Nineteenth-Century American Reform Movements and Sectional Conflict

Vocabulary terms covering antebellum reform movements, abolitionism, the Texas Revolution, the Mexican-American War, and the legislative crises over the expansion of slavery.

American Society for the Promotion of Temperance

An organization founded in 1826 by Boston ministers to publish literature, sponsor lectures, and encourage people to take a pledge against drinking alcohol.

American Temperance Union (ATU)

A national organization established in 1833 that campaigned against alcohol consumption, passing a resolution in 1836 demanding total abstinence from alcohol.

Declaration of Sentiments

An 1848 document drafted at the Seneca Falls Convention and modeled on the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming that all men and women are created equal and condemning laws that subordinate women.

Susan B. Anthony

An unmarried activist involved in the temperance and abolition movements who allied with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 1850s to advocate full-time for women's rights and post-Civil War suffrage.

Gradualists

Opponents of slavery, including Abraham Lincoln, who sought to prevent its expansion westward with the expectation that it would eventually die out where it already existed.

Immediatists

Abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison who rejected gradual emancipation and demanded an instant, uncompromising end to slavery everywhere, regarding it as a sin.

The Liberator

An abolitionist newspaper established in Boston in 1831 by William Lloyd Garrison, whose initial circulation relied on free black subscribers for 450 of its first 500 subscriptions.

American Anti-Slavery Society

An abolitionist society established in 1833 by evangelicals, Quakers, and free blacks that declared slaveholding a heinous crime before God, expanding to 160,000 members by 1840.

Oberlin College

An institution of higher learning in Ohio that in 1835 became the first college to admit black students, led by anti-slavery faculty funded by Arthur and Lewis Tappan.

Walker's Appeal

An 1829 pamphlet written by David Walker, a free black Boston merchant, that denounced Christian justifications for slavery and urged enslaved individuals to take up arms for their liberty.

Grimke Sisters

Sarah and Angelina Grimke, daughters of a South Carolina slaveowner who moved north, joined the Quakers, and toured Northern states lecturing mixed audiences on abolition and women's equality.

American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society

A breakaway organization formed in 1840 by Arthur and Lewis Tappan and other abolitionists who opposed allowing women equal voting and speaking roles in the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

The 1845 autobiography of Frederick Douglass that brought him international prominence and caused him to tour Europe for two years before purchasing his legal freedom.

Underground Railroad

A clandestine network of paths and safe houses maintained by black and white abolitionists to guide escaping slaves north to free states and Canada.

Harriet Tubman

An escaped slave from Maryland who served as an Underground Railroad conductor, returning south 19 times to rescue 300 slaves, and later worked as a Union scout and spy.

Elijah P. Lovejoy

An abolitionist newspaper editor in Alton, Illinois, whose printing presses were repeatedly wrecked by pro-slavery mobs before he was shot and killed while defending his office in 1837.

Positive Good Theory

A pro-slavery doctrine promoted by John C. Calhoun asserting that bondage benefited enslaved Africans by civilizing them and was necessary to maintain white supremacy.

Manifest Destiny

A term introduced in 1845 by editor John L. O'Sullivan expressing the conviction that providence ordained the United States to expand its territorial boundaries, capitalism, and Christianity across the continent.

Stephen F. Austin

A land developer who made an agreement with Mexican authorities to settle thousands of Americans in Texas to create a buffer zone against Comanche tribes.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana

The president and general of Mexico who suspended congress, took dictatorial powers, and ordered the expulsion and execution of rebel Texians at the Alamo and Goliad.

Battle of San Jacinto

An April 21, 1836 engagement lasting 18 minutes in which Sam Houston's Texian forces defeated the Mexican army and captured General Santa Ana to secure Texas independence.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The February 2, 1848 treaty ending the Mexican-American War, under which Mexico ceded 500,000 square miles of northern territory to the United States and recognized the Rio Grande boundary.

Wilmot Proviso

An 1846 amendment proposed by a Pennsylvania congressman to prohibit slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War.

Popular Sovereignty

A doctrine proposed by Senator Lewis Cass allowing the voting residents of a federal territory to decide for themselves whether to enter the Union as a free or slave state.

Compromise of 1850

A collection of five legislative measures formulated by Henry Clay that admitted California as a free state, applied popular sovereignty to New Mexico and Utah, resolved Texas boundaries, banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and enacted a stricter Fugitive Slave Act.

Fugitive Slave Act

A provision of the Compromise of 1850 placing the apprehension and return of escaped slaves under federal jurisdiction and obligating Northern authorities to return runaways to the South.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

An 1854 bill drafted by Stephen A. Douglas that organized the Kansas and Nebraska territories under popular sovereignty and repealed the Missouri Compromise boundary line of $36^\circ 30'$.