Edwards, America's History for the AP® Course 10e - Chapter 11

slave society

slave society

A society in which the institution of slavery affects all aspects of life.

republican aristocracy

The Old South gentry who envisioned themselves as an American aristocracy and feared federal government interference with their slave property.

Great American Desert

A term coined by Major Stephen H. Long in 1820 to describe the grasslands of the southern plains from the ninety-fifth meridian west to the Rocky Mountains, which he believed was "almost wholly unfit for cultivation."

Alamo

The 1836 defeat by the Mexican army of the Texan garrison defending the Alamo in San Antonio. Newspapers urged Americans to "Remember the Alamo," and American adventurers, lured by offers of land grants, flocked to Texas to join the rebel forces.

secret ballot

Form of voting that allows the voter to enter a choice privately rather than making a public declaration for a candidate.

Gullah dialect

A Creole language that combined English and African words in an African grammatical structure. It remained widespread in the South Carolina and Georgia low country throughout the nineteenth century and is still spoken in a modified form today.

task system

A system of labor common in the rice-growing regions of South Carolina in which a slave was assigned a daily task to complete and was allowed to do as he wished upon its completion.

German Coast uprising

The largest slave revolt in nineteenth-century North America, it began on January 8, 1811, on Louisiana sugar plantations and involved more than two hundred enslaved workers. About ninety-five slaves were killed in the fighting or executed as a result of their involvement.

Manifest Destiny

A term coined by John L. O'Sullivan in 1845 to express the idea that Euro-Americans were fated by God to settle the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

Oregon Trail

An emigrant route that originally led from Independence, Missouri, to the Willamette Valley in Oregon, a distance of some 2,000 miles. Alternate routes included the California Trail, the Mormon Trail, and the Bozeman Trail. Together they conveyed several hundred thousand migrants to the Far West in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s.

Californios

The elite Mexican ranchers in the province of California.

"Fifty-four forty or fight!"

Democratic candidate Governor James K. Polk's slogan in the election of 1844 calling for American sovereignty over the entire Oregon Country, which stretched from California to Russian-occupied Alaska and at the time was shared with Great Britain.

Bear Flag Republic

A short-lived republic created in California by American emigrants to sponsor a rebellion against Mexican authority in 1846.