APUSH

Question 1

1846 proposal by Democratic congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania to outlaw slavery in all territory acquired from Mexico. The proposal was defeated, but the fight over its adoption foreshadowed the sectional conflicts of the 1850s.

Answer 1

Wilmot Proviso

Question 2

Party founded by political abolitionists in 1848 to expand the appeal of the Liberty Party by focusing less on the moral wrongs of slavery and more on the benefits of providing economic opportunities for northern white people in western territories

Answer 2

Free-Soil Party

Question 3

Act that ensured the right of slaveholders to capture enslaved people who had fled by mandating that local government seize and return them. However, the act was largely ignored by northerners.

Answer 3

Fugitive Slave Act of 1793

Question 4

Series of acts following California’s application for admission as a free state. Meant to ease sectional tensions over slavery by providing something for all sides, the act ended up fueling more conflicts.

Answer 4

Compromise of 1850

Question 5

Act strengthening earlier fugitive slave laws, passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. The act provoked widespread anger in the North and intensified sectional tensions.

Answer 5

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Question 6

A series of routes from southern plantation areas to northern free states and Canada along which abolitionist supporters, known as conductors, provided hiding places, transportation, and resources to enslaved people seeking freedom.

Answer 6

Underground Railroad

Question 7

1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Meant to publicize the evils of slavery, the novel struck an emotional chord in the North and was an international best seller.

Answer 7

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Question 8

A railroad linking the East and West Coasts of North America. Completed in 1869, the transcontinental railroad facilitated the flow of migrants and the development of economic connections between the West and the East.

Answer 8

transcontinental railroad

Question 9

1854 act creating the territories of Kansas and Nebraska out of what was then American Indian land. The act stipulated that the issue of slavery would be settled by a popular referendum in each territory.

Answer 9

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Question 10

Also known as the Know-Nothing Party, a political party that arose in the Northeast, during the 1840s. The party was anti-Catholic and anti-immigration. It also supported workers’ rights against business owners, who were perceived to support immigration as a way to keep wages low.

Answer 10

American Party (aka Know-Nothing Party)

Question 11

Party formed in 1854 that was committed to stopping the expansion of slavery and advocated economic development and internal improvements. Although their appeal was limited to the North, the Republicans quickly became a major political force

Answer 11

Republican Party

Question 12

The Kansas Territory during a period of violent conflicts over the fate of slavery in the mid-1859s. This violence intensified the sectional division over slavery.

Answer 12

Bleeding Kansas

Question 13

1857 Supreme Court case centered on the status of Dred Scott and his family. In its ruling, the Court denied the claim that black men had any rights and blocked Congress from excluding slavery from any territory.

Answer 13

Dred Scott case

Question 14

Series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during the 1859 Illinois Senate race that mainly focused on the expansion of slavery.

Answer 14

Lincoln-Douglas debates

Question 15

1859 attack on the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, led by John Brown, who hoped to inspire a slave uprising and arm enslaved African Americans with the weapons taken from the arsenal. No uprising happened and Brown was captured and eventually executed for treason.

Answer 15

John Brown’s raid

Question 16

Name of the government that seceded from the Union after the election of President Lincoln in 1860.

Answer 16

Confederate States of America

Question 17

election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Beginning the Civil War.

Answer 17

Election of 1860

Question 18

A political compromise over slavery, which failed after seven southern states seceded from the Union in early 1861. It would have protected slavery from federal interference where it already existed and extended the Missouri Compromise line to California.

Answer 18

Crittenden Plan

Question 19

Union fort that guarded the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina. The Confederacy’s decision to fire on the fort and block resupply in April 1861 marked the beginning of the Civil War.

Answer 19

Fort Sumter

Question 20

First major battle of the Civil War at which Confederate troops defeated Union forces in July 1861.

Answer 20

Battle of Bull Run

Question 21

Term first used by Union general Benjamin Butler in May 1861 to describe enslaved people who had fled to Union lines to obtain freedom. By designating enslaved people as property forfeited by the act of rebellion, the Union was able to strike at slavery without proclaiming a general emancipation.

Answer 21

contraband

Question 22

Laws passed by Congress during the Civil War that authorized the confiscation of Confederate property. Under the confiscation acts, any enslaved people who were forced to work for the Confederate army would no longer be bound to slaveholders

Answer 22

confiscation acts

Question 23

September 1862 battle in Sharpsburg, Maryland. While it remains the bloodiest single day in U.S. military history, it gave Abraham Lincoln the victory he sought before announcing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Answer 23

Battle of Antietam

Question 24

January 1, 1863 proclamation that declared all enslaved people in areas still in rebellion “forever free.” While stopping short of abolishing slavery outright, the Emancipation Proclamation was, nonetheless, seen by both black people and white abolitionists as a great victory.

Answer 24

Emancipation Proclamation

Question 25

March 1863 Union draft law that provided for draftees to be selected by an impartial lottery. A loophole in the law allowing wealthy Americans to escape service by paying $300 or hiring a substitute created widespread resentment.

Answer 25

Enrollment Act

Question 26

A suspension of standard law in which the military takes over the normal operation of the government

Answer 26

martial law

Question 27

Northern Democrats who did not support the Union war effort. Such Democrats enjoyed considerable support in eastern cities and parts of the Midwest.

Answer 27

Copperheads

Question 28

July 1863 battle that helped turn the tide for the Union in the Civil War. The Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, combined with a victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi the same month, eliminated the threat of European intervention in the war and positioned the Union to push farther into the South.

Answer 28

Battle of Gettysburg

Question 29

After a prolonged siege, Union troops forced Confederate forces to surrender at Vicksburg, Mississippi, leading to Union control of the rich Mississippi River valley.

Answer 29

siege of Vicksburg

Question 30

A speech given by President Lincoln to inaugurate the federal cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in November 1863. In this speech, Lincoln expressed his belief that the war was a struggle for a “new birth of freedom.”

Answer 30

Gettysburg Address

Question 31

The strategy promoted by General Ulysses S. Grant in which Union forces destroyed civilian crops, livestock, fields, and property to undermine Confederate morale and supply chains.

Answer 31

total war

Question 32

Total war tactics employed by General William Tecumseh Sherman to capture Atlanta and huge swaths of Georgia and the Carolinas, devastating this crucial region of the Confederacy in 1864.

Answer 32

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Question 33

November 1864 massacre of 270 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians by the Third Colorado Cavalry of the U.S. army.

Answer 33

Sand Creek Massacre

Question 34

Abolished slavery

Answer 34

Thirteenth Amendment

Question 35

Federal agency created in 1865 to provide freedpeople with economic and legal resources. The Freedmen’s Bureau played an active role in shaping black life in the postwar South.

Answer 35

Freedmen’s Bureau

Question 36

Republican politicians who actively supported abolition prior to the Civil War and sought tighter controls over the South in the aftermath of the war.

Answer 36

Radical Republicans

Question 37

Racial laws passed by southern legislatures in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War that aimed to keep freedpeople in a condition as close to slavery as possible

Answer 37

black codes

Question 38

Amendment to the Constitution defining citizenship and protecting individual civil and political rights from abridgment by the states. Adopted during Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision.

Answer 38

Fourteenth Amendment

Question 39

Period from 1865 to 1877, during which the eleven ex-Confederate states were subject to federal legislative and constitutional efforts to remake their societies as they were readmitted to the Union.

Answer 39

Reconstruction

Question 40

1867 acts dividing Southern states into military districts and requiring those states to grant black male suffrage.

Answer 40

Military Reconstruction Acts

Question 41

Law passed by Congress in 1867 to prevent President Andrew Johnson from removing cabinet members sympathetic to the Republican Party’s approach to congressional Reconstruction without Senate approval. Johnson was impeached, but not convicted, for violating the act.

Answer 41

Tenure of Office Act

Question 42

Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the abridgment of a citizen’s right to vote on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” From the 1870s on, southern states devised numerous strategies for circumventing the Fifteenth Amendment.

Answer 42

Fifteenth Amendment

Question 43

Group of black and white women and men formed in 1866 to promote gender and racial equality. The organization split in 1869 over support for the Fifteenth Amendment.

Answer 43

American Equal Rights Association

Question 44

Derogatory term for white Southerners who supported Reconstruction.

Answer 44

scalawags

Question 45

Derogatory term for white Northerners who moved to the South in the years following the Civil War. Many white Southerners believed such migrants were intent on exploiting their suffering.

Answer 45

carpetbaggers

Question 46

A system that emerged as the dominant mode of agricultural production in the South in the years after the Civil War. Under the sharecropping system, sharecroppers received tools and supplies from landowners in exchange for a share of the eventual harvest.

Answer 46

sharecropping

Question 47

African Americans who migrated from the South to Kansas in 1879 seeking land, economic opportunity, and a better way of life.

Answer 47

Exodusters

Question 48

White, conservative Democrats who challenged and overthrew Republican rule in the South during Reconstruction.

Answer 48

Redeemers

Question 49

Organization formed in 1865 by General Nathan Bedford Forrest to enforce prewar racial norms. Members of the KKK used threats and violence to intimidate black people and white Republicans.

Answer 49

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (aka KKK)

Question 50

Three acts passed by Congress in 1870 and 1871 in response to vigilante attacks on southern black people. The acts were designed to protect black political rights and end violence by the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations.

Answer 50

Force Acts

Question 51

Act extending “full and equal treatment” for all races in public accommodations, including jury service and public transportation. However, in 1883, the Supreme Court ruled the act was unconstitutional.

Answer 51

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Question 52

Compromise between Republicans and southern Democrats that resulted in the election of Rutherford B. Hayes. Southern Democrats agreed to support Hayes in the disputed presidential election in exchange for his promise to end Reconstruction.

Answer 52

compromise of 1877