APUSH Period 5 (1844-1877): Review (Key Concepts and Events)

American Equal Rights Association

Group of black and white women and men formed in 1866 to promote gender and racial equality. The organization split in 1869 over support for the Fifteenth Amendment

American Party

Also known as the Know-Nothing Party, a political party that arose in the Northeast during the 1840s. The party was anti-Catholic and anti-immigration. It also supported workers’ rights against business owners, who were perceived to support immigration as a way to keep wages low

Battle of Antietam

September 1862 battle in Sharpsburg, Maryland. While it remains the bloodiest single day in US military history, it gave Abraham Lincoln the victory he sought before announcing the Emancipation Proclamation

Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas)

First major battle of the Civil War at which Confederate troops defeated Union forces in July 1861

Battle of Gettysburg

July 1863 battle that helped turn the tide for the Union in the Civil War. The Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, combined with a victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi the same month, eliminated the threat of European intervention in the war and positioned the Union to push farther into the South

Battle of Shiloh

Major, bloody Civil War battle fought on April 6–7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. It was a Union victory, though it resulted in extremely high casualties (over 23,000 combined) that shocked both sides and demonstrated the war would be long and devastating

Black codes

Racial laws passed by southern legislatures in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War that aimed to keep freedpeople in a condition as close to slavery as possible

Bleeding Kansas

The Kansas Territory during a period of violent conflicts over the fate of slavery in the mid- 1850s. This violence intensified the sectional division over slavery

California Gold Rush

The rapid influx of migrants into California after the discovery of gold in 1848. Migrants came from all over the world seeking riches

Californios

Spanish-speaking settlers and their descendants who inhabited California from the late 18th century to 1848, when Mexico ceded the territory to the United States

Carpetbaggers

Derogatory term for white Northerners who moved to the South in the years following the Civil War. Many white Southerners believed such migrants were intent on exploiting their suffering

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Act extending “full and equal treatment” for all races in public accommodations, including jury service and public transportation

Compromise of 1850

Series of acts following California’s application for admission as a free state. Meant to ease sectional tensions over slavery by providing something for all sides, the act ended up fueling more conflicts

Compromise of 1877

Compromise between Republicans and southern Democrats that resulted in the election of Rutherford B. Hayes. Southern Democrats agreed to support Hayes in the disputed presidential election in exchange for his promise to end reconstruction.

Confederate States of America (Confederacy)

Name of the government that seceded from the Union after the election of President Lincoln in 1860

Confiscation acts

Laws passes by Congress during the Civil War that authorized the confiscation of Confederate property. Under the confiscation acts, any enslaved people who were forced to work for the Confederate army would no longer be bound to slaveholders

Contraband

Term first used by Union general Benjamin Butler in May 1861 to describe enslaved people who had fled to Union lines to obtain freedom. By designating enslaved people as property forfeited by the act of rebellion, the Union was able to strike at slavery without proclaiming a general emancipation

Copperheads

Northern Democrats who did not support the Union war effort. Such Democrats enjoyed considerable support in eastern cities and parts of the Midwest

Crittenden Plan

A political compromise over slavery, which failed after seven southern sates seceded from the Union in early 1861. It would have protected slavery from federal interference where it already existed and extended the Missouri Compromise line to California

Democratic Review

John L. O’Sullivan’s journal that captured the American mood by declaring that nothing must interfere with “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence”

Dred Scott case

1857 Supreme Court case centered on the status of Dred Scott and his family. In its ruling, the Court denied the claim that black men had any rights and blocked Congress from excluding slavery from any territory

Emancipation Proclamation

January 1, 1863 proclamation that declared all enslaved people in areas still in rebellion “forever free.” While stopping short of abolishing slavery outright, the Emancipation Proclamation was, nothingless, seen by both black people and white abolitionists as a great victory

Enrollment Act

March 1863 Union draft law that provided for draftees to be selected by an impartial lottery. A loophole in the law allowing wealthy Americans to escape service by paying $300 or hiring a substitute created widespread resentment

Exodusters

African Americans who migrated from the South to Kansas in 1879 seeking land, economic opportunity, and a better way of life

Field Order Number

Civil War-era directive that redistributed confiscated coastal land from South Carolina to Florida to newly freed Black families

Fifteenth Amendment

Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the abridgment of a citizen’s right to vote on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” From the 1870s on, southern states devised numerous strategies for circumventing the Fifteenth Amendment

Filibuster

Private military expeditions to seize land in foreign countries, also refers to unauthorized military actions, often to expand U.S. territory or spread slavery

Force Acts

Three acts passed by Congress in 1870 and 1871 in response to vigilante attacks on southern black people. The attacks were designed to protect black political rights and end violence by the Klu Klux Klan and similar organizations

Fort Sumter

Union fort that guarded the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina. The Confederacy’s decision to fire on the fort and block resupply in April 1861 marked the beginning of the Civil War

Fourteenth Amendment

Amendment to the Constitution defining citizenship and protecting individual civil and political rights from abridgment by the states. Adopted during Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision

Freedmen’s Bureau

Federal agency created in 1865 to provide the freedpeople with economic and legal resources. The Freedmen’s Bureau played an active role in shaping black life in the postwar South

Free-Soil Party

Party founded by political abolitionists in 1848 to expand the appeal of the Liberty Party by focusing less on the moral wrongs of slavery and more on the benefits of providing economic opportunities for northern white people in western territories

Fugitive Slave Act of 1793

Act that ensured the right of slaveholders to capture enslaved people who had fled by mandating that local government seize and return them. However, the act was largely ignored by northerners

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Act strengthening earlier fugitive slave laws, passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. The act provoked widespread anger in the North and intensified sectional tensions

Gettysburg Address

A speech given by President Lincoln to inaugurate the federal cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in November 1863. In this speech, Lincoln expressed his belief that the war was a struggle for a “new birth of freedom”

Great Railway Strike

The nation's first major labor uprising, sparked by wage cuts on the B&O Railroad during an economic depression

Industrialization

Massive shift from artisanal and homemade goods to factory mass production that occurred during the mid-nineteenth century

John Brown’s raid

1859 attack on the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, led by John Brown, who hoped to inspire a slave uprising and arm enslaved African Americans with the weapons taken from the arsenal. No uprising happened and Brown was captured and eventually executed for treason

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854 act creating the territories of Kansas and Nebraska out of what was then American Indian land. The act stipulated that the issue of slavery would be settled by a popular referendum in each territory

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

Organization formed in 1865 by General Nathan Bedford Forrest to enforce prewar racial norms. Members of the KKK used threats and violence to intimidate black people and white Republicans

Liberty Party

Antislavery political party formed in 1840. The Liberty Party, along with the Free-Soil Party, helped place slavery at the center of national political debates

Lincoln-Douglas debates

Series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during the 1859 Illinois Senate race that mainly focused on the expansion of slavery

Manifest destiny

Term coined by John L. O’Sullivan in 1845 to describe what he saw as the nation’s God-given right to expand its borders. Throughout the nineteenth century, the concept of manifest destiny was used to justify US expansion

Material law

A suspension of standard law in which the military takes over the normal operation of the government

Mexican-American War

1846-1848 war between the United States and Mexico. Ultimately, Mexico ceded approximately one million square miles to the United States, including the present-day states of California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Texas in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Debates over the status of slavery in these territories reignited the national debate about the expansion of slavery

Military Reconstruction Acts

1867 acts dividing Southern states into military districts and requiring those states to grant black male suffrage

National Woman Suffrage Association

Formed in 1890 by merging two rival groups, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Its main goal was to secure women's right to vote in the United States, and it played a key role in the ratification of the 19th Amendment

Overland trails

Various land routes used for westward expansion in North America, particularly by settlers, traders, and migrants

Oregon Trail

The route west from the Missouri River to the Oregon Territory. By 1860, some 350,000 Americans had made the three- to six-month journey along the trail

Ostend Manifesto

1854 letter from US ambassadors and the secretary of state to President Franklin Pierce urging him to conquer Cuba. When it was leaked to the press, northerners voiced outrage at what they saw as a plot to expand slave territories

Panic of 1873

Severe economic depression triggered by the collapse of the Northern Pacific Railroad

Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 plan for readmitting Southern states to the Union after the Civil War. It offered a full pardon to Confederates who took an oath of loyalty and accepted the abolition of slavery, but with exclusions for high-ranking officials and others who supported the rebellion

Radical Republicans

Republican politicians who actively supported abolition prior to the Civil War and sought tighter controls over the South in the aftermath of the war

Reconstruction

Period from 1865-1877, during which the 11 ex-Confederate states were subject to federal, legislative, and constitutional efforts to remake their societies as they were readmitted to the Union

Redeemers

White, conservative Democrats who challenged and overthrew Republican rule in the South during Reconstruction

Republican Party

Party formed in 1854 that was committed to stopping the expansion of slavery and advocated economic development and internal improvements. Although their appeal was limited to the North, the Republicans quickly became a major political force

Sand Creek Massacre

November 1864 massacre of nearly 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians by the Third Colorado Cavalry of the U.S. army

Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas)

Major Confederate victory in the American Civil War, where General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia decisively defeated Union Major General John Pope’s Army of Virginia

Sharecropping

A system that emerged as the dominant mode of agricultural production in the South in the years after the Civil War. Under the sharecropping system, sharecroppers received tools and supplies from landowners in exchange for a share of the eventual harvest

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Total war tactics employed by General William Tecumseh Sherman to capture Atlanta and huge swaths of Georgia and the Carolinas, devastating this crucial region of the Confederacy in 1864

Siege of Vicksburg

After a prolonged siege, Union troops forced Confederate forces to surrender at Vicksburg, Mississippi, leading to Union control of the rich Mississippi River valley

Slaughterhouse cases

It narrowly construed the amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause, ruling it protected only rights of U.S. citizenship, not state citizenship

Tenure of Office Act

Law passed by Congress in 1867 to prevent President Andrew Johnson from removing cabinet members sympathetic to the Republican Party’s approach to congressional Reconstruction without Senate approval. Johnson was

Thirteenth Amendment

Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, passed in January 1865 and sent to the states for ratification

Total war

The strategy promoted by General Ulysses S. Grant in which Union forces destroyed civilian crops, livestock, fields, and property to undermine Confederate morale and supply chains

Transcontinental railroad

A railroad linking the East and West Coasts of North America. Completed in 1869, the transcontinental railroad facilitated the flow of migrants and the development of economic connections between the West and East

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

1848 treaty ending the Mexican-American War. By the terms of the treaty, the United States acquired control over Texas north and east of the Rio Grande plus the New Mexico territory, which included present-day Arizona and New Mexico and parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. The treaty also ceded Alta California, which had declared itself an independent republic during the war, to the United States

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Meant to publicize the evils of slavery, the novel struck an emotional chord in the North and was an international best seller

United States v. Cruikshank

Supreme Court case that severely limited federal power to protect Black civil rights during Reconstruction, ruling that the 14th Amendment applied only to state actions, not private conspiracies

Underground railroad

A series of routes from southern plantation areas to northern free states and Canada along which abolitionist supporters known as conductors, provided hiding places, transportation, and resources to enslaved people seeking freedom

Wade-Davis bill

An 1864 proposal by congressional Republicans for a stricter Reconstruction policy for Confederate states than President Lincoln's 10% Plan

Wilmot Proviso

1846 proposal by Democratic congressmen David Wilmot of Pennsylvania to outlaw slavery in all territory acquired from Mexico. The proposal was defeated, but the fight over its adoption foreshadowed the sectional conflicts of the 1850s

Women’s National Loyal League

U.S. organization founded in 1863 by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to support the Union and advocate for the passage of a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery

“Young America” movement

Advocated for territorial expansion (especially southward and westward), free trade, and support for republican movements abroad