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Charles Sumner
- Anti-Slavery leader
- Lawyer that attended Harvard
- Voiced for integrated public schools in Massachusetts
- Formed Free-Soil party and was elected to U.S. Senate as a Free-Soiler
- Campaigned against slavery
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Underground Railroad
- A system of people who aided escaped slaves to freedom in the northern states or Canada
- The Underground Railroad was a secret and a special language was used
- Routes = lines, stops = stations, helpers = conductors, charges = freight packages
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Compromise of 1850
- Admitted California as a free state
- Established new territories: Utah and New Mexico
- Slavery determined by popular sovereignty
- Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute solved
- Slave trade in Washington, D.C. was ended
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Fugitive Slave Acts
- Federal laws that enabled the capture and return of runaway slaves within the territory of the United States
- Allowed local governments to seize and return escaped slaves to their owners
- Local governments could impose penalties on anyone who aided in the flight of runaway slaves
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Anti-slavery novel
- 300,000 copies sold within three months
- Widely read
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Kansas-Nebraska Act
- Made it mandatory that “popular sovereignty” was used
- Enabled people of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state’s borders
- Created by Stephen A. Douglas
- Led to Bleeding Kansas
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Bleeding Kansas
- Happened soon after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed
- Pro-slavery and Anti-Slavery settlers went to Kansas to try to impact the decision
- Violence broke out while as both sides fought for power
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Dred Scott Case
- Dred Scott v. Sanford
- Dred Scott: slave who lived with his owner in a free state before going to Missouri (slave state)
- Scott believed this gave him emancipation
- Judge (Pro-Slavery) disagreed
- No black person (free or slave) could have U.S. citizenship
- Blacks could not petition the court for freedom
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Lincoln-Douglas Debates
- Seven debates
- During 1858 Illinois state election campaign
- One in each of the state's Congressional districts
- Douglas wanted to be reelected to a third term in the U.S. Senate
- Lincoln was running for Douglas’s Senate seat as a Republican
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Harpers Ferry
- U.S. military arsenal at Harpers Ferry was attacked
- Armed abolitionists led by John Brown
- The attack was the first step in a plan to free slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia
- John Brown was captured, convicted of treason, and hanged
- The raid infuriated white Southern fears of slave rebellion
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The Election of 1860
- Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860 to vote for a president
- 4 candidates
- Lincoln got 40% of the popular vote and 180 electoral votes
- Lincoln won and became president
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Secession
- 11 states from the upper and lower south broke away from the Union
- The Union was divided based on geographic lines
- There were 21 Union states
- 11 Confederate states
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Fort Sumter
- Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
- Constructed in 1849
- Where the first shots of the Civil War were fired
- U.S. Major Robert Anderson occupied the fort
- Lincoln announced plans to resupply the fort
- General P.G.T. Beauregard attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861
- 34-hour exchange of artillery fire
- Anderson and 86 soldiers surrendered the fort on April 13
