Chapter 1: The origins of the Civil War, 1820-61

• Mason-Dixon Line: separated Pennsylvania and Maryland, north and south, Maryland and Delaware, west and east. Became the symbolic dividing line between free and slave states
• Secession: leaving an organization or federation
• Territory: areas under the rule of Washington DC before they became states
• Proviso: a limitation to be imposed on another item
• Gross Domestic Product: annual value of a country's products and services
• Convention: a special group of voters called for an extraordinary reason
• Party Convention: a decision-making rally or large meeting of the members of a political party, often part of the process of selecting candidates
• Unorganized Lands: areas of the country where no governmental structures had been formally agreed. Thinly populated
• Freeport Doctrine: the idea that slavery could be banned by a series of local decisions rather a central federal decision to do so.
• Ticket: 2 or more politicians who run for office together.
• Political Processes: the formulation and administration of public policy usually by interaction between social groups and political institutions
• Upper South: the most northerly Southern states, adjacent to the Mason-Dixon line
• Factors the contributed to the settlement of the west:

  • Manifest Destiny
  • Gold discovered in California
  • Homestead Act of 1862
  • Transcontinental railroad
  • the American Dream
• Manifest Destiny: belief that it was America's mission to expand from ocean to ocean, spreading democracy and freedom.

  Americans believe it was their God-given duty to conquer the Western territories and unify the nation
• Territorial Expansion of the U.S.

  • 1803 Louisiana Purchase
  • 1845 Texas
  • 1848 Mexican-American War: Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, California, Nevada, and Utah
  • 1850 Oregon territory
• Oregon Trail: the only way West by land, 2170 mile route
• 1862 Homestead Act: millions of acres were given away free in the West to anyone that would claim land and live on it for 5 years, signed by Lincoln

  • encouraged settlement of the west
• Missouri Compromise of 1820 - Since Maine is free, Missouri should be a slave state. Anything north of Missouri is free and anything south is slave
• Compromise of 1850: permitted slavery in Washington D.C., but outlawed the slave trade, added California to the Union as a free state
• Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: required citizens to assist in apprehending runaway slaves and denied enslaved people a right to trail by jury
• in 1857, Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott Decision that African Americans didn't have legal citizenship rights.