APUSH Unit 5 Test

James K. Polk

James K. Polk

Democrats choose him for election of 1844, “Young Hickory”

• (Dark Horse)

• Polk wins

Goals:

• Lower tariff (he’s a Dem!)

• Get California (harbors for trade)

• Independent treasury (no bank!)

• Settle Oregon issue (expansion makes anti-slavery backers uncomfortable)

Manifest Destiny

Americans believed themselves to have a God-given right to possess a nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean

• Fueled the continued American expansion westward

• Biggest issue during Election of 1844

“54’50 or fight”

US and England disagree on Oregon boundary

• War?

Treaty of Guad-Hidalgo

US gets Mexican Cession and land to Oregon

• 1848

• US pays $15 million

• Rio Grande border

Wilmot Proviso

No slavery in any territory gained from Mexico

• Never passes :(

Free Soil Party

• No slavery in the territories

• Support Wilmot Proviso

• Not necessarily abolitionists

• Internal improvement

• Free homesteads

Walt Whitman

Collection of poems

• Leaves of Grass

James Fennimore Cooper

Conflict between nature and process

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Self-reliance

• Nonconformity

Popular Sovereignty

The people of a territory may decide for themselves if they want slavery (voting)

• Stephen Douglas

Compromise of 1850

Response to the Mexican War

• An attempt to keep a lid on the slavery issue

• California wants to enter the Union as a free state

North benefits:

• California admitted as a free state

• Disputed territory between NM and TX goes to NM

• No more slave trade in DC

South Benefits:

• NM and UT would have no restrictions on slavery (use popular sovereignty)

• US pays off the debt

• Stronger fugitive slave law **(**By far the most controversial part of the compromise)

Fugitive Slave Law

By far the most controversial part of the compromise of 1850

• Penalties for helping escaped slaves

• No trial by jury for slaves, slaves could not testify for themselves, and judges get more $$ if they send a slave back south

William Seward

Only one believed in “higher law” (bible)

Franklin Pierce

• Elected pres. in 1852

• Democrat (seems southern but is northern)

• End of the Whigs as a party

• Pierce sends naval fleet around the world

Ostend Manifesto

Secret plot to take Cuba

• Gadsden Purchase

  • $10 million to Mexico

  • Railroad from the South to CA

  • (slavery and expansion)

Stephen Douglas

• “Little Giant”

• Gets the Compromise of 1850 through congress

• Wanted the railroad to for through Nebraska

• Kan-Neb Act makes him lose support in the North (will cost him a chance at the presidency)

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Popular sovereignty would be used to decide Kan-Neb

• Would overturn Missouri Compromise

• Passes but North is angry

Impact:

• Douglas loses support in the North (will cost him a chance at the presidency)

• ESL dead in the North

• Democrat party split (after 1856 will not have a pres. for 28 years)

• Republican Party (GOP) is born

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe (the Beechers were a famous abolitionist family)

• Written in response to the Fugitive Slave Law (more opposition to slave law)

Awakened the North to the evils of slavery

• Splitting of families

• Translated, made into a play, a hit in England

• The South retaliates to UTC

• Numerous “Anti-Tom” books written to support slavery

Lincoln: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book…

Election of 1856

• Dems- James Buchanan

• GOP (Republicans)- John C. Fremont

• Know-Nothings- Fillmore

Republican Party

(GOP)

• No extension of slavery in the territories (like FS party)

• Repeal Kan-Neb Act

• Repeal FSL

John Brown

• An abolitionist

• Hacks up several pro-slavery supporters

• Bloodshed

Bleeding Kansas

Sovereignty, supporters from both sides (pro-slavery and anti-slavery) pour into Kansas to vote

• Kansas will pass the Lecompton Constitution

  • Pro-slavery

James Buchanan

• Does not feel the South has a right to secede

  • Also, no right to force them to stay (constitution)

• Won Election of 1856

• A weak leader that had limited ability to preserve the Union

• Often blamed for his inaction as Southern states began to secede from the Union, limited in his actions by his strict constitutionalist views

• A supporter of slavery and strongly opposed the abolitionist movement embodied by the Republican Party

Dred Scott

A slave who was brought to northern states; sues for his freedom

• Supreme Court ruling given by Chief Justice Roger Taney

  • A slave is not a citizen and cannot sue

  • Slaves were property so they could be taken anywhere (5th amend. -property rights)

  • Missouri Compromise unconstitutional

• Congress has no power to ban slavery in the territories (south cheers, popular sovereignty people hate it, ruling allows slavery in the territories)

Election of 1860

As important as any US election; Democrats are still split

• Northern Dems:

  • Stephen Douglas (IL)

  • Popular sovereignty

  • Leave FSL alone

• Southern Dems:

  • John C. Breckinridge (KY)

  • Extension of slavery

  • Annex Cuba

• Constitutional Union Party

  • John Bell (TN)

  • Keep the Union together

• Republicans (GOP)

  • Abraham Lincoln (IL)

  • No extension of slavery

  • Railroad in the west

Abraham Lincoln

• Lincoln is not on the ballot in the South (Election of 1860)

  • South threaten to secede if Lincoln is elected

• Lincoln wins but is a minority president

  • FL, AL, SC, TX, MS, LA, and GA secede

Compromise of 1877

Democrats allowed Hayes to be president in return for the removal of all federal troops from the south

Turner Thesis

Frontier

Liberty Party

Anti-slavery

Know-Nothing Party

Former Whigs that developed in response to the rising Immigration from Ireland and Germany

• Nativist

• Especially anti-Catholic