APUSH Period 5 (1844-1877)

Manifest Destiny

Go West! It was the divinely ordained right of the US to expand its borders to the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

Great American Desert

Term applied to the land west of the Missouri River and east of the Rocky Mountains, no trees, little rainfall, tough prairie sod.

Overland Trails

Route taken by the 19th century travelers who left the Mississippi valley to settle on the Pacific Coast, going either o California or Willamette Valley in Oregon.

Gold Rush (1848-1855)

Mass migration of Americans and others to California in search of gold, led to California’s statehood.

Silver Rush (1848-1856)

Miners rushed to Colorado, Nevada, and other western state to look for silver.

Federal land grants

Grants given by the federal government to companies or individuals for specific purposes such as infrastructure development or settlement expansion.

Wilmot Proviso

Bill proposed after the Mexican War that stated that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any territory gained from Mexico. Transformed the debate of slavery but never passed through both houses.

Ostend Manifesto

A group of southerners who met with Spanish officials in Belgium in attempt to get more slave territory

Stephen Austin

Original settler of Texas, granted land from Mexico only with assurance that there would be no slavery.

Aroostook War

1839, series of clashes between American and Canadian lumberjacks in the disputed territory of northern Maine. Resolved when a permanent boundary was agreed upon in 1842.

Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842)

Resolved several border issues between the US and the British North American colonies, particularly a dispute over the location of the maine-New brunswick border.

Rio Grande

Claimed by the US as the southern boundary of Texas

Nueces River

River that Mexico claimed as the Texas-Mexico boundary

Mexican War (1846-1848)

Conflict between the US and Mexico over a dispute over the annexation of Texas but The US and the long-standing dispute over the border between Texas and Mexico.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Peace agreement in 1858 that ended the Mexican-American war. Led to the US acquiring over half of Mexico’s territory.

Mexican Cession

The land that Mexico gave to the US which was land from Texas to California that was North of the Rio Grande.

Gadsden Purchase (1853)

Treaty where the US brought from Mexico parts of what is now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico.

Matthew C. Perry

Military leader who convinced the Japanese to sign a treaty in 1853 with the US that allowed for a commercial foot in japan which was helpful with furthering a relationship with Japan

Kanagawa Treaty

Trade treaty between Japan and the US opening two Japanese ports to US trade

Free Soil Movement

Political party with the main purpose of stopping the expansion of slavery in western territories, arguing free men on free soil.

Conscience Whigs

A faction within the Whig Party that was primarily based in the Northern states, mostly abolitionists or anti-slavery and were opposed to the expansion of slavery into the Western territories.

New England Emigrant Aid Company

Antislavery organization in the North that sent out thousands of pioneers to the Kansas-Nebraska territory to thwart the Southerners and abolitionize the West

Bleeding Kansas

Period of violent conflict in the Kansas Territory in the 1850s which was driven by the struggle between proslavery and anti-slavery factions over the issue of whether or not to allow slavery in the territory.

Pottawatomie Creek

In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence (Kansas) by proslavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers killed 5 pro slavery settlers north of the Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County Kansas.

Lecompton Constitution

Pro-slavery constitution that got voted in for Kansas after anti-slavery people boycotted the election, supported the existence of slavery in the proposed state and protected rights of slaveholders. It was rejected by Kansas, making it an eventual free state.

Popular Sovereignty

The doctrine stating that the sovereign people of a territory should themselves determine the status of slavery within that territory.

Lewis Cass

Father of popular sovereignty

Bull Run

The place where one of the first battles of the Civil War took place in 1861

Ulysses S. Grant

18th president of the US, defeated the Confederates leading to the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s army at the Appomattox Court House.

Gettysburg Address

Speech given by Lincoln after the Battle of Gettysburg, in which he praised the bravery of Union soldiers and renewed his commitment to winning the Civil Wars.

Executive Power

Power of the president delegated or implied by the Constitution, to implement and enforce laws.

Habeas Corpus

An order requiring that a prisoner be brought before a court at a specified time and place in order to determine the legality of the imprisonment.

Crittenden Compromise

Plan proposed by Senator John J. Crittenden for a constitutional amendment to protect slavery from federal interference in any state where it already existed and for the westward extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the California border.

Republican Party

Believed in non-expansion of slavery and consisted of Whigs, North Democrats, and Free Soilers in defiance of the Slave powers founder in 1850s.

Constitutional Union Party

Political party which pledged to uphold the Constitution, the Union, and enforce laws.

Fugitive Slave Law

Made it a crime to help runaway slaves. Allowed the arrest of escaped slaves in places where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders.

Underground Railroad- Harriet Tubman

Network of abolitionists that secretly helped slaves escape to freedom by setting up hiding places and routes to the North

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Supreme Court decision that rejected the claim of a slave who argued that time spent with his owner in regions where slavery was illegal made him a free man. Declared that Congress lacked the right to regulate slavery in territories.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Series of 7 public confrontations between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during their 1858 campaign for an Illinois Senate seat that focused on slavery.

House-divided speech

Speech made by Lincoln before he was elected stating that the US will either be all slave or all free but it can’t keep going as half and half.

Freeport Doctrine

Slavery could not exist in a community if the local citizens did not pass laws maintaining it. A territory could exclude slavery just by not adopting laws to protect it.

John Brown

Abolitionist who attempted to lead a slave revolt by capturing armories in southern territory and giving weapons to slaves, was hung in Harpers Ferry.

Harpers Ferry Raid

John Brown attempted to lead a group of followers and start a slave rebellion by seizing weapons and inciting enslaved people to rise up against their masters, failed and Brown was hung.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Anti-slavery nvel by Harriet Beecher Stowe published in 1852, tells the story of Uncle Tom, a slave, and his struggle to survive and maintain his dignity in the face of the injustice of the American slave system.

Impending Crisis in the South

An incendiary book written by Hinton R. Helper in 1857 that used stats to prove that vast number of nonslaveholding whites suffered most from the logical evils of slavery, argued that slavery was incompatible with economic progress.

Sociology of the South

Book written by George Fitzhugh that argued that the institution of slavery was necessary and offered a more beneficial and table system than a free society or free market.

Border States

Slave states that border with free states during the Civil War, slave-holding states that did not support Lincoln but believed in a strong federal union and remained part of the US hoping to compromise.

Confederate States of America

An unrecognized breakaway state that existed from 1861 to 1865, formed by 7 southern states where slavery was legal, who seceded from the US due to disagreements over states’ rights and slavery.

Second American Revolution

Civil War- transformed America into a complex modern industrial society of technology, national organizations, and large corporations.

Greenbacks

Paper money issued by the government during the Civil War, first national currency

Morrill Tariff Act

Law passed by a northern dominated congress in 1861, that increased duties 5-10%. Stimulated northern industries and was the beginning of the industrial revolution

Morrill Land Grant Act

Allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges that were given to states by the government to start a university.

Pacific Railway Act

1862, passed by Congress, gave loans and land to the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad companies to subsidize construction of a rail line between Omaha and the Pacific Coast.

Homestead Act (1862)

Gave 160 acres of free western land to any applicant who occupied and improved the property, led to rapid development of the American West after the Civil War, however many homesteaders found themselves unable to live on their land.

Confiscation Acts

Series of laws passed by the Union during the Civil War that allowed for the confiscation and liberation of enslaved people in Confederate-held territories.

Emancipation Proclamation (1862)

Declared that slavery would be legally abolished in all states that remained out of the Union

13th Amendment

1865- prohibiting all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude.

Draft Riots

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

Copperheads

Vocal group of Democrats in the Northern UNited States who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.

Election of 1864

Lincoln re-elected during the Civil War, signified public approval for his plan to reunify the nation and end slavery

Trent Affair

incident in which a Union ship north of Cuba stopped a British mail steamer, the Trent, and forcibly removed two Confederate diplomats bound for Europe.

John Wilkes Booth

Assassinated Lincoln—without Lincoln Reconstruction was basically over

Segregated Black Troops

Black soldiers in the Civil War were often discriminated against and put in black divisions

Massachusetts 54th Regiment

An infantry regiment that saw extensive service in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Frederick Douglass

An African-American social reformer, writer and statesman. Escaped slavery and became a leader of an abolitionist movement and became the most famous black abolitionist.

Mason-Dixon Line

Boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland- designated the boundary dividing the slave and free states.

Dominion of Canada

Established by British parliament in 18687 to strengthen Canada. British wanted to protect Canada from possible threats from a reunited America after the Civil War.

U.S. Sanitary Commission

Government agency established in 1861 that trained nurses, collected medical supplies, and equipped hospitals in an effort the help the union army. Helped to professionalize nursing and gave many women confidence in the women’s movement in postwar years.