1850s: Tumultuous Decade Trivia Quiz

Answer: California

California's admission statehood had occurred when Congress passed the controversial Compromise of 1850. California entered as a free state (no slavery), but, ironically, its first Senators were proslavery!

Answer: Fugitive Slave Act

The Fugitive Slave Act is arguably the worst law Congress has ever passed. A Federal commissioner, not a jury, decided on the fate of an alleged runaway slave hauled into court. The accused could not testify, have a lawyer, or call witnesses. The commissioner received a fee of five dollars if he ruled the accused was not a slave.

The commissioner received a fee of ten dollars if he ruled the accused was a slave!

Answer: Winfield Scott

Hoping to repeat their 1848 strategy of using a Mexican War hero to win the Presidency, the Whigs chose Scott as their 1852 candidate. He lost to Franklin Pierce, and the Whig Party began to crumble rapidly.

Answer: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel made a penetrating--and emotional--case against slavery as an institution that harmed slaves and slave-owners alike. The North loved it; the South hated it (and tried to ban it).

Answer: American (Know Nothing) Party

The American Party leaders made a big mistake when they told their members to tell hostile enquirers (that is, the Press) "I know nothing" when asked about party matters. Reporters and other critics thus began to call it the Know Nothing Party! A word of advice to would-be politicians: Don't offend the Press!

Answer: It potentially allowed slavery to expand into new territory.

By setting Kansas and Nebraska up as territories that would allow the settlers to vote on whether to have slavery permitted, the Act destroyed the old Missouri Compromise which had banned slavery in the area where both territories lay.

Answer: Republican Party

The Republicans emerged in the summer of 1854 as a party dedicated to stop the spread of slavery into Kansas or any other territory in the West. It attracted former Whigs (such as Abraham Lincoln), antislavery Democrats, abolitionists who wanted to end slavery, racists who wanted to keep black people out of the territories, and those who simply did not like Southern people!

Answer: John Brown

Brown had been a dedicated abolitionist for years and moved to Kansas to aid the free soil side in the effort to keep Kansas from becoming a slave territory. According to rumors, five people had died in the sacking of Lawrence, so Brown took five lives at Pottawatomie Creek. Ironically, only one person had died at Lawrence: a proslavery rioter who was killed by a falling brick from the building that he and the mob were tearing down!

Answer: Charles Sumner

After Sumner had made a long speech about the mishandling of Bleeding Kansas, during which he insulted his colleague from South Carolina, Andrew Butler, Representative Preston Brooks, Butler's kinsman, sought revenge by attacking Sumner as he sat at his Senate desk. Sumner lost consciousness and took almost four years to recover from his injuries.

The North condemned Brooks as a Southern criminal; proslavery Southerners sent Brooks complimentary walking sticks!

Answer: Dred Scott decision

Dred Scott was a slave from Missouri who had been taken by his former owner into territory in the North where slavery was not permitted. He argued that because of this sojourn in free territory he should be free. Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote for the majority to deny Scott his freedom and, while at it, said that blacks were not citizens and that no entity except a state could ban slavery.

There went the free soil and popular sovereignty stands that had argued that Congress could ban slavery from the territories (free soil) or that the territorial voters could (popular sovereignty).

Naturally, the Court ruling resolved all issues between the North and South and we never had a Civil War! NOT!