Key Terms

American Party

also called the Know-Nothing Party, a political party that emerged in 1856 with an anti-immigration platform

Bleeding Kansas

a reference to the violent clashes in Kansas between Free-Soilers and slavery supporters

border ruffians

proslavery Missourians who crossed the border into Kansas to influence the legislature

Compromise of 1850

five laws passed by Congress to resolve issues stemming from the Mexican Cession and the sectional crisis

Dred Scott v. Sandford

an 1857 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that Black people could not be citizens and Congress had no jurisdiction to impede the expansion of slavery

Fire-Eaters

radical southern secessionists

Free-Soil Party

a political party committed to ensuring that White laborers would not have to compete with unpaid enslaved people in newly acquired territories

Freeport Doctrine

a doctrine that emerged during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in which Douglas reaffirmed his commitment to popular sovereignty, including the right to halt the spread of slavery, despite the 1857 Dred Scott decision affirming slaveholders’ right to bring their property wherever they wished

Harpers Ferry

the site of a federal arsenal in Virginia, where radical abolitionist John Brown staged an ill-fated effort to end slavery by instigating a mass uprising among enslaved people

miscegenation

race-mixing through sexual relations or marriage

popular sovereignty

the principle of letting the people residing in a territory decide whether or not to permit slavery in that area based on majority rule

Republican Party

an antislavery political party formed in 1854 in response to Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act

Underground Railroad

a network of free Black and northern White people who helped enslaved people escape bondage through a series of designated routes and safe houses