The Wilmot Proviso passed both houses of Congress and became law in 1846.
Correct Answer
False
False. The proviso passed the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate, so it never became law, although it divided Congress along sectional lines.
Category: Compromise of 1850
Question 2
The Whigs won the 1848 presidential election with General Zachary Taylor as their candidate.
Correct Answer
True
True. Taylor, a slaveholder and hero of the Mexican-American War, took no clear public stand on the issues and defeated Democrat Lewis Cass and Free-Soil candidate Martin Van Buren.
Category: Compromise of 1850
Question 3
Under the Compromise of 1850, California entered the Union as a free state.
Correct Answer
True
True. California, whose population had soared during the Gold Rush, adopted a constitution banning slavery, and its admission as a free state was a major gain for the North.
Category: Compromise of 1850
Question 4
The Compromise of 1850 abolished slavery in Washington, DC.
Correct Answer
False
False. The compromise ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, but slavery itself remained legal there.
Category: Compromise of 1850
Question 5
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 paid federal commissioners more for ruling an accused person enslaved than for ruling the person free.
Correct Answer
True
True. Commissioners received ten dollars for each person sent South and five dollars for each person they freed, a difference critics saw as a bribe.
Category: Fugitive Slave Act
Question 6
Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Virginia and later guided others to freedom.
Correct Answer
False
False. Tubman was born enslaved in Maryland and escaped from there in the late 1840s; she returned many times to lead others north.
Category: Fugitive Slave Act
Question 7
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 commanded ordinary citizens to help capture people accused of escaping slavery when officials called on them.
Correct Answer
True
True. The law let federal marshals call on bystanders for help and set heavy fines and jail terms for anyone who hid or helped a freedom seeker, so Northerners could be drawn into enforcing slavery, which turned many against the law.
Category: Fugitive Slave Act
Question 8
Senator William H. Seward of New York introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
Correct Answer
False
False. Illinois Democrat Stephen Douglas introduced the act; Seward was an antislavery Whig and later a Republican who opposed it.
Category: Kansas-Nebraska Act
Question 9
Free-state settlers in Kansas wrote the Lecompton Constitution, which would have banned slavery.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Lecompton Constitution was drafted by a proslavery convention whose election free-state settlers boycotted, and it protected slavery. Free-state settlers wrote the Topeka Constitution.
Category: Kansas-Nebraska Act
Question 10
President James Buchanan supported the proslavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas.
Correct Answer
True
True. Buchanan backed the Lecompton Constitution, while Stephen Douglas opposed it as a violation of popular sovereignty, which split the Democrats further.
Category: Kansas-Nebraska Act
Question 11
The Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, in part because its Northern and Southern members divided over slavery.
Correct Answer
True
True. Already weakened, the Whigs lost much of their remaining strength after the Kansas-Nebraska Act and were no longer a major national party by the 1856 election.
Category: Party Realignment
Question 12
John C. Frémont won the 1856 presidential election as the first Republican nominee.
Correct Answer
False
False. Frémont lost the 1856 election to Democrat James Buchanan, though he drew about a third of the popular vote; he won no electoral votes in the slave states.
Category: Party Realignment
Question 13
Dred Scott based his suit for freedom on the time he had spent living in places where slavery was banned.
Correct Answer
True
True. Scott had lived with his owner in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was prohibited, and he argued that this residence made him free.
Category: Dred Scott and Debates
Question 14
The Dred Scott decision declared that the Missouri Compromise was constitutional.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress had no power to bar slavery from the territories.
Category: Dred Scott and Debates
Question 15
Abraham Lincoln's House Divided speech argued that the nation could not remain permanently half slave and half free.
Correct Answer
True
True. Lincoln predicted that the Union would become all one thing or all the other, and he saw the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision as steps toward making slavery national.
Category: Dred Scott and Debates
Question 16
Abraham Lincoln defeated Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Illinois race for the US Senate.
Correct Answer
False
False. Douglas kept his Senate seat when the Illinois legislature chose him, but the debates made Lincoln a nationally known figure.
Category: Dred Scott and Debates
Question 17
Federal troops under Robert E. Lee captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry.
Correct Answer
True
True. Lee, then a colonel in the US Army, commanded the detachment of US Marines sent to Harpers Ferry, and Lieutenant Israel Greene led the Marines who stormed the engine house and captured the wounded Brown; Virginia later hanged Brown for treason.
Category: Election of 1860
Question 18
Frederick Douglass joined John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.
Correct Answer
False
False. Douglass considered the plan suicidal and refused to take part, though some other abolitionists helped fund the raid.
Category: Election of 1860
Question 19
Abraham Lincoln won a majority of the popular vote in the 1860 election.
Correct Answer
False
False. Lincoln won about 40 percent of the popular vote in a four-way race, but his victories in the free states gave him a majority in the Electoral College.
Category: Election of 1860
Question 20
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union after Lincoln's election.
Correct Answer
True
True. South Carolina left the Union in December 1860, and other states of the Deep South followed in the weeks after.
Category: Election of 1860