U.S. History: Key Events and Policies from the Market Revolution to Reconstruction

Market Revolution

A period in the early 19th century when new technologies, transportation systems, and industrialization transformed the U.S. economy.

Monroe Doctrine

A U.S. foreign policy statement in 1823 declaring the Americas closed to European colonization and interference.

Missouri Compromise

An 1820 agreement that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while banning slavery north of latitude 36°30′.

Indian Removal Act

A law passed in 1830 authorizing the forced relocation of Native American tribes to lands west of the Mississippi.

Trail of Tears

The forced march of the Cherokee and other tribes from their homelands to Indian Territory in the 1830s.

Capitalism

An economic system based on private ownership and the pursuit of profit.

Telegraph

An invention by Samuel Morse in the 1830s-40s that allowed instant communication over long distances using electrical signals.

Entrepreneur

A person who organizes and operates a business, taking financial risks to do so.

Oregon Trail

A major 19th-century route used by pioneers traveling westward from Missouri to Oregon.

Abolition

The movement to end slavery in the United States.

Frederick Douglass

A formerly enslaved man who became a leading abolitionist, writer, and speaker.

Antebellum

A term meaning 'before the war,' referring to the period before the Civil War in the U.S.

Compromise of 1850

A set of laws attempting to balance free and slave states, including admitting California as a free state and strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act.

Underground Railroad

A secret network of routes and safe houses used to help enslaved people escape to freedom.

Fugitive Slave Act

A law requiring escaped enslaved people to be returned to their owners, even if found in free states.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

An 1854 law allowing settlers in Kansas and Nebraska to decide on slavery through popular sovereignty.

Fort Sumter

A Union fort in South Carolina where the first shots of the Civil War were fired in April 1861.

Antietam

A major Civil War battle in 1862 in Maryland, known as the bloodiest single-day battle in U.S. history.

Emancipation Proclamation

An executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 that declared enslaved people in Confederate states free.

Gettysburg

A three-day Civil War battle in 1863 in Pennsylvania that ended with a Union victory.

Thirteenth Amendment

An amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1865 that abolished slavery.