APUSH Ch. 12 Terms

Sir Walter Scott

Scottish historical novelist whose romantic works (like Ivanhoe) heavily influenced American writers, particularly in the South

James Fenimore Cooper

American novelist who wrote frontier romances including The Last of the Mohicans, creating the archetype of the American frontier hero

Walt Whitman

Poet who celebrated American democracy and individualism in Leaves of Grass, using free verse and bold imagery

Edgar Allan Poe

Master of Gothic horror and detective fiction; wrote "The Raven," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and invented the modern detective story

Herman Melville

Author of Moby-Dick, exploring themes of obsession, fate, and humanity's relationship with nature

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Writer who explored Puritan legacy and moral complexity in works like The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Physician, poet, and essayist known for "Old Ironsides" and essays in The Atlantic Monthly

Transcendentalists

Philosophical movement emphasizing individual intuition, nature's divinity, self-Reliance" and "Nature," promoting individualism and spiritual independence

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Leading transcendentalist philosopher and essayist who wrote "Self-Reliance" and "Nature," promoting individualism and spiritual independence

Henry David Thoreau

Transcendentalist writer and philosopher who lived at Walden Pond; wrote Walden and "Civil Disobedience," advocating simple living and resistance to unjust government

Brook Farm

Utopian transcendentalist community (1841-1847) in Massachusetts where intellectuals attempted communal living based on shared labor and education

Charles Fourier

French socialist whose theories inspired American utopian communities (phalanxes) based on cooperative labor and passion

Robert Owen

Welsh industrialist who founded New Harmony, Indiana (1825), a utopian community promoting cooperative living and education reform

Oneida Perfectionists

Religious communal society in New York (1848-1881) practicing complex marriage, shared property, and perfectionist Christianity under John Humphrey Noyes

Shakers

Religious sect practicing celibacy, communal living, ecstatic worship, gender equality, and known for simple, elegant furniture design

Joseph Smith

Founded the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) in 1830 after claiming to receive golden plates containing the Book of Mormon

Brigham Young

Mormon leader who led followers to Utah after Smith's death, establishing Salt Lake City and Mormon settlements in the West

Charles Grandison Finney

Revivalist preacher during the Second Great Awakening who promoted emotional conversion experiences and linked religion to social reform

Temperance

Reform movement advocating reduction or elimination of alcohol consumption, viewing drinking as a sin and social problem

Washington Temperance Society

Organization (1840) of reformed drunkards who used personal testimonies to promote abstinence through moral suasion

American Society for the Promotion of Temperance

Founded 1826, used churches and moral arguments to combat alcohol abuse; became major reform organization

Phrenology

Pseudoscience claiming personality and mental traits could be determined by measuring skull shape; popular in reform circles

Horace Mann

"Father of American public education" who championed free, universal public schooling and teacher training as Massachusetts education secretary

Benevolent Empire

Network of interdenominational reform societies (1810s-1830s) addressing social problems like poverty, vice, and ignorance through Christian charity. Believed it was government’s duty to care for citizenry.

Asylum Movement

Reform effort to create humane institutions for the mentally ill, replacing punishment with treatment; led by Dorothea Dix

American Colonization Society

Organization (1816) promoting gradual emancipation and resettlement of freed blacks to Africa (Liberia); opposed by most abolitionists

William Lloyd Garrison

Radical abolitionist who published The Liberator, demanding immediate emancipation and equal rights; burned Constitution as pro-slavery

David Walker

Free black abolitionist whose Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) urged enslaved people to violently resist slavery

Frederick Douglass

Escaped slave who became powerful abolitionist orator, writer, and editor of North Star; wrote influential autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass“

Amistad Case

Supreme Court case (1841) where African captives who seized slave ship won freedom; defended by John Quincy Adams

Prigg v. Pennsylvania

Supreme Court case (1842) ruling that states couldn't be forced to enforce Fugitive Slave Act, though federal law remained valid

Liberty Party

First antislavery political party (1840), advocating abolition through political action rather than moral persuasion alone

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 antislavery novel that dramatized slavery's horrors and galvanized Northern opposition

Hudson River School

First American art movement (1825-1870s) featuring romantic landscape paintings of the Hudson River Valley and American wilderness by artists like Thomas Cole and Frederic Church.

Seneca Falls

Site of first women's rights convention (1848) organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions

Document from Seneca Falls Convention modeled on Declaration of Independence, demanding women's equality and suffrage

Bloomer Costume

Dress reform advocated by Amelia Bloomer featuring loose trousers under a short skirt; challenged restrictive women's fashion

Resistance to Civil Government

Also known as "Civil Disobedience" is Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay arguing that individuals have a moral duty to refuse cooperation with an unjust government, written primarily in protest of slavery and the Mexican-American War.