Unit 6 Key Terms
1. Manifest Destiny
2. Oregon Trail
3. James K. Polk
4. “Fifty-four Forty or Fight”
5. Annexation of Texas
6. Mexican-American War
7. Wilmot Proviso
8. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
9. Popular sovereignty
10. Free-Soil Party
11. California Gold Rush
12. Compromise of 1850
13. Fugitive Slave Act
14. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
15. Transcontinental railroad
16. Gadsden Purchase
17. Kansas-Nebraska Act
18. Bleeding Kansas
19. John Brown
20. Caning of Charles Sumner
21. Republican Party
22. Abraham Lincoln
23. Dred Scott v. Sandford
24. Lincoln-Douglas Debates
25. Freeport Doctrine
26. Harpers Ferry
27. Election of 1860
28. Crittenden Compromise
29. Confederate States of America
30. Jefferson Davis
31. Fort Sumter
32. Border States
1. The idea that Americans had a God-given right to conquer and civilize North America
2. One of the routes that “overlanders” used to move to the West
3. Known as the “expansion president,” he was president when the United States gained the Oregon
Territory and fought the Mexican-American War
4. Slogan of people who felt the United States should fight England for all of the Oregon Territory rather
than share it
5. Action that made Texas part of the United States and angered Mexico
6. Conflict between the United States and Mexico caused by the United States’ desires for Texas and
California and started by a border dispute in Texas
7. Suggested law (that did not pass) that called for all land won from Mexico to be free from slavery
8. This ended the Mexican-American War and resulted in the Mexican Cession, which gave the United
States was is now the American southwestern states
9. The idea that states should decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery
10. Formed with the platform that slavery should not expand west and preserve the West for white people
11. Event that caused the population of California to increase dramatically and ask to be admitted as a free
state
12. Created by Henry Clay, this deal included California being admitted as a free state and the Fugitive
Slave Act being passed
13. This law forced northerners to aid in slave-catching and divided the country
14. Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, this caused many northerners to hate slavery
15. This proposed structure would unite the West to the rest of the country
16. This strip of land was bought from Mexico for the construction of a transcontinental railroad
17. This law proposed using popular sovereignty to settle Midwestern states but resulted in violence
18. This event involved pro-slavery forces and abolitionist forces fighting over control of their state
19. White abolitionist who killed slave owners in Kansas and later tried to start an armed slave rebellion
20. Event in which a Congressman almost killed a Senator in the U.S. Capitol
21. Formed with the platform that slavery could not expand west, took power with the election of Abraham
Lincoln
22. Won the Election of 1860 and led the country during the Civil War
23. This ruled the slaves were not citizens and that slavery could not be banned in any territory
24. Series of talks between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas that made Lincoln a popular candidate
for president two years later
25. Idea that, even if slavery could not be banned, western territories did not have to pass laws to protect it
26. Site of John Brown’s attempt to raid a federal arsenal and start an armed slave rebellion in the South
27. This event caused southern states to secede from the United States
28. This last ditch effort to prevent the Civil War, by bringing back the Missouri Compromise line and
extending it to the West Coast, that failed
29. The country that southern states established after Lincoln’s election
30. President of the Confederate States of America
31. Site of the first shots fired by the South against the North, started the Civil War
32. States that had slavery but remained part of the Union and were vital to Lincoln’s ability to conduct the
Civil War