Non Dates history terms

  1. Whigs

    • Definition: A political party active in the mid-19th century that emerged in opposition to Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party, advocating for protective tariffs, national banking, and federal aid for internal improvements.

  2. Republicans

    • Definition: A political party founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists and former Whigs, organized primarily to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories.


  3. Democrats

    • Definition: A major political party in the United States, historically supporting agrarian interests, states' rights, and strict constitutional construction during the 19th century.


  4. Know Nothings

    • Definition: A nativist political movement and party (formally the American Party) in the 1850s that opposed immigration and the influence of Roman Catholicism.


  5. Sectionalism

    • Definition: Exaggerated devotion and loyalty to the regional interests, economy, and culture of a specific section of the country (North, South, or West) over the nation as a whole.


  6. Cotton Gin

    • Definition: A mechanical device invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 that quickly separated cotton fibers from seeds, dramatically increasing cotton production and revitalizing the demand for enslaved labor in the South.


  7. Popular Sovereignty

    • Definition: The political doctrine asserting that the sovereign people of a federal territory should determine for themselves whether to permit or prohibit slavery.


  8. The Liberator

    • Definition: An influential abolitionist weekly newspaper founded and edited by William Lloyd Garrison advocating for the immediate, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved people.


  9. Narrative of the Life

    • Definition: Short title for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, an autobiographical memoir detailing Frederick Douglass's life in bondage and his escape to freedom.


  10. Manifest Destiny

    • Definition: The 19th-century cultural belief that the territorial expansion of the United States across the North American continent to the Pacific was divine, justified, and inevitable.



Key Figures

  1. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney

    • Definition: The fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, best remembered for delivering the controversial pro-slavery majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).


  2. Stephen Douglas

    • Definition: A U.S. Senator from Illinois known as the "Little Giant," who championed popular sovereignty, spearheaded the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and debated Abraham Lincoln in 1858.


  3. Abraham Lincoln

    • Definition: The 16th President of the United States who led the nation through the Civil War, preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and championed the 13th Amendment.


  4. John C. Breckinridge

    • Definition: The 14th Vice President of the United States under James Buchanan and the Southern Democratic presidential nominee in the 1860 election, campaigning on a platform protecting territorial slavery.


  5. Thomas Jefferson

    • Definition: The third President of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, and purchaser of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803.

  6. Andrew Jackson

    • Definition: The seventh President of the United States who popularized mass democracy, opposed the Second Bank of the United States, suppressed the Nullification Crisis, and enforced the Indian Removal Act of 1830.


  7. Frederick Douglass

    • Definition: An escaped enslaved African American who became a prominent abolitionist leader, orator, writer, editor of The North Star, and champion of universal civil and voting rights.


  8. William Lloyd Garrison

    • Definition: A prominent abolitionist journalist and co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, known for editing The Liberator and advocating immediate emancipation without compensation to enslavers.


  9. John Brown

    • Definition: A radical abolitionist who believed in armed insurrection as the sole means to overthrow the institution of slavery; led the Pottawatomie Creek attack in Kansas and the 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

  10. Eli Whitney

    • Definition: An American mechanical inventor famous for the development of the cotton gin in 1793 and the promotion of interchangeable parts in manufacturing.


  11. John C. Calhoun

    • Definition: A prominent South Carolina senator and Vice President who formulated the doctrine of state nullification and ardently defended slavery as a "positive good."