Unit 4 Vocab Flashcards
Oregon Trail
Overland trail of more than two thousand miles that carried American settlers from the Midwest to new settlements in Oregon, California, and Utah
claim clubs
Groups of local settlers on the nineteenth-century frontier who banded together to prevent the price of their land claims from being bid up by outsiders at public land auction
Santa Fe Trail
The 900-mile trail opened by American merchants for trading purposes following Mexico’s liberalization of the formerly restrictive trading policies of Spain.
Alamo
Franciscan mission at San Antonio, Texas, that was the site in 1836 of a siege and massacre of Texans by Mexican troops
Mexican Cession of 1848
The addition of half a million square miles to the United States as a result of victory in the 1846 war between the United States and Mexico
Manifest Destiny
Doctrine, first expressed in 1845, that the expansion of white Americans across the continent was inevitable and ordained by God.
Compromise of 1850
The four step compromise that admitted California as a free state, allowed the residents of the New Mexico and Utah territories to decide the slavery issue for themselves, ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and passed a new fugitive slave law to enforce the constitutional provision stating that a slave escaping into a free state shall be delivered back to the owner
Wilmot Proviso
The amendment offered by Pennsylvania Democrat David Wilmot in 1846 which stipulated that “as an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico… neither slavery no involuntary servitude shall every exist in any part of said territory.”
popular sovereignty
A solution to the slavery crisis suggested by Michigan senator Lewis Cass by which territorial residents, not Congress, would decide slavery’s fate
Fugitive Slave Act
Law, part of the Compromise of 1850, that required authorities in the North to assist southern slave catchers and return runaway slaves to their owners
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Law passed in 1854 creating the Kansas and Nebraska Territories but leaving the question of slavery open to residents, thereby repealing the Missouri Compromise
“Bleeding Kansas”
Violence between pro- and antislavery forces in Kansas Territory after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854
Know-Nothing Party
Anti-immigrant party formed from the wreckage of the Whig Party and some disaffected northern Democrats in 1854
Republican Party
Party that emerged in the 1850s in the aftermath of the bitter controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, consisting of former Whigs, some northern Democrats, and many Know-Nothings.
Constitutional Union Party
National party formed in 1860, mainly by former Whigs, that emphasized allegiance to the Union and strict enforcement of all national legislation
Lincoln-Douglas debates
Series of debates in the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign during which Democrat Stephen A. Douglas and Republican Abraham Lincoln staked out their differing opinions on the issue of slavery in the territories
John Brown’s Raid
New England abolitionist John Brown’s ill-fated attempt to free Virginia’s slaves with a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859
Confederate States of America
Nation proclaimed in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861 after the seven states of the Lower South seceded from the United States
Emancipation Proclamation
Decree announced by President Abraham Lincoln in September 1862 and formally issued on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in all Confederate states still in rebellion
First Confiscation Act
Law passed by Congress in August 1861, it liberated only those slaves who had directly assisted the Confederate war effort or whose masters were openly disloyal to the Union
Second Confiscation Act
Law passed by Congress in July 1862 giving Union commanders the right to seize slave property as their armies marched through Confederate territory
Copperheads
A term Republicans applied to northern war dissenters and those suspected of aiding the Confederate cause during the Civil War
Radical Republicans
A shifting group of Republican congressmen, usually a substantial minority, who favored the abolition of slavery from the beginning of the Civil War and later advocated harsh treatment of the defeated South
Thirteenth Amendment
Constitutional amendment ratified in 1863 that freed all slaves throughout the United States
Lost Cause
The phrase many white southerners applied to their Civil War defeat. They viewed the war as a noble cause and their defeat as only a temporary setback in the South’s ultimate vindication
Freedman’s Bureau
Agency established by Congress in March 1865 to provide social, educational, and economic services, advice, and protection to former slaves and destitute whites; lasted seven years
Field order No. 15
Order by General William T. Sherman in January 1865 to set aside abandoned land along the southern Atlantic coast to 40-acre grants to freedmen; rescinded by President Andrew Johnson later that year
Sharecropping
Labor system that evolved during and after Reconstruction whereby landowners furnished laborers with a house, farm animals, and tools that advanced credit in exchange for a share of the laborers’ crop.
Black Codes
Laws passed by states and municipalities denying many rights of citizenship to free blacks before the Civil War. Also, during the Reconstruction era, laws passed by newly elected southern state legislatures to control black labor, mobility, and employment
Fourteenth Amendment
Constitutional amendment passed by Congress in April 1866 incorporating some of the features of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It prohibited states from violating the civil rights of their citizens and offered states the choice of allowing black people to vote or losing representation in Congress
Scalawags
Soutehrn whites, mainly small landowning farmers and well-off merchants and planters, who supported the southern Republican Party during Reconstruction for diverse reasons; a disparaging term
Fifteenth Amendment
Passed by Congress in 1869, guaranteed the right of American men to vote, regardless of race
Carpetbaggers
Pejorative term to describe northern transplants to the South, many of whom were Union soldiers who stayed in the South after the war
Ku Klux Klan
Perhaps the most prominent of the vigilante groups that terrorized black people in the South during the Reconstruction Era, founded by Confederate veterans in 1866
Compromise of 1877
The congressional settling of the 1876 election that installed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House and gave Democrats control of all state governments in the South
Redeemers
Southern Democrats who wrested control of governments in the former Confederacy from Republicans, often through electoral fraud and violence, beginning in 1870.
