Unit 4: 1800-1848 - AP US History Review

Treaty of Greenville

An agreement reached in 1795 between indigenous confederacies and the United States that ceded most of Ohio to the federal government in exchange for goods and acknowledgment of tribal sovereignty over remaining lands.

Marbury vs. Madison

The landmark 1803 Supreme Court decision that firmly established the principle of judicial review, enabling the Court to strike down acts of Congress as unconstitutional.

Louisiana Purchase

The 1803 acquisition by President Thomas Jefferson from France that doubled the geographical size of the United States and granted full control of the Mississippi River.

Aaron Burr

The third Vice President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson who killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel and was later tried for plotting a secessionist conspiracy in the Southwest.

Lewis and Clark expedition

An overland scientific and exploratory mission commissioned by Thomas Jefferson from 1804 to 1806 to chart the newly acquired Louisiana territory to the Pacific Coast.

Embargo Act of 1807

A legislative measure enacted by Thomas Jefferson that prohibited American merchant ships from leaving port for foreign destinations in an effort to force Britain and France to respect American neutrality.

Battle of Tippecanoe

An 1811 engagement between Indiana territorial forces led by William Henry Harrison and Tecumseh's confederacy near Prophetstown, resulting in heavy indigenous losses.

War of 1812

A military conflict fought between the United States and Great Britain from 1812 to 1815 over issues of trade blockades, impressment of American sailors, and British support for Native resistance.

Hartford Convention

An 1814 gathering of New England Federalist leaders in Connecticut who met to protest the War of 1812 and propose constitutional amendments, which ultimately precipitated the downfall of the Federalist Party.

Treaty of Ghent

The treaty signed in December 1814 that concluded the War of 1812 by restoring borders to status quo ante bellum without addressing impressment or neutral shipping rights.

Battle of New Orleans

A decisive American victory commanded by General Andrew Jackson fought in January 1815 after the peace treaty had been signed, sparking widespread national pride.

John Marshall/Marshall Court Decisions

A series of early nineteenth-century Supreme Court rulings that consistently reinforced federal supremacy over state laws and protected property and contract rights.

Adams-Onis Treaty

An 1819 treaty negotiated between John Quincy Adams and Spain that ceded Florida to the United States and established a defined western boundary with Spanish territories.

Monroe Doctrine

An 1823 foreign policy statement by President James Monroe declaring that the Western Hemisphere was closed to future European colonization and foreign intervention.

Panic of 1819

The first major peacetime financial and economic crisis in the United States, precipitated by speculative land buying, falling crop prices, and sudden credit contractions by the Second Bank of the United States.

Commonwealth System

A state-level political and legal system that granted special charters and economic privileges to private corporations to construct infrastructure and advance the common wealth.

National Road

The first federally funded interstate highway, authorized in 1806, that connected Cumberland, Maryland, to the Ohio River Valley to facilitate western migration and trade.

Erie Canal

A 363-mile waterway completed in 1825 that connected Lake Erie to the Hudson River, cutting transportation costs and establishing New York City as the nation's premier commercial hub.

Market Revolution

The dramatic transformation in the first half of the nineteenth century characterized by the rapid expansion of markets, transportation networks, and commercial manufacturing.

Robert Fulton/Clermont

The inventor and steamboat that demonstrated the commercial viability of steam-powered river navigation on the Hudson River in 1807.

Samuel F.B. Morse/Telegraph

The American artist-inventor and device that utilized electrical impulses and Morse code to revolutionize long-distance communication in the 1840s.

Industrial Revolution

A structural transformation of the economy marked by the rise of factories, mechanized manufacturing, power-driven equipment, and a wage-earning labor force.

Cotton Complex

The interconnected economic network linking southern slave-based cotton agriculture with northern shipping, finance, and textile manufacturing.

Waltham-Lowell System

A factory production model developed in Massachusetts textile mills that recruited young, unmarried farm women and housed them in supervised boardinghouses.

gradual emancipation

Legislative schemes passed primarily in northern states that freed enslaved people born after a certain date only after they reached a specified adult age.

manumission

The legal act of a slaveholder voluntarily relinquishing ownership to emancipate an enslaved person.

Eli Whitney/cotton gin

The inventor and 1793 mechanical device that separated cotton fibers from seeds with high efficiency, sparking the explosive expansion of plantation slavery across the Deep South.

paternalism

A southern slaveholding ideology that justified human bondage by framing the master-slave dynamic as a benevolent, protective family relationship rather than an exploitative economic one.

machine tools/Eli Whitney again

Cutting and shaping machines designed to produce standardized, interchangeable metal components for firearms and other manufactured goods.

gang labor system

A disciplined method of plantation organization where enslaved workers were divided into groups and forced to work at a relentless pace under continuous overseer surveillance.

middle class

A distinct nineteenth-century social stratum of managers, professionals, and small business owners defined by material comfort, education, and moral self-discipline.

Black laws

Statutes passed in various northern states that placed legal restrictions on free Black residents regarding residence, civil rights, testimony in court, and public life.

American Colonization Society

An organization founded in 1816 that advocated the gradual emancipation of enslaved people coupled with their resettlement in West Africa.

Missouri Compromise

The 1820 agreement admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while prohibiting slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of latitude $36^{\circ}30'\text{N}$.

Republican Motherhood

The post-Revolutionary ideology assigning American women the civic responsibility of instructing their sons in republican values and civic virtue.

Political machines

Hierarchical urban and state party organizations that maintained political dominance by distributing patronage, jobs, and services in exchange for disciplined voting turnout.

Spoils system

The practice championed under Andrew Jackson of awarding civil service and administrative jobs to party loyalists and campaign supporters.

American System

An economic program advocated by Henry Clay featuring protective tariffs, a national bank, and federally funded internal improvements.

Election of 1824, Corrupt Bargain

The contested presidential race in which Henry Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams in the House vote and was subsequently named Secretary of State, outraging Andrew Jackson's partisans.

Tariff of Abominations

A package of steep protective duties passed by Congress in 1828 that caused intense fury in the South by raising import prices while protecting northern manufacturing.

Andrew Jackson and "The Democracy"

The political coalition and movement that elevated Andrew Jackson to the presidency, championing universal white male suffrage, popular democracy, and the common man against entrenched elites.

Nullification Crisis

A constitutional showdown in 1832–1833 prompted by South Carolina's assertion that states held the sovereign authority to void federal laws within their boundaries.

Force Bill

An 1833 statute passed by Congress empowering President Andrew Jackson to deploy the military to enforce federal tariff collections in South Carolina.

veto of Second Bank of the US

President Andrew Jackson's 1832 rejection of the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States, condemning it as an unconstitutional monopoly that benefited wealthy elites.

"pet banks"

State-chartered financial institutions selected by President Andrew Jackson's administration to receive deposits of federal revenue withdrawn from the Second Bank of the United States.

Indian Removal Act

The 1830 statute authorizing the federal government to negotiate removal treaties and relocate southeastern Native American tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River.

Worcester v. Georgia

The 1832 Supreme Court ruling determining that the Cherokee Nation constituted a distinct sovereign community over which the state laws of Georgia possessed no force.

Trail of Tears

The forced overland eviction of thousands of Cherokee people by federal troops in 1838–1839 to Indian Territory, during which roughly a quarter perished from cold, disease, and starvation.

Whig Party

An opposition political party established in the 1830s to resist Andrew Jackson's perceived executive overreach, advocating for corporate charters, tariffs, and moral reform.

Panic of 1837

A severe economic depression prompted by a collapse in cotton prices, volatile paper currency, and Jacksonian hard-money policies such as the Specie Circular.

Second Great Awakening

A widespread wave of Protestant evangelical revivals in the early decades of the nineteenth century that emphasized human agency in salvation and sparked widespread social reform movements.

Benevolent Empire

A coordinated coalition of Protestant moral reform societies active in the 1820s and 1830s that sought to alleviate poverty, curb drinking, and enforce Christian Sabbath observation.

American Temperance Society

A nationwide reform organization founded in 1826 that mobilized evangelical methods to convince citizens to pledge complete abstinence from intoxicating beverages.

American Renaissance

A mid-nineteenth-century literary and philosophical movement that produced a distinctive body of American literature, philosophy, and art.

Transcendentalism/Emerson

A philosophical movement spearheaded by Ralph Waldo Emerson that championed intuition, personal spiritual realization, self-reliance, and communion with the natural world over institutional dogma.

Brook Farm

A transcendentalist utopian communal experiment founded in Massachusetts in 1841 intended to fuse manual farm labor with intellectual and artistic life.