STAAR 8th Grade Social Studies Practice Test

Focusing on whether abolitionists were willing to use violence to end slavery, the clearest example is John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. Brown, an abolitionist, led a small group to seize the federal arsenal there in the hope of arming enslaved people and sparking an armed uprising to abolish slavery. This was a direct act of violence undertaken to advance the cause, even though the raid failed and Brown was captured and executed.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime executive order that declared enslaved people in Confederate-held areas to be free; it is a government action, not a demonstration of abolitionists using violence. The Dred Scott decision was a Supreme Court ruling that denied rights to enslaved people and upheld slavery—it's a legal decision, not an abolitionist act of violence. The Kansas-Nebraska Act set up how new territories would decide on slavery via popular sovereignty, which led to conflict but was a legislative measure, not an abolitionist violent action.