In 1820 Congress admitted Missouri as a state where slavery was legal. To keep the number of free and slave states in the Senate even, Congress admitted which state as a free state at the same time?

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 drew a line across the Louisiana Purchase at 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude. What did that line settle?

California asked to join the Union as a free state, which would break the even count of free and slave states in the Senate. Congress settled the argument with a package of five laws known as what?

One of the five laws in the Compromise of 1850 was a stronger Fugitive Slave Act. What did that law require?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 said that settlers living in Kansas and Nebraska would vote for themselves on whether slavery would be allowed there. What is that idea called?

After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, proslavery and antislavery settlers poured into Kansas Territory and fighting broke out between them for years. What were they fighting to decide?

In 1857 the Supreme Court decided the case of an enslaved man who had sued for his freedom after living in a free state and a free territory. Besides denying him his freedom, what did the Court rule about Congress?

By 1860 the plantations of eastern Texas produced one main crop for sale, grown by the forced labor of enslaved people. Which crop was it?

In 1860 the North and the South earned their livings in different ways. Which description fits the South's economy far more than the North's?

Frederick Douglass escaped enslavement in Maryland and became one of the best known voices against slavery in the years before the Civil War. What did he do?

Harriet Tubman escaped enslavement on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1849. What did she do over the next ten years?

In the presidential election of 1860, what was Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party's stated position on slavery?

Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of November 1860. What was unusual about how he won?

Weeks after the election of 1860, one state's convention voted on December 20, 1860, to leave the Union. Which state was the first to secede?

Texas governor Sam Houston opposed secession, but the state convention voted to leave the Union anyway and joined it to the Confederacy. What did Houston do when he was ordered to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy?

After South Carolina seceded in December 1860, Texas and several other Southern states voted to leave the Union within the next few months. What did these seceding states join together to form?

When Texas seceded, its convention published a Declaration of Causes on February 2, 1861, listing its reasons for leaving the Union. Which subject does that document return to again and again?

Leaders of the seceding states in 1861 said they were defending states' rights. Reading their own declarations of causes, which right did they say was at stake?

On April 12, 1861, Confederate guns around Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, opened fire on a United States fort, and the Civil War began. What was that fort called?

Historians separate long-running conditions from the single event that triggers a war. Which was the long-running condition behind forty years of sectionalism, rather than a triggering event?

Which issue was the central cause of the growing conflict between the North and South before the Civil War?

What does sectionalism mean?

What did Southern leaders mean when they argued for 'states' rights'?

In the 1840s and 1850s, most immigrants arriving from Europe settled in the North rather than the South. Why?

Why did the question of slavery in new western territories create conflict?

What was the Missouri Compromise meant to do?

The Compromise of 1850 settled disagreements permanently and ended sectional tension.

Which law let settlers in two new territories on the Great Plains vote for themselves on whether to allow slavery there?

What was 'Bleeding Kansas'?

Who were abolitionists?

What effect did Harriet Beecher Stowe's book Uncle Tom's Cabin have in the North?

In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, what did the Supreme Court rule about Black Americans, whether enslaved or free?

Why did John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry increase tension?

The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 led some Southern states to secede from the Union.

What does secession mean?

Abraham Lincoln was elected in November 1860 and took office in March 1861. By the time he took office, how many Southern states had already seceded?

Texas seceded from the United States and joined the Confederacy in 1861.

In February 1861 a Texas convention voted to leave the Union. How was that decision then confirmed?

What were tariffs, and why did they cause disagreement?

What were the major causes and events that led to the Civil War?