Crittenden Compromise Legislation proposed by Kentucky Senator John Crittenden during the Secession Crisis in 1860-1861. It called for a constitutional amendment recognizing slavery in all territory south of 36°30' (the “Missouri Compromise line”) and an ironclad amendment guaranteeing slavery in slave states. President-elect Lincoln and the Republicans rejected the proposals, 367
Dred Scott decision The 1857 Supreme Court ruling that held that blacks were not citizens and could not sue in a federal court, and, most important, that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority in banning slavery from the territories. By declaring the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and making future compromises even more difficult, the decision pushed the nation closer to civil war, 358
Kansas-Nebraska Act A compromise law in 1854 that superseded the Missouri Compromise and left it to voters in Kansas and Nebraska to determine whether they would be slave or free states. The law exacerbated sectional tensions when voters came to blows over the question of slavery in Kansas, 353
Know-Nothing party A nativist, anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic party that emerged in response to the flood of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany in the 1840s. The party achieved mostly local successes in the Northeast port cities; but in 1856 former President Millard Fillmore, whose Whig party had dissolved, accepted the nomination of southern Know-Nothings but carried only Maryland, a failure that contributed to the movement’s decline, 353
Lecompton constitution A proslavery constitution, drafted in 1857 by delegates for Kansas territory,
Elected under questionable circumstances, seeking admission to the United States. It was rejected by two territorial governors, supported by President Buchanan, and decisively defeated by Congress, 359
Ostend Manifesto A confidential 1854 dispatch to the U. S. State Department from American diplomats meeting in Ostend, Belgium, suggesting that the United States would be justified in seizing Cuba if Spain refused to sell it to the United States. When word of the document was leaked, Northerners seethed at this “slaveholders’ plot” to extend slavery, 348
Republican party One of the original two political parties, sometimes called “Democratic Republican,” it was organized by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and generally stood for states’ rights, an agrarian economy and the interests of farmers and planters over those of financial and commercial groups, who generally supported the Federalist party; both of the original parties faded in the 1820s. A new Republican party emerged in the 1850s in opposition to the extension of slavery in the territories. It also adopted most of the old Whig party’s economic program. The party nominated John C. Fremont for president in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln in 1860, 355
Underground Railroad A support system established by antislavery groups in the upper South and the North to help fugitive slaves who had escaped from the South to make their way to Canada, 350
Young America movement The confident enthusiasm, infused with a belief in the nation’s “manifest destiny,” that spread rapidly during the 1850s, 348
World History
