APUSH Flashcards Period 5 Vocab

Nativism

a policy of favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants.

Fugitive Slave Act

part of the Compromise of 1850 that required that slaves be returned to their owners, even if they were in a free state.

Underground Railroad

used by freedom seekers from slavery in the United States and was generally an organized network of secret routes and safe houses.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe.Published in 1852, it depicted the harsh realities of slavery and galvanized abolitionist sentiment in the United States.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

an American author and abolitionist who came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans.

Sectionalism

the expression of loyalty or support for a particular region of one's country, rather than to the country as a whole.

Stephen Douglas

an American politician and lawyer from Illinois; a U.S. Senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party to run for president in the 1860 presidential election.

Popular sovereignty

the doctrine stating that the sovereign people of a territory should themselves determine the status of slavery within that territory.

Kansas Nebraska Act

repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty.

“Bleeding Kansas”

between roughly 1855 and 1859, Kansans engaged in a violent guerrilla war between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces.

Sumner-Brooks incident

representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked Sumner at his desk in the Senate Chamber, beating him with a heavy walking stick until the senator was left bleeding and unconscious on the Chamber floor.

Republican Party

founded in the Northern United States by forces opposed to the expansion of slavery,

Lecompton Constitution

a document framed in Lecompton, the Territorial Capital of Kansas, in 1857 by Southern pro-slavery advocates of Kansas statehood.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens.

Abraham Lincoln

became the United States' 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

 a series of formal political debates between the challenger, Abraham Lincoln, and the incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas.

John Brown

a Northern abolitionist who moved about the country supporting anti slavery causes.

Harper’s Ferry

The Harper's Ferry raid was an 1859 assault by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown on the federal armory in the small town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Crittenden Compromise

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

Constitutional Union Party

a U.S. political party that sought in the pre-civil War election of 1860 to rally support for the Union and the Constitution without regard to sectional issues. 

Secession

the withdrawal of eleven southern states from the Union in 1860, leading to the Civil War.

Border states

slave states that bordered the free states during the United States Civil War.

Manifest Destiny

 the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.

Stephen Austin

the leader of the first wave of U.S. settlers accepted into the Mexican controlled territory

Sam Houston

United States politician and military leader who fought to gain independence for Texas from Mexico and to make it a part of the United States (1793

James K. Polk

the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849 and a protégé of Andrew Jackson and a member of the Democratic Party.

“Fifty Four Forty or Fight”

the United States ought to claim all the territory up to 54 degrees and 40 minutes north parallel or fight Great Britain for the land

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

signed on February 2, 1848, ended the war between the United States and Mexico.

Mexican Cession

Mexico ceded to the United States Upper California and New Mexico.

Wilmot Proviso

an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War

Free Soil Party

a minor but influential political party in the pre

Popular sovereignty

a controversial political doctrine according to which the people of federal territories should decide for themselves whether their territories would enter the Union as free or slave states.

Henry Clay

a prominent American statesman, lawyer, and orator who served as a U.S. Congressman and Senator in the early 19th century, known as the ‘Great Compromiser.’

John C. Calhoun

Vice President under Andrew Jackson; leading Southern politician; began his political career as a nationalist and an advocate of protective tariffs, later he became an advocate of free trade, states' rights, limited government, and nullification.

Compromise of 1850

a group of five laws passed in September of 1850 that made concessions to both free and slave states in an attempt to placate both sides of the slavery debate and preserve the union.

Jefferson Davis

an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865.

Anaconda Plan

a strategy outlined by the Union Army for suppressing the Confederacy at the beginning of the American 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.

Antietam

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

Ulysses S. Grant

the 18th president of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877 and a commanding general who led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865.

Gettysburg

a large battle in the American Civil War, took place in southern Pennsylvania from July 1 to July 3, 1863; described as the turning point in the Civil War.

William Tecumseh Sherman

an American Civil War general and a major architect of modern warfare who led Union forces in crushing campaigns through the South, marching through Georgia and the Carolinas.

March to the Sea

sixty-mile-wide swath of destruction across Georgia to deprive the Confederate army of war materials and railroad communications and break the will of the Southern people by burning towns and plantations.

Emancipation Proclamation

an edict issued by U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that freed the enslaved people of the Confederate states in rebellion against the Union.

Massachusetts 54th Regiment

the first military unit consisting of Black soldiers to be raised in the North during the Civil War.

Copperheads

a faction of the Democratic Party in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.

Gettysburg Address

the world-famous speech delivered by the U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln at the dedication (November 19, 1863) of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the decisive battles of the American Civil War.

Ten Percent Plan

aimed to restore Southern states to the Union after the war ended and called for only 10% of the voters in the Southern states to take an oath of loyalty to the Union before the state could be readmitted.

Black Codes

laws passed at different periods in the southern United States to enforce racial segregation and curtail the power of Black voters.

Wade Davis Bill

a bill "to guarantee to certain States whose governments have been usurped or overthrown a republican form of government," proposed for the Reconstruction of the South.

Andrew Johnson

former vice-president of Abraham Lincoln who became president upon Lincoln's assassination, whose time in office was largely defined by his opposition towards Reconstruction efforts in the South.

Freedmen’s Bureau

provided assistance to tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people and impoverished whites in the Southern States and the District of Columbia in the years following the war.

Civil Rights Act (1866)

declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens, “without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.”

13th Amendment

forever abolished slavery as an institution in all U.S. states and territories.

14th Amendment

granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to anyone born in the United States or who became a citizen of the country.

15th Amendment

granted the right to vote for all male citizens regardless of their ethnicity or prior slave status.

Radical Republicans

a member of the Republican Party committed to emancipation of enslaved people and later to the equal treatment and enfranchisement of the freed African Americans.

Reconstruction Act (1867)

organized the South into 5 military districts with a military leader from the North and forced the South to abolish black codes as well as ratify the 14th amendment.

Civil Rights Act (1875)

guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and prohibited exclusion from jury service.

Tenure of Office Act

provided that all federal officials whose appointment required Senate confirmation could not be removed without the consent of the Senate.

Redeemers

a political group established in the American South in the 1870s with a goal to "redeem" the South by removing Republicans from power and restoring white supremacy.

Ku Klux Klan

a violent secret fraternal society founded in 1915 in Georgia to maintain white Protestant cultural and political power.

Force Acts (1870 and 1871)

criminal codes that protected blacks' right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws.