DCUSH Unit 5 Vocab

American System

Program of internal improvements and protective tariffs promoted by Speaker of the House Henry Clay in his presidential campaign of 1824; his proposals formed the core of Whig ideology in the 1830s and 1840s.

Bank War

Political struggle in the early 1830s between President Jackson and financier Nicholas Biddle over the renewing of the Second Bank’s charter.

Democracy in America

Two works, published in 1835 and 1840, by the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville on the subject of American democracy, stressing its cultural nature and the importance and prevalence of equality in American life.

Era of Good Feelings

Contemporary characterization of the administration of popular Republican president James Monroe, 1817–1825.

Force Act

1833 legislation, sparked by the nullification crisis in South Carolina, authorizing the president’s use of the army to compel states to comply with federal law.

Indian Removal Act

An 1830 law signed by President Andrew Jackson that permitted the negotiation of treaties to obtain Native Americans’ lands in exchange for their deportation to what would become Oklahoma.

Missouri Compromise

Deal proposed by Kentucky senator Henry Clay in 1820 to resolve the slave/free imbalance in Congress resulting from Missouri’s admission as a slave state; Maine was admitted as a free state, and slavery was prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory north of the southern border of Missouri.

Monroe Doctrine

President James Monroe’s declaration to Congress on December 2, 1823, stating that the American continents would be thenceforth closed to European colonization and that the United States would not interfere in European affairs.

Nullification crisis

The 1832 attempt by the State of South Carolina to nullify, or invalidate within its borders, the 1832 federal tariff law, which President Jackson met with the Force Act of 1833.

Panic of 1837

Beginning of a major economic depression lasting about six years; touched off by a British financial crisis and worsened by falling cotton prices, credit and currency problems, and speculation in land, canals, and railroads.

Pet banks

Local banks that received deposits while the charter of the Bank of the United States was about to expire in 1836, with selections influenced by political and personal connections.

Spoils system

The custom of filling federal government jobs with persons loyal to the party of the president; originated during Andrew Jackson’s first term.

Tariff of abominations

Tariff passed in 1828 by Congress that taxed imported goods at a very high rate, arousing strong opposition in the South.

Trail of Tears

Cherokee’s own term for their forced removal, 1838–1839, from the Southeast to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), during which at least 4,500 of the 18,000 who began the journey died.

Harriet Tubman

Abolitionist who was born a slave, escaped to the North, returned to the South nineteen times, and guided 300 slaves to freedom.

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

An 1831 insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, led by an enslaved preacher, which resulted in the death of about sixty white persons.

“Peculiar institution”

A phrase used by whites in the antebellum South to refer to slavery without using the word “slavery.”

Underground Railroad

A clandestine system of routes and safehouses operating in the decades before the Civil War through which slaves were led to freedom in the North.

American Colonization Society

Organization established in 1816 to encourage the emigration of free Blacks to Africa; founded the West African nation of Liberia in 1822 to serve as a homeland for them.

Oneida

Utopian community founded in 1848 whose Perfectionist religious members practiced “complex marriage” under the leadership of John Humphrey Noyes.

Shakers

Religious sect founded by Mother Ann Lee in England (United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) that settled in Watervliet, New York, in 1774, and later established eighteen additional communes in the Northeast, Indiana, and Kentucky.

Temperance movement

A widespread reform movement, led by militant Christians, focused on reducing the use of alcoholic beverages.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 antislavery novel that popularized the abolitionist position.

Utopian communities

Ideal communities that offered innovative social and economic relationships to individuals seeking to achieve salvation.

Woman suffrage

Movement to give women the right to vote through a constitutional amendment, spearheaded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s National Woman Suffrage Association.