The US Civil War

148 flashcards by MentisLibrary

The four years that remade the United States, from the fight over slavery's expansion through Fort Sumter, Antietam, Gettysburg and Appomattox. Follows emancipation, Black soldiers, and the promise and collapse of Reconstruction.

What was the central cause of the American Civil War?
Slavery, above all the question of whether it could expand into the western territories
What was the Three-Fifths Compromise?
A constitutional rule counting three fifths of enslaved people toward a state's representation
When did the United States ban the Atlantic slave trade?
In 1808, the earliest date the Constitution allowed
Who was Frederick Douglass?
An escaped slave turned writer, orator and abolitionist leader who pressed Lincoln on emancipation and Black enlistment
What was the Missouri Compromise?
Missouri entered as a slave state and Maine as a free state, with slavery barred north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes in the Louisiana Purchase
What was the Underground Railroad?
A loose network of safe houses and guides helping enslaved people reach free states and Canada
What was The Liberator?
William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, demanding immediate and complete emancipation
What was Nat Turner's rebellion?
A Virginia uprising in which enslaved rebels killed about sixty white people before being crushed
What was the gag rule?
A House rule automatically tabling antislavery petitions without discussion
What was the Wilmot Proviso?
A proposal to bar slavery from any territory taken from Mexico
How did the Mexican War lead toward civil war?
It added vast western territory, forcing the question of whether slavery could expand into it
What was the Compromise of 1850?
California entered free, the slave trade ended in Washington DC, and a stronger Fugitive Slave Act was passed
What did the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 require?
Northern citizens and officials to assist in capturing people who had escaped slavery, with no jury trial for the accused
What was Uncle Tom's Cabin?
Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel, which sold enormously in the North
What did the Kansas-Nebraska Act do?
Let settlers in those territories decide on slavery by popular sovereignty, repealing the Missouri Compromise line
What was Bleeding Kansas?
Guerrilla violence between proslavery and antislavery settlers over the territory's future
When was the Republican Party founded?
In 1854, in opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories
What was popular sovereignty?
Stephen Douglas's idea that settlers in each territory should vote on slavery themselves
What was the caning of Charles Sumner?
A South Carolina congressman beat a Massachusetts senator unconscious on the Senate floor
What was the Dred Scott decision?
The Supreme Court held that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not bar slavery from the territories
What were the Lincoln-Douglas debates?
Seven debates in an Illinois Senate race, argued almost entirely over slavery in the territories
What did John Brown attempt at Harpers Ferry?
To seize a federal arsenal and spark an uprising of enslaved people
What was sharecropping?
A system in which labourers farmed land for a share of the crop, usually falling into permanent debt
What was the Crittenden Compromise?
A last attempt to save the Union by extending the Missouri line to the Pacific permanently
Why did Lincoln's election trigger secession?
He was elected on a platform of stopping slavery's expansion, and won without carrying a single southern state
Why did the election of 1860 have four candidates?
The Democratic Party split north and south, and a fourth party ran on preserving the Union alone
Which state seceded first?
South Carolina
How many states ultimately joined the Confederacy?
Eleven
What were the border states?
Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, slave states that stayed in the Union
Who was president of the Confederacy?
Jefferson Davis