Dred Scott was the slave in question, and the resulting Supreme Court decision takes his name.

Famed abolitionist John Brown led an armed slave revolt known as the Raid on Harpers Ferry, named after the town in which the raid occurred. Harpers Ferry, then in Virginia, is now located in modern day West Virginia.

Credit Mobilier is one of the more difficult questions covered in American History—the issues are relatively complex. That said, we’ll focus on the big picture rather than getting caught up in the granular details. Essentially, several members of the board of directors of Union Pacific (members of the board of directors of a corporation are, in a grossly oversimplified way, people who “run” a corporation) formed another corporation, called Credit Mobilier. After forming this new corporation, Credit Mobilier, they awarded themselves (really, the company, Credit Mobilier) lucrative construction contracts. In other words, Union Pacific contracted with Credit Mobilier to construct the railroad. Credit Mobilier ran up huge construction expenses and thus made enormous profits. Several Congressmen accepted either cash bribes or shares in Credit Mobilier (shares are ownership interests in a corporation, and often offer attractive returns such as dividends).

This is a relatively straightforward vocabulary question. Sharecropping took root (excuse the pun) after the end of the Civil War, and involved a landowner “renting” out extra space (generally old slave quarters) to “tenants” (generally ex-slaves) in exchange for a percentage of the crops that they produced.

The mutiny onboard the ship Amistad involved a slaver-ship’s attempt at bringing a group of men from Cuba (originally from Sierra Leone—Cuba was a stop along the way) to the US in order to sell them as slaves. The men revolted against their captors and attempted to force one of their captors to return them home to Sierra Leone. Unbeknownst to them, however, the remaining captor pointed the ship north toward the US, until it was eventually seized and brought to shore in NY. After a long, complicated case with international implications, the Supreme Court sided with the lower courts and held that the men were not property, and thus their revolt was a measure of self defence against their captors.

Contrary to many peoples’ beliefs, Charles Darwin did not create Social Darwinism. Herbert Spencer is responsible for the creation of the idea of “Social Darwinism,” although he based a large part of his ideas on Darwin’s theory.

Social Darwinism employed some of the aspects of Darwinism to the socioeconomic sphere. In other, more concrete terms, Spencer’s theory held that the lower class(es) would either stay where they were and die out, or the more ‘worthy’ of them would make it out of the lower class and become a member of the upper class. Thus, Spencer, for example, would not approve of social engineering like welfare.

Samuel Gompers was the leader of the American Federation of Labor—what ended up being the largest labor union (or federation of unions) in the late 19th/early 20th century. The AFL was more exclusive (and more realistic) than any of its contemporaries (like the “Wobblies”).

The AFL only allowed skilled workers within their ranks, and they struck (or agitated for) simple, everyday issues of their members—so-called “bread and butter” issues (like better hours and higher wages).