Chapter 19 Terms and Definitions
- Caning of Charles Sumner
The 1856 assault in which Congressman Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor after an antislavery speech, shocking the North.
- Dred Scott v. Sandford
The 1857 Supreme Court decision ruling that Dred Scott remained enslaved and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories, declaring the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.
- Roger B. Taney
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the Dred Scott decision, ruling that Black Americans could not be citizens.
- Lecompton Constitution
A fraudulent proslavery constitution for Kansas that split the Democratic Party when Stephen Douglas opposed it.
- Lincoln-Douglas Debates
A series of 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during their Illinois Senate race, focused on the morality and expansion of slavery.
- Freeport Doctrine
Stephen Douglas's position, stated during the debates, that territories could exclude slavery in practice by refusing to pass laws protecting it, despite the Dred Scott ruling.
- Harpers Ferry
The site of John Brown's 1859 raid on a federal arsenal, intended to spark a slave uprising.
- John Brown
Radical abolitionist who led the raid on Harpers Ferry; his execution made him a martyr to many northerners and a symbol of northern aggression to southerners.
- Constitutional Union Party
A short-lived party in the 1860 election that avoided the slavery issue and urged national unity above all else.
- Election of 1860
The four-way presidential race won by Abraham Lincoln without a single southern electoral vote, which triggered the secession crisis.
- Secession
The act of a state formally withdrawing from the Union; South Carolina was the first to secede in December 1860, followed by six more states.
- Confederate States of America
The government formed by seceding southern states in early 1861, with Jefferson Davis as president.