APUSH Period 5 Vocab A&B

Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny

The phrase ______ expressed the popular belief that the United States had a divine mission to extend its power and civilization across the breadth of North America. Enthusiasm for expansion reached a fever pitch in the 1840s. It was driven by a number of forces: Nationalism, popular increase, rapic economic development, technologival advaces, and reform ideals. But not all Americans united behind expansionism. Critics argued vehemently that at the root of the expansionist drive was the ambition to spread slavery into western lands.

Sam Houston

A change in Mexico’s government intensified conflict. In 1834, General Santa Anna made himself the dictator of Mexico and abolished that nation’s federal system of government. When Santa Anna attempted to enforce Mexico’s laws in Texas, a group of American settlers led by _______ revolted and declared Texas an independent republic in 1836.

The Alamo

A Mexican army led by Santa Anna captured the town of Goliad and attacked _____ in San Antonio, killing every one of its American defenders.

Election of 1844

The possibility of annexing Texas and allowing the expansion of slavery split the Democratic Party in 1844. The party’s Northern wing opposed immediate annexation and wanted to nominate former president Martin Van Buren to run again. Southern Whigs who were pro slavery and pro-annexation rallied behind former vice president John C. Calhoun of South Carolina as a candidate.

James K. Polk

After hours of debate, the Democrates finally nominated a dark horse (lesser-known) candidate, They chose _____ of Tennessee, a protege of Andrew Jackson, who was firmly committed to Manifest Destiny. Polk favored annexation of Texas, the acquisition of California, and the “reoccupation” of Oregon Territory all the way to the border with Russian Alaska at Latitude 54 degrees 40’.

“Fifty-four Forty or Fight!”

The Democratic slogan of ______ appealed strongly to American Westerners and Southerners who were in an expansionist mood.

General Zachary Taylor

Polk ordered ______ to move his army toward the Rio Grande, across territory claimed by Mexico.

John C. Fremont

Most of the Mexican-American war was fought in Mexican territory by small armies of Americans. Leading a force that never exceeded 1500, General Stephen Kearney succeeded in taking the New Mexico territory and southern California. Backed by only several dozen soldiers, a few navy officers and American civilians who had recently settled in northern California, _____ quickly overthrew Mexican rule in the region in June 1846. He proclaimed Califorina to be an independent republic.

Mexican Cession/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The _____ negotiated by diplomat Nicholas Trist with Mexico consisted of terms favorable to the United States.

• Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas.

• The United States took possession of the former Mexican provinces of California and New Mexico- the ___________. For these territories, the United States paid $15 million and assumed responsibility for any claims of American citizens against Mexico. 

Wilmot Proviso

The issue of slavery made the U.S. entry into a war with Mexico contriversial. In 1846, Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot proposed an appropriations bill be amended to forbid slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. This prohibition appealed to many voters and lawmakers who wanted to preserve the land for White settlers and protect them from having to compete with enslaved labor. The _______, as it was called, passed the House, where the populous Northern states had greater power, twice. Both times, it was defeated by the Senate, where Southern states had greater influence. 

Ostend Manifesto

 Several Southern adventurers led small expeditions to Cuba in an effort to take the island by force. These forays, however, were easily defeated, and those who participated were executed by Spanish firing squads. Elected to the presidency in 1852, Franklin Pierce adopted pro-southern policies and dispatched three American diplomats to Ostend, Belgium, where they secretly negotiated to buy Cuba from Spain. The agreement that the diplomats drew up was called the __________, was leaked to the press in the U.S. Antislavery members of Congress reacted angrily and forced President Pierce to drop the scheme.

Gadsden Purchase

 Although he failed to aquire Cuba, President Pierce succeeded in purchasing a small strip of land from Mexico in 1853 for $10 million. Though the land was semidesert, it lay on the best route for a railroad through the region. Known as the _________, it forms the southern section of present-day New Mexico and Arizona.

Free-Soil Party

In 1848, Northerners who opposed allowing slavery in the territories organized the _______, which adopted the slogan “free soil, free labor and free men”. In addition to its chief objective-preventing the extension of slavery- the new party advocated free homesteads (public land grants to small farmers) and internal improvements such as roads and harbors. 

popular sovereignty

A Democratic senator from Michigan Lewis Cass proposed a compromise solution that soon won considerable support from moderates across the country. Instead of Congress determining whether to allow slavery in a new Western territory or state, Cass suggested that the matter be determined by a vote of the people who settled a territory. Cass’s approach to the problem was known as squatter sovereignty or ____________ 

Compromise of 1850

The passage of the___________ bought time for the Union. because California was admitted as a free state, the compromise added to the North's political power. The political debate deepened in the commitment of  many Northerners to saving the union from secession.Parts of the Compromise became sources of controversy, especially the Fugitive Slave Law and the provision for popular sovereignty.

nativists/nativism

Many native-born Americans were alarmed by the influx of immigrants, Fearing that the newcomers would take their jobs and dilute the culture of the Anglo majority. These ethnic tensions were closely tied to religion. Most of the Native-born opponents of immigration were Protestants and most of the Irish and many of the German immigrants were Roman Catholics. In the 1840s hostility of these immigrants, known as ________, led to sporadic rioting in the big cities.

Fugitive Slave Law (1850)

The passage of a strict ________ in 1850 Persuaded many Southerners to accept that California would be a free state. However, many Northerners bitterly resented the law. The law’s purpose was to help owners track down Runaway (Fugitive)  enslaved people who had escaped to a Northern State, capture them, and return them to their Southern owners. The law removed Fugitive Slave cases from state courts and made them the executive jurisdiction of the federal government. It also authorized special U.S.  Commissioners to issue warrants to arrest fugitives. A captured person who claimed to be free and not someone who had just escaped slavery was denied the right of trial by jury. State  and local law enforcement officials were required to help enforce the Federal law.

Underground Railroad

The _______  was a loose network of activists  who helped enslaved people escape to freedom in the North or Canada. Most of the “conductors” and those operating the “stations” were free African Americans and people who had escaped slavery themselves with the assistance of white abolitionists.

Harriet Tubman

The most famous conductor was ____________, a woman who hadescaped slavery. She made at least 19 trips into the South and helped some 300 people escape.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin/Harriet Beecher Stowe

The publication of __________ In 1852 by the northern writer _______________ moved a generation of Northerners and many Europeans  to regard all slave owners as cruel and inhumane. Southerners condemned the “untruths" in the novel and looked upon  it as one more proof of the North’s incurable prejudice against the southern way of life.

Impending Crisis of the South

Appearing in 1857, Hinton R Helper's nonfiction book,______________, attacked  slavery from another angle. The author, a native of North Carolina,  used statistics to demonstrate to fellow Southerners that slavery weakened the South’s economy.  Southern States quickly banned the book, but it was widely distributed in the north by anti-slavery and Free Soil leaders.

“positive good argument”

The___________ is the idea that slavery was not, actually a "necessary evil," as Jefferson would describe it, but "a good-a positive good" institution for both blacks and whites in that whites get cheap manual labor and blacks benefit from the civilizing effect of being under the guidance of benevolent whites, and exposure to Christianity (John C. Calhoun's response)

George Fitzhugh

___________, The best known for slavery author, questioned the principle of equal rights for “unequal men”  and attacked the wage system as worse than slavery. Among His works were Sociology for the South  (1854) and Cannibals All! (1857).

Chief Justice Roger Taney

________ was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1836-1864, he overturned Marshall's strict emphasis on contract rights, ruling in favor of community interest in the famous Charles River Bridge case in 1837.

Lincoln-Douglas debates

________(1858) was a series of seven debates. The two argued the important issues of the day, like popular sovereignty, the Lecompton Constitution, and the Dred Scott decision. Douglas won these debates, but Lincoln's position in these debates helped him beat Douglas in the 1860 presidential election.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Congressional folly and presidential ineptitude contributed to the sectional crisis of the 1850s. Then the Supreme Court worsened the crisis when it infuriated many Northerners when a man named Dred Scott was held in slavery in Missouri and then taken to the free territory of Wisconsin, where he lived for 2 years before returning to Missouri. arguing that his residence on Free Soil made him a free citizen, Scott  issued for his freedom in Missouri in 1846. The case worked its way through the court system. A majority of the Court decided against Scott and gave the following reasons:

 

Dred Scott had no right to sue in a federal court because the farmers of the Constitution did not intend African Americans to be US citizens.

 

The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it excluded slavery from Wisconsin and other Northern Territories.

 

Congress did not have the power to deprive any person of property without due process of law. If slaves were a form of property, then Congress could not exclude slavery from any federal territory.

James Buchanan

As the one major national party, the Democrats expected to win the election of 1856. They nominated _______  of Pennsylvania, rejecting President Pierce and Stephen Douglas because they were too closely identified with the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Republican Party

Former Whigs who opposed slavery expansion formed the core of a new party. The _______ was founded in Wisconsin in 1854 as a reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. composed of free-soilers and anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats, its purpose was to oppose the spread of slavery in the territories, not to answer itself.

Sumner-Brooks incident

In 1856, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner attacked the Democratic Administration in a vitriolic speech, “The crime against Kansas.”  His remarks included personal charges against South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. Butler's nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks, defended his uncle’s honor by walking into the Senate chamber and beating Sumner over the head repeatedly with the cane. The action by Brooks outraged the North,  and the House voted to censure him while Southerners applauded the deed. The ____________ was another sign of growing passions on both sides. 

John Brown/Pottawatomie Creek

In 1856, pro-slavery forces attacked the Free Soil town of Lawrence, killing two and destroying homes and businesses. Two days later, ______, a stern abolitionist, retaliated. He and his sons attacked a personal reform settlement at __________, killing five.

“Bleeding Kansas”

Stephen Douglas, the Kansas-Nebraska sponsor, expected the slavery issue in the territory to be settled peacefully by the anti-slavery Farmers from the Midwest who migrated to Kansas constituted a majority. Slaveholders from neighboring Missouri also set up homesteads in Kansas as a means of winning control over the South. Northern abolitionists and free soilers responded by organizing the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which paid for the transportation of anti-slavery settlers to Kansas. Fighting broke out between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups, and the territory became known as _____________.

Stephen A. Douglas

_________ was a democratic senator from Illinois, a presidential candidate against Lincoln in 1858, one of the minds behind the Compromise of 1850, popular sovereignty, and the sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

The _______, in effect, repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had lessened regional tensions for more than three decades. After 1854, the conflicts between anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces exploded, both in Kansas and on the floor of the United States Senate.

Election of 1860

Election where slavery was the central issue, Abraham Lincoln (Republican) won over John Breckinridge (Democrat) and John Bell (Constitutional Union Party). Lincoln won 40% of the popular vote but won a large majority of electoral votes. Lincoln's victory led the South to secede.

John Brown/Raid at Harpers Ferry

__________Confirmed the South's worst fear of radical abolitionism when he tried to start an uprising of enslaved people in Virginia. In October 1859, he led a small band of followers, including his four sons and some formerly enslaved people, to attack the federal arsenal of Harpers Ferry. His impractical plan was to use guns from the Arsenal to arm Virginia's enslaved African Americans, whom he expected to rise up and revolt. Federal troops under the command of Robert E. Lee captured Brown and his band after a two-day siege. Brown and six of his followers were tried for treason by the state of Virginia. At the trial, Brown spoke with simple eloquence of his humanitarian motives in wanting to free enslaved people. However, he was convicted and hanged. Brown's raid divided Northerners. 

Crittenden Compromise

In a last-ditch effort to appease the South, Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky proposed a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to hold slaves in all territories south of the old Missouri compromise, 36°, 30’. Lincoln, however, said that he couldn't accept this compromise because it violated the Republican position against the extension of slavery into the territories. Southern whites who voted for secession believed they were acting in the tradition of the Revolution of 1776. They argued that they had a right to national independence and to dissolve a constitutional compact that no longer protected them from “ tyranny” of Northern rule.

Border States

keeping the  ________ (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia.) The union was a military and political goal for Lincoln. Their loss would increase the Confederate population by 50% and weaken the North's strategic position. partly to avoid alienating unionists in the _______, Lincoln rejected initial calls for the emancipation of slaves.

Deep (Lower) South

expanding agricultural regions in new states of the Southwest. SC, Georgia, Florida, Alamaba Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas

Upper (Middle) South

Before South Carolina attacked Fort Sumter, only seven states of the Deep South had seceded. After it was clear that Lincoln would use troops to defend the union, four states of the ________ Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas- seceded and joined the Confederacy.

Fort Sumter

 Despite the president's message of conciliation,  the danger of a war was acute. Critical was the status of federal forts in states that had seceded. ________, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was cut off by southern control of the harbor. Rather than either giving up _______ or attempting to defend it, Lincoln announced that he was sending provisions of food to the small Federal Garrison. He thus gave South Carolina the choice of either permitting the fort to hold out or opening fire.  Carolina's guns thundered, and on April 12th, 1861, the war began. the attack on ______ and its capture after 2 days of pounding the United and most Northerners behind a patriotic fight to save the Union.