American Empire

• Louisiana territory / Louisiana purchase

• Napoleon Bonaparte

• New Orleans

• James Monroe

Early National Period (1789-1820)

The idea that the United States would expand its territory, influence, and power across North America. During the Early National Period, the country expanded westward through land purchases, exploration, settlement, and the displacement of Native Americans.

American Empire

President Thomas Jefferson purchased approximately 828,000 square miles of land from France for 15$ million.

• Doubled the size of the United States and opened vast areas for Western settlement

Louisiana territory / Louisiana purchase 1803

French leader who controlled the Louisiana territory. He sold the territory to the U.S because he needed money for European wars and had lost interest in maintaining a large French empire in North America.

Napoleon Bonaparte

A major port at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Western farmers depended on access to ship their crops. The Louisiana purchase gave the United States control of the port and the Mississippi rivers outlet to the Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans

American diplomat who helped negotiate the Louisiana purchase with Robert Livingston in 1803. He later became the fifth president of the United States (1817-1825)

James Monroe

Led an expedition to explore the newly acquired Louisiana territory and traveled toward the Pacific ocean. They mapped land, studied plants and animals, and established contact with Indigenous people.

Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803-1806)

A hoped for water route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through North America. Lewis and Clark explored routes toward the pacific, but they did not discover a continuous navigable water passage across the continent.

Northwest passage

A Shoshone woman who accompanied the expedition with her infant son. Her language skills, geographic knowledge, and assistance with diplomacy and travel helped the expedition.

Sacagawea

Westward settlement led to new states, including Ohio (1803), Louisiana (1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819). Statehood increased the political importance of the West.

Western states added to union

Suffrage means the right to vote. During the early 1800s, many states removed property ownership requirements for white men, allowing more ordinary white male citizens to vote.

Expansion of suffrage

The principal that adult men should generally have the right to vote regardless of their wealth or property ownership. In practice, voting rights expanded mainly for white men, women and most black Americans remained excluded, and Native Americans faced dispossession and exclusion.

Universal manhood suffrage

A political approach that presents politics as a struggle between ordinary people and powerful elites. In the early 1800s, populist themes appeared in appeals to the common man, particularly during the rise of Andrew Jackson.

• The term populism became widely associated with a political movement later in the 19th century.

Populism

Developed during the 1820s and 1830s, after the Early National Period. It featured two major political parties with different views on federal power and the economy.

(parties)

• Democratic Republicans- Democrats

• National Republicans- Whigs

Second American Party System

• Associated with Andrew Jackson

• Emphasized political participation for the common white man

• Generally opposed concentrated federal economic power and the national bank

• Drew support from many farmers and working people

Democratic Republicans (democrats)

• Opposed Jackson in the 1820s, many later joined the whig party, which emerged in the 1830s

• Associated with Henry Clay and later, political figures such as Daniel Webster

• Supported a stronger federal role in economic development

• Favored policies such as a national bank, protective tariffs, and federally Supported internal improvements

National Republicans (whigs)

Four candidates ran for president, including Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Jackson received the most popular and electoral votes, but he did not win an electoral majority. The House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams as president. Jackson's supporters accused Adams and Henry Clay of making a corrupt bargain.

Election of 1824

Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams and became president. Jackson appealed to ordinary white men and promoted himself as a champion of the common people. However, many groups, including women and Black Americans, still could not vote.

Election of 1828

The sixth president of the United States, serving from 1825 to 1829. He supported national economic development, including roads, canals, and education. He lost the 1828 election to Andrew Jackson.

John Quincy Adams

The seventh president of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837. He promoted greater political participation for white men, opposed the Second Bank of the United States, and supported the Indian Removal Act, which led to the forced removal of Native Americans from their homelands.

Andrew Jackson

A political conflict in 1832–1833 over whether a state could declare a federal law unconstitutional and refuse to follow it. South Carolina opposed federal tariffs and claimed it could nullify them. Jackson opposed nullification and defended the authority of the federal government.

Nullification crisis

Taxes placed on imported goods to make American-made products more competitive. They helped protect American manufacturers from foreign competition, but many Southerners opposed them because they believed tariffs made imported goods more expensive.

Protective tariffs

A national bank established in 1816 to help regulate the nation's money supply and stabilize the economy. Andrew Jackson opposed the bank because he believed it gave too much power to wealthy individuals and financial interests. He vetoed the bill to renew its charter in 1832.

Second Bank of the United States

A law signed by President Andrew Jackson that authorized the federal government to negotiate treaties to relocate Native American tribes from their homelands in the southeastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River.

Indian Removal Act of 1830

The belief that Americans were destined to expand across North America. This belief was used to justify westward expansion and the displacement of Native Americans.

Manifest Destiny

Land west of the Mississippi River designated for Native Americans who were removed from their homelands. Much of this territory was in present-day Oklahoma.

Indian Territory

A historical term used by white Americans to describe five Native American nations whose communities had adopted some European American customs and institutions. The term is considered outdated because it suggests that some cultures were more civilized than others.

“Five Civilized Tribes”

The five Native American nations commonly grouped under the historical term “Five Civilized Tribes.” They lived primarily in the southeastern United States before many of their members were forcibly removed.

Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw

The process of adopting new technologies, institutions, and social or economic practices. Some Cherokee people adopted farming, written laws, schools, and a written language while maintaining their cultural identity.

“Modernization”

A Cherokee scholar who developed a writing system for the Cherokee language in the early 1800s. His syllabary helped increase literacy among the Cherokee people.

Sequoyah

Formal agreements between governments or political nations. The U.S. government used treaties to obtain Native American lands, sometimes through coercion, pressure, or agreements made by individuals who did not represent the entire nation.

Treaties

Native American peoples with their own governments, laws, cultures, and political identities. The term recognizes that Native American groups were nations rather than simply individuals or communities under U.S. authority.

Indian “Nations”

A term reflecting the belief that Native Americans were dependent on the government and needed its protection or control. This paternalistic view was used to justify restricting Native American sovereignty and independence.

Wards of the State

A Supreme Court case in which Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Georgia could not impose its laws within Cherokee territory because the Cherokee Nation had a distinct political status. Georgia largely ignored the ruling.

Worcester v. Georgia (1832)

A system Georgia used to distribute land taken from Native Americans to white settlers through lotteries. These lotteries encouraged settlement on Native American lands, particularly Cherokee territory.

Land lottery

A group of Cherokee leaders who supported signing a removal treaty with the United States. Major figures included Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot. They believed removal was unavoidable and that a treaty could protect some Cherokee interests, but most Cherokee people opposed their actions.

Treaty Party

An agreement signed by a small group of Cherokee representatives that exchanged Cherokee lands in the Southeast for land in Indian Territory. The majority of the Cherokee Nation opposed the treaty, but the U.S. government used it to justify removal.

Treaty of New Echota (1835)

The forced removal of thousands of Cherokee people from their southeastern homeland to Indian Territory under the presidency of Andrew Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren. Thousands died from disease, hunger, exposure, and exhaustion during the journey.

Trail of Tears (1838)