Paul Jones

American Pageant Chapter 18

1. Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas, son of Stephen Arnold Douglass and Sarah Fisk, was an
American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Democratic Party
nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham
Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed
series of debates. He was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short of stature
but was considered by many a "giant" in politics. Douglas was well-known as a
resourceful party leader, and an adroit, ready, skillful tactician in debate and passage of
legislation.
2. Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States, serving from 1853 to
1857, an American politician and lawyer. To date, he is the only President from New
Hampshire. He was also the first President to be born in the 19th century.
3. Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy
during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born,
she made thirteen missions to rescue over seventy slaves using the network of antislavery
activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John
Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for
women's suffrage.
4. James Gadsden
James Gadsden was an American diplomat, soldier and businessman and namesake of
the Gadsden Purchase, in which the United States purchased from Mexico the land that
became the southern portion of Arizona and New Mexico.
5. Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th President of the
United States, serving from 1850 until 1853 and the last member of the Whig Party to
hold that office. He was the second Vice President to assume the presidency upon the
death of a sitting president, succeeding Zachary Taylor, who died of what is thought to be
acute gastroenteritis. Fillmore was never elected president; after serving out Taylor's
term, he failed to gain the nomination of the Whigs for president in the 1852 presidential
election, and, four years later, in the 1856 presidential election, he again failed to win
election as the Know Nothing Party and Whig candidate.
6. Popular Sovereignty
Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the belief that the legitimacy
of the state is created by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all
political power. It is closely associated with the social contract philosophers, among
whom are Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Popular sovereignty
expresses a concept and does not necessarily reflect or describe a political reality.[1] It is
often contrasted with the concept of parliamentary sovereignty. Benjamin Franklin
expressed the concept when he wrote, "In free governments the rulers are the servants
and the people their superiors and sovereigns."
7. Free Soil Party
 The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the
1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. It was a third party that
largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party
leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the
Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the
western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and
economically superior system to slavery. They opposed slavery in the new territories and
worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed blacks in states such as
Ohio.
8. Fugitive Slave Law
It was officially called "An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping
from the service of their masters." It is commonly referred to as 1793 Fugitive Slave Act
and was written as way to ensure slaveowners would be able to recover their slaves in
any US state (Sections 3 & 4), as well as allow States to apprehend escaped fugitives
from the law (Sections 1 & 2), which were not the same. Although the U.S. Constitution
said that runaway slaves had to be returned in Article 4, it did not in itself make any
provision for doing so; specific laws were still required. Congress therefore used its
power to enact this Act.
9. Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses
used by 19th century Black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada
with the aid of abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied
to the abolitionists who aided the fugitives. Other various routes led to Mexico or
overseas. Created in the early nineteenth century, the Underground Railroad was at its
height between 1850 and 1860. One estimate suggests that by 1850, 100,000 slaves had
escaped via the "Railroad". Canada was a popular destination with over 30,000 people
arriving there to escape enslavement via the network at its peak, though US Census
figures only account for 6,000.
10. Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was an intricate package of five bills, passed in September
1850, defusing a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the
free states of the North that arose from expectation of territorial expansion of the United
States with the Texas Annexation (December 29, 1845) and the following Mexican-
American War (1846–1848). It avoided secession or civil war at the time and quieted
sectional conflict for four years until the divisive Kansas-Nebraska Act.
11. Ostend Manifesto
The Ostend Manifesto was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the
United States to purchase Cuba from Spain and implied the U.S. should declare war if
Spain refused. Cuba's annexation had long been a goal of U.S. expansionists, particularly
as the U.S. set its sights southward following the admission of California to the Union.
However, diplomatically the country had been content to see the island remain in Spanish
hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as the United Kingdom or
France. A product of the debates over slavery in the United States, Manifest Destiny, and
the Monroe Doctrine, the Ostend Manifesto proposed a shift in foreign policy, justifying
the use of force to seize Cuba in the name of national security.
12. Kansas-Nebraska Act
 The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska,
opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in
those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries. The
initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to create opportunities for a Mideastern
Transcontinental Railroad. It was not problematic until popular sovereignty was written
into the proposal. The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of
Illinois.
13. Gadsen Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase (known as Venta de La Mesilla, or "Sale of La Mesilla", in
Mexico) is a 29,670-square-mile (76,800 km2
) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was
purchased by the United States in a treaty signed by President Franklin Pierce on June 24,
1853, and ratified by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 1854. It is named for James Gadsden,
the American ambassador to Mexico at the time. The purchase included lands south of
the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande. The Gadsden Purchase was for the purpose of
the US's construction of a transcontinental railroad along a deep southern route. It was
also related to reconciliation of outstanding border issues following the Treaty of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War of 1846–48.
14. Personal Liberty Laws
The personal liberty laws were a series of laws passed by several U.S. states in the
North in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and 1850.

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