Unit 5 Vocab

Question 1

Oregon Trail

Answer 1

Overland Trail of more than 2000 miles that carried American settlers from the Midwest to new settlement in Oregon, California, and Utah

Question 2

Tejanos

Answer 2

person of Spanish or Mexican descent born in Texas

Question 3

Empresarios

Answer 3

agents who received a land grant from the Spanish or Mexican government in return for organizing settlements

Question 4

Alamo

Answer 4

Franciscan mission at San Antonio, Texas that was the site in 1836 of a siege and massacre of Texas by Mexican troops

Question 5

Mexican-American war

Answer 5

war fought between Mexico and the United States between 1846 and 1848 over control of territory in southwest North America

Question 6

49ers

Answer 6

thousands of Goldminers to arrive in the California Gold Rush in 1849

Question 7

Wilmot’s Proviso

Answer 7

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 nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of the said territory”

Question 8

popular sovereignty

Answer 8

A solution to the slavery crisis suggested by Michigan Senator Lewis Cass by which territorial residents, not Congress, would decide slavery’s fate

Question 9

Lincoln-Douglas debates

Answer 9

series of debates in the 1850 Illinois Senatorial campaign during which Douglas and Lincoln staked out their different opinions on the issue of slavery

Question 10

compromise of 1850

Answer 10

The four step compromise which admitted California as a free state, allowed the residents of the New Mexico and Utah territory 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

Question 11

fugitive slave law

Answer 11

part of the compromise of 1850 that require the authorities in the North to assist southern slave catchers and return runaway slaves to their owners

Question 12

Kansas Nebraska act

Answer 12

law passed in 1854 creating the Kansas and Nebraska territories but leaving the question of slavery open to residents, thereby repealing the Missouri compromise

Question 13

know-nothings

Answer 13

name given to the anti-immigrant party formed from the wreckage of the Whig party and some disaffected Northern Democrats in 1854

Question 14

republican Party

Answer 14

party that emerged in the 1850s in the aftermath of the better controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska act, consisting of former Whigs, some Northern Democrats, many know-nothings

Question 15

bleeding Kansas

Answer 15

violence between pro and anti-slavery forces in Kansas territory after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act in 1854

Question 16

Dred Scott vs. Sanford

Answer 16

Supreme Court ruling, in a lawsuit brought by Dred Scott, a slave demanding his freedom based on his residence in a free state, that slaves couldn’t be US citizens and that Congress had no jurisdiction over slavery in the territories

Question 17

Lecompton Constitution

Answer 17

proslavery draft written in 1857 by Kansas territorial delegates elected under questionable circumstances; it was rejected by to governors, supported by President Buchanan and decisively defeated by Congress

Question 18

panic of 1857

Answer 18

banking crisis that caused a credit crunch the North; it was less severe in the South, where high cotton prices spurred a quick recovery

Question 19

John Brown’s raid

Answer 19

New England abolitionist John Brown’s ill-fated attempt to free Virginia’s slaves with the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1859

Question 20

constitutional union party

Answer 20

National party formed in 1860, mainly by former whigs, that emphasized allegiance to the union and strict enforcement of all national legislation

Question 21

confederate states of America

Answer 21

nation proclaimed in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861, after the seven states of the lower south seceded from the United States

Question 22

legal tender act

Answer 22

act creating a national currency in February 1862

Question 23

National Bank act

Answer 23

act prohibiting state banks from issuing their own notes and forcing them to apply for federal charters

Question 24

Morill Tariff Act

Answer 24

acts that raised tariffs to more than double their prewar rate

Question 25

homestead act

Answer 25

law passed by Congress in May 1862 providing homesteads with 160 acres of free land in exchange for improving the land within five years of the grant

Question 26

Morill Land Grant Act

Answer 26

law passed by Congress in July 1862 forwarding proceeds from the sale of public lands to the states for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges

Question 27

Emancipation Proclamation

Answer 27

decree announced by President Abraham Lincoln in September 1862 and formally issued on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves and all confederate states still in rebellion

Question 28

13th, 14th, and 15th amendments

Answer 28

13-all slaves are free
14-all born in the US are citizens
15-all adult men regardless of race or color are allowed to vote

Question 29

copperheads

Answer 29

The term Republicans apply to northern war dissenters and those suspected of aiding the confederate cause during the Civil War

Question 30

radical Republicans

Answer 30

A shifting group of Republican congressman, usually a substantial minority, who favored the abolition of slavery from the beginning of the Civil War and later abdicated harsh treatment of the defeated South

Question 31

Freedmen’s Bureau

Answer 31

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

Question 32

civil rights act of 1866

Answer 32

act the full citizenship to African-Americans

Question 33

congressional reconstruction

Answer 33

name given to the period 1867-1870 when Republican-dominated Congress controlled because controlled Reconstruction-era policy

Question 34

tenure of office act

Answer 34

act stipulating that any officeholder appointed by the president with a senate’s advice and consent could not be removed until the Senate had approved a successor

Question 35

Ku Klux Klan

Answer 35

perhaps the most prominent of the vigilante groups that terrorized black people in the south during the reconstruction era, founded by the Confederate veterans in 1866

Question 36

sharecropping

Answer 36

labor system that evolved during and after reconstruction whereby landowners furnished laborers with a house, farm animals, and tools and advanced credit in exchange for a share of the laborers’ crop

Question 37

Carpetbaggers

Answer 37

Northern transplants to the south, many of whom are union soldiers who stayed in the south after the war

Question 38

scalawags

Answer 38

Southern whites, mainly small landowning farmers and well-off merchants and planters, who supported the Republican Party during Reconstruction

Question 39

slaughterhouse cases

Answer 39

Group of cases resulting in one sweeping decision by the US Supreme Court in 1873 that contradicted the intent of the 14th amendment by decreeing that most citizenship rights remained under state, not federal, control

Question 40

Compromise of 1877

Answer 40

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

Question 41

reconstruction act

Answer 41

1877 act that divided the south into five military districts subject to martial law

Question 42

Santa Fe Trail

Answer 42

a 900-mile trail open by American merchants for training purposes following Mexico’s liberalization for the formally restrictive trading policies of Spain