AP US History Unit 5 Flashcards

Flashcards covering key topics from Unit 5 of AP US History, focusing on the period from 1844 to 1877, including Manifest Destiny, the causes and events of the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

What is Manifest Destiny?

The idea that Americans were destined to expand across the entire continent, driven by the belief that land equaled opportunity and the West offered resources and a chance to get rich.

What were the effects of the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Act?

The Homestead Act provided free land to settlers, while the Pacific Railroad Act helped build railroads across the country, both facilitating westward movement.

What was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?

The treaty that ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, resulting in the US gaining a significant amount of land known as the Mexican Cession.

What was the Wilmot Proviso?

A failed proposal to ban slavery in all land gained from Mexico, increasing sectional tensions.

What were the key components of the Compromise of 1850?

California admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico territories decided on slavery through popular sovereignty, slave trade banned in Washington, D.C., a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, and Texas received $10 million for land claims.

What was the Fugitive Slave Act and its impact?

A component of the Compromise of 1850 that required Northerners to return escaped slaves, leading to resistance and increased sectional tensions.

What factors caused a surge in immigration to the US in the 1840s and 1850s?

Revolutions in Europe and the potato famine in Ireland led to a surge in immigrants from Ireland and Germany, who mostly settled in Northern cities.

Who was Frederick Douglass?

An abolitionist who gave fiery speeches, including 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?', exposing the hypocrisy of American freedom.

What was the impact of "Uncle Tom's Cabin?"

A book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe that exposed the horrors of slavery and was said to have been so influential that Lincoln supposedly said it started the Civil War.

What was the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

An act that allowed the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide on the issue of slavery through popular sovereignty, leading to violence and conflict known as Bleeding Kansas.

What was the Dred Scott v. Sanford Supreme Court case?

A Supreme Court case that ruled slaves were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in Southern territories, further exacerbating tensions.

What were the positions of the four presidential candidates in the 1860 election?

Abraham Lincoln (Republican) opposed the spread of slavery, Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrat) supported popular sovereignty, John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) was pro-slavery, and John Bell (Constitutional Union Party) advocated for preserving the Constitution.

What event marked the beginning of the Civil War?

Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, a US military base in South Carolina, initiating the Civil War.

What was the Emancipation Proclamation?

Issued by Lincoln after Antietam, it freed enslaved people in Confederate-held territories, reframing the war as a fight against slavery, and preventing European recognition of the Confederacy.

What was the significance of the Gettysburg Address?

Lincoln's speech redefined the Civil War as a fight to preserve democracy and ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

What was the 10% Plan?

Lincoln's plan during the war to readmit Southern states to the Union if 10% of the voters pledged loyalty to him, aiming for a lenient approach to Reconstruction.

What were the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments?

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 14th granted birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law, and the 15th gave black men the right to vote.

What were black codes?

Codes passed in the South after the Civil War that limited the freedoms of African-Americans and often forced them into forced labor.

Examples of Southern resistance to racial equality during Reconstruction:

Sharecropping, lynchings, organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, and convict leasing were used to oppress African-Americans.

What was the Compromise of 1877?

A backroom deal in which Republicans removed federal troops from the South in exchange for electing Rutherford B. Hayes as president, effectively ending Reconstruction.