Oregon Trail
A historic east-to-west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
An anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, which had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S.
Gold Rush
A rapid movement of people to a newly discovered goldfield; the most notable was the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
A 1854 law that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and allowed the settlers there to decide whether they would allow slavery within each territory.
Compromise of 1850
A package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress to defuse political confrontations between slave and free states regarding territories acquired in the Mexican–American War.
Republican Party
Founded in 1854, a political party that emerged in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into American territories.
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Part of the Compromise of 1850, this law required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate.
Bleeding Kansas
A series of violent political confrontations in Kansas between anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions from 1854 to 1859, which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.
Filibusters
In the context of the 19th-century U.S., this term refers to unauthorized military expeditions into foreign countries to support revolutions and establish control, often related to the expansion of slavery.
Dred Scott Decision
A landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1857 that declared African Americans could not be American citizens and negated the Missouri Compromise.
Ostend Manifesto
A document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain and implied the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused.
Harpers Ferry
The site of an 1859 abolitionist raid led by John Brown intended to initiate an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
Confederate States of America
A collection of 11 southern states that seceded from the United States in 1860 and 1861, leading to the American Civil War.
Fort Sumter
The location in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired on April 12, 1861.
Crittenden Plan
An unsuccessful proposal introduced in December 1860 aimed at resolving the secession crisis by addressing the grievances that led the slave states to contemplate secession.