Big Causes
Cotton & Slavery
Compromise
Abolitionists
Western Expansion
100
This was the central issue dividing the North and South
What is slavery
100
This invention made cotton production explode.
What is the cotton gin?
100
This line (latitude) was used in the Missouri Compromise.
What is 36°30′?
100
This abolitionist used his written word to change people's minds on slavery, most famously in his “Fourth of July” speech.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
100
The belief that the United States was meant to expand west, often with racist justification.
What is Manifest Destiny?
200
This process forced repeated decisions about slavery in new land.
What is westward expansion?
200
This crop is most responsible for the expansion of slavery.
What is cotton?
200
This compromise admitted California as a free state.
What is the Compromise of 1850?
200
This abolitionist led Underground Railroad rescues.
Who is Harriet Tubman?
200
This territory was acquired by the U.S. in 1803.
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
300
This political strategy tried to avoid conflict but ultimately resulted in repeated failure.
What is compromise?
300
This type of labor system grew alongside cotton production.
What is slavery?
300
This law required citizens to return escaped enslaved people.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act?
300
This abolitionist believed violence was necessary.
Who is John Brown?
300
This war gave the U.S. land in the Southwest.
What is the Mexican-American War?
400
This 1854 law repealed the Missouri Compromise and led directly to violence in Kansas.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
400
This was the reason cotton strengthened slavery instead of weakening it.
What is its profitability?
400
This idea stated that settlers should vote on slavery themselves.
What is popular sovereignty?
400
The abolitionist rejected compromise entirely, and even went so far as burning a copy of the Constitution.
Who is William Lloyd Garrison?
400
This 1845 event increased sectional tension because it added an enormous new potential slave state.
What is the annexation of Texas?