Chapter 14: The Sectional Crisis – Flashcards

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question
In 1856, which antislavery senator was almost beaten to death on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Representative Preston Brooks?
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Charles Sumner
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Harriet Beecher Stowe published her abolitionist novel ______ in 1852, and it was enormously successful.
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
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How did Abraham Lincoln argue about slavery in his debates with Stephen Douglas during the 1858 Senate race?
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He favored restricting slavery to the states where the Constitution protected it.
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What was true of most Northerners during the 1840s?
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They disliked slavery, but detested abolitionism.
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What made the Compromise of 1850 so difficult to pass?
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President Taylor opposed the compromise, and congressmen kept granting key concessions to rival parties.
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What were the different stands Democrats and Whigs took on annexation and slavery in new territories?
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Democrats endorsed expansion and a division of free and slave territories, while Whigs opposed annexation to avoid the slavery debate.
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What made Northerners so opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854?
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It permitted slavery in an area where it had previously been prohibited.
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How did the Republican Party manage to gain so much support in the 1850s?
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It wanted to prohibit slavery in the territories.
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What was true about the sectional quarrel between North and South during the 1840s and 1850s?
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It was increasingly seen in cultural and intellectual terms.
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What ultimately led to the Republican success in the election of 1860?
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Republicans were able to win decisively in the North.
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In what area did the Wilmot Proviso propose to ban slavery?
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in territory acquired from Mexico
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What was the difference between Northern and Southern evangelicalism in the mid-1800s?
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Northern evangelicalism focused on self-discipline and social reform; Southern evangelicalism focused on personal piety.
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For the Northern Democrats, who would determine whether a territory would have slavery, per the principle of squatter sovereignty, or popular sovereignty as it was later called?
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settlers
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Who was the "great pacificator" who established the Compromise of 1850?
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Henry Clay
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Which part of the Compromise of 1850 was considered an outrageous piece of legislation?
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enactment of the new Fugitive Slave Law
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In 1854, Stephen Douglas proposed a bill that would set up territorial governments in Kansas and Nebraska on the basis of what?
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popular sovereignty
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What did Ostend Manifesto of 1854 accuse the Pierce administration of doing?
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wanting to create a "Caribbean slave empire" by annexing Cuba
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What was the main reason that many native-born Americans disliked Irish and German immigrants?
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because they were mostly Roman Catholic
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What action took place after proslavery adherents raided Lawrence, the free-state capital of Kansas, in 1856?
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John Brown and his followers killed five proslavery settlers in cold blood.
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The tension between ________ became virtually "irreconcilable" in the years between the elections of 1856 and 1860.
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Northerners and Southerners
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Compromise of 1850
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Five federal laws that temporarily calmed the sectional crisis. The compromise made California a free state, ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law.
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Fugitive Slave Law
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Passed in 1850, this federal law made it easier for slave owners to recapture runaway slaves; it also made it easier for kidnappers to take free blacks.
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Kansas-Nebraska Act
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This 1854 act repealed the Missouri Compromise, split the Louisiana Purchase into two territories, and allowed its settlers to accept or reject slavery by popular sovereignty.
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Ostend Manifesto
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Written by American diplomats in 1854, this secret memorandum urge acquiring Cuba by any means necessary. When it became public, northerners claimed it was a plot to extend slavery, and the manifesto was disavowed.
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popular sovereignty
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The concept that the settlers of a newly organized territory had the right to decide whether to accept slavery.
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Wilmot Proviso
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In 1846, shortly after outbreak of the Mexican-American War, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced this amendment banning slavery in any lands won from Mexico.
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Charles Sumner
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A fervent abolitionist and longtime senator from Massachusetts, he is remembered for being brutally caned on the floor of the Senate in 1856 and for leading the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction
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Millard Fillmore
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He became the 13th president upon the death of Zachary Taylor and signed into law the Compromise of 1850, but failed to garner the Whig nomination in 1852.
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Stephen A. Douglas
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A senator from Illinois, he helped assure passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but is most noted for a series of debates on slavery with Abraham Lincoln during his successful re-election campaign of 1858.
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Franklin Pierce
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A New England Democrat, he became the 14th president in 1853 and his shaky tenure was dominated by furor surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which he supported and which cost him the nomination for re-election.
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James Buchanan
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A Pennsylvania Democrat, as the 15th president he proved incapable of steering the country through difficulties that included an economic panic, a growing sectional crisis and, during the final four months of his tenure, the secession of seven Southern states.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
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A member of a prominent family of religious leaders, this author's 1852 novel of slave life, Uncle Tom's Cabin, sold more than 300,000 copies within a year and swayed public opinion in the North to a more abolitionist position.
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Dred Scott
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A Missouri slave, he sued on the grounds that a move into the Wisconsin Territory should have freed him. The 1857 Supreme Court ruling that bears his name found 1) that no African American could sue because they were not citizens, and 2) the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
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Abraham Lincoln
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The 16th president and the first Republican to hold that office, his election prompted secession in the South and he led the nation through its Civil War in order to restore the Union, eliminating slavery in the process.
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John Brown
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A radical abolitionist, he and his followers murdered five proslavery settlers in Kansas in 1856 and, three years later, staged a futile raid on the armory at Harper's Ferry, Va., for the purpose of igniting a guerrilla war. He was then hanged, ensuring his status as a martyr to abolitionism.
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Hinton Rowan Helper
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Author of the 1857 book, The Impending Crisis of the South, which urged nonslaveholders in the South to resist planter domination and abolish slavery.
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John Breckenridge
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Pro-slavery presidential candidate from Kentucky who was nominated by the Southern faction of the Democratic Party in 1860.
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