2. Vocabulary
1. code: A set of laws.
2. Abolitionist: A person who wanted to end slavery.
3. Underground railroad: A system of secret escape routes
that led enslaved people to free land.
3. The Dred Scott decision
Dred Scott was an enslaved man owned by an army
doctor. When the owner died, Scott went to court to try to
gain his freedom. He argued that he should be free
because he had once lived on free land.
4.
5. The Fight to End Slavery
• Nat Turner led an attack in Virginia that
killed more than 50 people.
Many people in the United States worked to end slavery.
Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, started a
newspaper called Freedom’s Journal. It was the first
newspaper owned and written by African Americans.
6. William Lloyd Garrison, a white Northerner,
started an abolitionist newspaper called
The Liberator.
• Frederick Douglass became well known for his writings and
speeches against slavery.
7. » Isabella Van Wagener, traveled the country
speaking out against slavery. She changed
her name to Sojourner Truth. Sojourner
means “traveler.”
• John Brown planned to give the guns to
enslaved people so they could fight for their freedom. He
was caught, put on trial, and hanged.
8. The Underground Railroad
• By 1860, there were more than 500,000 free African
Americans living in the United States.
•
Harriet Tubman, an African American who had escaped
from slavery herself, was one of the best-known
conductors.
9. Women Work for Change
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought for the rights of both
women and enslaved people.
• Harriet Beecher Stowe published a book
called Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
It told the story of how
enslaved people were
mistreated.
10. • Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized a women’s rights
convention. They wrote a statement that demanded that
women should have “all privileges which belong to them
as citizens of the United States.”
