1. Section 1 Chapter 15

2.  How did the outcome of the Mexican War affect the debate over the expansion of slavery?  What were the major provisions of the Compromise of 1850, and what reasons were given for supporting or opposing it?  Why was the Fugitive Slave Act controversial in the North?

3.  The victory in the Mexican War added new land to the United States and brought back the debate over slavery  The Missouri Compromise had divided the country into free and slave states  Polk wanted the line to extend into new territory just taken from Mexico

4.  The debate over slavery really began to show the sectionalism (favoring interests of a region over the good of the country) of the country  Senator Lewis Cass called for popular sovereignty, which stated that the people of the state would determine if they would choose slavery

5.  In 1848, the Free-Soil Party was formed and it did not side with Democrats or Whigs  Whig candidate Zachary Taylor won the 1848 election

6.  When California went through the gold rush it skipped the territorial process for becoming a state  Many in California wanted to enter the Union as a free state but Southern politicians did not want California to enter as a free state as it would through the balance of power to free states in Congress

7.  Henry Clay was known as the “Great Compromiser” and stepped forward with a new plan to end the debate:  Let California enter as a free state  Popular sovereignty would decide slavery in the Mexican cession territories  Texas give up its claims east of the upper Rio Grande River and the federal government will pay of Texas’s debt  End the slave trade in Washington D.C. (slavery still allowed just no new trading)  New more efficient fugitive slave law

8.  Clay’s plan had critics in the South and in the North  Some felt it was too weak on the slave trade while others in the south thought it was too strict

9.  Daniel Webster of Massachusetts was a supporter of the plan because preservation of the Union is more important then stopping the expansion of slavery  He criticized northerners who against it and scolded southerners who wanted to break away  The Compromise of 1850 was passed in September and accomplished most of what Clay wanted

10.  The Fugitive Slave Act made it a federal crime to help runaway slaves  It allowed officials to arrest slaves in areas where slavery was illegal  Anyone who helped a runaway slave faced six months in jail and a $1000 fine  Thousands of African Americans went to Canada to escape potential prosecution

11.  For the most part Northerners who resisted the Fugitive Slave Act did so without violence  Anthony Burns was a fugitive that was caught in Boston and a group of abolitionists went to break him out  Along the way a deputy marshal was killed

12.  Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth put together narratives that were very popular  Truth’s narratives were centered around a woman and took place while she was a slave in New York

13.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the most powerful piece of literature that was written for abolitionists  Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this book and it centered on a slave named Tom who was separated from his family  She had learned about slaver when her family moved to Ohio and she met fugitive slaves there

14.  How did the outcome of the Mexican War affect the debate over the expansion of slavery?  What were the major provisions of the Compromise of 1850, and what reasons were given for supporting or opposing it?  Why was the Fugitive Slave Act controversial in the North?