Sol Jo Mr. Riley Vocabulary List 1.

Missouri Compromise: To settle the issue regarding an even balance between the number of slave and free states when Missouri was to be admitted as a slave state, this agreement admitted Maine as a free state, thus maintaining balanced representation in the Senate. 2. Abolitionist: An individual who opposed slavery as a moral wrong which violated religious teaching and basic human rights. 3. Frederick Douglass: Black abolitionist, journalist and editor of the North Star, an abolitionist newspaper; also spoke for womens rights. 4. Uncle Toms Cabin: A novel published in 1852 and written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She wrote about the evils of slavery. 5. Underground Railroad: A series of pre-Civil War escape routes for Southern blacks traveling North in hopes of attaining freedom. 6. Harriet Tubman: Born into slavery in 1819 or 1820, she escaped to Philadelphia in 1849 to avoid being sold after her master died. Over the next ten years, she assisted her family members and later up to 300 other slaves to escape from Maryland to freedom. During the Civil War, she served alternately as a nurse and a spy for the Union forces in South Carolina. She died in 1913. 7. Fugitive Slave Act: A provision of the Compromise of 1850; slaves that had escaped into free states were still considered the property of their owners and were to be returned. 8. Popular Sovereignty: The vote of people living in a territory who were responsible, before the Civil War, for deciding whether slavery would be permitted in that territory; see the Compromise of 1850. 9. Bleeding Kansas: As a result of the Kansas Nebraska Act (1854) Kansas saw a great deal of violence as pro and anti-slavery proponents rushed to the territory to vote. The Kansas Nebraska Act, which overturned the Missouri Compromise, allowed each territory to decide, by popular vote, whether to be a slave or free state. 10. John Brown: An fanatical abolitionist who led a small group on a raid of the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry in 1859, with intentions of leading a slave rebellion. He was executed and served as a martyr for the abolitionist cause. 11. Dred Scott Decision (effect on the Missouri Compromise): A Supreme Court decision regarding a former slave suing for freedom in 1857, whereby Justice Roger B. Taney stated that slaves were not citizens and had no standing in court. It effectively voided the Missouri Compromise, because the Court ruled that Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in the territories. 12. Sectionalism: Concern for or devotion to the interests of a state or particular section of the US over the interests of the nation itself. 13. Secession: The term used to describe the separation of the Southern states, before the Civil War (18611865), from the United States, as they formed the Confederate States of America. 14. Civil War: The period of warfare between the Confederate States of America (18611865) and the United States over the issues of states rights and slavery. 15. Reconstruction: The period 18671877 when the federal government, through its military or local Republican governments, ruled the former Confederate states.