Period 5 (1844-1877)

Question 1

What policy did the Whigs stand for?

Answer 1

internal improvements- building bridges, digging canals, etc.

Question 2

What did the Democrats stand for?

Answer 2

expansionists- pushing the nation’s borders outward, felt that newly added land should be kept in private hands

Question 3

What treaty did James Polk sign?

Answer 3

Oregon Treaty- with Great Britain, allowed United States to peacefully acquire Oregon, established northern border

Question 4

Mexican- American War

Answer 4

US tried to gain Texas

Question 5

Why did the Mexican- American War not have universal support?

Answer 5

Northerners feared that new states in the West would become slave states, tipping the balance in Congress in favor of proslavery forces

Question 6

What happened to the Wilmot Proviso and what was it?

Answer 6

bill prohibiting the extension of slavery into any territory gained from Mexico. Northerners voted in favor and Southerners opposed- did not pass

Question 7

What caused the end of the Whig party?

Answer 7

split between anti-slavery Northern WHigs and pro-slavery Southern Whigs

Question 8

What party rose to take the place of the Whigs?

Answer 8

Free- Soil Party- devoted to the goals of the Wilmot Proviso= opposed to the expansion of slavery because they didn’t want white settlers to have to compete with slave labor in new territories

Question 9

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Answer 9

Mexico handed over Arizona, New MExico, California, Nevada, and Utah. Known as the Mexican Cession, US paid $15 million

Question 10

popular sovereignty

Answer 10

the territories themselves would decide by vote whether to allow slavery within their borders

Question 11

Compromise of 1850

Answer 11

admitted California as a free state at the price of a stronger fugitive slave law, created Utah and New MExico, left the status of slavery up to each territory- popular sovereignty. Also abolished slave trade in Washington DC

Question 12

Kansas- Nebraska Act

Answer 12

allowed for Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery or not

Question 13

Who formed the Republican party?

Answer 13

Antislavery Whigs joined Northern Democrats and former Free- Soilers

Question 14

What was the Republican platform?

Answer 14

dedicated to keeping slavery out fo the territories, championed further development of national roads

Question 15

What new party formed during this period?

Answer 15

Know- Nothings- rallied around nativism- anti- Irish, anti- German, and anti- Catholic

Question 16

In retaliation to the Lecompton Constitution declaring Kansas a slave territory, who retaliated and what did this cause?

Answer 16

John Brown, bleeding Kansas

Question 17

After Buchanan took office, the crisis over slavery escalated when the Supreme Courth ruled what?

Answer 17

Dred Scott v. Sandford- Scott, a former slave whose master had taken him to territories where slavery was ilegal declared himself a free man and sued for his freedom. Lost in Supreme Court. Decided that slaves were property, not citizens, so could not sue in federal courts. Also ruled that Congress could not regulate slavery in the territories, as it had done in the Northwest Ordinance and with the Missouri Compromise

Question 18

What was John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry

Answer 18

Brown hoped to spark a slave revolt but failed

Question 19

Fort Sumter

Answer 19

First battle of the Civil War- Confederacy attacked and captured Fort Sumter

Question 20

Battle of Antietam

Answer 20

First battle fought in the East where the Union wasn’t completely defeated- Union forced Confederacy to retreat
Victory gave Lincoln the platform he needed to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, showed Britain and France that the Union wasn’t a lost cause

Question 21

Battle of Gettysburg

Answer 21

most northern point the Confederacy had reached, Confederacy forced to retreat

Question 22

Why did Jefferson Davis increase his control over the South?

Answer 22

he knew that the weak, poorly organized state governments could not mount an effective defense against the North’s considerable advantages in population, transportation, and economics

Question 23

Davis had some success in modernizing the Southern economy, but the Confederacy lagged too far behind in industrialization to catch up to the Union. Rapid economic growth also brought what?

Answer 23

Rapid inflation

Question 24

What, besides inflation, caused even greater poverty in the Confederacy?

Answer 24

conscription- military draft requiring many small farmers to serve in the Confederate Army

Question 25

What did conscription cause besides poverty?

Answer 25

class conflict- government allowed wealthy to hire surrogates to perform military service in their place and exempted anyone who owned more than 20 slaves from military service

Question 26

Why did the Northern economy receive a boost from the war?

Answer 26

demand for war- related goods spurred manufacturing

Question 27

Like the South, the North experienced a period of what resulting in what?

Answer 27

accelerated inflation, causing workers to worry about job security, forming unions

Question 28

Lincoln, like Davis, oversaw what?

Answer 28

a tremendous increase in the power of the central government during the war- initiated the printing of a national currency- greenbacks

Question 29

After the Union victory at Antietam, what did Lincoln issue?

Answer 29

Emancipation Proclamation- stated that the government would liberate all slaves residing in states “in rebellion”
- allowed Southern states to rejoin the Union without giving up slavery, ended Civil War and declared it a war against slabery

Question 30

Thirteenth Amendment

Answer 30

constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery

Question 31

Freedman’s Bureau

Answer 31

established by the government to help newly liberated blacks establish a place in postwar society by providing food and housing and developing schools

Question 32

Reconstruction

Answer 32

involved readmitting the Southern states that had seceded from the Union, reconstructing and rebuilding Southern towns, cities, and property, and integrating newly freed blacks into American society

Question 33

Ten Percent Plan

Answer 33

required that 10 percent of voters who had voted in the 1860 election to swear an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation to be admitted to the Union

Question 34

Wade- Davis Bill

Answer 34

thought Lincoln’s plan was too lenient, enacted this act that required 50% of the electorate to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States, but it was vetoed

Question 35

Congressional Reconstruction

Answer 35

• Fourteenth Amendment- if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen of the United States and you are a citizen of the state where you reside
• prohibited states from depriving any citizen of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law”
• prevented states from denying any citizen equal protection of the law

Question 36

Military Reconstruction Act of 1867

Answer 36

imposed martial law on the South and called for new state constitutional conventions, forced the states to allow blacks to vote for convention delegates

Question 37

Fifteenth Amendment

Answer 37

required states to allow black men to vote

Question 38

Why did Reconstruction fail?

Answer 38

• it cost a lot of money and high tax rates turned public opinion.
• did nothing to redistribute the South’s wealth of guarantee that the freedmen would own property- did not alter basic power structure of the region

Question 39

Even though the Civil War was over, a war of intimidation began, spear=headed by groups such as

Answer 39

the KKK- focused on murdering freedmen

Question 40

The Supreme Court consistently restricted the scope of the 14th and 15th Amendment, clearing the way for what

Answer 40

“Grandfather clauses”- poll taxes, literary tests, property requirements, etc.

Question 41

The Freedman’s Bureau attempted to establish a system in which blacks contracted their labor to whites, but it failed. What happened instead?

Answer 41

sharecropping- traded a portion of their crop in return for the right to work someone else’s land- landowners eventually used the system as a means of keeping poor farmers in a state of near slavery and debt.

Question 42

As a result of the Mexican- American War, what area did not become part of the United States?

Answer 42

Texas- it was annexed by the US prior to the start of the war

Question 43

What happened as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation?

Answer 43

nearly 200,000 free blacks and escaped slaves joined the Union Army- it only freed slaves in rebel territories not controlled by the Union

Question 44

The dispute over electoral votes in the election of 1876

Answer 44

was resolved by a special bipartisan commission and resulted in the end of military reconstruction

Question 45

What did the Free- Soil party advocate for?

Answer 45

the exclusion of slavery from any of the new territories