MTTC Social Studies (Secondary) (084) Practice Test

These events all hinge on whether slavery would be allowed in newly organized western territories. After the Mexican War, the United States gained vast lands whose future political status—free or slave—could shift the balance in Congress. The Kansas-Nebraska Act tried to settle this by letting settlers decide the slavery question locally, which effectively reopened the issue and led to violent clashes in Kansas as pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions fought it out. The Dred Scott decision then declared that Congress couldn't prohibit slavery in the territories, removing a federal check on slavery’s expansion and intensifying national disputes over whether slavery could spread into new western lands. Taken together, the core question becoming heatedly contested was whether slavery would be allowed in the western territories.