Unit 5: 1844-1877

Manifest Destiny

A notion held by a nineteenth-century Americans that the United States was destined to rule the continent, from the Atlantic the Pacific.

Texas Independent Republic

Americans were invited to settle there to help the Mexican economy. Brought protestants and slaves which clashed with Catholic and Abolitionist Mexico. Led to Mex-American war.

Stephen F. Austin

known as the Father of Texas, led the second and ultimately successful colonization of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States.

Sam Houston

United States politician and military leader who fought to gain independence for Texas from Mexico and to make it a part of the United States. First Republic of Texas President.

Battle of the Alamo

1836 attack on the Alamo mission in San Antonio by mexican forces during the texas revolution

Santa Anna

Mexican general who tried to crush the Texas revolt and who lost battles to Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War

Polk Presidency

Took money out of state banks and put funds in the Treasury. Signed Oregon treaty with Great Britain to get the Pacific Northwest. After a border attack, he started the Mexican-American war to get land for America.

What started the Mexican-American War?

There was a disagreement over the territory between Texas and Mexico. Thinking that a group of U.S. soldiers were on their land, Mexican troops fired shots across the Rio Grande, injuring and killing the U.S. soldiers. This shooting began the Mexican-America War.

Spot Resolutions

Congressman Abraham Lincoln supported a proposition to find the exact spot where American troops were fired upon, suspecting that they had illegally crossed into Mexican territory.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Treaty that ended the Mexican War, granting the U.S. control of Texas, New Mexico, and California in exchange for $15 million

Gold Rush

a period from 1848 to 1856 when thousands of people came to California in order to search for gold.

Boom towns

a town undergoing rapid growth due to sudden prosperity.

Three main Civil war stances

Pro slavery- believes it was a constitutional right. Free Soil- antislavery. Popular sovereignty- decision left up to the state.

Wilmot Proviso

1846 proposal that outlawed slavery in any territory gained from the War with Mexico

Compromise of 1850

Agreement designed to ease tensions caused by the expansion of slavery into western territories

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854 - Created Nebraska and Kansas as states and gave the people in those territories the right to chose to be a free or slave state through popular sovereignty.

Fugitive Slave Act

A law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves; allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in areas where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders

Bleeding Kansas

A sequence of violent events involving abolitionists and pro-Slavery elements that took place in Kansas-Nebraska Territory. The dispute further strained the relations of the North and South, making civil war imminent.

John Brown

Abolitionist who was hanged after leading an unsuccessful raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (1800-1858)

Uncle Tom's Cabin

a novel published by harriet beecher stowe in 1852 which portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral

Dred Scott Decision

A Missouri slave sued for his freedom, claiming that his four year stay in the northern portion of the Louisiana Territory made free land by the Missouri Compromise had made him a free man. The U.S, Supreme Court decided he couldn't sue in federal court because he was property, not a citizen.

Chief Justice Taney

As chief justice, he wrote the important decision in the Dred Scott case, upholding police power of states and asserting the principle of social responsibility of private property. He was Southern and upheld the fugitive slave laws.

What caused the Civil War?

Lincoln's election into office.

Fort Sumter

Federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; the confederate attack on the fort marked the start of the Civil War

Cornerstone Speech

a speech delivered by Confederate Vice President, Alexander Stephens in Savannah, Georgia on March 21, 1861. It laid out the Confederate causes for the American Civil War, and defended slavery.

CSA

Confederate States of America

Border States

in the civil war the states between the north and the south: delaware, mayland, kentucky, and missouri

Civil War Strategies

North: -Capture Richmond, the Confederate’s capital

\-Capture Mississippi Valley and cut the south in half using their main road line and strangling it by doing so (Anaconda Plan)

South: -Defensive War

\-Help from france and Britain

Anaconda Plan

Union war plan by Winfield Scott, called for a blockade of the southern coast, the capture of Richmond, capture of Mississippi River, and to take an army through the heart of south

Emancipation Proclamation

Issued by abraham lincoln on september 22, 1862 it declared that all slaves in the confederate states would be free

General Sherman

Union general who captured Atlanta, Georgia, then marched through Georgia to the sea, burning and destroying everything on the way

Battle of Vicksburg

1863, Union gains control of Mississippi, confederacy split in two, Grant takes lead of Union armies, total war begins

Battle of Gettysburg

Turning point of the War that made it clear the North would win. 50,000 people died, and the South lost its chance to invade the North.

General Grant

The lead general of the Union Army after victory at Vicksburg.

General Lee

Commander of Confederate Army. Great leader, Lincoln wanted him as the leader of the Union Army

Gettysburg Address

A 3-minute address by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War (November 19, 1963) at the dedication of a national cemetery on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg

Total War

A conflict in which the participating countries devote all their resources to the war effort

March to the Sea

Sherman's march to Savannah which cut off confederate supplies received by the sea

Appotomax Court House

a village in Virginia that was the site of the Confederate surrender to Union forces under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant

10% Plan

This was Lincoln's reconstruction plan for after the Civil War. Written in 1863, it proclaimed that a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10% of its voters in the 1860 election pledged their allegiance to the U.S. and pledged to abide by emancipation, and then formally erect their state governments. This plan was very lenient to the South, would have meant an easy reconstruction.

Radical Republicans

After the Civil War, a group that believed the South should be harshly punished and thought that Lincoln was sometimes too compassionate towards the South.

Reconstruction Amendments

13th: abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, 14th: secured the rights of former slaves after reconstruction, 15th: prohibits each government in the United States to prevent a citizen from voting based on their race

Sharecropping

A system used on southern farms after the Civil War in which farmers worked land owned by someone else in return for a small portion of the crops.

Ku Klux Klan

A secret society created by white southerners in 1866 that used terror and violence to keep African Americans from obtaining their civil rights.

Black Codes

Laws denying most legal rights to newly freed slaves; passed by southern states following the Civil War

Compromise of 1877

Ended Reconstruction. Republicans promise 1) Remove military from South, 2) Appoint Democrat to cabinet (David Key postmaster general), 3) Federal money for railroad construction and levees on Mississippi river