APUSH Unit 4

Wilmot Proviso

An unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. The conflict over the proposal was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.

Free Soil Party

Political Party that eventually became the Republican Party; its members were for stopping the expansion of slavery. One of its better-known members was David Wilmot.

Compromise of 1850

Compromise in which California became a free state and popular sovereignty was introduced to decide what would happen with the rest of Mexican Cession.

Popular sovereignty

The principle that the leaders of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political legitimacy. Used to address slavery question in Kansas and Nebraska.

Fugitive Slave Law

Part of the Compromise of 1850, Northerners were required to send escaped slaves back to their owners in the South.

Stephen Douglas

An American politician and lawyer from Illinois. A senator, he promoted the idea of Popular Sovereignty in Kansas and Nebraska. He also was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party for president in the 1860 presidential election, which was won by Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln.

Whig Party

This party collapsed following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, with most Northern members eventually joining the antislavery Republican Party and most Southern members joining the nativist American Party and later the Constitutional Union Party.

Republican Party

Political Party that had the platform that slavery should NOT be extended any more. Lincoln was a member of this party.

Ostend Manifesto

A document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Cuba's annexation had long been a goal of U.S. slaveholding expansionists.

Gadsden Purchase

An agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, in which the United States agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854 bill that mandated "popular sovereignty," allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state's borders. It effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise.

John Brown

A prominent leader in the American abolitionist movement in the decades preceding the Civil War.

Pottawatomie Massacre 1856

The murder of five men from a pro-slavery settlement in Franklin County, Kansas by an anti-slavery party led by the abolitionist John Brown and composed largely of men of his family.

Bleeding Kansas

This Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations between 1854 and 1859 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in this proposed state.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

An anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

Case in which it was decided that blacks were not citizens and that Congress could not constitutionally decide whether or not a territory has slavery.

Roger B. Taney

An American lawyer and politician who served as the fifth chief justice of the United States, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. He most famously rendered the Dred Scott Decision.

James Buchanan

President directly before Lincoln who supported corrupt popular sovereignty and didn't do anything to prevent the Civil War.

Lecompton Controversy (Constitution) 1857

Document framed in the Territorial Capital of Kansas in 1857 by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood. It contained clauses protecting slaveholding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates 1858

Set of discussions that were completed in competition for the Illinois Senate Seat in 1858, it is considered One of the most significant and far-reaching events in U. S. history, as the debates sharpened and brought to a head a number of crucial questions concerning slavery, states' rights, the legal status of blacks, and the effects of the Dred Scott decision.

John Brown's Raid

An effort by abolitionists, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It has been called the dress rehearsal for or Tragic Prelude to the Civil War.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The 16th President of the United States, he would serve during the Civil War and was the 1st President in U.S. history to be assassinated.

Election of 1860

The South seceded after this event because it was obvious that their vote did not matter, the North was more powerful politically.

Crittenden's Proposal (Compromise) 1861

an unsuccessful proposal to permanently enshrine slavery in the United States Constitution, and thereby make it unconstitutional for future congresses to end slavery.

Fort Sumter 1861

Confederate troops fired on this federal location in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. Less than 34 hours later, Union forces surrendered. Traditionally, this event has been used to mark the beginning of the Civil War.

Anaconda Plan

Military strategy proposed by Union General Winfield Scott early in the American Civil War. The plan called for a naval blockade of the Confederate coast, a thrust down the Mississippi, and the strangulation of the South by Union land and naval forces.

civil liberties

Constitution and federal laws contain critical protections that form the foundation of our inclusive society - the right to be free from discrimination, the freedom to worship as we choose, the right to vote for our elected representatives, the protections of due process, the right to privacy. During the Civil War The federal government restricted constitutional liberties, including freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Draft riots

Support for conscription was far from universal in the North, and public resistance culminated in this event of 1863, a racially charged four-day melee in which white rioters attacked federal buildings and African American workers in the streets of New York City.

Confiscation Acts

Laws passed by the United States Congress during the Civil War with the intention of freeing the slaves still held by the Confederate forces in the South. Passed in 1861 it authorized the confiscation of any Confederate property by Union forces ("property" included slaves).

Emancipation Proclamation

Issued by President Abraham Lincoln issued on January 1, 1863, this event declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Jefferson Davis

An American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865.

Election of 1864

In the midst of the American Civil War, incumbent President Abraham Lincoln easily defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212-21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote.

Antietam 1862

This battle ended the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's first invasion into the North and led Abraham Lincoln to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Copperheads

Also known as Peace Democrats, they were a faction of Democrats in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.

Vicksburg 1863

Battle for the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River; capturing it completed the second part of the Northern strategy. The successful ending of this campaign significantly degraded the ability of the Confederacy to maintain its war effort.

Gettysburg 1863

Battle that was the turning point in the Civil War, the Union victory that ended General Robert E. Lee's second and most ambitious invasion of the North.

Sherman's March to Sea

From November 15-December 21, 1864, American Civil War campaign that concluded Union operations in the Confederate state of Georgia. After seizing Atlanta, Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman embarked on a scorched-earth campaign intended to cripple the South's war-making capacity and wound the Confederate psyche. Sherman's army marched 285 miles (458 km) east from Atlanta to the coastal town of Savannah, which surrendered without a siege. Sherman's 37-day campaign is remembered as one of the most successful examples of "total war," and its psychological effects persisted in the postbellum South.

Appomattox

Robert E. Lee would surrender to Ulysses S. Grant here, effectively ending the U.S. Civil War.

Robert E. Lee

a Confederate general during the American Civil War, toward the end of which he was appointed the overall commander of the Confederate States Army.

Effects of Civil War

It confirmed the single political entity of the United States, led to freedom for more than four million enslaved Americans, established a more powerful and centralized federal government, and laid the foundation for America's emergence as a world power in the 20th century.

Reconstruction

The period in American history that lasted from 1865 to 1877 following the American Civil War and is a significant chapter in the history of American civil rights

Lincoln's 10% Plan

Proposed by the president at the time in 1864, A reconstruction program that would allow Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their male population took loyalty oaths and the states recognized the permanent freedom of formerly enslaved people.

Radical Republicans

Group during Reconstruction that wanted the military rule over the South. They also fought for black suffrage, black citizenship, and for the redistribution of land.

Wade-Davis Bill

Congress passed this bill on July 2, 1864 to provide for the admission to representation of rebel states upon meeting certain conditions. Among the conditions was the requirement that 50 percent of white males in the state swear a loyalty oath, and the insistence that the state grant African American men the right to vote. President Lincoln, who had earlier proposed a more modest 10-percent threshold, pocket-vetoed the bill, stating he was opposed to being "inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration."

ANDREW JOHNSON

The 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Would fight with the Radical Republicans and became the 1st president ever impeached while in office.

13th Amendment

Amendment that officially abolishes slavery.

Black Codes

Passed in some southern states after the war, these restricted black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. A central element of these were vagrancy laws. States criminalized men who were out of work, or who were not working at a job whites recognized.

Freedmen's Bureau

Group designed to assist both freed slaves and poor whites in the South; this group set up schools, helped with unemployment etc.

14th Amendment

The 1868 amendment to the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War.

First Reconstruction Act

On March 2, 1867, Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto and passed the first of four statutes known as the Reconstruction Acts. These laws divided the former Confederate states (with the exception of Tennessee) into five military districts and outlined the process of readmission to the Union.

15th Amendment

Amendment that prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".

Tenure of Office Act

Andrew Johnson violated this act which led to his impeachment.

Carpetbaggers

a largely historical term used by Southerners to describe opportunistic Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War, who were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, and/or social gain.

Scalawags

Southerners during Reconstruction who cooperated with the North, favored industrial development, or were more interested in themselves than the South as a region.

Sharecropping

A type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.

ULYSSES S. GRANT

An American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As commanding general, he led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865

sound money

Also called Hard money, it refers to coins or specie

soft money (greenbacks)

refers to paper currency.

Panic of 1873

A financial crisis that triggered an economic depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 to 1877. In the United States, the Panic was known as the "Great Depression" until the events of 1929 and the early 1930s set a new standard.

Seward's Folly

The 1867 Treaty with Russia was negotiated and signed by the Secretary of State and the Russian Minister to the United States. Critics of the deal to purchase Alaska called it this name. Opposition to the purchase of Alaska subsided with the Klondike Gold Strike in 1896.

Ku Klux Klan

Group in the South that was started in order to intimidate free blacks in the South and stop them from voting.

Democratic Party

Political party that was for popular sovereignty; Douglas was a member; after the Civil War this party became the party of the white South.

Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877

This was an informal, unwritten deal, that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election between Hayes and Tilden. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.

Election of 1876

Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes faced Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. It was one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history.

New South

a slogan in the history of the American South first used after the American Civil War.

Solid South

the Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of Democrats in those states.

Redeemers

the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce White supremacy. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags".

Bourbons

represented the planters, landowners and merchants and used coercion and cash to control enough black votes to control the Democratic Party conventions and thus state government.

Jim Crow Laws

State and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. All were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures after the Reconstruction period.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Lynching

Executions often carried out by lawless mobs, though police officers did participate, under the pretext of justice. They were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South.

Zebulon Pike

an American brigadier general and explorer for whom Pikes Peak in Colorado was named.

"The Great American Desert"

the term used by the people east of the Mississippi River to express their idea of the country westward when it was an unknown land. Carey and Lee's Atlas of 1827 located this geographical form as an indefinite territory in what is now Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas

Plains Indians

Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains of North America. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.

Chinese Migration

as gold rush fever swept the U.S., Chinese immigrants—like others—were attracted to the notion of quick fortunes. By 1852, over 25,000 Chinese immigrants had arrived in the United States, and by 1880, over 300,000 Chinese people were living in the United States, most in California.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

10 year suspension of Chinese Immigration to the United States.

Homestead Act

This was passed by the government in 1860 to give free land to settlers who moved out west and worked on the land for 5 years.

Comstock Lode

a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada, which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States and named after American miner Henry Comstock

Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis

the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the settlement and colonization of the rugged American frontier was decisive in forming the culture of American democracy.

Reservations/Concentration Policy

This plan of reducing the land areas available to the Plains Indians tribes. It eventually reached the point where the government tried to force all the Plains tribes onto two small reservations - one in the Dakotas and one in Indian territory (what subsequently became Oklahoma.)

Sand Creek/Chivington Massacre

a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by the U.S. Army in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 675-man force of the Third Colorado Cavalry under the command of U.S. Volunteers Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 69 to over 600 Native American people.

Fetterman Massacre

On the bitterly cold morning of December 21, about 2,000 Natives concealed themselves along the road just north of Fort Phil Kearney. A small band made a diversionary attack on a party of woodcutters from the fort, and commandant Colonel Henry Carrington quickly ordered Colonel Fetterman to go to their aid with a company of 80 troopers. Crazy Horse and 10 decoy warriors then rode into view of the fort. When Carrington fired an artillery round at them, the decoys ran away as if frightened. The party of woodcutters made it safely back to the fort, but Colonel Fetterman and his men chased after the fleeing Crazy Horse and his decoys, just as planned. The soldiers rode straight into the ambush and were wiped out in a massive attack during which some 40,000 arrows rained down on the hapless troopers. None of them survived.

Crazy Horse

A Lakota war leader of the Oglala band in the 19th century. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by white American settlers on Native American territory and to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people.

Sitting Bull

a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies.

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer

a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Met his demise at the Battle of Little Big Horn

"Custer's Last Stand" / Battle of Little Bighorn

Fought on June 25, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, pitted federal troops led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839-76) against a band of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Tensions between the two groups had been rising since the discovery of gold on Native American lands. When a number of tribes missed a federal deadline to move to reservations, the U.S. Army, including Custer and his 7th Cavalry, was dispatched to confront them. Custer was unaware of the number of Indians fighting under the command of Sitting Bull (c.1831-90) at Little Bighorn, and his forces were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed in what became known as Custer's Last Stand.

Chief Joseph

A leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain band of Nez Perce, a Native American tribe of the interior Pacific Northwest region of the United States, in the latter half of the 19th century.

Ghost Dance

A new religious movement incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. Associated with Wovoka's prophecy of an end to white expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Indians. Practice of the dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance to assimilation under the Dawes Act.

Battle at Wounded Knee (1890)

Shortly after Sitting Bull's killing, the Sioux surrendered and were marched to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. On the morning of December 29, 1890, 500 troops of the U.S. 7th Calvary Regiment surrounded a group of Lakota Sioux where they had made camp at Wounded Knee Creek. The troops entered the camp to disarm the Lakota. During a brief scuffle between a soldier and a Lakota man who refused to surrender his weapon, the rifle fired, alarming the rest of the troops. The troops began firing on the Lakota, many of whom tried to recapture weapons or flee the assault. The attack lasted for more than an hour and left more than 300 Lakota dead; over half of those killed were women, children, and elderly tribal members, and most of the dead were unarmed.

Dawes Act

1887 act that authorized the President of the United States to subdivide Native American tribal landholdings into allotments for Native American heads of families and individuals.

Barbed Wire

played a central role in the development of the Wild West. The "Devil's Rope" transformed the plains from an expansive open range into a set of defined and enforced tracts of cattle land and farm ground, buttressing property rights and facilitating a boom in economic productivity.