APUSH Chapter 12 and 13

Manifest Destiny

• popular belief that the United

  States had a divine mission to extend its power/civilization across North America.

Railroads

• America’s largest industry. 

Required immense amounts of capital and labor and gave rise to business organizations.

Panic of 1857

• a sharp decrease in prices for Midwestern agricultural products and a sharp increase in unemployment in Northern cities

• South less effected

Great American Desert

• lands between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast before 1860

Mountain Men

• Served as the guides and pathfinders

  for settlers crossing the mountains into California and Oregon in the 1840s.

Overland Trails

• Routes that settlers used to travel west across the United States in the 1800s, usually by wagon. They were long, difficult journeys used to reach places like Oregon, California, and Utah.

Mining Frontier

• Areas in the West where large numbers of people moved to search for gold, silver, and other valuable minerals

Gold Rush

• Mass migration to California after 1848 gold discovery; boosted westward expansion and led to rapid California growth.

Silver Rush

• Rapid migration to western areas after major silver discoveries leading to boomtowns and economic growth.

Farming Frontier

• Movement of settlers west to start farms on newly available land, encouraged by cheap land and new technology.

Federal Land Grants 

• Government-given land (usually to railroads or settlers) to promote westward expansion and development.

Urban Frontier

• Western cities that arose as a result of railroads, mineral wealth, and farming attracted a number of professionals and business owners.

Oregon Territory

• Land in the northwest that Americans moved into during westward expansion, later officially gained by the U.S. in the Oregon Treaty of 1846

John Tyler

• Southern Whig who was worried about the growing influence of

  the British in Texas. 

“Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!”

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

Wilmot Proviso

• proposed that an appropriations bill be amended to forbid slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico.

Ostend Manifesto

• An 1854 secret document in which U.S. diplomats said the U.S. should buy Cuba from Spain, and take it by force if Spain refused.

Franklin Peirce

• Northern Democrat who supported Southern, pro-slavery policies

• Forced to drop Ostend Manifesto 

Texas

• In 1823, after gaining independence from Spain, Mexico encouraged American (Anglo) settlers to move into the lightly populated Texas region to help farm and develop the area.

Stephen Austin

• succeeded in bringing 300 families into Texas and thereby beginning a steady migration of American settlers into the vast frontier territory.

Sam Houston

• When Santa Anna attempted to enforce Mexico’s laws in Texas, he led a group of American settlers revolted (he wanted slavery) and declared Texas an independent republic in March 1836.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

• made himself dictator of Mexico and abolished that nation’s federal system of government.

Alamo

• Mexican army led by Santa Anna captured the town of Goliad and

  attacked the Alamo in San Antonio, killing every one of its American

  defenders.

Aroostook War

• conflict between rival groups of lumber workers on the Maine-Canadian border erupted into open fighting.

• settled by treaty

Webster-Ashburton Treaty 

• the Maine-Canadian territory was split between Maine and British Canada.

• The treaty also settled the boundary of the Minnesota territory,

Rio Grande

• A river that forms the border between Texas and Mexico.

Zachary Taylor

• A U.S. general who led troops during the Mexican-American War and won key battles.

• Mexican war hero who had never been involved in politics and took no position on slavery in the territories.

Mexican War

• A conflict between the U.S. and Mexico mainly over the border of Texas and U.S. expansion

John C. Fremont

• explorer called “The Pathfinder” who helped overthrow Mexican rule in California in 1846 and later became the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856.

Bear Flag Republic 

• California gained this name because its flag included a California grizzly bear

Winfield Scott

• prominent U.S. General known for his long career and key roles in major conflict

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

• The 1848 treaty that ended the Mexican War. Mexico gave the U.S. California and the Southwest, the Rio Grande became the Texas border, and the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million.

Mexican Cession 

• The United States took possession of the former Mexican provinces

  of California and New Mexico

Walker Expedition

• He briefly seized control of Nicaragua and declared himself president, but he was later overthrown and executed.

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty

• An agreement between the U.S. and Britain saying neither country would take exclusive control of any future canal in Central America

Gadsden Purchase

• The U.S. bought a small strip of land from Mexico, forms the southern sections of present-day New Mexico and Arizona.

Matthew C. Perry

• A U.S. naval officer who sailed to Japan, and forced Japan to open its ports to American trade

Kanagawa Treaty

• Perry pressured Japan’s government to sign this, which allowed U.S. vessels to enter two Japanese ports to take on coal

Free Soil Movement

• A political movement in the 1840s–50s that opposed the expansion of slavery into western territories.

Free Soil Party

• Northerners who opposed allowing slavery in the territories

• adopted the slogan “free soil, free labor, and free men.”

• advocated free homesteads and internal improvements such as roads and harbors.

“Conscience” Whigs

• Whigs who opposed slavery expansion

“Barnburners”

• anti-slavery Democrats whose decision to leave the party nearly caused the Democratic Party to fall apart.

“Bleeding Kansas”

• Pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers violently fought over whether Kansas would enter as a slave or free state.

Pottawatomie Creek

• John Brown and his sons attacked this proslavery farm, killing 5

Lecompton constitution 

• proslavery state constitution for Kansas submitted by the Southern legislature, rejected 

Lewis Cass

• Michigan senator who introduced popular sovereignty

Popular sovereignty

• The people settled in a territory get to decide if it’s a free or slave state.

Henry Clay

• Wrote the plan for the Compromise of 1850.

Millard Fillmore

• Sucesor or President Taylor who signed the Compromise of 1850

Stephen A. Douglas

• proposed building a transcontinental railroad through the center of the country

Compromise of 1850

• California enters free

• Popular sovereignty in Utah & New Mexico

• Fugitive Slave Law strengthened

• Slave trade banned in D.C.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

• a bill to divide the Nebraska Territory into two parts, the Kansas and Nebraska territories, and allow settlers in each territory to decide whether to allow slavery

Crittenden Compromise

• Proposed amendment that would guarantee the right to hold slaves in all territories south of the old Missouri Compromise line

Franklin Pierce

• Democrat nominated, A Northerner who was acceptable to Southern Democrats because he supported the Fugitive Slave Law.

Know-Nothing Party

• Those who were frightened about immigration joined

• Nativist party that opposed immigration

Republican Party

• A party founded in Wisconsin in 1854 as a reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

James Buchanan

• Democrat nominated presidential candidate in The Election of 1856

• Winner 

Election of 1860

• Lincoln wins → South sees it as a threat to slavery → several states secede the Union. 

Secession

• Southern states leaving the Union and forming the Confederacy.

Fugitive Slave Law

• Required all citizens to help catch escaped enslaved people; punished anyone who helped them.

Underground Railroad

• a loose network of activists who helped enslaved people escape to freedom in the North or Canada

Harriet Tubman

• a woman who had escaped slavery. She made at least 19 trips into the South to help some 300 people escape.

Roger Taney

• Southern Democrat Chief Justice 

Dred Scott v. Sandford

• Against Scott

• Said…

  • Enslaved people are not citizens

  • Slaves are property

  • Congress can’t ban slavery in territories

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

• Series of debates in 1858 about slavery’s expansion; made Lincoln nationally famous.

Abraham Lincoln

• successful trial lawyer and former member of the Illinois legislature

“House-divided” speech

• Lincoln Speech, said the nation couldn’t survive permanently half slave and half free.

Freeport Doctrine

• Douglas responded that slavery could not exist in a community if the local citizens did not pass laws maintaining it.

Sumner-Brooks incident

• Senator Sumner was beaten with a cane by Congressman Brooks after giving an anti-slavery speech.

John Brown

• A radical abolitionist willing to use violence to end slavery

Raid at Harpers Ferry

• Brown led a small band of followers to attack the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry

• Planned to take guns from the arsenal 

• Federal troops caught him 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• novel about the conflict between an enslaved man, Tom, and the brutal White slave owner, Simon Legree.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Southerners hated the book.

Hinton R. Helper

• Southern writer who argued slavery hurt the South’s economy, especially poor whites.

Impending Crisis of the South

• Helper’s book showing statistics to prove slavery was economically damaging.

Sociology of the South

• A pro-slavery book by George Fitzhugh arguing slavery was good for enslaved people.