Sectionalism, Expansion, and the Civil War Era

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering U.S. sectionalism, territorial expansion, the Civil War, and Reconstruction from 1820 to 1877.

North's economy ($1820$-$1860$)

An industrialized economy characterized by factories, wage labor, transportation networks, and growing cities.

South's economy ($1820$-$1860$)

An economy reliant on plantation agriculture, specifically cotton production, supported by enslaved labor.

West/Old Northwest economy ($1820$-$1860$)

An economy focused on commercial farming and the growth of new towns connected by transportation networks.

Industrialization

The growth of factory-based manufacturing and machine production.

Urbanization

The growth of cities as people move from rural areas to urban areas.

Irish and German immigrants

The primary groups that made up much of the immigrant population settling in the North for factory and city jobs.

Labor union

An organization of workers formed to protect workers' interests, improve wages, hours, and working conditions.

Commonwealth v. Hunt ($1842$)

A significant legal ruling that established that labor unions were legal.

Ten-hour movement

A campaign to reduce the length of the workday from longer hours to a maximum of $10$ hours.

King Cotton

A term indicating that cotton dominated the Southern economy and world markets.

Planter aristocracy

Wealthy plantation owners who held the majority of political and social power in the South.

Small slaveholders

Farmers who owned a few enslaved people but did not own large plantations.

Poor whites

White Southerners who owned little or no land and usually no enslaved people.

Mountain people

Southerners living in isolated mountain regions with fewer ties to plantation agriculture.

Passive resistance

Daily acts of defiance against slavery, such as working slowly, breaking tools, or pretending illness.

Active resistance

Resistance to slavery that included direct actions such as rebellions and escapes.

Nat Turner

An enslaved preacher who led a major slave rebellion in Virginia in $1831$, resulting in the deaths of dozens of white people.

Free Blacks

African Americans who had legal freedom but still faced significant discrimination and restrictions.

Great Plains

A vast grassland region west of the Mississippi River inhabited by Plains Indians with buffalo and horse-based cultures.

Mountain men

Fur traders and explorers who lived and worked in the Rocky Mountains.

Frontier

The edge of settled territory moving westward across North America.

Sectionalism

Loyalty to one's specific region rather than the nation as a whole.

Missouri Compromise

An agreement admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while limiting slavery north of the $36^\circ 30'$ line.

Manifest Destiny

The belief that Americans were destined to expand across the North American continent.

Battle of the Alamo

A battle where Texan defenders were defeated by Mexican forces, later becoming a symbol of Texan resistance.

Battle of San Jacinto

The engagement where Texas won its independence after defeating Mexican forces.

Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!

A slogan demanding U.S. control of Oregon up to the latitude $54^\circ 40'$.

$$49\text{th parallel}$$

The latitude at which the U.S. and Britain agreed to divide the Oregon Territory.

James K. Polk

The U.S. President during the Mexican-American War who argued Mexican forces attacked Americans on U.S. soil.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The treaty ending the Mexican-American War; Mexico recognized the Rio Grande border and ceded territory for $15 \text{ million}$ dollars.

Mexican Cession

Land acquired from Mexico including California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of several other states.

Wilmot Proviso

A proposal to ban slavery in all territory acquired from Mexico, which intensified sectional conflict.

Telegraph

A communication system using electrical signals that allowed messages to travel quickly over long distances.

Compromise of $1850$

A package of laws that admitted California as a free state and enacted a stronger Fugitive Slave Law.

Kansas–Nebraska Act

A law allowing settlers to decide the slavery issue through popular sovereignty, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise line.

Bleeding Kansas

Violent conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers within the Kansas territory.

Republican Party

A political party created in the mid-$1850\text{s}$ to oppose the expansion of slavery into western territories.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

A Supreme Court ruling that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in territories.

Election of $1860$

The presidential election won by Abraham Lincoln that directly triggered Southern secession.

Secession

The formal withdrawal of states from the Union.

Anaconda Plan

The Union's military strategy to blockade Southern ports and divide the Confederacy.

Battle of Antietam

A battle that halted a Confederate invasion and led to the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Battle of Gettysburg

A major turning point battle of the Civil War in favor of the Union.

Siege of Vicksburg

A Union victory that gave the North control of the Mississippi River.

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln's order declaring enslaved people in rebelling states free, making ending slavery a central Union war goal.

Reconstruction

The process of rebuilding the South and restoring the Union after the Civil War ($1863$-$1877$).

Thirteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

Fourteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment that granted citizenship and equal protection under the law.

Fifteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment that prohibited denying voting rights based on race.

Black Codes

Laws passed in the South designed to restrict the freedom of African Americans after the Civil War.

Sharecropping

A farming system where tenants worked land in exchange for a share of the crop, often resulting in economic dependence.

Denmark Vesey

A free Black man linked to an alleged slave uprising plot in South Carolina.