Leading up to the Civil War

• Abolitionist: Someone who wants to abolish a rule/law. The Abolitionist Movement aimed to abolish slavery.
• Abraham Lincoln: 16th president of the United States, Republican, abolished slavery, 1865-1869
• Bleeding Kansas: Violent riots that took place in Kansas after the Kansas-Nebraska Act between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces.
• Dred Scott Case: In 1847 Dred Scott sued his owner claiming he was free because he had been taken into a non-slave state. However, the Supreme Court ruled against him stating that slaves were not citizens so could not sue in federal court. This decision angered many Northerners as it seemed to give slave owners more power over their slaves.
• John Brown's Raid on Harper’s Ferry: John Brown led an attack on a US Army post at Harpers Ferry with the aim of starting a rebellion among enslaved people. He failed but this event helped to increase tensions between North and South.
• Compromise of 1850: Compromised included California being admitted as a free state, New Mexico and Utah territories would decide whether they wanted to be free or slave states, fugitive slaves must be returned to their masters if caught, and the slave trade banned from Washington DC.
• The Election of 1860 displayed how divided the country was. Lincoln won the election, and the Confederacy decided to secede from the country, and the Civil War began. 
• Fugitive Slave Act: A person arrested as a runaway slave had almost no legal rights and can become a slave again. Assisting an escaped slave is against the law. The Compromise of 1850 made this law stronger.
• "Gag" Rule: In 1836, Congress gagged, or silenced, all congressional debate over slavery. This outraged abolitionists. Kept the issue of slavery out of Congress for 10 years
• Henry Clay: Representative of Kentucky, proposed Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850.
• Kansas-Nebraska Act: An act passed in 1854 that created the Kansas and Nebraska territories and abolished the Missouri Compromise by allowing settlers to determine whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories, which caused many settlers to move to Kansas. 
• Lincoln-Douglas Debates: A series of political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, who were candidates in the Illinois race for U.S. senator, in which slavery was the main issue. Lincoln lost but became very well known throughout the country
• Sectionalism: When people identify with their region more than the nation as a whole. North vs. South
• Missouri Compromise: Passed in 1820, admitted Maine into the Union as a free state while admitting Missouri as a slave state. It also set the boundary line at the southern border of Missouri where slavery could not exist north of it.
• Nat Turner's rebellion was the last large-scale slave revolt. 
• Secession: The act of a state or region leaving a larger political unit.
• Tallmadge Amendment: 1875 - prohibited the federal government from interfering with state governments. A proposed amendment that said Missouri would join the Union as a free state enraged the south because they thought the North would have too much power in the Senate, and that they can abolish slavery everywhere. Approved by HOR but not the Senate. 
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin & Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a narrative written by a woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe that informed Northerners of the horrors of slavery.
• The Union is the anti-slavery North, and the Confederacy is the pro-slavery South. Fort Sumter is where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.
• Wilmot Proviso: An unsuccessful proposal made in 1846 to fund the war and to prohibit slavery in the territory added to the United States because of the Mexican American War
• NW Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery North of OH River