final exam

Question 1

Missouri compromise

Answer 1

• 1820
• Legislative decision to admit Missouri as a slave state and abolish slavery in the area west of the Mississippi River and north of the parallel 36°30ʹ.
• on the heels of the financial panic, a fierce sectional controversy between the North and South over expanding slavery into the new western territories erupted
  = in 1819, the US has an equal number of slave and free states; 11 of each
  = the Northwest Ordinance (1787) had banned slavery north of the Ohio River
  = the Southwest Ordinance (1790) had authorized Slavery south of the Ohio
  = Missouri was the first territory, other than Louisiana, to apply for statehood in the Louisiana territory. Louisiana became a state in 1812
• 1819: Missouri applied for statehood: there were aprox. 2-thousand slaves in the territory

Question 2

monroe doctrine

Answer 2

• John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, authored it
• 1823
• U.S. foreign policy that barred further colonization in the Western Hemisphere by European powers and pledged that there would be no American interference with any existing European colonies.

Question 3

manifest destiny

Answer 3

• A catchphrase historians applied to the Romantic mood of American expansion to the Pacific during the 1840s.
  = In a sense this really wasn’t new: Jefferson believed we would cover the whole northern continent with people “speaking the same language, governed by similar forms, and by similar laws.”
  = John Quincy Adams believed that “North America appeared to be destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one nation.
• But, in the 1840s an article in the Democratic Review, written by it’s editor John L. O’Sullivan seemed to light a fire under the American people, although Americans didn’t really need O’Sullivan to justify their hunger for territory. (re. Texas )

Question 4

Dreds Scott v.s Sanford

Answer 4

• 1857
• U.S. Supreme Court ruling that slaves were not U.S. citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in territories.

Question 5

William Lloyd Garrison

Answer 5

• 1805-1879
• In 1831, he started the anti-slavery newspaper Liberator
• Helped start the New England Anti-Slavery Society.
• Two years later, he assisted Arthur and Lewis Tappan in the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
• He and his followers believed that America had been thoroughly corrupted and needed a wide range of reforms, embracing abolition, temperance, pacifism, and women’s rights.

Question 6

election of 1844

Answer 6

• The leaders of both major parties (Clay-Whig, Van Buren-Dem) hoped (agreed) to keep the divisive Texas issue out of the presidential campaign:
  = At the Democratic Convention, Van Buren’s southern supporters abandoned him and nominated James K. Polk, an avowed southern expansionist.
  = On the ninth ballot he became the first “dark horse” candidate.
  = The Democratic platform called for: annexation of both Oregon and Texas.
• The 1844 presidential election proved to be one of the most significant in American history:
  = Clay lost many “antislavery” votes to the Liberty party in the north.
  ~ The Liberty party drew enough votes from Clay and the Whigs to give New York to Polk.
  ~ Although Polk won the election he did not have a vote majority. Although his victory did send a message of pro-expansion.
  ~ Clay lost his third and last effort to win the presidency.

Question 7

fugitive slave act

Answer 7

• 1850
• A part of the Compromise of 1850 that authorized federal officials to help capture and then return escaped slaves to their owners without trials.
• One thing that Douglas misjudged, was the extent to which slavery had become a moral issue in this country:
  = During the 1850s, anti-slavery advocates gained a powerful new
  weapon in the form of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel,

Question 8

“Bleeding Kanas”

Answer 8

• Rival groups for and against slavery recruited immigrants to move to Kansas:
  = The first election, went to the pro-slavery forces. On Election Day, thousands of “border ruffians” from Missouri crossed into Kansas, illegally elected pro-slavery legislators, and vowed to kill every “God-damned abolitionist in the Territory.” Pro slavery government at
  Lecompton, KS.= Outraged free-state advocates in Kansas elected their own delegates.
  They met in Topeka, and drafted a new state constitution excluding
  slavery and applied for statehood.
  = By 1856, there were two illegal governments in the Kansas Territory.
  = Soon there was a civil war, which journalists called “Bleeding Kansas.”
• In May 1856 violence sprouted like the dandelions:
  = The free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas was destroyed.
  = “The Sack of Lawrence” ignited the vengeance of a passionate white
  abolitionist named John Brown.
• Shortly after the attack of Lawrence, John Brown, led four of his sons to Pottawatomie, Kansas, a pro-slavery settlement:
  = In a very real way, Brown led a “holy war” against the pro-slavery forces.
  = He dragged five men from their houses and hacked them to death with
  swords.
  = “God is my judge…we were justified under the circumstances.”
  = The Pottawatomie Massacre (May 24-25, 1856), ignited a guerrilla war.
  = By the end of 1856, about 200 settlers on both sides had been killed.

Question 9

Emancipation Proclaimation

Answer 9

• 1862
• Military order issued by President Abraham Lincoln that freed slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy but did not free the 500,000 slaves in the four border states that remained in the Union.

Question 10

American System

Answer 10

• part 1
  -a new national bank: (2nd B.U.S) — Madison now supported it*
  = promote economic growth
  = 1816-1836
  = 20 yr charter
  = capitalized at $35 million
  = issued a national currency
  = branches in every state
  = 4/5 private investment (in other words, a corporation which sold stock to investor). 1/5 government
  = largest and most powerful bank in the country

Part 2
- a protective tariff: to protect the new manufacturing sector
= northern manufacturers wanted protection from “unfair” British competition
= Tariff of 1816, placed 20-25 percent tax on a long list of imported goods
= Tariffs helped the Northeast more than the South
= Aggravated sectional tensions
= Dominated political debate throughout the nineteenth century
= benefited manufacturers rather than consumers

• Part 3
  -internal improvements:* the federal financing of roads, bridges, canals, and harbors:
  = the war demonstrated how hard it was to move troops, and supplies overland to the west
  = what was needed was a system to tie the country together
  = support fro federally-financed roads and canals came largely from the West (Clay)
  = Madison did not support internal improvements: he believed it would take a Constitutional amendments
  = other critics (later Jackson) believed that only state, or private investor should fund such projects

Erie Canal (1816-1825): greatest contraction project to that time
= huge financial success
* 364 miles long from Albany, New York to Buffalo
* brought a “river of gold” to New York City to Buffalo from 20 days to 6
* it’s success inspired more canals another states
* by 1837 there were 3,000 miles of canals

Question 11

Declaration of Rights and Sentiments

Answer 11

• Document based on the Declaration of Independence that called for gender equality, written primarily by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and signed by Seneca Falls Convention delegates in 1848.

Question 12

Frederick Douglas

Answer 12

• escaped from Slavery in Maryland in 1838
• is a slavery abolitionist and went on to become the national leader in the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York

Question 13

Compromise of 1850

Answer 13

• California requested statehood in 1849, and Taylor thought it a good idea:
  = In fact, why not make California and New Mexico free states
  immediately, he argued, and bypass the volatile issue of slavery?
  = In his annual message December 4, 1849, Taylor endorsed immediate
  statehood for California and urged Congress to avoid injecting slavery
  into the issue.
  = Irritated Southerners threatened to leave the Union. Southerners
  disproportionately fought in the Mexican War, and they were not going
  to be denied the fruits of victory.
  = Admitting California tips the “balance of power” perhaps permanently.
  = Taylor, a traitor to the South.
  = Congress was paralyzed, fist fights broke out.
  = Sixty ballots to elect a Speaker of the House.
  = Talk of secession or civil war.
• Congressional leaders turned to Clay, who was “regarded by all, as the man for the crisis.”
• On January 29, 1850 Clay presented to Congress set of resolutions meant to settle the controversy:

Question 14

Whig Ideology

Answer 14

–Believed it was okay to acquire a large share of the wealth.
–Okay to use the government to foster progressive initiatives.
–Increasing concentrations of power and wealth helped the welfare of the entire community.

• They Whigs criticized Jackson and Democrats for underestimating the possibilities of upward mobility, for pitting poor against rich, and for disrupting social harmony.
• The Whigs warned against strong, highly individualistic executives who pandered to the masses.
• They warned that Democratic economic programs would turn back the clock:
  = Impoverishing and weakening the nation.
• As an alternative, the Whigs offered legislative rule, and a program of more economic nationalism:
  = In short, they wanted Congress to exercise leadership
• the use of government power and wealth to further the welfare of the people:
  = attacked Jackson’s pitting of the poor against the rich
  = Alternatives:_legislative rule and economic nationalism (3rd B.U.S)
  ~ “American System”
  = not in favor of geographic expansion
  ~ especially expansion of slavery
  ~ only for economic development
  
  • Whigs did not believe that political parties were a good thing
    
    • partisanship was thrust on them

Question 15

Kanas-Nebraska Act

Answer 15

• 1854
• Controversial legislation that created two new territories taken from Native-Americans, Kansas and Nebraska, where resident males would decide whether slavery would be allowed (popular sovereignty).
• Douglas had to find some way to induce Southerners to go along with his proposal:
  = He found it, he offered to engineer the repeal of the Missouri
  Compromise Line, and replace it with “popular sovereignty.”
  = For Southern support, Douglas held out the bait of making Kansas and
  Nebraska slave states.
  ~ Douglas believed that slavery was an outmoded institution, unsuited by climate and geography to the plains of Kansas.
  ~ He was counting on popular sovereignty barring slavery.
• After three months of fierce debate, the bill passed Congress:
  = The Kansas-Nebraska Act shredded what little had remained of the
  uneasy truce of 1850.
  = It put slavery on the front burner once again.
  = It turned Kansas into a battleground and ruptured the Democratic party
  along sectional line.

Question 16

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Answer 16

• 1858
• between Abraham Lincoln & Stephen A. Douglas
• Lincoln’s challenge to Douglas for the senate seat in Illinois.
  = Lincoln sought to raise his profile by challenging Douglas to a series of
  debates across the state.
• The debates attracted tens of thousand of spectators and became the nation’s seminar on slavery and freedom:
  = Douglas tried to stigmatize Lincoln as an abolitionist.
  = Lincoln was not, but he hated slavery, and he did insist that it could be
  banned in the new western territories.
  ~ Restriction of slavery had been the policy of the founders, he said.
  = He hammered away at Douglas as a defender of slavery.
• At Freeport, Lincoln asked Douglas if there was any lawful way for the inhabitants of a territory to exclude slavery:
  = Douglas answered by saying that slavery would dissolve unless
  protected by a slave code and local police enforcement.
  = Douglas’s answer antagonized the South. On the national scene,
  southern Democrats angrily repudiated Douglas and condemned the
  Freeport Doctrine.
• • Lincoln gave a masterful performance, which would earn him the Republican nomination for president in 1860. But, he lost the race against Douglas.*

Question 17

Wilmot Proviso

Answer 17

• 1946
• David Wilmot, D (HOR, PA): northern Democrat proposes an amendment to an appropriations bill for the war:
  = Says, “on the acquisition of any territory from Mexico as a result of this war, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in any part of said territory.”
  = Antislavery? Sure
  = Northern Democrats getting even w/Southern Democrats? Sure.
  = Remember: Northern Dems were denied Van Buren, they didn’t get “all of Oregon or none,” and Southerners got Texas.
• Launches the “Free Soil Crusade.”
  = “free soil, free, speech, free labor, free men.”
  = Save the West for free men, not slavery.
  = 1848 Free Soil Party, platform is Wilmot.
• Free Soilers concurred with the following set of propositions:*

    1. Free labor was more efficient than slave labor because it was motivated by the inducement of wages and ambition for upward mobility.
    2. Slavery undermined the dignity of manual work, and therefore degraded white labor wherever slave labor existed.
    3. Slavery inhibited education and social improvements and kept poor whites as well as slaves in ignorance.
    4. Slavery held down all southerners in poverty except the slave owning gentry.
    5. Slavery must be kept out of all new territories so that *_free labor_* could flourish there.

• reignited the debate over the westward extension of slavery. The issue had been quiet ever since the Missouri controversy

Question 18

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Answer 18

• Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852
• Her novel “rocked the nation,” selling over 300,000 copies within the first year, a million in England.
• Stowe detested the Fugitive Slave Act.
• She succeeded in bringing the message of abolitionism to an enormous new audience.
  = Not only through readership, but also through the dramatization of the
  story by countless theater companies (stage shows).
• The novel revealed how the brutal realities of slavery harmed everyone associated with it.
• Many of the characters became part of American popular legend.
  = Uncle Tom, Simon Legree, Eliza, and Miss Ophelia.
• The book was reviled in the South. It was banned and burned.
• Few books have had so great an impact.

Question 19

John Brown

Answer 19

• a passionate white abolitionist named John Brown.
• Shortly after the attack of Lawrence, John Brown, led four of his sons to Pottawatomie, Kansas, a pro-slavery settlement:
  = In a very real way, Brown led a “holy war” against the pro-slavery forces.
  = He dragged five men from their houses and hacked them to death with swords.
  = “God is my judge…we were justified under the circumstances.”
  = The Pottawatomie Massacre (May 24-25, 1856), ignited a guerrilla war.
  = By the end of 1856, about 200 settlers on both sides had been killed.
• John Brown’s Raid: October 16, 1859.
  = Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).
  = Plan: raid the federal arsenal, steal guns, give muskets to thousands of slaves in the area in the hope of triggering mass uprisings across the South.
  = Brown was captured, convicted of treason, murder, and “conspiring with Negroes to produce insurrection.”
  = Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.
  = He became a martyr for the anti-slavery cause, and he stirred the South’s worst nightmare; that armed slaves would revolt.

Question 20

free labor

Answer 20

• was more efficient than slave labor because it was motivated by the inducement of wages and ambition for upward mobility.
• one of the propositions by the Free Soilers Part of 1848

Question 21

second two-party system

Answer 21

• The political party system in the United States between 1828 and 1854,
• consisted of Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party and Henry Clay’s Whig Party.
• The first two party system consisted of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties.

Question 22

Transcontinental Treaty

Answer 22

• 1819
• also known as Adams-Onís Treaty
• Treaty between Spain and the United States that clarified the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase and arranged the transfer of Florida to the United States in exchange for cash.

Question 23

ACS

Answer 23

• American Colonization Society
• Founded by Maryland and Virginia planters to promote gradual individual emancipation of slaves followed by colonization (voluntary) in Africa:
  = By the early 1820s, several thousand ex-slaves had been transported to Liberia on the West African coast.
  = Newly freed men and women, however, were not eager to emigrate.
  = Their African roots were three or more generations in the past.
  = Colonization was also expensive for states.
  ~ Their legislatures needed to appropriate money to compensate slave owners for the emancipation of their slaves.
  ~ Few states were willing to do that.
  = Americans who were members of the ACS: Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke.
  = By 1830 the society had settled 1420 freed slaves in the colony of Liberia.
  ~ But the cost of living was high, and the colonies affairs were mismanaged, many settlers were unhappy.
  ~ By the decade before the Civil War the project was moribund. The total settled was approx. 14,000.
  = There were other such “colonization” organizations which suggested settling freed slaves in Canada, Haiti, Mexico, South America, as well as the American West
  = For several reasons all schemes failed: cost, supporters, as well as attitudes.

Question 24

Tallmadge Amendment

Answer 24

• James Tallmadge (NY-HOR), proposed an amendment to the statehood bill, that would ban the further introduction of slaves into Missouri
• the Tallmadge Amendment infuriated southern slaveholders:
  = Any effort to restrict slavery in the western territories, could lead to
  “disunion.”
  = also, southerners worried that Missouri, as a dress state, would tip the balance in the senate in favor of free states
  = the house passed the bill,
  = but the Senate rejected it

Question 25

Know-Nothings

Answer 25

• The Free Soil party virtually disappeared, and we saw the emergence of a new “nativist” party called the “Know-Nothings.”
• The Know-Nothings became popular as an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Irish organization.
• formed in 1854 after a large-scale german and irish immigration