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Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad was the term used to describe a network of people who helped escaped slaves on their way to freedom in the Northern states or Canada. -
John Brown
An American abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. -
John C Calhoun
Calhoun stood before the United States Senate and read aloud two antislavery petitions sent to Congress by abolitionist groups. He then proceeded to deliver a warning:
"As widely as this incendiary spirit has spread, it has not yet infected this but unless it be speedily stopped, it will spread and work upwards till it brings the two great sections of the Union into deadly conflict." -
Wilmot Proviso
Wilmot Proviso prohibited the establishment of slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico during the Mexican War (1846–48). Although the proviso was passed twice by the House of Representatives, it was rejected by the Senate, which reflected the deep division in the United States over the issue of slavery. -
Free Soil Party
It was a third party and a single issue party that appealed to and drew its greatest strength from NY. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. -
The Great Debate
Five separate bills passed in the United States in September 1850, which defused a four year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War -
Fugitive Slave Act
It was required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law. -
Dred Scott V. Sanford
a slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford . The case was based on the fact that although he and his wife Harriet Scott were slaves, they had lived with his master, Dr. John Emerson, in states and territories where slavery was illegal according to both state laws and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, -
Abe Lincon
Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
