Chapter 13
free-soil movement; Free-Soil party | Did not want end of slavery but they wanted to keep the West a land of opportunity for whites only so that the white majority would not have to compete with the labor of slaves or free blacks; Free-Soil party in 1848 in North, saying, "free soil, free labor, free men"; advocated free homesteads (public land grants to small farmers) and internal improvements |
conscience Whigs | Anti-slavery whigs who opposed both the Texas annexation and the Mexican War on moral grounds. |
"barnburners" | Free-Soilers whose defection threatened to destroy the Democratic party., conscience Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats were known as this |
popular sovereignty | in the mid-1800s, a term referring to the idea that each territory could decide for itself whether or not to allow slavery by popular vote |
Lewis Cass | Democratic senator who proposed popular sovereignty to settle the slavery question in the territories; he lost the presidential election in 1848 against Zachary Taylor but continued to advocate his solution to the slavery issue throughout the 1850s. |
Zachary Taylor | 12th US President (1849-1850) Taylor was a general and hero of the Mexican-American war. He was elected to the presidency in 1848, representing the Whig party. He was in office during the crisis of California's admittance to the Union but died in office before a compromise could be worked out, and left vice president Filmore to finalize a deal between the hostile north and south. Advocated admission of California and New Mexico to US. |
Compromise of 1850 | Henry Clay proposed:
-Admit California to the Union as a free state
-Divide the remainder of the Mexican Cession into New Mexico and Utah (popular sovereignty)
-Give land in dispute between Texas and New Mexico to federal government in return for paying Texas' public debt of 10 million
-Ban slave trade in D. C., but permit slaveholding
-New Fugitive Slave Law to be enforced |
Stephen...