Divided Nation Vocabulary Practice

A person who flees or tries to escape (for example, from slavery).

• Missouri Compromise
• Fugitive
• Dred Scott Decision
• Union

A Supreme Court decision in 1857 that held that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

• Dred Scott Decision
• Kansas Nebraska Act
• Lincoln Douglas Debates
• Compromise of 1850

The agreements made in order to admit California into the Union as a state without slavery. These agreements included allowing the New Mexico and Utah territories to decide whether to allow slavery, outlawing the trade of enslaved people in Washington, D.C., and creating a stronger fugitive slave law.

• Missouri Compromise
• Fugitive
• Wilmot Proviso
• Compromise of 1850

An act passed in 1854 that created the Kansas and Nebraska territories and abolished the Missouri Compromise by allowing settlers to determine whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories.

• Lincoln Douglas Debates
• Union
• Kansas Nebraska Act
• Missouri Compromise

A series of political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, who were candidates in the Illinois race for U.S. senator, in which slavery was the main issue.

• Union
• Lincoln Douglas Debates
• Compromise of 1850
• Wilmot Proviso

An agreement made by Congress in 1820 under which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a state with slavery and Maine was admitted as a state without slavery.

• The Missouri Compromise
• Dred Scott Decision
• Union
• Wilmot Proviso

The United States as one nation united under a single government. During the Civil War, “the Union” came to mean the government and armies of the North.

• Fugitive
• Union
• Kansas Nebraska Act
• Missouri Compromise

A proposal made in 1846 to prohibit slavery in the territory added to the United States as a result of the Mexican-American War

• Lincoln Douglas Debates
• Union
• Compromise of 1850
• Wilmot Proviso