Quiz #3

War of 1812

Began because of wars between british and french that brought originally prosperity to Americans farmers and traders because they could provide materials for war torn nations

Britain argued that US sailors must be enlisted in their navy (impressment) because many Americans were originally born in Britain and therefore required to work for them

Government launched war over sailor’s rights and international free trade

Tecumseh & Tenskwatawa

Two Shawnee brothers that attempt to organize an Indian confederacy

Become diplomats and military leaders during the War of 1812

Advocated for a return to tribal traditions and a rejection of whiskey, imported goods, European foods, intermarriage with whites and private property

Missouri Crisis/Compromise

1820 legislation that balanced free and slave states and determined the legal status of slavery in western territories by the geographical line 36/30 parallel

Precipitated by clashing migratory streams Yankees and family farmers and slave owners

Missouri enters the Union as a slave state while Maine enters as a free state

Mexican-American War

Waged between 1846-8 that begins when Polk send troops to US-Mexico border to provoke a skirmish

Uses the skirmish to argue that “war exists” and annexes of NM & CA

Supported by Southerners to expand the slave economy

Invades Mexico because of a weakened Mexican state due to Comanche raids

Mexico loses 55% of its territory with the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

Andrew Jackson

Jackson was a successful planter and charismatic, violent, and prominent general during the War of 1812

Leader of “Jacksonian Democracy” (aka White Male Suffrage), the common but potentially misleading scholarly term for the culture of mass political participation that President Andrew Jackson both championed and symbolized.

Oversaw the ethnic cleansing of native communities in the Southeast

White Male Suffrage

abolition of property requirements to vote in the 1820s sets the stage for a universal white male suffrage

the rise of white, male suffrage was accompanied by Black disenfranchisement through white violence

Increase of white male voters help Jackson take the presidency in 1828

American Colonization Society (ACS)

Formed in 1817

Argued for the Compensation for slave owners and the transportation of free black Americans to Africa (Liberia)

Could not imagine a truly multi-racial society with freed slaves and whites

Spread rapidly in the 1820s and 1830s

Trail of Tears

The end product of ethnic cleansing of Southeastern native populations

Applies to the Five Civilized Tribes (white term) called this because there were the most assimilated into White society (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee)

Represents how the relocation was lethal for each nation because bad supplies, harsh weather, lack of government support (4,000 Cherokee 4,000 died in the process of removal)

Second Great Awakening

Refers to the religious revivals that swept through the United States in the first half of the 19th century

“Democratization” of religion: de-emphasis of education & orthodox theology, focus on the “New Birth” (conversion experience), personal bible study is central, camp meeting, includes Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, Presbyterians, etc.

Where the Black Church emerges from

Pro-Slavery/Anti-Slavery Christianity

Pro-slavery: Claims slavery is legitatimte because of the Curse of Ham, Old Testament references to slavery, New Testament makes no statement against slavery, ideal of the benevolent and patriarchal Christian household

Anti-Slavery: Claims slavery contradicts the principle of benevolence and the Golden Rule, that Slavery creates cruelty, that Humans can only be moral if they are FREE to make their own choices, and that through perfectionism, Humans could wipe sin & slavery from the face of the earth

The Black Church

Independent churches developed by free Black communities after the 1780s, through such denominations as Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist.

Comes out of the Second Great Awakening but splits from white churches over enduring racial sentiment

Becomes the target of the KKK during Reconstruction

Nat Turner

Nat Turner was a preacher who led a slave rebellion in 1831 leading to the murder of 55 whites

Inspired Gabriel’s Revolt and Evangelical Christians

Turner is executed and white Virginians retaliate by murdering 200 enslaved people

Anti-Slavery Society

Organization founded in 1833 that helped to spread abolition throughout the North

By 1838: 25,000 members and 1300 auxiliaries

Used images of brutality & torture to convince white Americans of the horrors of slavery

Eventually split over the following two questions: 1. Should the abolitionist movement work within the system of the US Government? 2. Should women be allowed to address abolitionist audiences?

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

200 women and 40 men met to “discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and the rights of women”

Attendees included Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Stanton and Mott

Composed the “Declaration of Sentiments” based off the Declaration of Independence
Narrowly supported women’s right to vote

First Wave Feminism

Women movement starting in the mid 19th century focus on these major issues: legal equality for women, domestic abuse (marital rape not recognized as a crime), divorce laws, suffrage

Mainly focused on the concerns of white, middle class women

Rejects the cult of domesticity and the restrictions of the women’s sphere

Industrialization

Developed during early 19th century and is usually defined as the shift from agriculture to manufacture; associated with urbanization.

Industrialization is both urban and rural, northern and southern.

Slave economies were central to industrialization in the United States and Europe.

William Lloyd Garrison

President of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1843-1865

Published The Liberator (1831-1860)

Radical and militant approach to abolition who advocated for immediate abolition opposed compensation & colonization and preached anti-slavery Christianity

Frederick Douglass

Former slave who became one of the most important abolitionists in antebellum America

Wanted blacks to be included in the political process

Defended the United States Constitution

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is #1 Best-seller of the ENTIRE 19th century

Helped to garner widespread support for abolition

Evangelical attack on slavery by arguing that slavery breaks apart families and emphasizing Christian compassion

Moral Suasion

Worked within the political system to abolish slavery through legal means and moral argument

Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison fall out over whether to pursue abolition through moral suasion or political action

Manifest Destiny

Popular ideology from the 1840s maintaining that the United States was divinely ordained to expand to the Pacific Ocean.

Coined in the 19th century by John O’Sullivan in 1845

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Nicholas Trist is tasked with securing a peace treaty and hated the idea of the U.S. invading Mexico

Trist is recalled by Polk and ignores the recall and makes a peace treaty with Mexico with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February of 1848

Treaty concludes the Mexican War, which in part ceded 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory to the United States.

Wilmot Proviso

U.S. Representative David Wilmot’s unsuccessful proposition to prohibit slavery in any territories gained in the Mexican War.

Compromise of 1850

Bundle of legislation, including California’s admission as a free state and the Fugitive Slave Act, born of political debates over slavery in the Mexican Cession.

Proposed by Henry Clay and carried out by Stephen Douglas who proposes the compromise in individual measures instead of a full package.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Controversial 1850 law strengthening the legal obligation to return escapees from slavery to their owners.

the law set up a federal bureaucracy to catch slaves, created a summary process that didn’t follow due process in court, and made Northerns help slave catchers

Harpers Ferry

John Brown’s attempt in 1859 to seize a federal arsenal and spark a slave insurrection, for which he was executed but subsequently lionized by antislavery Americans.

General Robert E. Lee’s forces attack Brown’s men

November 11, 1859: John Brown executed and remembered as a madman or a martyr

Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

1857 Supreme Court case that denied African Americans U.S. citizenship and asserted that slavery could not be legally regulated in the territories.

Emancipation Proclamation

Intention: weaken the South by attacking their most vital economic institution.

Freed enslaved people only in rebellious states; NOT in the border states of DL, MD, KY and MO.

The U.S. government would no longer enforce the Fugitive Slave Law

Reconstruction

Political, social, and economic projects of reintegrating seceded states into the Union, in large part by stripping former slaveholders of power and protecting Black civil rights.

Presidential Reconstruction

President Andrew Johnson’s attempt to reunifty Southern states by appealing to White plantation owners by blocking programs that would give land to formerly enslaved Black Americans, pardoning Confederate leaders, and allowing the creation of all-white state governments.

Congressional Reconstruction

The Radical Republican led Congress who overrides Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction to push for universal male suffrage (15 Amendment), birthright citizenship (14th Amendment) and land redistribution

White Redemption campaigns

Vigilante groups (KKK, Red Shirts, etc.) formed during the 1870s to impede congressional reconstruction efforts.

They gain power as the Republican hold over congress weakens.

13th Amendment

Constitutional amendment, ratified in 1865, that outlawed slavery except as punishment for crime.

14th Amendment

Constitutional amendment decreeing birthright citizenship for all persons born on U.S. soil, except Native Americans, and protecting the basic rights of all citizens from infringement by the states.

15th Amendment

Constitutional amendment granting citizens the right to vote regardless of race or a previous condition of servitude.