📚 APUSH Notes — Market Revolution & Slavery

unit 4-2nd quiz

National Road

One of the first major federally funded highways in the U.S., connecting the East to the West and facilitating trade and westward migration.

Robert Fulton

American engineer and inventor who developed the first commercially successful steamboat, the Clermont, making river transportation faster and cheaper.

Samuel Slater

Industrialist who brought British textile manufacturing technology to the U.S. and established the first successful water-powered textile mill.

Market Revolution

Early 19th-century economic transformation in the U.S. characterized by a shift from home-based self-sufficiency to factory production and interconnected national markets.

Erie Canal

A waterway completed in 1825 connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, dramatically lowering shipping costs and boosting New York City's commercial dominance.

Cult of Domesticity

Value system among middle-class 19th-century white families emphasizing that women should restrict their sphere to the home, morality, and family care.

Putting-Out System

Pre-industrial production model in which merchants distributed raw materials to rural families to manufacture goods in their homes.

Lowell System

Textile factory system in Massachusetts that employed young, unmarried farm women who lived in company-owned boardinghouses.

Wage Slaves

A critical term used to describe urban industrial workers whose livelihood depended on low wages and harsh, rigid working conditions.

John Deere

Inventor of the steel plow, which allowed Midwestern farmers to clear tough prairie soil efficiently and expand agricultural production.

Treatise on Domestic Economy

1841 book by Catharine Beecher that instructions women on household management and codified the ideas behind the Cult of Domesticity.

Nat Turner

Enslaved preacher who led a violent 1831 slave revolt in Virginia, resulting in increased fear among slaveholders and tighter restrictions on enslaved people.

Underground Railroad

A clandestine network of routes, safe houses, and assistance that helped enslaved African Americans escape to free northern states and Canada.

Gag Rule

Congressional policy enforced from 1836 to 1844 that automatically tabled antislavery petitions to block debate on slavery in the House of Representatives.

Harriet Tubman

Escaped enslaved woman who became one of the most prominent conductors on the Underground Railroad, making repeated trips to guide others to freedom.

Gabriel's Rebellion

An aborted 1800 slave revolt in Virginia led by an enslaved blacksmith, which spurred tighter legal controls on free and enslaved Black people.

Sold "Down the River"

Phrase describing the forced domestic slave trade transferring enslaved individuals from the Upper South to the harsh labor conditions of the Deep South.

Denmark Vesey

A free Black man in Charleston, South Carolina, who was executed in 1822 after being accused of planning a widespread slave uprising.

Planter Elite

The wealthy minority of Southern slaveholders who owned large plantations and exercised dominant economic and political influence.

Hinton Helper

Southern white author of The Impending Crisis of the South who argued that slavery hindered the economic prosperity of non-slaveholding Southern whites.

Fire-Eaters

Extremist pro-slavery Southern politicians in the 1850s who actively advocated for secession to preserve the institution of slavery.