Period 5 Terms Flashcards
Manifest Destiny
Coined by journalist John O’Sullivan in 1845 to describe the belief that it was God’s will for the United States to expand westward to the Pacific Ocean. It also describes a more general expansionism, such as the dispute over the Oregon Territory that Polk campaign on and the U.S. expansion into the Southwest following the Mexican-American War
Oregon Trail
Throughout the 1840s, a flood of settlers began traversing the dangerous Oregon Trail. Families traveled up to six months in caravans, covering only about 15 miles per day with good weather. While living on the trail, some women began to run prayer meetings and schools to maintain some vestiges of home. Women also began to take on new roles outside of homemaking and childcare, such as repairing wagon wheels and tending to livestock.
Martin Van Buren
Eighth President. Served 1837–1841. Van Buren’s presidency was marred by an economic depression resulting from the policies of his predecessor, Andrew Jackson. The Panic of 1837 dogged his administration.
Panic of 1837
A financial crisis that last from 1837 until the mid 1840s. Caused, in part, by Andrew Jackson killing the Bank of the United States and issuing the Specie Circular, the latter of which caused the value of paper money to plummet.
Whig Party
The Whig Party was born out of opposition to Jacksonian Democrats. The Whigs favored economic nationalism, a strong central government, and rechartering the national bank. They believed in protectionist measures such as tariffs to support American industrialization. They also promoted Clay’s American System as a way to improve the roads, canals, and infrastructure of the country. The party collapsed over the question of slavery’s expansion into newly acquired territories.
William Henry Harrison
Ninth President. Served from March 4 to April 4, 1841, famously dying after 31 days in office. A hero of the War of 1812, specifically the Battle of Tippecanoe, his lively campaign saw the Whigs cart model log cabins to towns and distribute hard cider to boast of Harrison’s “poor” background. His “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too” ticket easily defeated Van Buren in 1840. However, he gave his Inaugural Address on a cold, rainy day and neglected to wear a warm coat. He contracted pneumonia and died.
John Tyler
Tenth President. Served April 4, 1841 to 1845. A Virginian Whig, Tyler was that first vice president to ascend to the presidency upon the death of the incumbent. This act set the precedent that all future vice presidents would follow, as the issue was something of a legal gray area constitutionally. Tyler sought the annexation of Texas but was unable to secure it. Nicknamed His Accidency.
Daniel Webster
U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1827–1841, 1845–1850) and Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler (1841–1843) and Fillmore (1850–1852). A Whig politician and member of the Great Triumvirate. During the debate over the Tariff of 1816, he complained that New England had not developed enough to withstand interruptions in its ability to trade freely with Britain. He opposed nullification. He often sought the presidency but never won. He resigned his Senate seat over the negative reception to his support for the Compromise of 1850
Webster-Ashburton Treaty
An 1842 treaty that divided a contested territory in northern Maine between the United States and Britain, settling Maine’s northern boundary.
James K. Polk
Eleventh President. Served 1845–1849. An heir of sorts to Andrew Jackson, he advocated for Manifest Destiny. His campaign slogan was “Fifty-four forty or fight!” Yet while that slogan advocated a hardline position on the disputed Oregon Territory, he instead reached a diplomatic agreement with Britain. The border was drawn at the 49th parallel, which ceded what is now British Columbia, including Vancouver Island. He then oversaw the controversial Mexican-American War, expanding the U.S. into the Southwest. Having pledged to only serve one term, he declined to run for reelection in 1848
Mexican-American War
A conflict between the United States and Mexico. It took place from April 1846 to February 1848. Following the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered a wayward province whose independence was a legal fiction created under duress, war broke out between the two nations. The war was deeply controversial in its time, illustrating the deepening divide between free and slave states. Many political and military leaders of the Civil War fought in this war. It also led to a major U.S. territorial expansion
Sam Houston
As President of Texas, he advocated annexation by the United States. Later, as Texas governor, he resisted efforts at secession to join the Confederacy and was removed from office.
Alamo
The site of a famous battle in San Antonio, Texas. A small force of Texans found themselves under siege from February 23 to March 6, 1836. Mexican forces led by Santa Anna eventually took the Alamo, killing all the defenders in the process. However, news of the resistance inspired other Texans to rebel, especially thanks to an open letter—To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World—by the Alamo’s commander, William B. Travis.
Republic of Texas (Lone Star Republic)
A republic declared in 1836. Santa Anna was forced to signed a peace treaty recognizing its independence from Mexico while in custody of Sam Houston’s forces. Its initial attempts to join the United States were rebuffed under Jackson and Van Buren for fear of tipping political power toward the slave states. Congress rejected Tyler’s efforts to absorb it in 1844. It was finally annexed under the Polk administration.
John Slidell
A special envoy sent by President Polk to to inform the Mexican government of U.S. desires to draw the Texas border at the Rio Grande, rather than the Nueces River farther south, and to purchase California. In anticipation of Mexican resistance to Slidell’s proposal, Polk amassed the U.S. Army, led by Zachary Taylor, along the disputed southern border of Texas at the Rio Grande River in January of 1846.
Zachary Taylor
Twelfth President. Served 1849–1850. Died of a stomach ailment. Tyler was a Mexican-American War general. The Whigs nominated him in the 1848 election. While a slave-owner, he did not advocate the expansion of slavery, believing that the practice wasn’t economically viable in the West.
Abraham Lincoln
Sixteenth President. Served 1861 to his assassination on April 15, 1865. A former Whig who had opposed the Mexican-American War, he joined the newly formed Republican Party. His 1860 election triggered the secession of several states, and he deftly led the Union through the ensuing Civil War.
Wilmot Proviso
Following the Mexican-American War, Representative David Wilmot proposed that slavery would be forbidden in any new lands acquired by the war with Mexico. The final bill passed in the House but failed in the Senate. This bill, the Wilmot Proviso, signaled the start of an even deeper crisis that would pit the North against the South over issues of slavery’s expansion, states’ rights, and government representation.
Bear Flag Republic
An unrecognized independent California that existed from June 14 to July 9, 1846. Led by John C. Fremont, and annexed into the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
John C. Fremont
Temporary leader of the Bear Flag Republic and later governor of California. Fremont is perhaps best remembered for his role in the 1856 presidential election, where he served as the very first nominee of the newly founded Republican Party. He came in second with a little over 33 percent of the popular vote. During the Civil War, he served as a Union major general, fighting mainly in the Midwest.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Signed in February 1848, it ended the Mexican-American War. The treaty granted California and most of the Southwest (including current-day New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada) to the United States. The U.S. government agreed to pay war reparations in the sum of $15 million to the Mexican government. Despite continued bitter debate over the expansion of slavery, the treaty was ratified.
Gadsden Purchase
An 1853 treaty between the U.S. and Mexico. It was ratified in 1854. The treaty resolved a border issue lingering from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In exchange for $10 million, the U.S. purchased a chunk of modern-day Arizona and a small portion of southwest New Mexico. This was the last notable expansion of the continental U.S.
Free Soil Party
Inspired by the Wilmot Proviso, antislavery advocates from various political parties founded the Free Soil Party to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. Martin Van Buren ran for president as a Free Soil candidate in 1848. The Free Soil Party’s membership was later absorbed into the new Republican Party.
Gold Rush
Commonly refers to the California Gold Rush, which took place between 1848 and roughly 1855. The population of California ballooned as prospectors flocked to the state to seek a fortune in mining gold. Over 100,000 American Indians died as settlers and prospectors violently displaced them. See: Forty-Niners.
Compromise of 1850
A package of several bills that alleviated some of the tension between the North and South, delaying the Civil War for another decade. Orchestrated by Henry Clay. Its key points were: California was admitted as a free state; it created the New Mexico and Utah Territories, and popular sovereignty would determine slavery’s status in them; it banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C.; it enacted a stricter Fugitive Slave Act; it give Texas monetary compensation to drop its claims to part of New Mexico’s territory.
Fugitive Slave Act
A controversial law that constituted part of the Compromise of 1850. It required that escaped slaves, upon their capture, would be returned to their masters, and that the authorities in a free state had to cooperate with this process. Nicknamed the “Bloodhound Law” by abolitionists for the common use of such dogs in hunting down slaves
William H. Seward
A radical abolitionist New York senator (1849–1861). He argued that slavery should be banned on moral grounds. Initially a Whig, he joined the Republican Party in 1855. Seward served as Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869. He was one of the officials targeted by John Wilkes Booth’s conspiracy but narrowly survived multiple stab wounds. He masterminded the purchase of Alaska in 1867, an act initially nicknamed Seward’s Folly.
Millard Fillmore
Thirteenth President. Served 1850–1853. Took office after the sickness and death of Zachary Taylor. A longtime House member, Fillmore worked to help pass the Compromise of 1850. Notably, he dispatched the Perry Expedition to Japan. After failing to gain the Whig nomination in 1852, he served as the Know-Nothing Party nominee in 1856.
Stephen A. Douglas
A senator from Illinois nicknamed the “Little Giant.” He is notable for creating the Kansas-Nebraska Act as well as participating in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. He initially supported the Dred Scott decision until it proved politically unpopular. He opposed the Lecompton Constitution. A staunch Unionist, he supported Lincoln during the Civil War, even holding the man’s stovepipe hat during the Inauguration ceremony. However, he died in June 1861 of typhoid fever.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, this novel expressed Northern abolitionist frustrations with the Fugitive Slave Act. In the North, the novel quickly gained fame and convinced many that slavery was morally wrong. Meanwhile in the South, the commitment to protecting the institution of slavery intensified.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Proposed by Senator Stephen A. Douglas in 1854, it functionally repealed the Missouri Compromise. The act proposed the Nebraska Territory be divided into two regions, Nebraska and Kansas, and each would vote by popular sovereignty on the issue of slavery. It was presumed that Nebraska would become a free state, while Kansas would become a slave state. Douglas was able to push his bill through Congress, and President Pierce signed it into law in 1854. It helped spur the formation of the Republican Party
Bleeding Kansas
The nickname for a period of bloody conflict in what became Kansas. Lasted 1855–1859. Proslavery and antislavery forces engaged in a number of battles, massacres, and raids in order to determine whether Kansas would be a free or slave state. Due to decrying slavery in Kansas, Senator Charles Sumner was nearly beaten to death on the Senate floor by Preston Brooks. Due to the objections of Southern states, Kansas would not be admitted to the United States until the start of the Civil War
