Documents
What central hypocrisy does Douglass highlight when addressing an all-white audience on Independence Day?
That the nation celebrates liberty while millions of enslaved people are denied freedom.
Which president won the 1844 election and made the annexation of Texas inevitable by supporting expansion under Manifest Destiny?
James K. Polk
Which president quietly helped move Texas annexation forward at the end of his term by sending the annexation bill to Congress before leaving office?
John Tyler
What 1846 proposal tried to ban slavery in any territory gained from the Mexican War?
The Wilmot Proviso
What belief claimed it was America’s destiny to spread across the entire continent?
Manifest Destiny
What disturbing reality does Northup describe about the treatment of enslaved people in New Orleans slave markets?
They were inspected, priced, and sold like livestock, with families separated for profit.
Which Southern leader replaced Jefferson’s idea of slavery as a “necessary evil” with the argument that slavery was a “positive good”?
John C. Calhoun
Which South Carolina governor argued that slavery was a fair and natural social hierarchy based on paternalism?
James Henry Hammond
Which thinker claimed slavery was the best form of social organization, a system that even “cared” for laborers better than free labor in the North?
George Fitzhugh
Which state was admitted as a free state under the Compromise of 1850?
California
What argument does Helper make about slavery’s effect on the Southern economy?
He argues that slavery holds back economic growth and prevents non-slaveholding whites from advancing.
Who published The Liberator and called the Constitution a “covenant with death”?
William Lloyd Garrison
Which congressional rule blocked anti-slavery petitions and even stopped anti-slavery mail from being delivered?
The Gag Rule
What belief claimed that Southern slaveholders controlled the federal government and were using it to protect and expand slavery?
The Slave Power Conspiracy
Which formerly enslaved writer exposed the sexual abuse she endured in order to show Northern readers that slavery degraded everyone involved?
Harriet Jacobs
What does Douglass urge the nation to do rather than simply celebrate its founding ideals?
He calls on Americans to actually live up to the principles of liberty and equality they claim to honor.
Which Illinois Democrat broke the Compromise of 1850 into separate bills so they could pass Congress?
Stephen A. Douglas
Which new political party formed in 1848 to oppose the expansion of slavery into western territories?
The Free Soil Party
Which law made enslaved people’s stories and suffering “a Northern issue,” bringing the realities of slavery directly to free states?
The Fugitive Slave Law
Which major political party collapsed after the Kansas-Nebraska Act split its Northern and Southern factions?
The Whig Party
In Northup’s account of the slave mart, how are enslaved people’s bodies evaluated, and what does this reveal?
They are physically examined and judged for strength, health, and appearance, revealing how slavery reduces human beings to property.
Who delivered the July 5th, 1852 speech arguing that Independence Day was a mockery to enslaved people?
Frederick Douglass
What 1854 law overturned the Missouri Compromise line and left the question of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska to settlers?
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Which 1831 rebellion involved an enslaved preacher who killed around 50 white people before being stopped?
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Which law ensured that new western territories such as Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin entered the Union as free (anti-slavery) states?
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Why does Helper argue that non-slaveholding whites should oppose slavery?
Because slavery concentrates wealth and political power in the hands of slaveholders, preventing ordinary white southerners from prospering.
Which Illinois politician reentered public life after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, arguing that slavery’s expansion violated the ideals of the Founders?
Abraham Lincoln
What key argument did Douglass make about the Constitution in his speech?
That the Constitution could be interpreted as anti-slavery when read through the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
Which event in 1854 forced Boston citizens to watch an escaped enslaved man being marched back into slavery under federal guard?
The Anthony Burns case
What vision suggested that Southern slaveholders hoped to make slavery a national system, not just a regional one?
The “Slaveholding Vision” of expanding slavery across the nation