US History: Sectional Conflict and Expansion

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, and legislation leading up to the U.S. Civil War based on lecture notes.

Samuel F.B. Morse

The inventor who created the telegraph in 1844, improving communication and nourishing booming industries in the North.

Telegraph

An 1844 communication technology with wires strung along railroad tracks that benefited the North more than the South.

Manifest Destiny

A term used during the 1830s and 1840s describing the belief of many Americans who favored expanding United States territory.

James K. Polk

The winner of the 1844 presidential election who tried to buy Mexican territory and ordered troops into disputed territory along the Rio River, leading to war with Mexico.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The 1848 treaty ending the Mexican War in which Mexico surrendered claims to Texas, California, and New Mexico in exchange for $15 million.

Gadsden Purchase

An 1853 transaction where the U.S. bought 30,000 square miles of territory from Mexico for $10 million, forming southern New Mexico and Arizona.

Wilmot Proviso

An unpassed proposal to block slavery in new territories acquired from Mexico, which highlighted the growing gap between the North and South over slavery.

Stephen Douglas

An Illinois Senator known as 'The Little Giant' who sought to benefit Chicago trade and run for president by proposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

An 1854 act proposed by Stephen Douglas that repealed the Missouri Compromise by letting territorial voters decide on slavery via popular sovereignty.

Popular Sovereignty

The principle allowing voters within a territory to decide for themselves whether to enter the Union as a free or slave state.

Republican Party

A political party created by individuals across professions and political backgrounds due to dissatisfaction with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the lack of an anti-slavery party.

Bleeding Kansas

The period of violent conflict erupting in 1856 characterized by murderous raids and counterraids between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas Territory.

John Brown

An anti-slavery supporter who, along with his followers, brutally hacked five pro-slavery men to death near Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas.

Preston Brooks

A U.S. Representative who brutally attacked anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor by beating him with a cane.

Charles Sumner

An anti-slavery Senator who was beaten with a cane by Representative Preston Brooks, leaving his empty Senate seat as a reminder of brutal sectional tensions.

James Buchanan

The Democratic candidate from Pennsylvania who supported states' rights to allow slavery and won the presidential election of 1856 with solid Southern support.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

A landmark Supreme Court ruling establishing that enslaved people were property without citizenship rights, and that Congress had no constitutional power to ban slavery in any state or territory.