Antebellum & Civil War Era

Question 1

What is the Antebellum period (1813-1860)?

Answer 1

It is the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. This period was characterized by political polarization over slavery. The North and the South differed in their economies and on their view of slavery

Question 2

What is the Monroe Doctrine (1823)?

Answer 2

President James Monroe warns European to stop further colonization in the Americas (i.e. area today U.S., Canada, Mexico, and South America).

Question 3

What is the Indian Removal Act (1830)?

Answer 3

Andrew Jackson’s bill that moved native tribes further west of the Mississippi River. This resulted in the Trail of Tears: the forceful relocation of native tribes from their lands.

Question 4

What is Jacksonian Democracy?

Answer 4

Suffrage rights to white males over 21, regardless of if they owned land.
Championing the rights of the common “man” and fighting perceived elite privileges.

Question 5

What is the Oregon Compromise (1846)?

Answer 5

A treaty between the United States and Great Britain that settled the the boundary dispute over Oregon country. Britain kept the north portion and the U.S. kept the south portion.

Question 6

What cause the Civil War (1861-1865)?

Answer 6

The dispute between the North (the Union states) and the South (the Confederate states) over the expansion of slavery caused the war.
The south wanted to pull out of the union so it can practice slavery as desired, but the north believed it did not have the right to fracture the union.
The Union won. The U.S. remained one, and slavery was abolished altogether.

Question 7

What is the 13th Amendment?

Answer 7

This amendment abolished slavery.

Question 8

What is the 14th Amendment?

Answer 8

This amendment gave freed slaves equal rights as whites.

Question 9

What is the 15th Amendment?

Answer 9

This amendment prohibited the denying of voting rights on the basis of color.

Question 10

Name the reconstruction amendments (3)

Answer 10

13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

Question 11

What is the Reconstruction era (1865-1877)?

Answer 11

The period of rebuilding the south following the civil war.
The focus was reintegrating the Confederate states and determining African American’s status following the abolishment of slavery.

Question 12

What is the Gettysburg Address?

Answer 12

The speech Abraham Lincoln delivered to honor the soldiers that died fighting for the Union in the Civil War. He argued that citizens should honor those that died by preserving the country as the Founding Father’s intended i.e. maintaining the spirit of liberty stated in the U.S. Constitution.

Question 13

What is the Manifest Destiny?

Answer 13

President James Polk belief and political practice that it was God’s intent for the U.S. to spread west to the Pacific.

Question 14

How is the Mexican American War connected to the civil war?

Answer 14

The large territory gained from the Mexican Cessation increased the tension between congressmen who supported slavery and those who did not.

Up until then, the U.S. has managed to maintain a balance of power in Congress by balancing the ratio of slave states to non-slave states. However, disagreement about whether the new territory would be allowed to practice slavery or not led to polarization in Congress and eventually the civil war.

Question 15

What were the main provisions of the Compromise of 1850 (3)?

Answer 15

1) CAL was admitted as a free state.
2) Fugitive slave laws (i.e. free state residents MUST assist in the return of runaway slaves).
3) Ban of slave trade in Washington, D.C., though those who already owned slaves could keep the slaves they owned.

Question 16

Who is John Brown?

Answer 16

A militant abolitionist who instigated the Bleeding Kansas.

He was tried and hung for treason when in attempted to steal arms from the federal arsenal to arm slaves.

Question 17

Who is Fredrick Douglass (3)?

Answer 17

1) He was an abolitionist.
2) He wrote an influential memoir about his time as a slave.
3) He gave presentations about the evils of slavery.

Question 18

Who is Harriet Beecher Stowe (3)?

Answer 18

1) Abolitionist
2) Helped in the underground railroad network
3) Wrote an influential anti-slavery book (Uncle Tom).

Question 19

Who is William Lloyd Garrison (2)?

Answer 19

1) Abolitionist

2) Founded the Liberator (abolitionist newspaper)

Question 20

What is the outcome of Dred Scott vs Sanford case (1857)?

Answer 20

The Supreme Court ruled that Blacks cannot be citizens. This case added to the tension between the North and South (Hello Civil War 1961) because the Court said that the federal government did not have the right to limit the spread of slavery.

Question 21

What events eventually led to the Civil War (1961-1965) (5)?

Answer 21

1) Mexican Cessation 1848
2) Compromise of 1850
3) Nebraska-Kansas Act 1854
4) Dred Scott vs Sanford case 1858
5) The election of Abraham Lincoln (a well-known antislavery proponent, 1860)

Question 22

What were the problems with slavery (3)?

Answer 22

1) for some moral (abolitionists)
2) for some economics
3) for some political

Question 23

What was the major point of the Emancipation Proclamation (1862)?

Answer 23

This decree freed slaves in states that succeeded from the Union.

Question 24

What is the major point of the Compromise of 1877?

Answer 24

Removed Union forces from the South and gave the South home rule, making the end of reconstruction

Question 25

What was the Freedman Bureau?

Answer 25

An organization set up by Congress to help freed slaves transition into freedom. The organization helped former slaves find lost relatives, learn to read, negotiate contracts, etc.