APUSH Chapter 16/17 Simple IDs and People

Oligarchy

Rule by a small elite

Medievalism

Devotion to the social values, customs, or beliefs of the European Middle Ages, especially a fixed social hierarchy and code of honor

Comission

Fee paid to an agent in a transaction, usually as a percentage of the sale

Middlemen

In commerce, those who stand between the producer and the retailer or consumer

Racism

Belief in the superiority of one race over another or behavior reflecting such a belief

Squadron

A medium-sized military unit, especially naval or air, assigned to a specific task or purpose

Bankruptcy

In law, the condition of being declared unable to meet legitimate financial obligations or debts, therefore requiring special supervision by the courts

Overseer

Someone who governs or directs the work of another

Sabotage

Intentional destruction or damage of goods, machines, or productive processes

Fratricidal

Literally, concerning the killing of brothers; the term is often applied more broadly to the killing of relatives or countrymen in feuds or civil wars

Barbarism/Barbarian

The condition of being crude, uneducated, or uncivilized

Table/Tabling

In parliamentary rules of order, the act of setting aside a resolution or law without voting or taking action, positive or negative, on the proposal itself

Cotton Kingdom

Term for the ante-bellum South that emphasized its economic dependence on a single staple product

West Africa Squadron

British naval unit that seized hundreds of slave ships in the process of suppressing the illegal slave trade in the early 1800s

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s powerful 1852 novel that focused on slavery’s cruel effects in separating black family members from one another

Black Belt

The fertile region of the Deep South, stretching across Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, where the largest concentration of black slaves worked on rich cotton plantations

Amistad

Spanish slave ship, seized by revolting African slaves that led to a dramatic U.S. Supreme Court case that freed the slaves.

American Slavery As It Is

Theodore Dwight Weld’s powerful antislavery book

American Colonization Society

Organization founded in 1817 to transport American blacks back to Africa

Lane Rebels

The group of theology students, led by Theodore Dwight Weld, who were expelled from their seminary for abolitionist activity and later became leading preachers of the anti-slavery gospel

The Liberator

William Lloyd Garrison’s fervent abolitionist newspaper that preached an immediate end to slavery

American Anti-Slavery Society

Garrisonian abolitionist organization, founded in 1833, that included the eloquent Wendell Phillips among its leaders

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Classic autobiography written by a leading African American abolitionist

Mason-Dixon Line

The line across the southern boundary of Pennsylvania that formed the boundary between free states and slave states in the East

Gag Resolution/Gag Rule

Strict rule passed by pro-southern Congressmen in 1836 to prohibit all discussion of slavery in the House of Representatives

Free Soilers

Northern antislavery politicians, like Abraham Lincoln, who rejected radical immediate abolitionism, but fought to prohibit the expansion of slavery in the western territories

Eli Whitney

Inventor of a machine for extracting seeds from cotton that revolutionized the southern economy

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author of an abolitionist novel that portrayed the separation of slave families by auction

Nat Turner

Visionary black preacher whose bloody slave rebellion in 1831 tightened the reins of slavery in the South

William Turner

British evangelical Christian reformer who in 1833 achieved the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies

Theodore Dwight Weld

Leader of the Lane Rebels who wrote the powerful antislavery work American Slavery As It Is

Wendell Phillips

New England patrician and Garrison follower whose eloquent attacks on slavery earned him the title “abolition’s golden trumpet”

Denmark Vesey

Free black whose failed attempt to lead a slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina, led to the execution of more than thirty of his followers

William Lloyd Garrison

Leading radical abolitionist who burned the Constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell”

David Walker

Black abolitionist writer who called for a bloody end to slavery in an appeal of 1829

Sojourner Truth

New York free black woman who fought for emancipation and women’s rights

Martin Delany

Black abolitionist who visited West Africa in 1859 to examine sites where African Americans might relocate

Frederick Douglass

Escaped slave and great black abolitionist who fought to end slavery through political action

Lewis Tappan

Wealthy New York abolitionist merchant whose home was ransacked by a proslavery mob in 1834

John Quincy Adams

Former president who won the Amistad rebellious slaves’ freedom and fought for the right to discuss slavery in Congress

Elijah Lovejoy

Illinois editor whose death at the hands of a mob made him an abolitionist martyr