unit 4 key terms

Question 1

The widespread belief that America was “destined” by God to expand westward across the continent into lands claimed by Native Americans as well as European nations

Answer 1

Manifest Destiny

Question 2

Trail routes followed by wagon trains bearing settlers and trade goods from Missouri to the Oregon Country, California, and New Mexico, beginning in the 1840s

Answer 2

overland trails

Question 3

The lure of fertile land and economic opportunities in the Oregon Country that drew thousands of settlers westward, beginning in the late 1830s

Answer 3

Oregon fever

Question 4

Conflict between Texas colonists and the Mexican government that resulted in the creation of the separate Republic of Texas in 1836

Answer 4

Texas Revolution (1835–1836)

Question 5

Treaty between United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican-American War

Answer 5

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

Question 6

Proposal by Congressman David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican-American War

Answer 6

Wilmot Proviso (1846)

Question 7

Legal concept by which the white male settlers in a new U.S. territory would vote to decide whether or not to permit slavery

Answer 7

popular sovereignty

Question 8

A political coalition created in 1848 that opposed the expansion of slavery into the new western territories

Answer 8

Free-Soil party

Question 9

A massive migration of gold hunters, mostly men, who transformed the economy of California after gold was discovered in the foothills of northern California.

Answer 9

California gold rush (1849

Question 10

A package of five bills presented to the Congress by Henry Clay intended to avoid secession or civil war by reducing tensions between North and South over the status of slavery

Answer 10

Compromise of 1850

Question 11

Part of the Compromise of 1850, a provision that authorized federal officials to help capture and then return escaped slaves to their owners without trials

Answer 11

Fugitive Slave Act (1850)

Question 12

Controversial legislation that created two new territories taken from Native Americans, Kansas and Nebraska, where residents would vote to decide whether slavery would be allowed (popular sovereignty)

Answer 12

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

Question 13

A series of violent conflicts in the Kansas Territory between anti-slavery and pro-slavery factions over the status of slavery

Answer 13

Bleeding Kansas (1856)

Question 14

U.S. Supreme Court ruling that slaves were not U.S. citizens and therefore could not sue for their freedom and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the western territories

Answer 14

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Question 15

During the Illinois race between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephen A. Douglas for a seat in the U.S. Senate, a series of seven dramatic debates focusing on the issue of slavery in the territories

Answer 15

Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858)

Question 16

The Union’s primary war strategy calling for a naval blockade of major southern seaports and then dividing the Confederacy by gaining control of the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi Rivers.

Answer 16

Anaconda Plan

Question 17

Slaves who sought refuge in Union military camps or who lived in areas of the Confederacy under Union control.

Answer 17

Contrabands

Question 18

Turning-point battle near Sharpsburg, Maryland, leaving over 20,000 soldiers dead or wounded, in which Union forces halted a Confederate invasion of the North

Answer 18

Battle of Antietam (1862)

Question 19

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.

Answer 19

Emancipation Proclamation (1862)

Question 20

Congressional measure that permitted freed slaves to serve as laborers or soldiers in the United States Army.

Answer 20

Militia Act (1862)

Question 21

Legislation granting “homesteads” of 160 acres of government-owned land to settlers who agreed to work the land for at least five years.

Answer 21

Homestead Act (1862)

Question 22

Federal statute that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges and universities, which were founded to provide technical education in agriculture, mining, and industry.

Answer 22

Morrill Land Grant College Act (1862)

Question 23

Democrats in northern states who opposed the Civil War and argued for an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates; Republicans labeled them “Copperheads,” because they wore copper coins on their lapels.

Answer 23

Copperhead Democrats

Question 24

A protracted battle in northern Mississippi in which Union forces under Ulysses Grant besieged the last major Confederate fortress on the Mississippi River, forcing the inhabitants into starvation and then submission.

Answer 24

Battle of Vicksburg (1863)

Question 25

A monumental three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania, widely considered a turning point in the war, in which Union forces successfully countered a second Confederate invasion of the North.

Answer 25

Battle of Gettysburg (1863)

Question 26

Abraham Lincoln’s successful reelection campaign, capitalizing on Union military successes in Georgia, to defeat Democratic opponent, former general George B. McClellan, who ran on a peace platform.

Answer 26

election of 1864

Question 27

The Union army’s devastating march through Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah led by General William T. Sherman, intended to demoralize civilians and destroy the resources the Confederate army needed to fight.

Answer 27

March to the Sea (1864)

Question 28

Virginia village where Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union general Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865

Answer 28

Appomattox Court House

Question 29

Amendment to the U. S. Constitution that freed all slaves in the United States.

Answer 29

Thirteenth Amendment (1865)

Question 30

Senators and congressmen who, strictly identifying the Civil War with the abolitionist cause, sought swift emancipation of the slaves, punishment of the rebels, and tight controls over the former Confederate states after the war

Answer 30

Radical Republicans

Question 31

Reconstruction agency established in 1865 to protect the legal rights of former slaves and to assist with their education, jobs, health care, and landowning.

Answer 31

Freedmen’s Bureau

Question 32

Plan to require southern states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, disqualify wealthy ex-Confederates from voting, and appoint a Unionist governor.

Answer 32

Johnson’s Restoration Plan

Question 33

Laws passed in southern states to restrict the rights of former slaves; to combat the codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment and set up military governments in southern states that refused to ratify the amendment.

Answer 33

black codes

Question 34

Guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words similar to those of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Answer 34

Fourteenth Amendment (1866)

Question 35

Phase of Reconstruction directed by Radical Republicans through the passage of three laws: the Military Reconstruction Act, the Command of the Army Act, and the Tenure of Office Act.

Answer 35

Congressional Reconstruction

Question 36

A formal misconduct charge made against a public official, usually the president, by the House of Representatives. The official’s removal from office requires a separate process in the form of a trial facilitated by the Senate. A guilty verdict from two-thirds of the participating senators leads to a conviction.

Answer 36

impeachment

Question 37

This amendment forbids states to deny any person the right to vote on grounds of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Former Confederate states were required to ratify this amendment before they could be readmitted to the Union.

Answer 37

Fifteenth Amendment (1870)

Question 38

Poor, mostly black farmers who would work an owner’s land in return for shelter, seed, fertilizer, mules, supplies, and food, as well as a substantial share of the crop produced

Answer 38

sharecroppers

Question 39

Organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction; a revived organization in the 1910s and 1920s stressed white, Anglo-Saxon, fundamentalist Protestant supremacy; the Klan revived a third time to fight the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the South

Answer 39

Ku Klux Klan

Question 40

Paper money issued during the Civil War. After the war ended, a debate emerged on whether or not to remove the paper currency from circulation and revert back to hard-money currency (gold coins). Opponents of hard-money feared that eliminating the greenbacks would shrink the money supply, which would lower crop prices and make it more difficult to repay long-term debts. President Ulysses S. Grant, as well as hard-currency advocates, believed that gold coins were morally preferable to paper currency.

Answer 40

greenbacks

Question 41

A financial calamity in the United States brought on by a dramatic slowdown in the British economy and exacerbated by falling cotton prices, failed crops, high inflation, and reckless state banks.

Answer 41

Panic of 1873

Question 42

Post–Civil War Democratic leaders who supposedly saved the South from Yankee domination and preserved the primarily rural economy.

Answer 42

redeemers

Question 43

Deal made by a special congressional commission on March 2, 1877, to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876; Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote, was declared the winner in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, marking the end of Reconstruction.

Answer 43

Compromise of 1877

Question 44

Southern whites’ view of secession as a noble “lost cause.” A revisionist version of history that glamorized plantation culture and insisted that the Civil War had little to do with slavery and everything to do with a defense of states’ rights from the Republican party and the “War of Northern Aggression.”

Answer 44

Lost Cause narrative