lame-duck" period
Period between Lincoln's election and his inauguration, during which the ineffectual President Buchanan remianed in office
Election of 1860
Four-way race for the presidency that resulted in the election of a sectional minority president
Crittenden Compromise
A last-ditch plan to save the Union by providing guarantees for slavery in the territories
Confederate States of America
A new nation that proclaimed its independence in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1861
South Caroline
First state to secede from the Union in December 1860
Constitutional Union Party
Newly formed middle-of-the-road party of elderly politicians that sought compromise in 1860, but carried only three border states
Lincoln-Douglas debates
Thoughtful political discussions during an Illinois Senate campaign that sharply defined national issues concerning slavery
Panic of 1857
Sharp economic decline that increased northern demands for a high tariff and convinced southerners that the North was economically vulnerable
Dred Scott Case
Controversial Supreme Court ruling that blacks had no civil or human rights and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories
Know-Nothing Party
Anti-immigrant party headed by former President Fillmore that competed with Republicans and Democrats in the election of 1856
Lecompton Constitution
Tricky proslavery document designed to bring Kansas into the Union but blocked by Stephen A. Douglas
Bleeding Kansas
Term that described the praire territory where a small-scale civil war erupted in 1856
Beecher's Bible
Rifles paid for by New England abolitionists and brought to Kansas by antislavery pioneers
The Impending Crisis of the South
A book by a southern white that argued that slavery especially opressed poor whites
Uncle Tom's Cabin
A powerful, personal novel that altered the course of American politics