Chapter 14 Key Terms and People

Question 1

the principal marketplace of the Northwest fur trade, which peaked in the 1820s and 1830s. Each summer, traders set up camps in the Rocky Mountains to exchange manufactured goods for beaver pelts.

Answer 1

rendezvous(279)

Question 2

historians term for the spoliation of western natural resources through excessive hunting, logging, mining, and grazing.

Answer 2

ecological imperialism(279)

Question 3

Irish semisecret society that served as a benevolent organization for downtrodden Irish immigrants in the US

Answer 3

Ancient Order of Hibernians(283)

Question 4

secret organization of Irish miners who campaigned, at times violently, against poor working conditions in the Pennsylvania mines.

Answer 4

Molly Maguire’s(283)

Question 5

powerful New York political machine that primarily drew support from the city’s immigrants, who depended on Tammany Hall patronage particularly social services.

Answer 5

Tammany Hall(283)

Question 6

Nativist political party, also know as the American party. that emerged in response to an influx of immigrants, particularly Irish Catholics.

Answer 6

Know-Nothing party(286)

Question 7

Maria Monks sensation expose of alleged horrors in Catholic convents. Its popularity reflected nativists fears of Catholic influence.

Answer 7

Awful Disclosures(286)

Question 8

shift toward mass production and mechanization that included the creation of a modern factory system

Answer 8

Industrial Revolution(286)

Question 9

Eli Whitney’s Invention that sped up the process of harvesting cotton. The gin made cotton cultivation more profitable, revitalizing the southern economy and increasing importance of slavery in the south.

Answer 9

cotton gin(287)

Question 10

federal government bureau that review patent applications. a patent is a legal recognition of a new invention, granting exclusive rights to the inventor for a period of years.

Answer 10

Patent Office(291)

Question 11

legal principal that facilities capital investment by offering protection for individual investors, who, in cases of legal claims or bankruptcy, cannot be held responsible for more than the value of their individual shares.

Answer 11

limited liability(292)

Question 12

Ralph-Waldo Emerson’s popular lecture-essay that reflected the spirit of individualism pervasive in American popular culture during the 1830s and 1840s.

Answer 12

“Self-reliance”(278)

Question 13

Massachusetts Supreme Court decision that strengthened the labor movement by upholding the legality of unions.

Answer 13

Commonwealth v. Hunt(293)

Question 14

young women employed in the growing factories of the early nineteenth century, they labored long hours in difficult conditions, living in socially new conditions away from farms and families.

Answer 14

factory girls(295)

Question 15

pervasive nineteenth-century cultural creed that venerated the domestic role of women. It gave married women greater authority to shape home life but limited opportunities outside the domestic sphere.

Answer 15

cult of domesticity(295)

Question 16

Mechanized the harvest of grains, such as wheat, allowing farmers to cultivate larger plots. The introduction of the reaper in the 1830s fueled the establishment of large-scale commercial agriculture in the Midwest.

Answer 16

McCormick reaper(297)

Question 17

privately funded, toll-based public road constructed in the early nineteenth century to facilitate commerce.

Answer 17

turnpike(298)

Question 18

New York State canal that linked Lake Erie to the Hudson River. It dramatically lowered shipping costs, fueling an economic boom in upstate New York and increasing the profitability of farming in the Old Northwest.

Answer 18

Erie Canal(299)

Question 19

small, swift vessels that gave American shippers an advantage in the carrying trade. Clipper ships were made largely obsolete by the advent of sturdier, roomier iron steamers on the eve of the Civil War.

Answer 19

clipper ships(301)

Question 20

Short lives, speedy mail service between Missouri and California that relied on lightweight riders galloping between closely place outposts.

Answer 20

Pony Express(303)

Question 21

Term referring to a series of nineteenth-century transportation innovations-turnpikes, steamboats, canals, and railroads- that linked local and regional markers, creating a national economy.

Answer 21

transportation revolution(304)

Question 22

eighteenth- and nineteenth- century transformation from a disaggregated, subsistence economy to a national commercial and industrial network.

Answer 22

market revolution(304)

Question 23

A skilled British mechanic of twenty-one, he was attracted by bounties being offered to British workers familiar with the textile machines. After memorizing the plans for the machinery, he escaped in disguise to America, where he won the backing of Moses Brown, a Quaker capitalist in Rhode Island. He put into operation in 1791 the first efficient American machinery for spinning cotton thread.

Answer 23

Samuel Slater

Question 24

He graduated from Yale and then journeyed to Georgia to serve as a private tutor while preparing for the law. There he was told that the poverty of the South would be relieved if someone could only invent a workable device for separating the seed from the short-staple cotton fiber. Within ten days, in 1793, he built a crude machine called the cotton gin that was fifty times more affective than the handpicking process.

Answer 24

Eli Whitney

Question 25

Invented the sewing machine in 1846 and it was perfected by Isaac Singer. It gave another strong boost to northern industrialization.

Answer 25

Elias Howe

Question 26

Perfected the sewing machine. The sewing machine became the foundation of the ready-made clothing industry, which took root about the time of the Civil War. It drove many a seamstress from the shelter of the private home to the factory, where, like a human robot, she tended the clattering mechanisms.

Answer 26

Isaac Signer

Question 27

He invented the telegraph which was among the inventions that tightened the sinews of an increasingly complex business world. A distinguished but poverty-stricken portrait painter, Morse finally secured from Congress, to the accompaniment of the usual jeers, an appropriation of $30,000 to support his experiment with “talking wires.” In 1844 Morse strung a wire forty miles from Washington to Baltimore and tapped out the historic message, “What hath God wrought?” The invention brought fame a fortune to Morse, as he put distantly separated people in almost instant communication with one another.

Answer 27

Samuel F. B. Morse

Question 28

In 1837 this inventor finally produced a steel plow that broke the stubborn soil. Sharp an effective, it was also light enough to be pulled by horses, rather than oxen

Answer 28

John Deere

Question 29

Irish-American inventor that developed the mechanical reaper. The reaper replaced scythes as the preferred method of cutting crops for harvest, and it was much more efficient and much quicker. The invention helped the agricultural growth of America.

Answer 29

Cyrus McCormick

Question 30

American inventor who designed the first commercially successful steamboat, the Clermont, and the first steam warship (1765-1815

Answer 30

Robery Fulton

Question 31

United States politician who as governor of New York supported the project to build the Erie Canal (1769-1828)

Answer 31

DeWitt Clinton

Question 32

American businessman who laid the first telegraph wire across the Atlantic. This cut down the time it took for a message to be sent from Europe to American and vice-versa.

Answer 32

Cyrus Field

Question 33

A new Yorker, he founded the American Fur company, he made so much more money in the fur treade that he became the richest man in the U.S.

Answer 33

John Jacob Astor