Standards or guides based on prior decisions that serve as a rule for settling similar disputes

The formal instructions that government issues for implementing laws.

Loyalty to a region

A law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves; allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in areas where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders.

A belief that ultimate power resides with the people.

Created two states and gave the people in those territories the right to chose to be either a free or slave state through popular sovereignty.

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

Willfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it.

The killing or wounding of people, usually during fighting or a war.

To find fault with.

A particular area of land.

Abolitionist who was hanged after leading an unsuccessful raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (1800-1858)

To show approval.

A Missouri slave sued for his freedom, claiming that his four year stay in the northern portion of the Louisiana Territory made free. The U.S, Supreme Court decided he couldn't sue in federal court because he was property, not a citizen.

John Brown plans to start a slave uprising, so he steals weapons at Harper's Ferry and is stopped by U.S. Marines where he is captured.

16th President of the United States saved the Union during the Civil War and emancipated the slaves; was assassinated at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.

The crime of betraying one's country.

The southern states that seceded from the United States in 1861.