Unit 5 Flashcards :General Overview

Causes of Westward Expansion

• Manifest Destiny: belief that U.S. was destined to expand across North America.

• Texas Annexation (1845): sparked tensions with Mexico.

• Oregon Trail: settlers moved westward; "54°40' or Fight!" over Oregon border.

• California Gold Rush (1848): influx of settlers; intensified sectional debates over slavery in new territories.

Mexican-American War (1846–1848)

• Causes: U.S. annexation of Texas, border disputes.

• Events: U.S. forces occupied Mexican territories.

• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: U.S. gained Mexican Cession (California, Arizona, etc.).

• Consequences: exacerbated sectional tensions over slavery in new territories.

Wilmot Proviso (1846)

• Proposal to ban slavery in Mexican Cession territories.

• Failed to pass; highlighted growing sectional divide.

Compromise of 1850

• Admitted California as a free state.

• Fugitive Slave Act enforced stricter rules.

• Popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico.

• Slave trade banned in D.C., but slavery remained legal.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

• Repealed Missouri Compromise (1820).

• Established popular sovereignty for Kansas and Nebraska.

• Led to "Bleeding Kansas" as pro- and anti-slavery forces clashed.

Dred Scott Decision (1857)

• Supreme Court ruled African Americans were not citizens.

• Declared Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.

• Inflamed tensions between North and South.

Rise of the Republican Party

• Formed in response to Kansas-Nebraska Act.

• Platform: opposed expansion of slavery.

• Abraham Lincoln emerged as a key leader.

Election of 1860

• Abraham Lincoln won without Southern support.

• Prompted Southern states to secede, beginning with South Carolina.

• Led to the formation of the Confederate States of America.

Civil War (1861–1865) Causes

• Slavery and sectionalism.

• States' rights vs. federal authority.

• Economic differences: industrial North vs. agrarian South.

• Election of Abraham Lincoln as a catalyst.

Major Battles of the Civil War

Fort Sumter (1861): first shots fired.

Antietam (1862): bloodiest single-day battle; led to Emancipation Proclamation.

Gettysburg (1863): turning point; Union victory.

Appomattox Court House (1865): Lee surrendered to Grant.

Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

• Declared freedom for slaves in Confederate states.

• Did not apply to border states.

• Shifted war aims to include ending slavery.

Reconstruction (1865–1877) Overview

• Presidential Reconstruction: lenient policies under Lincoln and Johnson.

• Radical Reconstruction: stricter policies; included military occupation of the South.

• Aimed to rebuild the South and integrate freedmen.

13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

• 13th: Abolished slavery.

• 14th: Granted citizenship and equal protection under the law.

• 15th: Voting rights for African American men.

Freedmen's Bureau (1865)

• Provided education, food, and support for former slaves and poor whites.

• Faced opposition from Southern whites

Black Codes and Sharecropping

• Black Codes: laws restricting African Americans' freedoms.

• Sharecropping: economic system trapping freedmen in cycles of debt and poverty.

Ku Klux Klan

• White supremacist group that terrorized African Americans and Republicans.

• Aimed to suppress African American voting and maintain white dominance.

End of Reconstruction (1877)

• Compromise of 1877: Rutherford B. Hayes became president; federal troops withdrawn from South.

• Led to rise of Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement of African Americans.