APUSH Unit 3 Terms

Alexis de Tocqueville

French aristocrat that visited the United States to study American prisons, but go beyond that mandate and write a classic study of American life at the time, Democracy in America.

Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville, the French writer who visited the U.S. in the early 1830s, returned home to produce "Democracy in America," a classic account of a society in the midst of a political transformation. His key insight was that democracy by this time meant far more than either the right to vote or a particular set of political institutions. It was a culture that encouraged individual initiative, belief in equality, and an active public sphere populated by numerous voluntary organizations that sought to improve society. Democracy, Tocqueville saw, had become an essential attribute of American freedom.

Corrupt Bargain

The Election of 1824 is referred to as this because Henry Clay got electors from Kentucky to vote for JQA, JQA won, and then JQA appointed Henry Clay Secretary of State.

ANDREW JACKSON

7th President of the United States, he was considered to be the first Common Man president and was the first president born of "the West."

"Jacksonian Democracy"

The movement championed greater rights for the common man and was opposed to any signs of aristocracy in the nation. It was aided by the strong spirit of equality among the people of the newer settlements in the South and the West.

Petticoat Affair (Peggy Eaton Affair)

A controversy surrounding the wives of Jackson's cabinet, eventually led to the resignation of all but one member of Jackson's cabinet.

Spoils system

The practice of a successful political party, giving public office to its supporters. First practiced at National level by Andrew Jackson.

Nullification crisis

1832 controversy over Tariffs between South Carolina and President Jackson, where South Carolina tried to ignore U.S. laws.

Tariff of 1828 (Tariff of Abominations)

Law passed in the attempt to protect northern American businesses by taxing imports at a higher rate; would later set off the Nullification Crisis.

John C. Calhoun

an American statesman and political theorist who served as the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. Born in South Carolina, he adamantly defended American slavery and sought to protect the interests of white Southerners.

Interposition

a state assumes the right to "interpose" itself between the federal government and the people of the state by taking action to prevent the federal government from enforcing laws that the state considers unconstitutional.

Exposition and Protest

The document was a protest against the Tariff of 1828, also known as the Tariff of Abominations. It stated also Calhoun's Doctrine of nullification, i.e., the idea that a state has the right to reject federal law, first introduced by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.

Webster-Hayne Debate (1830)

An unplanned series of speeches in the Senate, where the senator from S. Carolina interpreted the Constitution as little more than a treaty between sovereign states, & the senator from Massachusetts expressed the concept of the U.S. as one nation. The debate cemented the image of the Massachusetts senator as a legendary defender of the Constitution and preserving the Union.

Trail of Tears

The removal of Native Americans during the winter of 1838 to the Indian Territory was called this term because at least 1 in every 4 Natives died on the trip.

Bank veto

In 1832, President Jackson vetoed a politically motivated proposal to renew the charter of the second Bank of the United States. Jackson's veto message asserted that the Bank was unconstitutional, a specially privileged institution, and vulnerable to control by foreign investors.

Whigs

The party that formed as a response to issues with Andrew Jackson, they were supporters of the American system, southern nullification supporters, northern industrialists and merchants, and evangelical protestants associated with the Anti-Masonic party

Specie circular

Issued by Jackson to force the payment for federal lands with gold or silver. Many state banks collapsed as a result. A panic ensued (1837). Bank of the U.S. failed, cotton prices fell, businesses went bankrupt, and there was widespread unemployment and distress.

MARTIN VAN BUREN

This president set up the Independent Treasury Act in which federal deposits were made in independent institutions that were not associated with "pet banks" or the national bank (dealt with the Panic of 1837).

Election of 1836

Won by Martin Van Buren, the election was crucial in developing the Second Party System and a stable two-party system more generally. By the end of the election, nearly every independent faction had been absorbed by either the Democrats or the Whigs.

The Panic of 1837

Caused by the economic policies of President Jackson who ordered the Specie Circular, which required the payments for government lands to be paid in gold or silver, this traumatic economic downturn was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and record high unemployment levels.

Independent Treasury Act

"Divorce Bill" in 1840 which created an independent treasury that took the government's funds out of the pet banks that Jackson created and put them in vaults in several of the largest cities. This way the funds would be safe from inflation and denied to the state banks as revenue.

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON

A former governor of Indian Territory and army general (Battle of Tippecanoe) who defeated incumbent Martin Van Buren in the presidential election of 1840. Harrison's election marked the beginning of an era in which the Whigs and Democrats were the two major opposing forces in American politics. Unfortunately he died after less than a month in office.

Election of 1840

The election demonstrated that a strong, democratic, and popular two-party system was firmly established. First presidential election won by the Whig Party, with William Henry Harrison elected.

Log Cabin Campaign

A strategy used by the Whig party in election of 1840 to make Harrison look like the common man who drinks cider and lives in a log cabin even though it was a false image. The campaign was "the first image advertising campaign for a presidential candidate, establishing forever a basic tactic of political campaigns."

Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842)

This agreement helped to settle disputes over the northern boundary between the United States and Canada, which was controlled by Great Britain. It would signal a strong partnership and diplomatic success for the two nations.

Nativism

A defense of native-born people and a hostility to the foreign-born, usually combined with a desire to stop or slow immigration.

Canal Age

1820s-1830s resulted in an expansion of canals and greater access to goods from the west at a cheaper cost to consumers in the east. The canal age contributed to greater trade. The most famous one is the Erie Canal which spans from Lake Erie at Buffalo, NY to the Hudson River in Albany, NY.

Steamboat

First built by Robert Fulton in 1807, they would increase the speed and efficiency of river travel. Arriving shortly after the mad rush of canals, they largely improved inter-regional travel and allowed goods to be shipped long distances, which helped to stimulate both western and southern agricultural economies by opening markets.

Erie Canal

Started in 1817, this construction project would connect the trading port of New York to the trading center of Chicago through the Great Lakes. The project was finished in 1825 to great fanfare.

Railroad

These were able to replace canals by the 1850's, linking the NE & Midwest regions. This "invention" opened up the land south & west of Chicago, contributing to westward expansion.

Telegraph

widely used by 1837, was the first method of instant communication over long distances. This precursor to the telephone and email directly revolutionized wars, such as the Civil War, by allowing telegrams to be sent immediately.

Lowell System

A labor production model invented in Massachusetts in the 19th century. The system was designed so that every step of the manufacturing process was done under one roof and the work was performed by young adult women instead of children or young men.

Cult of Domesticity / Republican Motherhood

The belief that as the fairer sex, women occupied a unique and specific position and that they were to provide religious and moral instruction in the homes but avoid the rough world of politics and business in the larger sphere of society.

Prosser Rebellion

Gabriel Prosser, and a small group of artisan leaders, expected about 1,000 slaves to follow them in a well-coordinated attack upon Richmond that targeted Federalists and merchants who were the most prominent residents of the city. The assault planned for August 30, 1800, however, never came together. Torrential rain caused confusion and a traitor from within the group warned white authorities of the impending attack. Instead, Gabriel's slave conspiracy ended in severe repression. While no whites were killed in the revolt that never really got started, the state of Virginia executed 27 blacks, including Gabriel, by public hanging. Whites responded to the planned revolt, and another one linked to it in 1802, by tightening legal restrictions on slaves.

Turner Rebellion

1831 violent slave revolt in Virginia. A group of slaves plan & kill all of the slave holders and their families in Southhampton County, killing about 60 white people in their community. Rebellion is crushed, and eventually the revolt leader was captured and executed. It would lead many states to strengthen their slave codes.

Denmark Vesey

a carpenter and formerly enslaved person, allegedly planned an enslaved insurrection to coincide with Bastille Day in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822. Vesey modeled his rebellion after the successful 1791 slave revolution in Haiti. Though the rebellion never actually happened (a slave spilled the beans about it to authorities before it could happen), he and 34 slaves, including some from the household of the state's governor, were tried and executed for "attempting to raise an insurrection."

James Fenimore Cooper

Only novelist before 1830 to make successful use of national heritage - famous for The Spy, The Pioneers, and The Last of the Mohicans, all tales about Indians and settlers that presented a romanticized picture of frontier life.

Transcendentalists

Northern intellectuals who believed people can themselves reason (own consciousness) and find the truth by having an intense kind of spiritual experience in nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Considered to be main leader of Transcendentalism, quit his work as a Unitarian minister to write and teach its elements.

Henry David Thoreau

A transcendentalist who repudiated the forces of society, most famously explaining his theories in the book Walden.

Perfectionism

Christian movement of the 1830s that beloved people could achieve moral perfection in their earthly lives because the Second Coming of Christ had already occurred.

Utopian Communities

New Harmony, Indiana and Brookwood Farm, Massachusetts were examples of this idea

New Harmony, Indiana

led by George Rapp, arrived in the United States in 1804 and settled in Pennsylvania before purchasing 20,000 acres on the Wabash River and moving to Indiana in 1814. The Harmonists were religious Separatists from Germany who pursued Christian perfection through every aspect of their daily conduct.

Oneida

Religious perfectionists that desired to create a utopian society, community believed strongly in a system of free love known as complex marriage, where any member was free to have sex with any other who consented. Noyes believe that complex marriage would move the community beyond divisive commitments to a single partner or family.

Mormons

Another name for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, it began in upstate New York under the guidance of Joseph Smith, and later would relocate to Salt Lake City, Utah.

2nd Great Awakening

A series of religious revivals starting in 1801, based on Methodism and Baptism. Stressed a religious philosophy of salvation through good deeds and tolerance for all Protestant sects. The revivals attracted women, Blacks, and Native Americans, and had an effect on moral movements such as prison reform, temperance, and moral reasoning against slavery.

Charles G. Finney

This man urged people to abandon sin and lead good lives in dramatic sermons at religious revivals.

Temperance movement

Neal Dow led this movement to decrease domestic abuse, decrease crime, and strengthen family values.

Neal Dow

American politician and temperance advocate whose Maine Law of 1851 presaged national prohibition in the United States.

Horace Mann

An American educational reformer and Whig politician known for his commitment to promoting public education.

McGuffey Reader

The first national textbook, taught 3 R's, moral education.

Dorothea Dix

An American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War, she served as a Superintendent of Army Nurses.

Women's rights

In the early years of this movement, the agenda included much more than just the right to vote. Their broad goals included equal access to education and employment, equality within marriage, and a married woman's right to her own property and wages, custody over her children and control over her own body.

Lucretia Mott

A female abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongst the women excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. Would be one of the leaders at the Seneca Falls Convention.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Working with Lucretia Mott, this woman helped to lead the women's rights movement at Seneca Falls in 1848. She remained committed to efforts to gain property rights for married women and ending slavery, but the women's suffrage movement increasingly became her top priority.

The Grimke Sisters

Two Southern white women who famously became outspoken abolitionists and advocates for women's rights.

Seneca Falls

Heralded as the first women's rights convention in the United States, it was held at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19 and 20, 1848. At that conference, activist and leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted The Declaration of Sentiments, which called for women's equality and suffrage.

Declaration of Sentiments

A rewrite of the Declaration of Independence by women at the Seneca Falls Convention

American Colonization Society

Formed in 1817, this group was reflecting the focus of early abolitionists on transporting freed blacks back to Africa; the organization established Liberia, a West- African settlement intended as a haven for emancipated slaves.

Abolition

the movement in opposition to slavery, often demanding immediate, uncompensated emancipation of all slaves. This was generally considered radical, and there were only a few adamant abolitionists prior to the Civil War.

William Lloyd Garrison

Abolitionist who wrote The Liberator; against colonization; for the immediate emancipation of slaves with no compensation for owners.

Harriet Tubman

Former slave who would eventually become an intricate part of the Underground Railroad.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Woman who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, participated in the abolitionist movement.

Frederick Douglass

An American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings.

Texas Settlement and Revolution

war fought from October 1835 to April 1836 between Mexico and Texas colonists that resulted in Texas's independence from Mexico and the founding of the Republic of Texas (1836-45).

Stephen F. Austin

An immigrant from Missouri who in 1822, established the first legal American settlement in Mexico. He recruited many Americans to come live in Texas.

Santa Anna

A Mexican dictator who led the government and troops into war against the settlers of Texas. Famously defeated rebels at the Alamo, in modern day San Antonio in late February 1836. Would be defeated by the Texas rebellion and sign the agreement to make Texas independent.

Davy Crockett

legendary frontiersman, folk hero, and politician who was a champion for the "common man" and lost his life in the Texas Revolution at the Battle of the Alamo.

The Alamo

Santa Anna and his army of about 1,500 soldiers arrived in February 1836 determined to retake Texas. They laid siege to the fort in order to drive out the rebels. The Texan volunteers held out for 13 days before the Mexican forces overpowered them. Every Texan soldier in the fort was killed and the only survivors were women, children, those who had been enslaved by the Texans at the fort. As a result of the devastating loss for the American settlers, the Alamo became a symbol of resistance and a rallying cry. Thousands of white Texans signed up to join the rebellion against the Mexican government.

Sam Houston

United States politician and military leader who fought to gain independence for Texas from Mexico and to make it a part of the United States (1793-1863)

JAMES K. POLK

The 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was Speaker of the House of Representatives and governor of Tennessee. A protégé of Andrew Jackson, he was a member of the Democratic Party and an advocate of Westward Expansion.

Election of 1844

James K. Polk defeats Henry Clay. Polk beat Clay by fewer than 40,000 votes, a margin of 1.4%. James G. Birney of the anti-slavery Liberty Party won 2.3% of the vote. As President, Polk completed American annexation of Texas, which was the proximate cause of the Mexican-American War.

Manifest Destiny

The 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the United States throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.

54 40' or Fight

The slogan of several people in the US who did not want America to just give GB any land in Oregon Country because there were many settlers from the US already in this territory (led by President Polk).

Oregon Treaty of 1846

A treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country, dividing the territory at the 49th parallel.

John Slidell mission

Mission in which US representative was sent down to Mexico to purchase California and New Mexico; Mexican gov't refused to even see this representative (One cause of the Mexican-American war).

Mexican War

a conflict between the United States and Mexico that took place between 1846 and 1848. The war was sparked by a dispute over the annexation of Texas by the United States and a long-standing dispute over the border between Texas and Mexico.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

This agreement was signed on February 2, 1848, ending the Mexican-American War in favor of the United States. The war had begun almost two years earlier, in May 1846, over a territorial dispute involving Texas.

Wilmot Proviso

The proposal within Congress in 1846 to prohibit slavery in the territory acquired by the United States at the conclusion of the Mexican War. It would fail.

Free Soil Party

A short-lived coalition political party in the United States active from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into the Republican Party. The party was largely focused on the single issue of opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories of the United States.

Forty-Niners

Easterners who flocked to California after the discovery of gold there. They established claims all over northern California and overwhelmed the existing government. Arrived in 1849.

Gadsden Purchase

In 1853, the US bought this land from Mexico (part of Arizona and New Mexico) so that a railroad could be built out west.