APUSH Unit 5 Quiz

James K. Polk

Democrat elected president in 1844

• First American dark horse candidate for president (Franklin Pierce was another dhc who won the Democratic nomination and then the presidency)
• Not one of the announced candidates before the Democratic convention of that year

Manifest Destiny

Americans believed themselves to have a God-given right to possess a nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean

• Fueled the continued American expansion westward

Oregon Trail

A six-month, 2,000-mile journey to Oregon

• Brought settlers to the Oregon territory
• Many settled in the Willamette Valley

Oregon Treaty

1846

• Gave most of Oregon to the Americans

Bear Flag Republic

Officially proclaimed in the California territory on July 4, 1846

Treaty of Guad-Hidalgo

Signed on February 2, 1848 and officially ended the Mexican-American War

• Many who had favored war considered the treaty too generous to the defeated Mexicans

Wilmot Proviso

David Wilmot introduced an amendment to a bill authorizing funding for the Mexican-American War that stated slavery could not exist in any territory acquired from Mexico

• Was passed by the House of Rep. four times and rejected by the Senate each time

• Symbolized the growing tension over westward expansions and the question of slavery

Missouri Compromise

President Polk decided to continue the line drawn out to the Pacific Ocean

• Slavery allowed in territories south of the line
• Slavery not allowed in territories north of the line

Free-Soil Party

Members of the Liberty party and defectors from the Whig and Democratic parties

• Main purpose was to oppose slavery in the newly acquired western territories

Compromise of 1850

Both the North and South got some of what they wanted from the compromise

• Northerners were happy the legislation allowed California to enter the Union as a free state
• Residents of New Mexico and Utah territories would decide if areas would be slave territories and that slave trading was eliminated in Wash. D.C.
• Strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act bothered Abolitionists in the North

Fugitive Slave Act

Law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves

• Allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in areas where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders
• Part of the Compromise of 1850

Stephen Douglas

Sponsored the bill that proposed the creation of the Kansas and Nebraska territories

• Was pressured by Southern senators
• Included a provision in the bill that the existence of slavery in these territories would be decided by a vote of those who lived there
• Opposed by Abraham Lincoln in the 1858 election for senator from Illinois

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Major Slave Legislation #3 of 3

• Reversed the Missouri Compromise
• Constructed by Stephen Douglas
• Let Kansas and Nebraska decide if they would be a slave state or not (popular sovereignty)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• A response to the Fugitive Slave Act
• Demonstrated the immortality of slavery
• Quickly became the best-selling book in America
• Popularity helped stoke the fires of abolition

Gadsden Purchase

American diplomats negotiated with Mexico

• Gave America an additional southern route for trade and territory for a proposed transcontinental railroad

Know-Nothing party

Former Whigs that developed in response to the rising Immigration from Ireland and Germany

• Nativist
• Especially anti-Catholic

Republican Party

Created from the fury over the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Exclusively Northern
• Dedicated to the principle that slavery should be prohibited in all territories
• Replaced the Know-Nothings as the second most important political party in the US

Bleeding Kansas

Many proslavery settlers flooded into Kansas from Missouri, thus ensuring the election of a proslavery legislature in 1855 by casting illegal ballots

• Fighting broke out between the anti-slavery and proslavery factions in that territory
• Free-soil settlement at Lawrence was attacked, in response, Abolitionist John Brown and his followers killed five proslavery settlers

Dred Scott

A former slave who was suing for his freedom on the basis that his owner had taken him to stay first in a free state, Illinois, and then into free territory, Wisconsin

• Dred Scott case finally made it to the Supreme Court docket in 1856

Abraham Lincoln

• Was a part of 1858 election for senator from Illinois
• Used to be a Whig, now a Republican, having broken from the Whig party over slavery
• Practicing attorney
• Been in the US Congress during the Mexican War
• Narrowly lost an earlier bid for the Senate in 1852

Freeport Doctrine

Douglas’ response to how the residents of a territory could exclude slavery in light of the Dred Scott decision

• Maintained that territory could exclude slavery if the laws and regulations written made slavery impossible to enforce

Election of 1860

Election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 virtually ensured that some Southern states would leave the Union

• Stephen Douglas received the support of Northern Democrats
• John Breckinridge got support from Southern Democrats
• Lincoln received nearly 40% of the popular vote and easily won the Electoral College vote
• Lincoln won

Confederate States of America

Seven states that left the union

• F- Florida

• A- Alabama

• S- South Carolina (first to leave)

• T- Texas

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• M- Mississippi

• L- Louisiana

• G- Georgia

Compromise of 1877

Democrats allowed Hayes to be president in return for the removal of all federal troops from the south

Election of 1844

Democratic candidate James K. Polk vs Whig candidate Henry Clay

• Polk wins

• Polk with 170 electoral votes to Clay’s 105