Key Vocab

• Union - another term for the United States

• Free State - a state that made slavery illegal

• Slave State - a state that allows slavery

• Proviso - a condition attached to an agreement

• Popular Sovereignty - the power to the people: people get to vote to make decisions about something

• Secede or Secession - to formally withdraw from, or leave, a country

South Carolina - First state that secede from Union

Cotton Gin - Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793. It caused mor cotton to be grown and more enslaved people were needed.

Textile Mills - Factories in the north that turned cotton, that was picked by enslaved people in the south, and turned it into clothing and sold around the world.

Compromise - This was necessary each time when a new state was added like Missouri and California to sort there differences over slavery.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin - A novel published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 which portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral.

Frederick Douglass - Abolitiionist and writer, he escaped slavery and became a leading African American spokesman and writer. He founded the abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

William Lloyd Garrison - Abolitionist who founded and ran The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper

Underground Railroad - A system of secert routes used by those escaping slavery to reach freedom in the North or in Canada

Example of Resistance of Slavery - Theft, property destuction, work slowdowns, running away, maintaining family, religion and culture, learning to read and write

John Brown - Abolitionist who led anti-slavery activity in Kansas during Bleeding Kansas, and later led a raid on Harpers Ferry tro start a slave rebellion.

Bleeding Kansas - An time period of violent events that involved abolitionist and pro-Slavery forces that took place in Kansas-Nebraska Territory.

Dred Scott - An enslaved man who sued for his freedom after being moved to a free terrritory, only to be told that he is not a citizen by the Supreme Court.

Election of 1860 - Lincoln, won because the democratic party was slit over slvery. South no longer felt lik it has a voice in politics and a number of states seceded from the Union.

Kansas-Nebraska Act - A law that allowed voters in Kansas and Nebraska to choose whether to allow slavery