U.S. Expansion, Industrialization, and Social Change

Vocabulary flashcards covering the major topics of early-to-mid 19th-century American history: westward territorial expansion, transportation revolutions, Native American removal and resistance, immigration, and early industrialization.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

A foundational act passed by Congress four years before the U.S. Constitution that organized the Northwest Territory, created a process for territories to become states, sold land to pay off war debts, and explicitly outlawed slavery.

Louisiana Purchase

The purchase of territory from France under President Thomas Jefferson that doubled the size of the United States and gave the nation vast new natural resources.

Manifest Destiny

The belief, popularized during expansion and illustrated in John Gast's painting American Progress, that the United States was destined by God to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the North American continent.

Dominion

Supreme authority, sovereign rule, or ownership of a territory, people, or property.

The American System

An economic program proposed by Henry Clay designed to benefit agriculture, merchants, and industry through protective tariffs, a national bank to issue business loans, and infrastructure improvements like roads and canals funded by land sales and tariffs.

Clermont

The steamboat developed by Robert Fulton on the Hudson River that proved steam-powered transportation could travel upstream easily and quickly, transforming river trade and travel on the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers.

Erie Canal

A $\$7\text{ million}$ engineering project championed by New York Governor DeWitt Clinton that linked Lake Erie with the Mohawk and Hudson rivers, opening up trade routes to ship timber and manufactured goods into the Northwest Territory.

The National Road

A federally funded highway approved by Congress in $1806$ that by $1818$ connected Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, Virginia, across the Ohio River, and later extended into Illinois to replace muddy, stump-filled frontier tracks.

Sequoyah

A Cherokee leader who created a written language syllabary in $1821$, enabling Cherokee people to read and write and helping preserve Cherokee culture in written law and government.

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831)

A Supreme Court case ruling that Native American tribes were not independent foreign nations with standing to sue in federal court, leaving the Cherokee unable to block the state of Georgia from enforcing laws over tribal lands.

Worcester v. Georgia (1832)

A Supreme Court decision holding that individual states had no authority to enforce state laws in Native American territories because only the federal government possessed jurisdiction, a decision ignored by President Andrew Jackson.

Indian Removal Act of 1830

Legislation passed by Congress under President Andrew Jackson that authorized the exchange of ancestral lands held by approximately $100{,}000$ Native Americans east of the Mississippi River for territory in the West.

Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830)

An agreement in which the Choctaw ceded their remaining ancestral lands east of the Mississippi to the federal government in exchange for lands in the West, prompting roughly $15{,}000$ people to migrate westward between $1831$ and $1833$.

Trail of Tears

The forced relocation of Southeastern Native American nations to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), during which inadequate federal provisions of food, winter clothing, and shelter led to thousands of deaths from starvation and disease.

Second Seminole War

An armed conflict starting in $1835$ led by Chief Osceola in Florida against federal forces resisting relocation, recognized as the costliest military war fought by the United States to gain tribal lands.

Historiography

The study of how historical events are recorded and interpreted by historians over time, and how evolving social change shapes perceptions of the past.

Cession

The formal act of giving up rights, property, or territory from one sovereign entity or state to another.

Annexation

In the context of conflict, the forcible incorporation of a foreign territory into a prevailing nation's domain following military conquest or occupation.

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848)

The treaty ending the Mexican-American War in which Mexico surrendered $55\%$ of its territory ($525{,}000\text{ square miles}$) to the United States for $\$15\text{ million}$ and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas.

Mexican Cession

The vast tract of land surrendered by Mexico in $1848$ comprising present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, and portions of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

Push and Pull Factors of Irish Immigration

The forces driving approximately $2\text{ million}$ Irish to the U.S. between $1845$ and $1852$, driven by push factors like the Potato Famine and British oppression, and pull factors like industrial jobs, political liberty, and religious freedom.

Iniquity

Grossly immoral, sinful behavior or wickedness.

Vice

A habit regarded as a moral fault, defect, or weakness in a person's behavior.

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

A federal law signed by President Chester Arthur on May $6$, $1882$, that barred Chinese laborers from entering the country, representing the first time in United States history that immigration was restricted on the basis of race.

Samuel Slater

An English industrialist nicknamed 'The Traitor' who introduced British factory blueprints to America, establishing the nation's first permanent cotton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in $1789$.

Waltham-Lowell System

An integrated factory model established in $1815$ by Francis Cabot Lowell where all stages of cloth production were mechanized under one roof.

Urbanization

The demographic process where large numbers of people permanently concentrate in relatively small areas, transforming rural communities into growing cities.

Exploitation

The practice of unfairly taking advantage of a person or group due to their neediness or vulnerability to benefit economically from their labor.

Lowell Girls

Female textile mill workers in Massachusetts recruited for monthly cash wages, company boarding, and personal freedom from male control, who experienced strict boarding house codes, low pay relative to men, and eventual displacement by cheaper immigrant labor.