is sectionalism?
A short label for the widespread violent conflict in Kansas between pro‑slavery and anti‑slavery groups in the mid‑1850s.
What is "Bleeding Kansas"?
This senator from Massachusetts was nearly beaten to death on the Senate floor after criticizing slavery.
Charles Sumner
Explain why the Dred Scott decision increased sectional tensions and affected the Republican Party's position.
The decision declared that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories, undermining Republican goals and making compromise harder.
This 1862 Tennessee battle gave the Union control of the Mississippi River at that location after a costly river campaign and included a successful naval assault and siege
What is the Siege of Vicksburg?
The term for formally leaving the United States to form a separate nation.
What is secede (or secession)?
A short phrase meaning “to settle differences by giving each side part of what it wants"
What is compromise?
He was the 1856 Democratic president who supported the Lecompton pro-slavery government in Kansas and lost support from many Northerners
Who is James Buchanan?
Compare the Missouri Compromise line (36°30') to the effect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act on where slavery could be allowed.
The Missouri Compromise had banned slavery north of 36∘30′36∘30′; the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed those areas to use popular sovereignty, opening them to slavery.
This Confederate attack in April 1861 on a federal fort in Charleston Harbor started open warfare between North and South
What is the attack on Fort Sumter?
Letting the people who live in a territory vote to decide whether slavery would be allowed there.
What is popular sovereignty?
This word refers to an organized, public disagreement where people use writing, speeches, or books to change public opinion about an issue like slavery
What is an abolitionist movement (or activism)?