TERMINOLOGY PAPER

• POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY: The doctrine that sovereign power is vested in the people and that those chosen by election to govern or to represent must conform to the will of the people.
• WILMOT PROVISO: The Wilmot Proviso was introduced on August 8, 1846 in the House of Representatives as a rider on a $2 million appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican-American War.
• “49ers”: Is derived from 1849, the California Gold Rush and is used to describe the gold prospectors that came to California during the gold rush.
• COMPROMISE OF 1850: A series of laws that attempted to resolve the territorial and slavery controversies arising from the Mexican-American War (1846–1848).
• FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT: The fugitive slave laws were statutes passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a public territory.
• UNDERGROUND RAILROAD: The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses that 19th century African slaves in the United States used to escape to free states (or as far north as Canada) with the aid of abolitionists.
• GADSDEN PURCHASE: The Gadsden Purchase (known as Venta de La Mesilla in Mexico) is a 45,535 mi² (76,770 km²) region of what is today southern Arizona and New Mexico that was purchased by the United States from Mexico in 1853.
• KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and opened new lands for settlement, and allowed the settlers to decide whether or not to have slavery.
• BLEEDING KANSAS: Bleeding Kansas, sometimes referred to in history as Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a sequence of violent events involving Free-States (anti-slavery) and pro-slavery "Border Ruffians"
• DRED SCOTT DECISION: was a lawsuit, pivotal in the history of the United States, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 that ruled that people of African descent, whether or not they were slaves, could never be citizens of the United States, and that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The decision for the court was written by Chief Justice Roger Taney.