Comprehensive US History: Second Great Awakening to Reconstruction (19th Century)

Second Great Awakening

A massive religious revival that spread Protestantism through the US in the early 19th century, providing the moral basis for many reform movements.

Charles Grandison Finney

Key minister and central figure in the Second Great Awakening whose strong oration and modern revivalism influenced the nation.

Mormons

A group of polygamous Christians, led by Joseph Smith, who settled in Utah.

Shakers

A Christian sect, led by Ann Lee, known for communal living, celibacy, and simplicity.

Utopian Societies

Communities like the Oneida Community, Brook Farm, and New Harmony that ran social experiments to form the perfect society.

Horace Mann

Father of American Education, strong advocate for public education and education reform.

Dorothea Dix

Reformer who advocated for better conditions in prisons and asylums.

Temperance

The movement to regulate alcohol consumption, supported by organizations like the American Temperance Society.

Seneca Falls Convention

The first women's rights convention in the U.S. where activists produced the 'Declaration of Sentiments.'

Nat Turner's Rebellion

A violent slave revolt in Virginia led by Nat Turner that resulted in the death of 55-56 white people.

Abolitionism

Social and Political movement aimed at immediately ending the institution of slavery in the United States.

Transcendentalism

A philosophical movement centered in New England that emphasized intuition, individualism, and nature over established doctrines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A leading 19th century American transcendentalist known for promoting individualism, self-reliance, and intellectual independence.

Hudson River School

A mid 19th century American art movement characterized by painters focused on landscapes of the Hudson River Valley.

Compromise of 1850

A set of five laws passed to resolve disputes over slavery in territories gained from the Mexican American War.

Election of 1852

The Whig party split between the North and the South during this election and collapsed due to internal debates over slavery.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Compromise that left the question of slavery in the Kansas and Nebraska territories up to popular sovereignty.

Bleeding Kansas

A series of violent conflicts in the Kansas territory caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and debates over slavery in Kansas.

Industrial Revolution

The Northern US shifted to a factory-based economy while the South remained rooted in cotton and slavery.

Westward Expansion

Accelerated sectionalism due to increased debates over slavery in new American territory.

Secession

Formal withdrawal of eleven southern states from the Union in 1860 to protect and expand the institution of slavery.

Fort Sumter

On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor after Union forces attempted to provision the fort.

Union

The Northern states, which were loyal to the federal government during the Civil War, and were anti-slavery.

Confederacy

A self-proclaimed sovereign nation formed by Southern states that seceded from the Union and were pro-slavery.

Border states

Five slave states that did not secede during the Civil War, including Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia.

Battle of Antietam

The single bloodiest day of battle, this battle was a turning point because Union forces held back a Confederate invasion.

Battle of Gettysburg

An essential Union victory in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, that led to Lincoln issuing his famous Gettysburg Address.

Siege of Vicksburg

This famous siege helped push the war closer to its end, cutting off many resources needed by the Confederacy.

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln's statement that freed all enslaved people in the Confederate states.

Appomattox Court House

Here, the Civil War ended after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant.

Pickett's Charge

A famous and monumental victory for the Union, part of the larger Gettysburg campaign.

Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War

Established by Congress during the Civil War to oversee military affairs, under the control of radical Republicans, they advocated for a more vigorous war effort and emancipation.

Copperheads

Northern Democrats who obstructed the war effort by attacking Abraham Lincoln, the draft, and, after 1863, emancipation.

Union party

A coalition party of pro-war Democrats and Republicans formed during the 1864 election to defeat anti-war Northern Democrats.

Writ of habeas corpus

Requires law enforcement officers to present detained individuals before the court to examine the legality of the arrest, but Lincoln suspended this during the war.

Greenbacks

Paper currency issued by the Union Treasury during the Civil War, which fluctuated in value throughout the war, reaching a low of 39 cents on the dollar because they were inadequately supported by gold.

National banking system

A network of member banks that could issue currency against purchased government bonds, created to establish a stable national currency and stimulate the sale of war bonds.

New York draft riots

Uprising, mostly of working-class Irish Americans, in protest of the draft because of the ability of the rich to hire substitutes or purchase exemptions.

Morrill Tariff Act

Increased duties back up to 1846 levels to raise revenue for the Civil War.

Lincoln's second inaugural address

Delivered only 41 days before his assassination, and near the end of the Civil War, this address focused on reconstruction, national reconciliation and healing the nation.

Freedmen's Bureau

An agency created by the federal government in order to assist formerly enslaved blacks and poor whites in the south.

13th Amendment

This amendment was written in January of 1868 and ratified five months later. It officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for convicted crime.

14th Amendment

Ratified in 1868, this amendment granted citizenship to all those born or naturalized in the U.S.A regardless of former slave status. It also granted equal protection under law.

15th Amendment

This amendment prohibits both federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote solely on the basis of 'race, color, or previous servitude.'

Black codes

Restrictive laws passed by many of the southern states between the post civil war years of 1865-1866 to limit new found African American freedom.

Radical republicans

A faction under the new republican party that was dedicated to rapidly abolishing slavery and punishing the former confederate states.

Carpet Baggers

A derogatory term made to criticize those who moved from the north to south during the era to exploit the political and social unrest.

Civil rights act 1866

The nation's first federal civil rights law declaring birthright citizenship.

Redeemers

A coalition of southern democrats who sought to overthrow the radical republican governments.

Reconstruction act of 1867

This act outlined the process of reintegrating the confederate states back into the union, establishing militarized zones and placing the states under martial law.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

A terrorist hate group led by protestant individuals who preached white supremacy, utilizing violence and intimidation to oppose federal civil rights efforts.

United States v. Cruikshank

A landmark supreme court decision ruling that overturned the convictions of white defendants involved in the 1873 Colfax Massacre.

Compromise of 1877

Also called The Wormley Agreement, it sought to end the dispute over the Election of 1876.

White League

A white supremacist paramilitary terrorist organization originating in the south in 1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting.

Red Shirts

White supremacist paramilitary terrorist groups active in South Carolina and North Carolina who worked to disenfranchise black voters.

Sharecropping

A post-Civil War agricultural system where landowners allowed tenants, often freed Black people, to use land and tools in exchange for a large share of the crop.

Grandfather clause

A way to disenfranchise black voters by exempting poor or illiterate whites from voting restrictions.

Panic of 1873

Brought on by post civil war troubles, the panic was one of international peril, primarily plaguing the United States due to southern railroad overexpansion and banking troubles.

Literacy test

Discriminatory, subjective tools used in the South all the way until 1965 to disenfranchise Black voters.

Enforcement acts of 1870 and 1871

Three federal laws passed during Reconstruction to combat white supremacist violence and protect the voting rights of African Americans.