APUSH Unit 5 Key Terms 1844-1877

The Battle of Alamo 1836

Santa Anna troops kill all American defenders at the Alamo

Texan Annexation 1845

Texas joins U.S as a slave state

Mexican American War 1846-1848

Conflict between the United States and Mexico, resulting in significant territorial gains for the U.S.

• begins with the Texas border dispute over the annexation of Texas and the desire for California and New Mexico.

• ends with Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 1848

makes peace between U.S and Mexico, ending the Mexican American War

• U.S purchases territory

Mexican Cession 1848

territory that the U.S acquired from Mexico after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, including present-day California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

Gadsden Purchase 1853

U.S purchase territory from Mexico in order to build a railroad

Gold Rush 1849

Thousands of people move West to California in hopes to find gold & become rich

• leads to increase in population and economic development.

Compromise of 1850

Henry Clay’s deal on Californias statehood

• California becomes a free state

• Utah and New Mexico territories allowed to decide on slavery through popular sovereignty

• slave trade abolished in Washington D.C

• stricter Fugitive Slave Act

Popular Sovereignty

New states could vote on slavery

Fugitive Slave Laws

Federal agents hunt escaped slaves in the North

Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854

splits the rest of the Louisiana Purchase into 2 territories, which are Kansas and Nebraska

• killed Missouri Compromise of 1830

Wilmot Proviso

• proposal to prohibit slavery in new territories

• opponents of slavery organized the Free-Soil Party due to this

Free-Soil Party

party that opposed expansion of slavery in Western territory

Bleeding Kansas 1855-1861

a series of violent political confrontations between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas.

Caning of Charles Sumner 1856

South Carolina Congressman almost kills anti-slavery senator Charles Sumner during a speech.

Republican Party

Northern anti-slavery party that emerged in the 1850s, advocating for free soil and a stop to the expansion of slavery.

Dred Scott V. Sanford

was a landmark Supreme Court case in 1857 where the Court ruled that enslaved individuals were not citizens and could not sue for their freedom, further escalating tensions over slavery.

• Scott sued for freedom in 1847, claiming he was in free territory where slavery was illegal

Harpers Ferry 1859

John Brown attacks US military base, trying to start a slave rebellion

Secession

Southern states broke away from the Union

Confederate States of America

new pro-slavery country formed by the seceding states

Fort Sumter 1861

Confederate soldiers capture a U.S military base in South Carolina

• begins the Civil War

Union

Northern states

Confederacy

Southern states that seceded from the Union during the Civil War, forming their own government to preserve slavery and states' rights.

Anaconda Plan

Union plan to strangle Confederate economy

Battle of Gettysburg 1863

bloodiest battle in U.S history

• stopped the Confederate Invasion of the North

Battle of Vicksburg 1863

a turning point in the war, as the Union gained control of the Mississippi River

Sherman’s March to the Sea 1864

Total war on Georgia

• destroys the Southerns economy

Appomattox Courthouse 1865

site of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln

16th U.S President who led the U.S through the Civil war & issued the Emancipation Proclamation

Emancipation Proclamation 1863

Lincoln declared all slave states in the Confederacy as free, so all slaves here were declared free

13th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that abolished slavery in the United States in 1865

Reconstruction

• from 1865-1877

• effort to rebuild the South after the Civil War

Johnsons Reconstruction Plan

• returned confiscated land to former slave owners

• pardoned most confederate leaders

Black Codes

southern slave laws restrict African American rights as well as the 13th Amendment

Radical Republicans

want to punish Confederacy and want equal rights for African Americans

Freedmen’s Bureau 1865

Congress provides food, clothing, education, hospitals to former slaves and poor whites in the South. It aimed to assist in their transition to freedom and integrate them into society.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Gave citizenship & basic rights to African Americans

• overrides the Black Codes

14th Amendment

• 1866

• citizenship & equal rights to African Americans

• no state can deny rights of citizens

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Military occupation of the South to enforce new laws and protect the rights of freedmen, it divided the South into five military districts.

Johnson Impeachment 1868

House charged Johnson with violating the Tenure of Office Act

Ulysses. S. Grant

Republican President from 1869-1877

• led the Union to victory in the Civil War

carpet beggars

northerners who moved south

scalawags

poor southern whites

freedmen

former slaves

15th Amendment

• in 1870

• Voting rights for Black men

• gave the first African Americans chance to get voted into Congress

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

a white supremacist terrorist group formed in 1866

• use violence to intimidate Black voters & Southerners

Redeemers

Democrats regain control of the South

Enforcement Act 1870-1871

Sent federal troops to destroy the KKK

• nearly destroyed by 1972

Panic of 1873

economic depression that weakens Northerns support for the Reconstruction efforts in the South

• caused by a collapse of major railroad companies & land speculation bubble burst

• caused by investment “bubble”

• railroad stock & land price collapsed- triggering bank fail

• government had to raise taxes to pay for Reconstruction programs

Bargain of 1877

Republican Hayes, wins presidency only if Republicans were to move troops that were located in the South

• brings end of Reconstruction

Jim Crow Era

legalized segregation in the South

• Black people become second class citizens

• outlawed until 1964

Plessy V. Ferguson 1896

Supreme Court case that upheld segregation laws as “separate but equal”, stating that segregation didn’t violate the 14th Amendment

• overturned by Brown V. Board in 1954