Period 5: 1844–1877: Slavery, Civil War, and the Transformation of American Society

John OʼSullivan

John OʼSullivan

He coined the term “manifest destiny.“ It describe the fervor of the westward expansion movement, implying that it was God's plan for the United States to take over and populate the land from coast to coast.

Overland Trails

It is estimated that 300,000 people traveled these trails between 1840 and the Civil War, and stories of death and desperation are often repeated.

Sutterʼs Mill

The most significant strike of precious metals in the antebellum period was at ______ in Coloma, California, in 1848.

Forty-niners

As word spread, thousands of people came to California to try to strike it rich, leading to the nickname "____".

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Other name for “Mormons.“

Great Salt Lake region of Utah

Where did Mormons settled in 1847?

Morrill Land Grant Act (1862)

It promoted secondary public education primarily in the West. Under the act, the federal government transferred substantial tracts of its lands to the states.

Pacific Railroad Act (1862)

This act and other supplementary acts passed in the 1860s extended government bonds and tracts of land to companies engaged in building transcontinental railroads.

Homestead Act (1862)

This act provided free land in the region to settlers who were willing to farm it.

Tokugawa shogunate

The ______ had isolated Japan from Western countries since the seventeenth century, and the Tokugawa government resisted attempts by Americans and Europeans to establish business and diplomatic ties.

Commodore Matthew C. Perry

He led a naval expedition to Japan, and through vague threats and skillful diplomacy, he was able to secure a treaty with Japan that opened Japan up to American trade.

Oregon border dispute

Democratic candidate James K. Polk pledged to acquire Texas and resolve the _______ with Great Britain.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

In 1848, the Mexican government signed the ______, giving up its claims to the disputed territory in Texas and agreeing to sell the provinces of California and New Mexico, known as the Mexican Cession, to the United States for $15 million.

Gadsden Purchase

The final land acquisition in what would become the continental United States was the _____, acquired from Mexico in 1853, five years after the Mexican-American War.

Indian Appropriations Act of 1851

This established reservations in present-day Oklahoma to keep American Indians off lands that white settlers wanted to settle.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851)

It was signed in 1851 between the United States government and 10,000 Plains Indians to provide a corridor for wagon trains to the Far West, in exchange for the government guaranteeing the remaining Indian lands in the West would not be encroached upon. White settlers refused to honor the treaty.

The Dakota War (1862)

A military commission tried and sentenced 303 Dakota Sioux men to death, but President Abraham Lincoln commuted 264 of them and allowed 39 of them to proceed.

Colorado War

This was a conflict between U.S. army forces, the Colorado militia, and white settlers against the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and allied Brulé and Oglala Sioux (or Lakota) peoples in Colorado Territory.

Sand Creek Massacre

The Colorado War included this massacre, where Colonel John M. Chivington led an attack on a peaceful Cheyenne village, killing between 150 and 500, mostly women and children.

Yuki people

As the 1850s progressed, thousands of Indians were either murdered or enslaved, and the _____ of Round Valley in northern California were viciously targeted.

The Wilmot Proviso (1846)

It was an attempt by Northern politicians to ban slavery in territories gained in the Mexican-American War.

Free-Soil Party

higs and Democrats Antislavery men in both parties founded this party, which ran candidates in the presidential elections of 1848 and 1852.

popular sovereignty

Senator Lewis Cass proposed a compromise measure on the question of slavery in newly acquired territories, known as _____.

Ostend Manifesto (1854)

Polk offered to purchase the island from Spain, but Spain balked. Later, American diplomats tried to secretly buy Cuba, resulting in the ________, which provoked anger from northern politicians.

Compromise of 1850

This was a series of measures to resolve the contentious issue of California's admission as a free state. It included the admittance of California.

Five Points

The largest destination for Irish immigrants in the United States was the _____ neighborhood of New York City, which was one of the most desperate urban slums in the Western world in the midnineteenth century.

Nativists

______ saw this lack of self-control in immigrants' drinking habits. They tried to control immigrant drinking culture in Irish pubs and German beer halls.

The “Know-Nothings”

The party was the political wing of a growing anti-Catholic, anti-Irish movement that gained traction in the wake of the large-scale Irish immigration of the late 1840s and 1850s.

The “Know-Nothings”

Formally known as the American Party, it emerged in the 1840s and, by the 1850s, had achieved electoral success in several states, especially in the Northeast.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

This act led to a backlash among northerners, with many states passing "personal liberty laws" and forming vigilance committees to protect fugitives from slave catchers.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania

In _____, the Court overturned the abduction conviction of Edward Prigg on the grounds that federal law was superior to state law.

Ableman v. Booth

In _____, the Court overturned a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that Sherman Booth was not guilty, asserting the supremacy of federal statutes and court decisions over state courts.

Uncle Tomʼs Cabin

The novel, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe of the antislavery Beecher family, depicted in graphic and emotional detail the brutality of slavery.

John Brown

He carried out a raid to acquire weapons from a federal armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia in 1859, which pushed North–South relations to the breaking point.

Robert E. Lee

The men managed to capture the armory in the raid, but were soon overwhelmed by reinforcements led by future Confederate Commander ______.

necessary evil

In the first half of the nineteenth century, white southerners often defended slavery as a "____"

Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854

Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois introduced the _____ to divide the northern section of the Louisiana Purchase territory into two organized territories.

Missouri Compromise

The most contentious part of the act was allowing for the possibility of slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which had been closed to slavery by the _______.

Pottawatomie Creek

In May 1856, John Brown initiated the killing of proslavery men along the banks of the ____ in Kansas.

Crimes against Kansas

Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts had given a pointed antislavery speech, called “____, ” in which he singled out Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina.

Preston Brooks

Butlerʼs nephew, a South Carolina representative named _____, heard about the speech and attacked Sumner at his desk in the Senate chamber, beating him viciously with a heavy cane.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

The Supreme Court decision in _________ further divided Northern and southern relations by ruling that Scott was still a slave and that Congress had overstepped its bounds in declaring the northern portion of the Louisiana Purchase territory off-limits to slavery.

beings of an inferior order

The decision also declared that no African Americans, not even free men and women, were entitled to citizenship in the United States because they were "_________."

free labor

The modern Republican Party was formed in 1854 and was composed of many different factions. Central to the ideology was the "______" ideology, which upheld civic virtue and the dignity of labor and put a great deal of emphasis on economic growth and social mobility.

John C. Fremont

The Republican slogan in the 1856 presidential campaign of _____, "Free soil, free labor, free men, Fremont," encapsulated this ideology.

James Buchanan

The Democratic Party won the election of 1856 by picking a northern candidate with southern sympathies, _____, and the two main parties remained the Democrats and the Republicans.

Fort Sumter

The presence of U.S. troops at ______, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, sparked the American Civil War.

Gilded Age

Many of the "captains of industry" who came to dominate the economy during the ______, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and Phillip D. Armour, began their economic rise through supplying the Union war effort.

greenbacks

Congress issued three Legal Tender Acts in 1862 and 1863, allowing the government to issue paper currency, or "_____".

National Banks Acts

To standardize the issuing of bank notes, stabilize the banking system, and stimulate economic growth, the government passed a series of _______ (1863–1864).

Enrollment Act (1863)

President Abraham Lincoln faced resistance to Union policies in the loyal states, including riots against the _____ in New York City in July 1863.

Habeas Corpus Suspension Act (1863)

President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, authorizing the arrest of rebels and traitors without due process. Congress supported Lincoln's move by passing the ________.

First Battle of Bull Run

President Lincoln and much of the northern populace expected the war to be quick and easy, but this was shattered after the _____ in Virginia.

Battle of Antietam (1862)

The _____ was considered a Union victory, but a more aggressive Union general might have inflicted heavier damage.

Battle of Gettysburg (1863)

An important turning point in the civil war was the ______, which was the high-water mark for the Confederacy.

March to the Sea

In 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman's "_____" shattered the South's last hope for a negotiated peace.

Confiscation Acts (1861-1862)

Lincoln opposed the ________, which declared any slaves pressed into working for the Confederacy to be "contraband of war" and considered "confiscated property".

Emancipation Proclamation

President Abraham Lincoln issued the _______ on September 22, 1863, ordering the freeing of all slaves in rebel-held territory as of January 1, 1863.

Juneteenth

On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger and his troops announced that all slaves were free, known as "______".

Thirteenth Amendment

This amendment freed the remaining slaves but, more importantly, it enshrined in the United States Constitution that slavery was illegal in America.

Fourteenth Amendment

It also stated that the "privileges and immunities" of citizens shall not be abridged by states, and that no citizens shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Fifteenth Amendment

The guarantee of voting rights for African-American men was a key element of the Reconstruction program of the “radical Republicans.”

Nineteenth Amendment (1920)

Women were not guaranteed the right to vote until ratification of the _______.

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

The AWSA and NWSA eventually reconciled and in 1890 merged to become the _______.

Reconstruction

Refers to the process of reuniting the nation following the Civil War and restructuring the political, legal, and economic systems in the states that had seceded.

Wade-Davis Bill

In 1864, Lincoln vetoed the _____, which would have required half of the voters in a state to sign a loyalty oath to the United States before Reconstruction could begin.

Black Codes

These were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866 that regulated the activities of African Americans and recreated the conditions of slavery.

vagrancy laws

allowed for the arrest of freed people for minor infractions.

Mississippi

first state to pass Black Codes in 1865

Congressional Reconstruction

Racial Reconstruction, also known as "_______", was a phase of Reconstruction that showed the potential for a biracial democracy in the United States and the limits of federal resolve against the Fourteenth Amendment.

Reconstruction Acts (1867)

Congressional Republicans were able to pass the _____, which divided the South into five military districts and guaranteed basic rights to African Americans.

Thaddeus Stevens

Representative _____ introduced a bill to redistribute land so that each freedman could be granted forty acres, but the idea ran against the Republican value of protecting private property.

Tenure of Office Act

The House charged Johnson with violating the _____, which prohibited the president from firing cabinet members without Senate approval.

scalawags

Southern whites who joined the Republicans were labeled "_____" by their Democratic opponents, while northerners came to the South to participate in Reconstruction.

Colfax, Louisiana

The bloodiest single act against African Americans during Reconstruction occurred in _____, in 1873, in the wake of the contested 1872 election for governor.

United States v. Cruikshank

The Supreme Court, in the case of _____, issued a decision that greatly weakened Reconstruction, holding that the federal Enforcement Act of 1870, which enabled federal authorities to protect the constitutional rights of African Americans from vigilante violence, was unconstitutional.

Rutherford B. Hayes

Samuel J. Tilden won the majority of the popular vote, but neither he nor his Republican opponent, _______, were able to claim enough electoral votes to be declared the winner. (The Election of 1876)

sharecropping

This "_____" system was somewhat of a compromise, but it created a cycle of debt that prevented African Americans from acquiring wealth and owning land.

Jim Crow laws

The term "_____" originated from a song-and-dance routine from the 1830s, which included white actors in blackface caricaturing African Americans.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

In the case of _____, the Supreme Court specifically asserted that racial segregation did not violate the equal protection provision of the Amendment.

whites only

The Democratic Party often held "____" primaries, and African Americans who spoke out against this were targets of violence and murder.

Ku Klux Klan

The group was first organized in 1866, and thousands of African Americans were killed by lynch mobs.