APUSH Antebellum people to know

Walt Whitman Rostow

Came up with the idea that nations pass through 5 stages of economic growth: traditional society, transitional, take-off, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption.

Nat Turner

an enslaved Black carpenter and preacher who led a four-day rebellion of both enslaved and free Black people in Virginia in August 1831. Turner and his group of followers killed about 60 people. His action set off a massacre of up to 200 Black people and a new wave of oppressive legislation prohibiting the assembly of enslaved people, education, and movement.

Charles Grandison Finney

a controversial Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening → "Father of Old Revivalism". Finney rejected much of traditional reformed theology. His religious beliefs led him to support many social reforms such as abolitionism and equal education for women and African Americans. He preached that God would punish people who drank alcohol and that people needed to do good work on Earth. He did not just lead revivals; he actively marketed, promoted, and packaged them.

George Rapp

Leader of the Rapphites who instilled the beliefs of living a heavenly life to prepare for heaven, celibacy, and hardwork.

Mother Ann Lee

leader of the utopian community the Shakers who believed Christ would come as a female and the world would end.

William Miller

Started the Millerites and said the end of the world was on October 22nd, 1844. He and his group was proved wrong because the world didn't end and it was the "great dissapointment".

John Humphrey Noyes

Leader of the Oneida community (free love sex commune) who believed in perfectionism (christ had already come so their was no sin), complex marriage (every man was married to every woman and the woman chose sexual partners), mutual criticism (after dinner they would insult each other so no one would have self importance), and supported their community by creating silverware. Oneida eventually died out because Noyes had a warrant for his arrest and fled to Canada.

Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith was an American religious leader and the founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. Publishing the Book of Mormon at 24, followers believe Smith was led to a hill near Palmyra, NY, where he received an ancient record from an angel, Moroni. Smith received a revelation from God that Mormons should practice plural marriage, which led them to be exiled and move from New York to Nauvoo, Illinois. In 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.

Brigham Young

Bringham Young was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877. During his time as church president, Young led his followers west from Nauvoo, Illinois to the Salt Lake Valley. Bringham and 16 of his wives had a total of 56 children. He was also an advocate of education and founded the institutions that would later become Brigham Young University and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Robert Owen

founder of the Owenites who were a free love commune in Indiana that practiced "enlightened socialism"

Charles Fourier

founder of the Fourierites which was a utopian society that believed in cooperative phalanxes (hard jobs should be payed but easy jobs shouldn't)

Lucretia Mott

Quaker reformer (she believed in human equality as a right granted by God) and minister who was an abolitionist and women's rights activist. When Mott was denied the right to speak at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London because she was a woman, she was inspired to focus on women's rights and anti-slavery work. She helped initiate the Seneca Falls Convention with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848. Later, she helped found the National Woman's Suffrage Association with Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Margaret Fuller

A Transcendentalist who wrote "Women in the nineteenth century" which explained women's life in the nineteenth century and said that depriving women of their rights disrupts the natural order.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A young mother from New York that called the Seneca falls convention alongside Lucretia Mott.

Susan B. Anthony

Originally started as an anti-slavery and temperance activist but then joined Stanton and Mott in their fight for women's rights. She is the one that advocated for women's right to vote.

Frederick Douglass

One of the great spokesmen of the abolition movement and was born to an absent mother, and he suspected that his father was also his enslaver. He was moved around to many different plantations and house jobs to get the "rebelliousness" out of him and where he taught himself to read at age 8. He forged his own freedom papers and then was recruited by an anti slavery society to be a traveling lecturer

Elijah Lovejoy

Lovejoy started out as a Presbyterian minister in New England and received a sign from God to focus on the destruction of slavery leading to his newspaper that denounced alcohol, catholicism, and slavery. His printing press was destroyed twice by white mobs and then eventually attacked by White Racists who were firing shots that killed Lovejoy. (known as the first martyr of the abolition movement).

William Lloyd Garrison

A driving force in the abolitionist movement, he created the newspaper the Liberator that was published until the 13th Ammendment was achieved in 1865. He also was one of the main organizers in the American Anti Slavery Society.

Thomas Gallaudet

Cared for the deaf and worked to break the stigma that these people were "less than" or "incomplete" (how they were viewed by society). Gallaudet University was the school for the deaf.

Samuel Gridley Howe

Cared for the blind by using sign language and creating Boston Line type (same idea as brail) and encouraged separate schools for their learning.

Dorothea Dix

Cared for those with Mental Illness and wanted these peoples illnesses to be treated just like any other illness and not like they were "crazy" or "taken by sin". Created Mental Hospitals and asylums so these people could be treated and not abused in prisons.

Sojourner Truth

She was given the name Isabella Hardenbergh at birth but changed her name to Sojourner when she had a conversation with God who told her to travel all over the Americas and preach "the truth" about slavery. She was freed in 1827 and continued to speak about the truth of the "peculiar institution" as well as inequalities for women. She spoke at the Ohio women's rights convention and wrote "Ain't I a woman?".

David Walker

Wrote and published a pamphlet entitled, "Appeal to Colored Citizens of the World." In the pamphlet, Walker denounced slavery and encouraged enslaved people to fight for their freedom. He spoke out against colonization, believing American belonged to all who built it. Walker's appeal shocked the American conscience and set in motion a movement for immediate abolition (also sparked Southern outrage).

Frederick Edwin Church

Enrolled at the Hudson river school and created art that emphasized romanticism and the ever changing beauty of nature. One of his paintings was a sunset to provoke an emotional response to the wonder of nature and how the sunset changes.

Thomas Cole

Also enrolled at the Hudson river school and focused on change when he painted the edge of civilization and storm clouds coming in.

James Fennimore Cooper

Wrote "Last of the Mohicans" and talked about colonizers and indigenous people and how they should live in harmony with themselves and nature. Focused on Naturalism and Individualism.

Herman Melville

Focused on Naturalism when he wrote "Moby Dick" because the sea captain wanted to kill the whale but nature won.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

His writings focused on change and progress and he wrote similar to the way we talk so they're easy to read. One of his works is "the Scarlett Letter" was written in the 1850's and he was talking about the 1600's. It focused on the different standard for women than men and showed progress because adulterers in society no longer had to wear a red A.

Edgar Allan Poe

Focused on emotionalism in his writing because he often wrote about substance abuse, mental illness or murder which tugs at human emotions.

Walt Whitman

His writing was sensual and often talked about the human body. He rarely followed a meter or rhyme because his writing were supposed to fit the mood and appeal to emotionalism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A big transcendentalist who became the nation's most popular speaker and urged individuals to create their own distinct literature, art, thought, and spirituality in communion with nature. He became an essayist, poet, and lecturer who celebrated self-reliance and every individual's unlimited potential. He first published "Nature" which helped launch transcendental ideas, and then "Self-Reliance," which expressed the transcendentalist ideal of intellectual independence.

Henry David Thoreau

America's first wild child who preached self-reliance and perfectionism like Emerson. He did a solitary experiment in the woods, where he lived a minimalist lifestyle and wrote "Walden" to commemorate how nature was sacred and liberating and had beauty and sensuality. During his time at Walden Pond, he heard about the Abolitionist movement and hated Polk's idea to go to war with Mexico just to get more land for enslavers. He stopped paying his taxes and was put in jail for a night. He was then inspired to write "Civil Disobedience," which encouraged people to break the law if it was unjust to someone.

Emily Dickinson

A poet from Massachusetts who wrote about life, death, fear, loneliness, nature, and a withdrawal from God because she believed he couldn't be found. Much of her writing was inspired by her solitude because her father kept her from seeing the world.

William Henry Harrison

The first Whig to win the presidential office in 1840 with the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." He died shortly after he went into office, possibly due to the curse of Tecumseh. His VP John Tyler, took over the Presidency.

John Tyler

Harrison's VP and Whig Party member (former Democrat). Became President when Harrison died of a cold he caught giving his inauguration speech. Dubbed "His accidency". Was pro-annexation, but lacked support in Congress. Whigs hated him because he used to be a Democrat, and Democrats hated him for changing parties. The entire cabinet resigned in protest, save for Daniel Webster, who officiated the Webster-Ashburton treaty, the only semi-notable change brought upon by his presidency. (defined Canada-Maine border)

Moses Austin

He had convinced the Mexican government that American Settlers could provide a buffer zone between Comanches to the north and Mexicans in the South. He was a leading promoter of American Settlement in Mexico-owned Texas until he died and his son took over.

Stephen Austin

Took over for his dad and encouraged settlement of Texas by creating an Anglo-Texas "colony" on the lower Brazos and Colorado River. He wanted his community to Americanize Texas and be a thriving community of cooperating families. The Americans outnumbered Mexicans in Texas with 20,000 Anglo-Texans and 1,000 enslaved people.

Davy Crockett

Colonel Davy Crockett was a politician, frontiersman, and militia officer. Known as "King of the Wild Frontier", he represented Tennessee in the House of Representatives and fought in the Texas Revolution ("You all can go to hell-I'm going to Texas"). He died at the Alamo on March 6, 1836. While in Congress he promoted westward expansion of the frontier through Tennessee toward Texas and was opposed to Jackson's policies on Indian Removal.

Sam Houston

Commander in chief of the Texian Army. He was a US congressman, attorney and Tennesee governor. He was a drunkard, so he resigned the governorship and went to the Cherokees in the Arkansas territory where he married a cherokee woman and was adopted by their community. From their he moved to Texas, became a Mexican citizen and practice law. When Americans in Texas declared their independence from Mexico he assumed the role to lead them. He surprise attacked the Mexicans at the San Jacinto river, captured Santa Anna and Texas was independent.

Santa Anna

Mexicos General who led/directed them at the Alamo, Goliad (Battle of Coleto), and San Jacinto. They beat the Americans at Alamo and killed virtually all of them, at Coleto the Mexicans defeated the Americans again and then led them to Goliad to murder the captured soldiers. Finally, the Americans defeated the Mexicans at San Jacinto, and Santa Anna himself was captured and he had to buy his freedom. He was believed to be a tyrant and thats why many Tejanos turned against him and joined the Americans.

James K. Polk

Won the election of 1844. He wanted the Oregon territory and was willing to go to war with Great Britain for it, but the British weren't so they signed the Oregon treaty which extended the US border all the way to the Pacific coast along the 49th parallel. He also wanted to fight the Mexicans for Texas because he wanted more land for enslavers. He also claimed the land all the way down to the Rio Grande and so did the Mexicans so that started the conflict.

Zachary Taylor

He was a general and Whig in the Mexican-American War with many quick victories leading him to be named commander in the early days of war. His first big win was is Northern Mexico at Monterrey in a 5 day siege

Winfield Scott

nickname "Old fuss & feathers" (definitely in it for the uniforms - just look at him), General Winfield Scott led his armies into central Mexico, capturing Mexico City. He and his forces forced the Mexican Government to sign the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, ending the war, defining a Mexican border, and granting the states a huge amount of land west of Texas.

Stephen Kearny and John Fremont

helped win Front two: California in the Mexican American war because Fremont supported california rebels in Sonoma and Kearny captured San diego.