CH203 Exam 2 Study Guide Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key historical terms, concepts, legal acts, and foundational texts from the CH203 Exam 2 study guide.

Missouri Compromise (1820)

An agreement that drew an imaginary line across the country. Land north of this line prohibited slavery, while land south permitted it. To keep political power balanced in the Senate, Maine entered the Union as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.

Different Approaches to Abolition

The debate over how to end slavery. William Lloyd Garrison pushed for peaceful moral pressure and changing public hearts, while John Brown believed slavery was a violent sin that could only be destroyed through direct armed revolt and physical force.

Moral Suasion

An abolitionist strategy championed by William Lloyd Garrison focused on changing public hearts and ending slavery through peaceful persuasion, public lectures, and newspapers like The Liberator, while refusing political compromises or a "pro-slavery" Constitution.

The Slave Narrative (and its recurring/genre features)

A genre of first-person autobiographies written by escaped or freed slaves (like Frederick Douglass). Key genre features include starting with "I was born" to establish human identity, detailing the physical brutality of bondage, and portraying literacy as a double-edged sword that opens the eyes to freedom while deepening the agony of enslavement.

Transcendentalism

A movement that taught people to trust their own instincts, reject conformity, and find truth in nature.

It emphasized radical individualism, spiritual truth found in nature, intuition, and nonconformity against traditional institutional rules.

Self-Reliance

A core Transcendentalist concept popularized by Ralph Waldo Emerson urging individuals to trust their own inner intuition and reject blind conformity to societal traditions and social expectations.

Free Verse (poetry)

A flexible style of poetry that breaks away from traditional European rhythms, rhymes, and formal rules. Walt Whitman used it in Leaves of Grass to capture the raw, democratic voice and everyday working-class reality of American life.

Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau’s moral rule that citizens must peacefully break government laws when those laws force them to support state injustice, such as slavery or unfair imperial wars, even if it means going to prison.

Manifest Destiny

The belief that the United States was destined to expand across North America spreading white American democracy, culture, and capitalism westward.

Mexican-American War

A territorial war sparked by the annexation of Texas and border clashes near the Rio Grande. The U.S. won vast land in the Southwest, which immediately reignited explosive political fights over whether that new land should allow slavery.

Lost Cause

The Southern cultural myth that the Civil War was mainly about states' rights instead of slavery. romanticized the Confederacy as a noble legacy of the American Revolution

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Legislation that repealed the Missouri Compromise by introducing popular sovereignty, allowing settlers in new territories to vote on whether to permit slavery.

Dred Scott Decision

A Supreme Court ruling that said Black Americans were not citizens and Congress could not ban slavery in territories.

Slave Power Conspiracy

The growing fear among Northerners that a small, wealthy elite of Southern slaveholders held disproportionate, secret control over all three branches of the federal government to protect slavery.

The Rain Follows the Plough

Gilded Age theory claiming that human settlement, farming, and tilling land permanently increased rainfall in arid Western regions

Different Approaches to Reconstruction

Lincoln’s 10% Plan- Quick & lenient plan to bring the Union back together--Emphasis on restoration & reunification 10% of Southern state’s population takes oath of allegiance to Union and The “Radical” Republicans --angered by Lincoln’s “softer” approach --wanted harsher, longer, and more retributive approach to Reconstruction --South as “conquered province” “Ironclad Oath”= “I never supported the Confederacy”

13th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that ended slavery except as punishment for a crime.

14th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that granted citizenship to those born in the United States and guaranteed equal protection.

15th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that protected voting rights for Black men.

Myth of the Vanishing Indian

The belief that Native Americans were naturally disappearing, Native Americans were destined to naturally fade away due to the "superiority" of white civilization, used to justify taking Native land.

Reservations & Allotments

Federal policies shifting Native Americans onto enclosed reservations and later breaking up tribal land via the Dawes Act (allotting 160-acre private plots) to force agrarian assimilation and private property ownership.

Carlisle Boarding School

An aggressive federal assimilation institution founded by Richard Henry Pratt under the doctrine "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man", which forcibly stripped Native children of their native languages, clothes, and cultural heritage

Frontier Thesis

Turner's argument that the frontier created American independence, democracy, and self-reliance. stripped away European habits

Gilded Age

A period of economic growth and wealth that masked severe economic inequality, political corruption, and labor exploitation beneath a shiny surface

The Progressive Era

A major reform movement spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries that sought to address the systemic inequalities, political corruption, and harsh working conditions bred by the Gilded Age.

Social Darwinism

The misapplication of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory to human society, arguing that wealth and power were indicators of natural biological superiority while poverty reflected weakness, used to oppose social welfare programs.

Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's belief that wealthy people should use their money to improve society.

Chinese Exclusion Act

A federal law suspending Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S., marking the first major legal restriction on immigration based heavily on race and nationality.

Johnson-Reed Act

Setting quotas of amount of people allowed into America, effectively ending the open "melting pot" era and severely limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia.

Eugenics

A false theory claiming some groups were naturally superior to others, fuel intense racist immigration restriction, revival of the KKK.

Passage Identification: "You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale…"

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:
It serves as an essential text in the Slave Narrative Genre used for Moral Suasion, capturing the double edge of literacy where learning to read allowed him to understand his rights while watching free ships on Chesapeake Bay made physical bondage more agonizing.

Passage Identification: "The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs… Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

Self-Reliance (Emerson), Ralph Waldo Emerson:

It is the cornerstone statement of Transcendentalism, attacking social pressure and traditional institutions while urging individuals to trust their internal moral compass.

Passage Identification: "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

Song of Myself, Walt Whitman:

It establishes American Free Verse Poetry, breaking away from rigid European rhyming structures to create an inclusive democratic poem representing every worker and citizen.

Passage Identification: "When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army…"

Civil Disobedience (Thoreau), Henry David Thoreau:

It provides the foundation for Civil Disobedience, directly linking tax refusal to the moral fight against slavery and the Mexican-American War.

Passage Identification: "…the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

Annexation (1845), John L. O'Sullivan:

It coined the exact term Manifest Destiny and provided moral and political justification for U.S. expansionism, supporting Texas annexation and President Polk's push into the Mexican-American War.

Passage Identification: "Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural condition."

Cornerstone Speech (1861), by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens:

Modern historians use it to dismantle The Lost Cause Myth by proving secession was created specifically to protect racial slavery.

Passage Identification: "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk…"

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865) by Abraham Lincoln:

It re-frames the Civil War as divine punishment for nationwide complicity in 250 years of slavery, establishing the moral vision that set up the Reconstruction Amendments.

Passage Identification: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States…"

Thirteenth Amendment (1865) Constitutional amendment passed by U.S. Congress:

It ended chattel slavery, though its penal loophole was later exploited by Southern states through Black Codes and convict leasing systems.

Passage Identification: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States… are citizens of the United States… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process…"

Fourteenth Amendment (1868) Constitutional amendment passed by U.S. Congress:

A major victory of Radical Reconstruction that overturned Dred Scott by guaranteeing birthright citizenship and equal legal protection.

Passage Identification: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Fifteenth Amendment (1870) Constitutional amendment passed by U.S. Congress: It extended voting rights to Black men, though Southern states bypassed it with literacy tests and poll taxes until the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Passage Identification: "A great general has said…all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites (?), speech by Richard Henry Pratt:

It defines the philosophy behind boarding schools and forced assimilation, arguing that destroying Indigenous cultures, languages, and identities was a merciful way to integrate Native children into white society.

Passage Identification: "I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; I was just at the awkward age… I had been shorn of my long hair, and now I was made to feel like a coward…"

American Indian Stories (1921) by Zitkála-Šá:

It provides an Indigenous personal response to Carlisle boarding school assimilation, exposing psychological trauma, loss of tribal identity, and emotional cruelty.

Passage Identification: "…liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members…"

The Challenge of Facts (social darwinism?) by William Graham Sumner:

It is the primary text for Gilded Age Social Darwinism, arguing economic inequality is natural and that aiding the poor slows social progress.

Passage Identification: "The cyclone of civilization rolled westward over the continent, sweeping away the wilderness and replacing the red man with the sturdy pioneer…"

The Red Mans Greeting, Simon Pokagon:

It illustrates the Myth of the Vanishing Indian and Manifest Destiny by portraying the destruction of Native societies as an unavoidable force of natural progress.
the imagery justifies colonial expansion by portraying Indigenous peoples as part of a wild landscape meant to be tamed by European civilization

Passage Identification: "The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist"

The Significance of the Frontier in American History by Frederick Jackson Turner:

It formulates the Frontier Thesis, asserting that open Western wilderness broke European habits and created American democracy and individualism.

the harsh environment stripped away their refined European habits

Passage Identification: "Today three-fourths of the city's population lived in the tenements…"

How the Other Half Lives (1890) by Jacob Riis:

It drove Progressive Era reforms by using investigative reporting and photography to expose dark Gilded Age urban poverty, tenement housing, and landlord corruption.

Passage Identification: "Fired up by this revealing light, I began to build a bridge of understanding between the American-born and myself."

America and I (1923) by Anzia Yezierska:

Yezierska describes the painful gap between the romanticized "American Dream" and the harsh reality of living isolated in urban ethnic enclaves or sweatshops, shut off from native-born Americans