Period 5 Terms - PDF

Period 5 Terms th Manifest Destiny: The 19 century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the U.S. throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. American people would irresistibly spread their uplifting and ennobling democratic institution...

Period 5 Terms th Manifest Destiny: The 19 century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the U.S. throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. American people would irresistibly spread their uplifting and ennobling democratic institutions over the entire continent, especially the West and possibly over South America. Slave-based agriculture: To have a dependency on slave labor for economic reasons such as cotton farming. Slavery as a positive good: Was the Apologist View of the South towards slavery. The South thought instead of defending slavery as a necessary evil, they began to defend slavery as a "positive good." They argued that the slaves were happy, content, and well cared for. They even went as far as saying that being a slave was better than being a worker in a northern factory, a condition referred to as "wage slavery." Dred Scott Case: In 1857, a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. That the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the U.S.. Dred Scott, an African American slave who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom and the court denied his request. Republican Party: its formation was based around opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was founded by previous members of the Free Soil Party and the Whig party to stop the expansion of slavery. It called not simply for independence, but for the creation of a new kind of political society, a republic, where power flowed from the people themselves, not from a corrupt and despotic monarch. All government officials should develop their authority from popular consent. This was the party of Lincoln. Confederacy: A government set up in 1861 by 11 slave states of the lower South (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina) that had declared their succession from the U.S. following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. 13th Amendment: In January 1865, Lincoln urged Congress to try again to end slavery. This time, the measure known as the Thirteenth Amendment passed. By year’s end, 27 states, including 8 in the South, had ratified the amendment. From that point on, slavery was banned in the United States. 14th Amendment: Republicans were not satisfied with passing laws that ensured equal rights. They wanted equality to be protected by the Constitution itself. To achieve this goal, Congress opposed the 14th Amendment in 1866. It stated that all people born in the United States were citizens and had the same rights. All citizens were to be granted “equal protection of the laws.” However, the amendment did not establish black suffrage. Instead, it declared that any state that kept African Americans from voting would lose representatives in Congress. This meant that the Southern states would have less power if they did not grant black men the vote. th 15 Amendment: Stated that citizens could not be stopped from voting “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The amendment was ratified in 1870. The amendment did not apply to women, thus enraging them. Mexican American War: The war politically divided and unprepared Mexico's military against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. president James Polk, who believed the U.S., had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. gained the New Mexico and California territory from the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, causing controversy over whether the new territories should be free or a slave territory. Abolitionists: By the later 1850s, organized abolitionism in politics had been contained by the larger sectional crisis over slavery prompted by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s raid on Harper's Ferry. Most abolitionists supported the Republican party, stood by the Union in the secession crisis, and became militant champions of military emancipation during the Civil War. The movement again split in 1865, when Garrison and his supporters protested that the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery made continuation of the American Anti- Slavery Society unnecessary. It continued until 1870 to demand land, the ballot, and education for the freedman. Only when the Fifteenth Amendment extending male suffrage to African-Americans was passed did the society declare its mission completed. Secession: It applies to the outbreak of the American Civil War that began in 1860, when eleven states in the Lower and Upper South severed their ties with the Union. The first seven seceding states of the Lower South set up a temporary government at Montgomery, Alabama. After hostilities began at Fort Sumter in 1861, the border states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the new government, which then moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia. Twenty-one northern and border states retained the style and title of the United States, while the eleven slave states adopted the classification of the Confederate States of America. Kansas-Nebraska Act: In 1854 Southerners applauded the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and supported the bill that proposed Nebraska and Kansas be divided into two territories, and allowed male settlers to determine through popular sovereignty, whether they would allow slavery. Anti-slavery forces, particularly those around Boston, immediately announced that they would try to settle people in Kansas to prevent the territory from becoming an area where slavery was legal. Pro-slavery forces reacted, even over-reacted, to these plans. Even though the bill angered opponents of slavery, it passed, therefore establishing a reputation of pro-slavery forces willing to do anything, even fix an election, to get their way. Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln led the U.S. through the Civil War; the bloodiest war and the greatest moral, constitutional and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, began the movement to abolish slavery, and strengthened the federal government. Union: Consisted of the national government, Northern free states, and the 5 border states (Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia), that would suppress the uprising in the South. Sharecropping system: Under this system, a worker rented a plot of land to farm. The landowner provided the tools, seed, and housing. When harvest time came, the sharecropper gave the landowner a share of the crop. This system gave families without land a place to farm and gave landowners cheap labor. It became widespread as a response to economic upheaval caused by the end of slavery during and after reconstruction. Intensified Sectionalism: At the same time nationalism was unifying the country, sectionalism was threatening to drive it apart. Sectionalism is loyalty to the interest of your own region or section of the country, rather than to the nation as a whole. Economic changes had created some divisions within the United States. White Southerners were relying more on cotton and slavery. In the Northeast, wealth was based on manufacturing and trade. In the West, settlers wanted cheap land and good transportation. The interests of these actions were often in conflict. Nullification: The principle of nullification holds that a local or state jurisdiction has the power to overturn a law instituted by a federal authority. This creates a sectionalist issue between the states and federal government leading to the secessionist Civil War. Free-Soil: A political party dedicated to stopping the expansion of slavery between 1848 and 1852. The party made slavery a key issue in national politics. The party's slogan expressed the ideals “Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men”. Compromise of 1850: This compromise introduced by “The Great Compromiser” Henry Clay amended the Fugitive Slave Act, abolished the slave trade, and entered California as a free state selected through popular sovereignty. Second American party system: shift from a one party system caused by the failure of the Federalists party at the Hartford Convention. The two parties were the Jacksonian- Democratic Party, and opposed to Jackson’s policies, the Whig Party was created. The second party system reflected and shaped the political, social, economic, and cultural currents of the Jacksonian Era until succeeded by the third party system, which later become the Republican Party. Emancipation Proclamation: on January 1st, 1863, Lincoln issued this, which freed all slaves in Confederate territory, creating a moral war. The proclamation was based on the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces; it was not a law passed by Congress. However, it freed very few slaves. Most of the slaves that Lincoln intended to liberate lived in areas distant from the Union troops that could enforce his Proclamations. Radical Republicans: Was the name given to a faction in the U.S. Congress which advocated emancipation of slaves before and during the Civil War, and insisted on harsh penalties for the South following the war, during the period of Reconstruction. Two prominent leaders of the Radical Republicans were Thaddeus Stevens a congressman from Pennsylvania, and Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts. They were in opposition to Lincoln’s lenient ideas and after Lincoln’s assassination; they were outraged by the policies of President Andrew Johnson.