Unit 5 - 1844 to 1877 Flashcards
Manifest Destiny
American settlers, John O’Sullivan, James K. Polk
Belief that the U.S. was destined to expand from coast to coast.
Western United States
1845 to 1900
Justified aggressive expansion. Resulted in the forced removal of Native Americans from their territories. Brought about the Mexican-American War.
Mexican-American War
James K. Polk
War of expansion between Mexico and the U.S.. The U.S. gains the American Southwestern territories, including California.
California, New Mexico, Texas, United States
1846 to 1848
New piece of foreign policy. Aggressive. Politically divisive. Sets precedent for territory acquisitions. Reignites slavery issue.
Compromise of 1850
Millard Fillmore, Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas
Set Texas’s northern and western borders. California admitted. Popular sovereignty in acquired territories. Stringent Fugitive Slave Law. Banned slave trade in D.C.
United States, Territories acquired from the Mexican-American War
September 1850
Defuses confrontation between slave and free states. Free State Majority in Congress. Effectively postpones Civil War.
Republican Party
Anti-slavery Conscience Whigs and Free Soil Democrats, Lincoln.
Founded by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Opposed the expansion of slavery. Promoted the modernization of the U.S.
Wisconsin, Northern United States
1854
Main opposition to the Democratic party. Dominant throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction. Party of Lincoln.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Stephen Douglas, Franklin Pierce
Act that created and organized Kansas and Nebraska. Established popular sovereignty in those territories.
Kansas and Nebraska territories.
1854
Repealed Missouri Compromise. Led to a series of conflicts over the issue of slavery known as “Bleeding Kansas”
Know Nothing Party
Whigs, Disaffected Northern Democrats
Nativist; anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, populist, and xenophobic party. Participates in Bloody Kansas. Later split due to the slavery issue. Many members joined the rapidly emerging Republican Party.
United States
1854
Intense nativist anti-immigrant sentiment due to increased immigration of the 1840s and 1850s.
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott, U.S. Supreme Court
Landmark decision. Ruled that Africans cannot be and were never intended to be citizens under the U.S. Constitution.
Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin
1857
SCOTUS attempt to resolve the issue of slavery. Intensely decried. Leads to further conflict between and within the North and South.
Homestead Act
Abraham Lincoln
Congressional act offering 160-acre plots of land in the west for a small fee and the promise to improve land.
Western United States
1862
Led to Western Expansion. Allowed for all citizens — including former slaves, women, and immigrants — to become landowners; however, most of land went to speculators, cattlemen, miners, lumbermen, and the railroads. Native Americans were forced off of their ancestral lands.
Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln
Presidential executive order issued during the Civil War that freed only those slaves living in states not under Union control.
United States, Confederates States
September 22, 1862
Changed the focus of Civil War; prevented foreign involvement; crippled the Confederacy’s use of slaves in the war effort.
Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln
At a dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg ceremony and to honor those who died at Gettysburg, Lincoln gives speech to rally morale in the Union to preserve the union and its freedoms.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
1863
First time that Lincoln relates the Civil War to the fight for freedom and equality, rather than simply a conflict to preserve the Union. Invokes connections to the Declaration of Independence, and that “all men are created equal”
Reconstruction Amendments
Radical Republicans, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant
13th Amendment - Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime.
14th Amendment - Defines all people born in the U.S. as citizens, requires due process, and equal protection.
15th Amendment - Prohibits discrimination in voting rights on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude
United States, Confederates States
13th Amendment, 1865
14th Amendment, 1868
15th Amendment, 1870
Intended to guarantee and safeguard the freedom of former slaves, and to establish and prevent discrimination in the United States. Promises of these amendments were gradually eroded by state laws and federal court decisions throughout the late 19th century.
Sharecropping
Andrew Johnson, Southern Landowners, Freedman, and Small White Farmers
Type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a share of their crop, given to the landowner at the end of each year.
Southern United States (Former Confederate States)
Reconstruction Era (1863 - 1877)
During Reconstruction, former slaves — and many small white farmers — were trapped within this system of economic exploitation. Lacking capital and land, they were forced to work for large landowners.
Jim Crow Laws
African Americans, State and Local Governments
State and local laws legalizing discrimination and segregation throughout the United States.
United States
Reconstruction Era (1863 - 1877)
Upheld and enforced a system of white supremacy and entrenched racism in structures of U.S. society.
Compromise of 1877
Rutherford B. Hayes, Radical Republicans, Southern Democrats
Unwritten deal, informally arranged among U.S. Congressmen, that settled the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election.
United States
1877
Hayes became president on the understanding that he would withdraw troops from the South. Black Republicans felt betrayed as they lost political power, and were subject to discrimination and harassment to suppress voting rights. By 1905, virtually all blacks were disenfranchised by state legislatures in every Southern state.
National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Merging of two opposing suffrage factions. Worked on a state by state campaign to ratify a constitutional amendment to grant women the right to vote.
Washington, District of Columbia
1890 to 1920
Despite being part of a segregated movement, especially after passage of the 14th Amendment, NAWSA, along with other women’s suffrage reform groups such as the National Women’s Party, was successful in getting the 19th Amendment passed in 1920.
