Key Terms:

• Abolitionist: a reformer who favors abolishing slavery.
• Abraham Lincoln: 16^th President of the United States.
• Compromise of 1850: a series of five bills passed within Congress for the admittance of new states into the union as well as the Fugitive Slave Act.
• Cotton Gin: machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds.
• Fugitive Slave Act: allowed for the seizure and return of runaway slaves.
• Harriet Beecher Stowe: author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• Harriet Tubman: former slave who escaped to the north and later helped many other slaves do the same through the Underground Railroad.
• Henry Clay - prominent politician who helped write the Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850.
• James Buchanan: 15^th president of the United States.
• Jefferson Davis: President of the Confederate States of America.
• John Brown - radical abolitionist, well known for John Brown's Raid.
• Kansas-Nebraska Act: dealt with the admittance of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. States would become slave or free depending on popular sovereignty.
• Missouri Compromise: in 1820 this deal was a compromise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in Congress for the admittance of the state of Missouri.
• Popular Sovereignty: people vote for what they desire.
• Republican Party: this party worked for the abolition of slavery.
• Secede: the withdrawal from an organization.
• Stephen Douglas: prominent politician who helped create the Kansas- Nebraska Act.
• Supreme Court Decision Scott v. Sandford (Dred Scott case): monumental Supreme Court Decision that supported the Fugitive Slave Act.
• Thomas Garrett: abolitionist and leader in the Underground Railroad.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin : famous book that made many northerners become outspoken abolitionists.
• Underground Railroad: a network of secret routes and safe houses to help slaves from the south get to the free north.