AP U.S. History Review - Periods 1-6

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key topics, laws, and social movements in United States history from the pre-contact period through the Gilded Age as described in the provided lecture transcripts.

Columbian Exchange

A transatlantic trade in animals, plants, and germs that altered life for people around the globe after contact between Europeans and Native Americans.

Encomienda system

A Spanish labor system in which the king granted land and the natives living on it to individual Spaniards, who forced them to farm or work in mines while claiming to "care" for them.

Asiento system

A system requiring Spanish colonists to pay a tax to their king on each enslaved person imported from Africa to the Americas.

Iroquois Confederation

A powerful political union of several tribes living near the Great Lakes and in New York, also known as the Haudenosaunee, who battled rival tribes and Europeans.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement between Spain and Portugal that moved the pope’s line of demarcation, establishing Portugal’s claim to Brazil and Spain’s claim to the rest of the Americas.

Protestant Reformation

An early 1500s revolt by Christians in northern European countries against the authority of the pope in Rome, adding religious motives to exploration.

Revolution of 1800

The peaceful passing of power from the Federalist Party to the Democratic-Republican Party following the election of Thomas Jefferson.

Judicial Review

The doctrine established in Marbury v. Madison (1803) giving the Supreme Court the power to decide whether an act of Congress or the president is allowed by the Constitution.

Louisiana Purchase

The 1803 acquisition of vast western lands from France for $15$ million, which more than doubled the size of the United States.

Missouri Compromise (1820)

An agreement that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of latitude $36^\circ 30'$.

Monroe Doctrine

An 1823 declaration asserting that the American continents were not to be considered subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

American System

Henry Clay’s three-part economic plan consisting of protective tariffs, a national bank, and internal improvements (roads and canals).

Cult of Domesticity

The idealized view of women as moral leaders and providing care within the home as men increasingly worked away for salaries during the Market Revolution.

Second Great Awakening

A series of religious revivals starting in the late 18th century that stressed salvation for all through faith and hard work, fueling various reform movements.

Spoils System

The practice of dispensing government jobs in return for party loyalty, heavily utilized by Andrew Jackson.

Nullification Crisis

A conflict in 1832 where South Carolina attempted to declare federal tariffs unconstitutional, based on the theory that states could decide whether to obey federal laws.

Transcendentalists

New England thinkers like Emerson and Thoreau who argued for mystical thinking and looking for the essence of God in nature over material wealth.

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

The first women’s rights convention in American history, which issued the "Declaration of Sentiments" declaring all men and women equal.

Manifest Destiny

The popular 19th-century belief that the United States had a divine mission to extend its power and civilization across the breadth of North America.

Wilmot Proviso

An 1846 proposal to forbid slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico, which passed the House but was defeated in the Senate.

Popular Sovereignty

The approach of allowing the matter of slavery in a new territory to be determined by a vote of the people who settled there.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

A law that divided the Nebraska Territory and allowed settlers to decide on slavery, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise and leading to "Bleeding Kansas."

Dred Scott v. Sandford

An 1857 Supreme Court case ruling that African Americans were not U.S. citizens and that Congress could not exclude slavery from any federal territory.

Emancipation Proclamation

An executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 freeing all enslaved persons in states then at war with the Union.

Black Codes

Laws passed by southern legislatures after the Civil War that restricted the rights and movements of former slaves, such as prohibiting them from renting land.

Sharecropping

A post-Civil War labor system in which a landlord provided seed and supplies in return for a share of the harvest, often leading to a cycle of debt.

Gilded Age

A term coined by Mark Twain referring to the late 19th-century era of superficial glitter and new wealth covering deep-seated social and economic problems.

Social Darwinism

The belief that Darwin’s ideas of natural selection and "survival of the fittest" should be applied to the marketplace and human society.

Dawes Act of 1887

A law designed to break up tribal organizations by dividing tribal lands into plots of up to 160 acres to encourage Native American assimilation.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A landmark Supreme Court case that upheld "separate but equal" accommodations, supporting the wave of Jim Crow segregation laws.