Unit 5 Vocab

slave codes

set of laws beginning in 1662 defining racial slavery. They established the hereditary nature of slavery and limited the rights and education of slaves

Manifest Destiny

belief that the US was destined by God to spread its “empire of liberty” across North America. Served as a justification for mid-nineteenth-century expansionism

Stephen Austin

the original settler of Texas. Austin granted land from Mexico only with assurance that there would be no slavery. The city, Austin, Texas, was named after him

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Mexican political leader, general, and president who greatly influenced early Mexican and Spanish politics and government, fought first against Mexican independence from Spain, Texas Revolution

Sam Houston

prominent American soldier and politician, best known for his role in leading Texas to independence from Mexico and serving as the first President of the Republic of Texas

Alamo

fortress in Texas where two hundred American volunteers were slain by Santa Anna in 1836. “Remember the Alamo” became a battle cry in support of Texan independence

John Tyler

a Virginian Whig who served as William Henry Harrison's Vice President until his death in 1841 in which he succeeded him and became President

James K. Polk

the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was Speaker of the House of Representatives (1835-1839) and governor of Tennessee (1839-1841)

“Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!”

slogan adopted by mid-nineteenth-century expansionists who advocated the occupation of Oregon Territory, jointly held by Britain and the United States. Though President Polk had pledged to seize all of Oregon, to 54^o 40’, he settled on the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise with the British

Bear Flag Republic

a short-lived rebellion that took place in June 1846, when American settlers in California rebelled against Mexican rule and declared California an independent republic

Mexican Cession

The land that Mexico gave to the U.S. Which was land from texas to California that was north of the Rio Grande

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

an agreement between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican-American War and transferred territory to the United States.; President James K. Polk approved the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which is also known as the Mexican Cession

Wilmot Proviso

Amendment that sought to prohibit slavery from territories acquired from Mexico. Introduced by Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot, the failed amendment ratcheted up tensions between North and South over the issue of slavery

Ostend Manifesto

secret Franklin Pierce administration proposal to purchase or, failing, to wrest militarily Cuba from Spain. Once leaked, it was quickly abandoned due to vehement opposition from the North

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty

signed by Great Britain and the United States, it provided that the two nations would jointly protect the neutrality of Central America and that neither power would seek to fortify or exclusively control any future isthmian waterway

Gadsden Purchase

Americans agreed to pay $10 million for about 29,670 square miles of land south of the Gila River. Thus, this land became the southern parts of Arizona and New Mexico

Free-Soil Movement

anti-slavery party in 1848 and 1852 elections that opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, arguing that the presence of slavery would limit opportunities for free laborers

Compromise of 1850

Admitted California as a free state, opened New Mexico and Utah to popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade 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

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. Strengthened the antislavery cause in the North

Harriet Tubman

a conductor who helped slaves escape. She was African-American and helped over 300 slaves to freedom using the Underground Railroad, and also became a very outspoken advocate for women's rights

Uncle Tom’s Cabin- Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery. It heightened northern support for abolition and escalated the sectional conflict

Impending Crisis of the South

Antislavery tract, written by white southerner Hinton R. Helper, arguing that nonslaveholding whites actually suffered most in a slave economy

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 Douglas in an effort to bring Nebraska into the Union and pave the way for a northern transcontinental railroad

popular sovereignty

notion advanced before the Civil War that the sovereign people of a given territory should decide whether to allow slavery. Seemingly a compromise, it was largely opposed by northern abolitionists, who feared it would promote that spread of slavery to the territories

Bleeding Kansas

Civil War in Kansas over the issue of slavery in the territory, fought intermittently until 1861, when it merged with the wider national Civil War conflict

John Brown’s Raid

an attempt to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee

Caning of Senator Sumner

Preston Brooks came into the Senate with his cane and started beating Charles Sumner until he was unconscious. This was the first type of violence shown about sectionalism

Republican Party

a political party in the United States founded in the 1850s, primarily to oppose the expansion of slavery into the territories

Lecompton Constitution

proposed Kansas constitution, whose ratification was unfairly rigged so as to guarantee slavery in the territory. Initially ratified by proslavery forces, it was later voted down when Congress required that the entire constitution be put up for a vote

Dred Scott v. Sanford

Supreme Court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Also declared that slaves, as property, were not citizens of the United States

Abraham Lincoln

16th president of the United States, he promoted equal rights for African Americans in the famed Lincoln- Douglas debates, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and set in motion the Civil War, but he was determined to preserve the Union, and was assassinated by Booth in 1865

Freeport Doctrine

declared that since slavery could not exist without laws to protect it, territorial legislatures, not the Supreme Court, would have the final say on the slavery question. First argued by Stephen Douglas in 1858 in response to Abraham Lincoln’s “Freeport question”

Harpers Ferry

federal arsenal in Virginia seized by abolitionist John Brown in 1859. Though Brown was later captured and executed, his raid alarmed southerners, who believed that northerners shared in Brown’s extremism

Breckinridge

John C Breckinridge (1821–1875) was an officer in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He was Vice President to James Buchanan and joined the Confederacy when the Civil War started

Bell

TBD

border states

five slave states - Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia - that did not secede during the Civil War. To keep the states in the Union, Abraham Lincoln insisted that the war was not about abolishing slavery but rather protecting the union

Fort Sumter

South Carolina location where Confederate forces fired the first shots of the Civil War in April of 1861, after Union forces attempted to provision the fort