PRACTICE QUIZ || "A Divided Nation: 1850-1854"

What was one provision of the Compromise of 1850?

• It admitted California as a free state.
• It extended the Missouri Compromise Line

• It admitted California as a slave state.
• It prohibited slavery in territories won from Mexico.

How did the Fugitive Slave Act discourage people from helping enslaved people?

• People faced harsh penalties.
• People agreed with the law.
• People respected the federal marshals.
• People did not agree with the law, but they followed it.

What could federal marshals do under the Fugitive Slave Act?

• free enslaved people who made it to a free state
• confront slave catchers and free enslaved people from jail
• collect rewards offered for escaped enslaved people
• force ordinary citizens to help capture enslaved people

Which event prompted John Brown’s attack on the Pottawatomie Creek settlement?

• the passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act
• the attack on Senator Charles Sumner
• the violent proslavery raid in Lawrence, Kansas
• the contested elections of the Free-Soil Party

What was the main obstacle to Stephen A.Douglas's proposed Chicago-San Francisco railroad?

• It would be far too expensive to build.
• The territory was not organized into states.
• Settlers in the territory objected to a railroad.
• The territory between the cities was dangerous.

What is popular sovereignty?

• making territories into states
• bringing new voters into a state or territory
• electing the president of the United States
• allowing residents to decide issues by voting

Why was the territory called "Bleeding Kansas"?

• The territory's population was decreasing sharply.
• The territory's land contained acres of red soil.
• The territory included former enslaved people.
• The territory had several violent incidents.

“The enhanced enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act had the effect of deterring and recapturing most of those people who escaped enslavement in the 1850’s.”

• TRUE! The enhanced Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the forced assistance of northerners allowed easy capture of those enslaved people during the decade before the Civil War.

• FALSE! The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 riled up abolitionist sentiments in the North and, ultimately, led to very few enslaved people being captured and returned to slavery in the South. 

Unusual for the time, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was written by a woman. Please, name this author of the influential abolitionist work. It rallied even more people to take up the cause of abolition.

• Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Emily Bront

• Willa Cather

• Louisa May Alcott

Creating the Nebraska Territory would make it easier for the federal government to supply funding for what transportation project important to Illinois and this Senator?

• a canal connecting Lake Michigan to the Missouri River   

• a railroad across the Great Plains and over the Rocky Mountains to California 

• a national road providing easy passage by wagon into the West

• a railroad through the Great Plains from Canada to Texas