american history midterm

Fugitive Slave Act (1850)

Federal law letting Southern bounty hunters enter the North to capture escaped enslaved people.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Supreme Court ruled Black Americans are not citizens.

Freedom suits

Lawsuits in which enslaved people sued for their freedom (as early as the 1700s, more common by the 1850s). Also used by Native parents trying to get children back from boarding schools.

Naturalization Act (1790)

First law deciding who could become a U.S. citizen; it excluded many groups from the start.

Worcester v. Georgia (1832)

Cherokee won the right to stay on ancestral land, but the ruling was not enforced, leading to the Trail of Tears (1838).

Big idea of Week 1

Law evolves with the people; legal outcomes and experiences differ from the law on paper because of enforcement.

13th Amendment

Abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime. Loophole fueled Black codes, chain gangs, prison labor, and convict leasing.

14th Amendment

Birthright citizenship and the equal protection clause.

15th Amendment

The right to vote cannot be denied based on race.

Black codes

Laws restricting the freedom, labor, and movement of newly freed Black people.

Convict lease system

States renting out prisoners to private employers for labor; a workaround to the 13th Amendment.

Jim Crow

System of laws enforcing racial segregation, mainly in the South.

Sharecropping

Farmers worked land they didn't own and paid the landowner with a share of the crop, often trapped in debt.

Freedmen's Bureau

Federal agency that helped freed people with education, labor, marriage, divorce, custody, property and contract disputes, and political participation.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Upheld "separate but equal," 7-1. Tested Louisiana's Separate Car Act (1890) under the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

Homer Plessy

Mixed-race shoemaker from New Orleans who deliberately tested the Separate Car Act.

Comité des Citoyens

A civil rights group formed in September 1891 in New Orleans by a group of 18 prominent African Americans, Creoles of color, and white Creoles to fight racial segregation on public transportation

Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedpeople's petition (1865)

Freed Black people asked the Freedmen's Bureau and U.S. military to help free relatives held in Native nations; a Native law threatened death for Black people who fled.

Belly family

Pierre Belly (French slaveholder) and Rose (enslaved) used legal loopholes and paper trails to live as a married couple; he freed their five children.

Robert Smalls

Escaped slavery by commandeering a Confederate ship; later a SC state and U.S. representative who pushed free education and military desegregation.

Jonathan Jasper Wright

First Black lawyer admitted to the Pennsylvania bar; first Black state supreme court justice in South Carolina.

Fellow servant rule

Workers couldn't sue employers for injuries caused by a coworker; workers were said to assume the risk of the job.

Workers' compensation

State-mandated insurance covering medical costs and lost wages for injured workers; opposite of the fellow servant rule.

First modern workers' comp

Bismarck's German Accident Insurance Law (1884). In the U.S.: Federal Employers Liability Act (1906) and Wisconsin (1911).

Phossy jaw

Disease of matchstick workers from phosphorus exposure.

Black lung

Disease of coal miners.

Mary Ellen Wilson

Child severely abused when no child abuse laws existed; her case inspired organizing to protect children.

Kleptomania

Supposed compulsion to steal, first identified in 1816; tied to "hysteria" and used as a defense in shoplifting cases.

Hysteria

Discredited diagnosis blaming women's symptoms on the uterus.

Tort

A civil legal claim for damages.

Tort of seduction

Civil claim (usually by a father) for damages from sex on false pretenses or breach of promise; survives only in NC and SD.

Push factors (immigration)

Irish Potato Famine, European wars and displacement, religious and ethnic discrimination.

Pull factors (immigration)

Factory jobs, Homestead Act, Gold Rush and get-rich-quick fever.

Progressive Era

Reform period responding to industrialization, wealth gaps, and urban problems; philanthropy, ideas of progress, gender activism.

The Gospel of Wealth

Carnegie's 1889 essay: the rich should live modestly and give generously (e.g., Carnegie libraries).

Hull House

Chicago settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to help immigrants, with childcare and classes.

Temperance and Prohibition

Movement against alcohol tied to family welfare and xenophobia toward Irish and Italians; led to the 18th Amendment.

Carrie Nation

Prohibition activist who smashed bars with a hatchet; sold hatchet pins to pay bail.

Moral treatment

Humane approach to mental illness; Dorothea Dix pushed to build asylums.

Phrenology

Pseudoscience of reading character from skull shape.

Nellie Bly

Went undercover in an asylum to expose terrible conditions.

M'Naghten Rule (1843)

British insanity defense test adopted in the U.S.; a defendant isn't to blame if too insane to understand the act or that it was wrong.

William Freeman (1846)

First attempted insanity defense in America.

Ward of the state

Person (child or adult) whose rights are controlled by the state or a guardian.

Guardian vs. power of attorney

A guardian is court-appointed with broad control; power of attorney is a voluntary delegation of authority.

Ex parte Crouse (1838)

Mary Ann Crouse sent to a House of Refuge; PA Supreme Court said parental rights are natural but not unalienable; established parens patriae in the U.S.

Parens patriae

"Parent of the country"; the government may act as a parent in appropriate cases.

In loco parentis

"In place of a parent"; acting as a parent for decisions like custody and treatment.

Eugenics

Pseudoscience claiming humans can be improved by controlling reproduction; begun by Francis Galton (1883).

Positive vs. negative eugenics

Positive: encouraging "fit" people to have children. Negative: state-enforced sterilization.

Eugenics in practice (U.S.)

Anti-miscegenation laws, forced sterilization (65,000+ people), immigration restrictions, better baby contests.

Anti-miscegenation laws

Laws banning interracial marriage.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Barred Chinese immigration; example of eugenic and nativist immigration policy.

Johnson-Reed Act (1924)

Immigration Act restricting immigration by national origin.

Virginia Sterilization Act (1924)

Allowed forced sterilization of institutionalized people deemed "feebleminded" or hereditarily insane after a hearing.

Buck v. Bell (1927)

Supreme Court upheld forced sterilization (Holmes: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough"). Carrie Buck's lawyer was a eugenicist who barely defended her.

Carrie Buck

Woman institutionalized as "feebleminded" and "promiscuous" after being assaulted; sterilized after Buck v. Bell.

Nativism

Favoring native-born people over immigrants; aimed at Irish, Catholics, Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, and Asians.

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

First women's rights convention; produced the Declaration of Sentiments.

Declaration of Sentiments

Reworked "all men are created equal" to include women and demanded rights as citizens.

Wyoming suffrage (1869)

First place to grant women full suffrage (a territory then; state in 1890).

Why the West granted suffrage

Attract and keep white settlers, balance demographics, untapped voters, looser gender roles, Latter-day Saints.

Women's suffrage before the 19th Amendment

23 states granted women the vote.

Sex work in the West

About 50,000 sex workers; brothels technically illegal but tolerated through zoning and licenses; brothel money funded schools and hospitals.

Nevada brothel law

Legal brothels in counties with fewer than 100,000 people.

Tender Years Doctrine

Presumption that mothers should get custody of young children; first U.S. case Commonwealth v. Addicks (1813); replaced by "best interest of the child."

Age of consent history

Historically about 7-10 (Delaware was 7 in 1885).

Mann Act (1910)

White Slave Traffic Act banning transport of women across state lines for "immoral" purposes; also used against interracial couples.

Sojourner Truth

Spoke at the 1851 Ohio women's rights convention ("Ain't I a Woman?").

Ida B. Wells

Black journalist and activist, anti-lynching and suffrage leader.

Spanish-American War

1898 war sparked by the sinking of the USS Maine; gave the U.S. Puerto Rico and about 1 million Spanish speakers.

Foraker Act (1900)

Replaced Spanish law with U.S. law in Puerto Rico and created the Insular Government.

Jones-Shafroth Act (1917)

Granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans.

Insular Cases (1900-1906)

Split territories into incorporated (destined for statehood, full rights) and unincorporated (only fundamental rights); criticized by Gorsuch in 2022.

Incorporated vs. unincorporated territory

Incorporated: headed for statehood with full constitutional rights. Unincorporated: not headed for statehood, only fundamental rights.

Isabel Gonzalez

Puerto Rican woman detained at Ellis Island in 1902 as "likely to become a public charge"; "neither American nor foreigner."

Noncitizen national

Status of Puerto Ricans before 1917: partial rights, not full citizens.

Public charge

Someone likely to rely on government support; used to exclude immigrants.

Jones Act (1920)

Shipping between U.S. ports must use U.S.-built, owned, and crewed ships; hurt Hurricane Maria relief (2017).

Indian Removal Act (1830)

Let Jackson take tribal land east of the Mississippi and relocate tribes west.

Indian Appropriations Act (1851)

Created reservations and boundaries and put federal agents in charge.

Dawes Act (1887)

Broke communal tribal land into individual allotments.

Curtis Act (1898)

Dissolved tribal governments and tribal courts.

Homestead Act (1862)

Promised 160 acres of public land for living on, improving, and farming it for 5 years.

Indian boarding schools

Forced assimilation; Pratt: "Kill the Indian in him, and save the Man."

Sand Creek Massacre (1864)

Colorado militia killed about 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women, children, and elders, under federal protection.

Camp Grant Massacre (1871)

Mob killed about 150 Aravaipa Apache, mostly women, children, and elders, under federal protection.

Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)

Cheyenne, Lakota, and Arapaho victory over federal troops (Custer's Last Stand).

Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee (1890)

Ghost Dance (Wovoka) triggered the military slaughter at Wounded Knee.

Buffalo Soldiers

All-Black regiments established by Congress in 1866.

American Anti-Imperialist League

Group critiquing U.S. empire; included Mark Twain and William Jennings Bryan.

Manifest Destiny

Belief the U.S. was divinely meant to expand across the continent (John O'Sullivan, 1845).

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

Ended the Mexican-American War; about 130,000 Mexicanos and 40,000 Native people came under U.S. rule.

California language laws

1849 constitution required bilingual government materials; 1879 constitution passed the first "English only" policy.

New Mexico constitution (1912)

Protected voting, office-holding, and jury service regardless of inability to speak English or Spanish.

California Land Act (1851)

Forced Californios to prove land claims dating back centuries.

Mary Ellen Pleasant

Black multimillionaire; Underground Railroad work, funded John Brown, helped desegregate SF streetcars.

Gold and silver rushes

California, Nevada Comstock Lode (1859), Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Black Hills, Tombstone, Klondike.

IWW

Industrial Workers of the World ("Wobblies"), founded 1905 in Chicago.

AFL

American Federation of Labor, founded 1886 in Columbus, Ohio.