Chapter 13 - Expansion, War, and Sectional Crisis, 1844-1860

Question 1

manifest destiny

Answer 1

the notion that America’s borders should extend to the Pacific Ocean

Question 2

Oregon Trail

Answer 2

route from the border states to Oregon; traveled by many Americans starting in 1843

Question 3

Californios

Answer 3

elite Mexican ranchers

Question 4

James K. Polk

Answer 4

protegé of Andrew Jackson and 11th president

Question 5

“fifty-four forty or fight!”

Answer 5

part of Polk’s campaign to claim all of Oregon Country

Question 6

conscience Whigs

Answer 6

Whig politicians who opposed the Mexican War on moral grounds

Question 7

Wilmot Proviso

Answer 7

proposed ban on slavery in any territories gained from the war

Question 8

free-soil movement

Answer 8

political movement that opposed the expansion of slavery

Question 9

Frederick Douglass

Answer 9

African American social reformer and abolitionist

Question 10

Zachary Taylor

Answer 10

former general and 12th president

Question 11

Lewis Cass

Answer 11

military officer and politician; senator of Michigan

Question 12

Stephen Douglas

Answer 12

pushed for squatter sovereignty in deciding the slave status of territories

Question 13

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Answer 13

author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which sparked unprecedented discussions about race and slavery

Question 14

Abraham Lincoln

Answer 14

16th president; led during the Civil War

Question 15

John Brown

Answer 15

white abolitionist who believed in the use of force to overthrow the institution of slavery

Question 16

squatter sovereignty

Answer 16

promoted by Lewis Cass; suggested that Congress allow settlers in each territory to determine its status as free or slave

Question 17

forty-niners

Answer 17

nickname for the 80,000+ gold-seeking people who had arrived in California by 1849

Question 18

“slavery follows the flag”

Answer 18

Calhoun’s assertion that planters could by right take their slave property into new territories

Question 19

Compromise of 1850

Answer 19

series of five laws: Fugitive Slave Act (federal support to slave catchers), California admitted as a free state, resolution of boundary dispute between New Mexico and Texas, abolished slave trade in D.C., organized conquered Mexican lands into new territories and left slavery issue to their residents

Question 20

personal-liberty laws

Answer 20

passed by northern legislatures; guaranteed all residents (including alleged fugitives) the right to a jury trial

Question 21

Franklin Pierce

Answer 21

14th president; viewed the abolition movement as a threat to the nation’s unity

Question 22

Gadsden Purchase

Answer 22

small piece of land purchased during Pierce’s presidency; intended for a transcontinental rail line from New Orleans to Los Angeles

Question 23

Ostend Manifesto

Answer 23

1854 manifesto that urged Pierce to seize the slave-owning province of Cuba from Spain; denounced as too aggressive by northern democrats

Question 24

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Answer 24

controversial 1854 law that divided Indian Territory into Kansas and Nebraska, repealed the Missouri Compromise, and left the new territories to decide on slavery based on popular sovereignty

Question 25

American “Know-Nothing” Party

Answer 25

political party that drew on the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic movements of the 1840s

Question 26

“Bleeding Kansas”

Answer 26

term for the bloody struggle between proslavery and antislavery factions in Kansas following its organization as a territory

Question 27

James Buchanan

Answer 27

15th president

Question 28

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Answer 28

1857 Supreme Court decision that ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional

Question 29

Freeport Doctrine

Answer 29

argument presented by Senator Stephen Douglas that a territory’s residents could exclude slavery by not adopting laws to protect it