HUSH Unit 5 Vocabulary: 1844 - 1877

13th Amendment

abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime

14th Amendment

addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War

15th Amendment

prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's 'race, color, or previous condition of servitude.'

Abraham Lincoln

He is regarded by many people as one of America's greatest presidents, because he served during the American Civil War, preserved the Union, and freed the slaves.

Annexation of Texas

the United States Congress passed a 'Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States' and Texas was subsequently admitted to the Union as the 28th state.

Compromise of 1850

a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

Compromise of 1877

an informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the national government pulling the last federal troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.

Draft Riots

violent disturbances in New York City that were the culmination of working-class discontent with new laws passed by Congress that year to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War.

Dred Scott v. Sanford

the Supreme Court ruled that Americans of African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens (seen as property) and could not sue in federal court. The Court also ruled that Congress lacked the power to ban slavery in the U.S. territories.

Election of 1860

served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The United States had been divided during the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners.

Emancipation Proclamation

an executive order issued on January 1, 1863, by President Lincoln freeing slaves in all portions of the United States not then under Union control (that is, within the Confederacy).

Establishment of the Confederacy

After the Election of Lincoln South Carolina was the first to secede, on December 20, 1860, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. On February 8, 1861, representatives of those states announced the formation of the Confederate States of America, with its capital at Montgomery, Alabama.

Free-soilers

US political party founded in 1848 to oppose the extension of slavery into US territories and the admission of slave states into the Union.

Harriet Tubman

was an American abolitionist, humanitarian, and armed scout and spy for the United States Army during the American Civil War and chief operator of the Underground Railroad. Known as 'Moses.'

Homestead Act

made public lands in the West available to settlers without payment, usually in lots of 160 acres, to be used as farms.

John Brown

American abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States.

John C. Calhoun

The leading southern politician of the early nineteenth century; he served as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson and then was elected senator from South Carolina. He championed slavery and states' rights.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

allowed citizens in the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide locally whether to allow slavery. The act was modeled on the Compromise of 1850 but repealed both that compromise and the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

King Cotton

a phrase coined in the years before the Civil War to refer to the economy of the American South.

Know-Nothings

a member of a political party in the US, prominent from 1853 to 1856, that was antagonistic toward Roman Catholics and recent immigrants and whose members preserved its secrecy by denying its existence.

Ku Klux Klan

A secret society in the southern U.S. that focuses on white supremacy and terrorizes other groups that emerged during reconstruction.

Manifest Destiny

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

March to the Sea

The march began after Sherman captured, evacuated, and burned Atlanta in the fall of 1864. His men, numbering about sixty thousand, destroyed railroads, factories, cotton gins, houses, livestock, and anything else that might be useful to the South in the war.

Mexican-American War

A war fought between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. The United States won the war, encouraged by the feelings of many Americans that the country was accomplishing its manifest destiny of expansion.

National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)

response to whether the women's movement should support the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Nativist movement

the political position of supporting a favored status for certain established inhabitants of a nation (i.e. self-identified citizens) as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants.

Panic of 1857

the financial downturn in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. The north was significantly affected more than the south.

Popular Sovereignty

the principle that the authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power.

Reconstruction

The period after the Civil War in which the states formerly part of the Confederacy were brought back into the United States.

Republican Party

As a response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper Midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new political party that supported abolition and pro-business.

Sharecropping

a tenant farmer who gives a part of each crop as rent.

Sojourner Truth

African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist known for her speech "Ain't I a Woman."

Transcontinental Railroad

A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was the project of two railroad companies: the Union Pacific built from the east, and the Central Pacific built from the west. The two lines met in Utah.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

First published serially, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; it paints a grim picture of life under slavery. The title character is a pious, passive slave, who is eventually beaten to death by the overseer Simon Legree.

Underground Railroad

a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century slaves in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.

Wilmot Proviso

It prohibited the expansion of slavery into any territory acquired by the United States from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War settlement.