Notion that the sovereign people of a given territory should decide whether to allow slavery. Seemingly a compromise, it was largely opposed by Northern abolitionists who feared it would promote the spread of slavery to the territories.

Passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, it set high penalties for anyone who aided escaped slaves and compelled all law enforcement officers to participate in retrieving runaways. Strengthened the antislavery cause in the North.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery. It heightened Northern support for abolitions and escalated the sectional conflict.

1863. Declared all slaves in rebelling states to be free but did not affect slavery in non-rebelling Border States. The Proclamation closed the door on possible compromise with the South and encouraged thousands of Southern slaves to flee to Union lines.

1864-1865. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's destructive march through Georgia. An early instance of "total war", purposely targeting infrastructure and civilian property to diminish morale and undercut the Confederate War effort.

1865-1872. Created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support. Its achievements were never and depended largely on the quality of local administrators.

1865-1866. Laws passed throughout the South to restrict the rights of emancipated blacks, particularly with respect to negotiating labor contracts. Increased Norhterners' criticisms of President Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction policies.

An extremist, paramilitary, right-wing secret society founded in the mid-nineteenth century and revived during the 1920s. It was anti-foreign, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, anti-evolutionist, and anti-bootlegger, but pro-Anglo-Saxon and pro-Protestant. Its members, cloaked in sheets to conceal their identities, terrorized freedmen and sympathetic whites throughout the South after the Civil War. By the 1890s, Klan-style violence and Democratic legislation succeeded in virtually disenfranchising all Southern blacks.

An agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a certain "share" of each year's crop. Sharecropping was the dominant form of southern agriculture after the Civil War, and landowners manipulated this system to keep tenants in perpetual debt and unable to leave their plantation.

The South conceded to let Hayes win the presidency because he agreed to pull out the troops; thus, the Compromise of 1877

Admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in Washington D.C., and introduced a more stringent fugitive slave law. Widely opposed in both the North and South, it did little to settle the escalating dispute over slavery.

1854. Proposed that the issue of slavery be decided by popular sovereignty in the Kansas and Nebraska territories, thus revoking the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Introduced by Stephen Douglass in an effort to bring Nebraska into the Union and pave the way for a northern transcontinental railroad.

1862. A federal law that gave settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by, for instance, building a house on it. The act helped make land accessible to hundreds of thousands of westward-moving settlers, but many people also found disappointment when their land was infertile or they saw speculators grabbing up the best land.

1863. Abraham Lincoln's oft-quoted speech, delivered at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg battlefield. In the address, Lincoln framed the war as a means to uphold the values of liberty.

Site (city) where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865 after almost a year of brutal fighting throughout Virginia in the "Wilderness Campaign".

1863. Introduced by President Lincoln, it proposed that a state be readmitted to the Union once 10 percent of its voters had pledged loyalty to the United States and promised to honor emancipation of slaves.

13th: Abolished slavery except for criminal punishment.

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Most liberal part of the Republican Party. Desired political, economic, and social equality for African Americans. Wanted harsh punishment for the South after the Civil War. Became much more powerful after Andrew Johnson's impeachment.

Angered many people in the south who owned slaves because he wanted to end slavery. Won the election of 1860 but did not win the popular vote. South Carolina was happy at the outcome of the election because now it had a reason to secede.11 states in the south seceded and made themselves the Confederacy after the election.

The movement to end the practice of slavery within the entirety of the United States.

Union war plan by Winfield Scott, called for blockade of southern coast, capture of Richmond, capture of the Mississippi River, and to take an army through heart of south.

(1846) Proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican War. Never passed by both houses of Congress but helped fan the flame of sectional tension.

(1848) Political party dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery into new territories.

(1856-1861) A sequence of violent events involving abolitionists and pro-Slavery elements that took place in Kansas-Nebraska Territory. The dispute further strained the relations of the North and South, making civil war imminent.

(1857) Supreme Court case that decided US Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories and slaves, as private property, could not be taken away without due process. Invalidated the Missouri Compromise.

(1859) John Brown led a raid on Harper's Ferry. He hoped to start a rebellion against slaveholders by arming enslaved African Americans. Brown was quickly defeated by citizens and federal troops. Brown became a villain to southerners who now thought northerners would use violence to end slavery as well as a martyr to some northerners who saw Brown as someone who sacrificed himself for the ideal of freedom for all.

(1860) The United States presidential election of 1860 set the stage for the American Civil War. Hardly more than a month following Lincoln's victory came declarations of secession by South Carolina and other states, which were rejected as illegal by outgoing President James Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln.

(1867) Banned discrimination in public accommodations, prohibited discrimination in any federally assisted program, outlawed discrimination in most employment; enlarged federal powers to protect voting rights and to speed school desegregation.

(1865) The constitutional amendment ratified after the Civil War that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude.

(1868) Provided equal protection of the law to freed slaves. Representation for any state that withheld voting from African Americans would be reduced.

(1870) Prohibited any state from denying citizens the right to vote on the grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

(1877) It withdrew federal soldiers from their remaining position in the South, enacted federal legislation that would spur industrialization in the South, appointed Democrats to patronage positions in the south, appointed a Democrat to the president's cabinet, and allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to win the election. Marked the end of reconstruction.

1854. Established by anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats, "free-soilers" and reformers from the Northwest met and formed party in order to keep slavery out of the territories.

Senator from Illinois who ran for president against Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln-Douglas Debates) and was a leading voice in the debates over slavery and its expansion before the Civil War. Wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Freeport Doctrine.

16th President of the United States saved the Union during the Civil War and emancipated the slaves; was assassinated by Booth (1809-1865)

Formal withdrawal of states or regions from a nation; the South used this to try and protect a state's right to allow individuals to own slaves

Petition requiring law enforcement officers to present detained individuals before the court to examine the legality of the arrest. Protects individuals from arbitrary state action. Suspended by Lincoln during the Civil War.

Term used to describe the growing differences between the regions of the United States, especially the North and South, leading up to the Civil War.

A battle near a sluggish little creek, it proved to be the bloodiest single day battle in American History with over 26,000 lives lost in that single day. Prevented an Confederate invasion of Maryland.

A large battle in the American Civil War, took place in southern Pennsylvania from July 1 to July 3, 1863. Union General George G. Meade led an army of about 90,000 men to victory against General Robert E. Lee's Confederate army of about 75,000. Proved to be a significant turning point in the war because of the loss of about 1/3 of Lee's army.

An American general and the eighteenth President of the United States (1869-1877). He achieved international fame as the leading Union general in the American Civil War. He was relentless in his attacks against Lee. As a president, he let his advisors have too much power, and, as such, seemed to have an ineffectual presidency marred by corrupt officials.

Union General who destroyed South during "march to the sea" from Atlanta to Savannah; example of total war and "scorched-earth" military tactics.

Wide-ranging powers a president may exercise during times of crisis or those powers permitted the president by Congress for a limited time.

Name given to the period when Congress, which was controlled by Republicans, took over Reconstruction efforts. When southerners balked at some of the more moderate reforms proposed, more radical republicans started to gain more power and pass more legislation.

1867. Divided the South into five districts and placed them under military rule; required Southern States to ratify the 14th amendment; guaranteed freedmen the right to vote in convention to write new state constitutions

1865. Organization (turned government agency) run by the army to care for and protect southern Blacks after the Civil War, sometimes including settling them on confiscated confederate lands.

Ended reconstruction because neither candidate had an electoral majority. The Democrat Sam Tilden loses the election to Rutherford B Hayes, Republican, was elected, and then ended reconstruction as he secretly promised.

A northerner who went to the South immediately after the Civil War; especially one who tried to gain political advantage or other advantages from the disorganized situation in southern states (as viewed from the southern perspective).

A derogatory term for southerners who were working with the North to buy up land from desperate southerners; sometimes used in a general way by southerners criticizing other southerners who had northern sympathies.

Secret system of safe houses along a route that led many slaves to freedom in the North and eventually Canada.

Lincoln challenged Stephen Douglas to debates during the senatorial race of 1858 which became a public referendum on the issue of slavery.

Southern states that never chose secession and joined the Confederacy during the Civil War (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Deleware).

17th President of the United States, A Southerner form Tennessee, as V.P. when Lincoln was killed, he became president. He opposed radical Republicans who passed Reconstruction Acts over his veto. Forgiving of the poor white farmer; ultimately forgiving towards the plantation owner. The first U.S. president to be impeached--violated Tenure of Office Act, he survived the Senate removal by only one vote.

Radical Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who defended runaway slaves in court for free and insisted on being buried in a black cemetery; hated white Southerners. Leading figure on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction and for the social equality of African Americans. Did not allow returning Confederate representatives a seat in Congress.

Lincoln's plan for re-admitting the Southern states into the Union: a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of its voters in the presidential election of 1860 had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and pledged to abide by emancipation.

A Reconstruction bill which gave which granted citizenship to African Americans and weakened the poliferation of Black Codes in the South.

Largely former slave owners who were the bitterest opponents of the Republican program in the South. Staged a major counterrevolution to "redeem" the south by taking back southern state governments. Their foundation rested on the idea of racism and white supremacy.

The "Invisible Empire of the South", founded in Tennessee in 1866, made up of embittered white Southerners who resented the success and ability of Black legislators. They would terrorize, mutilate, and even murder "upstart" blacks or their supporters to "keep them in their place".

This would have made slavery permanent in the South, but not allowed the spread of it. Lincoln, at that time, supported that.

a freed slave who lived in America during the late 1800's. She was also known as Isabella. From her home in New York she waged a constant battle for the abolition of slavery. She was also a prominent figure in the fight for women's rights.