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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who educated himself to read and write. He published several autobiographies and gave speeches about his experience as a slave. These autobiographies made him well known and boosted the abolitionist movement. He also edited a influential black newspaper that argued against the ideals of slavery. He eventually became one of the most influential and powerful abolitionists of his time and showed that blacks were as capable as whites -
Wilmot Proviso
David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed in 1846 the ban to slavery in territory acquired from the Mexican war. Whigs and antislavery Democrats in the House of Representatives quickly passed this bill, but it did not make it past the senate. -
Free-Soil Movement
The free-soil movement was a political movement that opposed the expansion of slavery. In 1848 the free-soilers organized the Free-Soil Party, which depicted slavery as a threat to republicanism and to the Jeffersonian ideal of a freeholder society, arguments that won broad support among aspiring white farmers. -
Popular Sovereignty
The concept that political power rests with the people who can create, alter, and abolish government. People express themselves through voting and free participation in government -
Underground Railroad
The underground railroad was a series of secret pathways that led from the south to the north. It was used by slaves to escape from slavery. Slaves were often helped by free blacks, abolitionists or religious people who helped navigate and protect slaves on their way to freedom. The underground railroad helped lead thousands of slaves to freedom in the 1800's. The fact that more and more slaves were escaping mysteriously was a great source of tension in the south. -
Compromise of 1850
Laws passed in 1850 that were meant to resolve the dispute over the status of slavery in the new territories gained by the Mexican War. Key elements included the admission of California as a free state and the Fugitive Slave Act. -
Fugative Slave Act
Passed by the U.S. Congress as a part of the Compromise of 1850. This act allowed slave owners the right to capture their slaves that had escaped to the free states, also imposed penalties to anyone who aided in their escape. The Compromise angered and was unpopular among the Northerners and converted many indifferent Northerners to anti-slavery. -
Harriet Tubman Stowe
Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in order to become an abolitionist who led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of Underground Railroad. She dedicated and risked her life in helping others. -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was A controversial 1854 law that divided Indian territory into Kansas and Nebraska, repealed the Missouri Compromise, and left the new territories to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty. -
Dred Scott Case
The 1857 Supreme Court decision that ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. The Court ruled against slave Dred Scott, who claimed that travels with his master into free states and territories made him and his family free. The decision also denied the federal government the right to exclude slavery from the territories and declared that African Americans were not citizens.
