Sectionalism Vocabulary
US History
Ms. Granillo
Lewis and Clark
(Meriwether Lewis and William Clark)
Explorers who explored the Louisiana
Purchase
John C. Fremont
Surveyor/explorer of the West known as the
“Pathfinder” and later the first presidential
nominee for the Republican Party.
James Gadsden
Negotiated the last purchase of the
continental United States
James K. Polk
President during the Mexican-American War
John Brown
Made the abolition of slavery a personal
crusade; murdered slavery supporters in
Kansas and led the raid at Harper’s Ferry,
VA (was executed).
Frederick Douglass
Self-educated slave who escaped and
became a leading spokesman for the
abolitionist movement, publisher of The
North Star (Anti-slavery newspaper)
Stephen Douglas
Democrat who ran for the Senate seat from
Illinois in 1858 taking the position that
popular sovereignty should determine
whether slavery would extend into
western territories
William Lloyd Garrison
Abolitionist who led the American AntiSlavery Society and editor of The Liberator
(anti-slavery newspaper)
Abraham Lincoln
Republican who ran for the Senate seat in
Illinois in 1858. Believed slavery should
not extend to the western territories
Dred Scott
Slave who sued for his freedom because his
master had taken him into non-slave
territories and still held him as a slave
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Tubman
Runaway slave and conductor of the
Underground Railroad
Expansion
Spreading into a connecting area
Manifest Destiny
Belief it was the God given right of
Americans to expand westward to the
Pacific Ocean
Push-Pull Theory
Events and conditions that either force
(push) people to move elsewhere or
strongly attract (pull) them to do so
Abolitionists
Those who wanted to abolish or end slavery
Popular Sovereignty
The policy of allowing people in a territory to
decide whether or not they will allow
slavery
Secession
Formal withdrawal of a state from the Union
Sectionalism
The placing of he interests of one’s own
region ahead of the interests of the nation
as a whole
Underground Railroad
A vast network of people who helped
fugitive slaves escape to the North and to
Canada. It was not run by any single
organization or person, but rather, it
consisted of many individuals. It
effectively moved hundreds of slaves
northward each year—according to one
estimate, the South lost 100,000 slaves
between 1810 and 1850