Studied by 69 PeoplePopular Sovereignty
Tags & Description
Popular Sovereignty
The notion that the sovereign people of a given territory should decide whether to allow slavery.
Fugitive Slave Law
Passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, it set high penalties for anyone who aided escaped slaves and compelled all law enforcement officers to participate in retrieving runaways.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe's widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery.
New York Draft Riots
Uprisings during the Civil War (1863), mostly of working-class Irish-Americans, in protest of the draft. Rioters were particularly incensed by the ability of the rich to hire substitutes or purchase exemptions.
Emancipation Proclamation
Declared all slaves in rebelling states to be free but did not affect slavery in non-rebelling Border States.
Sherman's March to the Sea
1864-1865. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's destructive march through Georgia. An early instance of "total war", purposely targeting infrastructure and civilian property to diminish morale and undercut the Confederate War effort.
Freedmans' Bureau
1865-1872. Created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support.
Black Codes
1865-1866. Laws passed throughout the South to restrict the rights of emancipated blacks.
KKK (Ku Klux Klan)
An extremist, paramilitary, right-wing secret society founded in the mid-nineteenth century and revived during the 1920s. It was anti-foreign, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, anti-evolutionist, and anti-bootlegger, but pro-Anglo-Saxon and pro-Protestant. Its members, cloaked in sheets to conceal their identities, terrorized freedmen and sympathetic whites throughout the South after the Civil War.
Sharecropping
An agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a certain "share" of each year's crop.
Hayes-Tilden Election
The South conceded to let Hayes win the presidency because he agreed to pull out the troops.
Compromise of 1850
Admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in Washington D.C., and introduced a more stringent fugitive slave law. Widely opposed in both the North and South, it did little to settle the escalating dispute over slavery.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Proposed that the issue of slavery be decided by popular sovereignty in the Kansas and Nebraska territories, thus revoking the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Introduced by Stephen Douglass in an effort to bring Nebraska into the Union and pave the way for a northern transcontinental railroad.
Homestead Act
A federal law that gave settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by, for instance, building a house on it. The act helped make land accessible to hundreds of thousands of westward-moving settlers.
Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln's oft-quoted speech, delivered at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg battlefield. In the address, Lincoln framed the war as a means to uphold the values of liberty.
Appomattox Court House
Site (city) where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865 after almost a year of brutal fighting throughout Virginia in the "Wilderness Campaign".
10% Reconstruction Plan
Introduced by President Lincoln, it proposed that a state be readmitted to the Union once 10 percent of its voters had pledged loyalty to the United States and promised to honor emancipation of slaves.
13th, 14th, 15th Amendments (Reconstruction Amendments)
13th: Abolished slavery except for criminal punishment. 14th: Gave equal rights and government protection to all men. 15th: Secured suffrage for men.
Radical Republicans
Most liberal part of the Republican Party. Desired political, economic, and social equality for African Americans. Wanted harsh punishment for the South after the Civil War.
Election of Lincoln
Angered many people in the south who owned slaves because he wanted to end slavery. Won the election of 1860 but did not win the popular vote. South Carolina was happy at the outcome of the election because now it had a reason to secede.11 states in the south seceded and made themselves the Confederacy after the election.
Abolitionist Movement
The movement to end the practice of slavery within the entirety of the United States.
Anaconda Plan
Union war plan by Winfield Scott, called for blockade of southern coast, capture of Richmond, capture of the Mississippi River, and to take an army through heart of south.
The American Party (The Know-Nothing Party)
(1840s-1850s) This political party carried anti-immigrant sentiments against the Catholic and the Irish and saw some electoral success.
Wilmot Proviso
(1846) Proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican War. Never passed by both houses of Congress but helped fan the flame of sectional tension.
Free-Soil Party
(1848) Political party dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery into new territories.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
(1848) The Mexican government gave up the area of Texas and offered to sell the provinces of California and New Mexico as a result of its defeat in the Mexican-American War.
Gadsden Purchase
(1853) Agreement w/ Mexico that gave the US parts of present-day New Mexico & Arizona in exchange for $10 million; all but completed the continental expansion envisioned by those who believed in Manifest Destiny.
Ostend Manifesto
(1854) A declaration issued from Ostend, Belgium, by the U.S. ministers to England, France, and Spain, stating that the U.S. would be justified in seizing Cuba if Spain did not sell it to the U.S.
Bleeding Kansas
(1856-1861) A sequence of violent events involving abolitionists and pro-Slavery elements that took place in Kansas-Nebraska Territory. The dispute further strained the relations of the North and South, making civil war imminent.
Dred Scott v. Sanford
(1857) Supreme Court case that decided US Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories and slaves, as private property, could not be taken away without due process. Invalidated the Missouri Compromise.
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry
(1859) John Brown led a raid on Harper's Ferry. He hoped to start a rebellion against slaveholders by arming enslaved African Americans. Brown was quickly defeated by citizens and federal troops. Brown became a villain to southerners who now thought northerners would use violence to end slavery as well as a martyr to some northerners who saw Brown as someone who sacrificed himself for the ideal of freedom for all.
Election of 1860
(1860) The United States presidential election of 1860 set the stage for the American Civil War. Hardly more than a month following Lincoln's victory came declarations of secession by South Carolina and other states, which were rejected as illegal by outgoing President James Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln.
Civil Rights Act of 1867
(1867) Banned discrimination in public accommodations, prohibited discrimination in any federally assisted program, outlawed discrimination in most employment; enlarged federal powers to protect voting rights and to speed school desegregation.
Thirteenth Amendment
(1865) The constitutional amendment ratified after the Civil War that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude.
Fourteenth Amendment
(1868) Provided equal protection of the law to freed slaves. Representation for any state that withheld voting from African Americans would be reduced.
Fifteenth Amendment
(1870) Prohibited any state from denying citizens the right to vote on the grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Compromise of 1877
(1877) It withdrew federal soldiers from their remaining position in the South, enacted federal legislation that would spur industrialization in the South, appointed Democrats to patronage positions in the south, appointed a Democrat to the president's cabinet, and allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to win the election. Marked the end of reconstruction.
Manifest Destiny
A notion held by a nineteenth-century Americans that the United States was destined to rule the continent, from the Atlantic the Pacific.
Texas Annexation
Originally refused in 1837, as the U.S. Government believed that the annexation would lead to war with Mexico. Texas remained a sovereign nation. Annexed via a joint resolution through Congress, supported by President-elect Polk, and approved in 1845. Land from the Republic of Texas later became parts of NM, CO, OK, KS, and WY.
"Fifty-Four Forty or Fight"
The phrase used in James K Polk's 1844 presidential election dealing with the Oregon Territory. Polk's campaign used the phrase as a rallying cry for the United States to obtain all of Oregon Territory, including land claimed by the English, up through Northern Canada.
Oregon Trail
2000 mile long path along which thousands of Americans journeyed to the Willamette Valley in the 1840's.
California Gold Rush
Gold discovered in California attracted a rush of people all over the country and world to San Francisco; arrival of the Chinese; increased pressure on federal government to establish a stable government
Mexican American War
1846 - 1848. President Polk declared war on Mexico over the dispute of land in Texas. At the end, American ended up with 55% of Mexico's land, called the Mexican Cession.
Republican Party
Established by anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats, "free-soilers" and reformers from the Northwest met and formed party in order to keep slavery out of the territories.
Stephen A. Douglas
Senator from Illinois who ran for president against Abraham Lincoln and was a leading voice in the debates over slavery and its expansion before the Civil War. Wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Freeport Doctrine.
Freeport Doctrine
Stated that exclusion of slavery in a territory (where it was legal) could be accomplished by the refusal of the voters to enact any laws that would protect slave property. Stated by Stephen Douglass during the Lincoln-Douglass debates, eventually contributed to his loss in the 1860 presidential election as Democrats believed he had walked back the gains made with the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision.
Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States saved the Union during the Civil War and emancipated the slaves; was assassinated by Booth (1809-1865)
secession
Formal withdrawal of states or regions from a nation
