Magic Study Guide APUSH

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Created by
Alyssa Kaufmann

Cards (241)

  • American Revolution

    After fighting the costly French & Indian war largely on behalf of the colonists' interests, Britain decides to raise more revenue through colonial taxes and to tighten its control over the colonies (e.g. cracking down on smuggling)
  • Cycle of increasingly violent resistance by the colonists and increasingly aggressive responses by Britain

    1. Protests and boycotts--centered initially in New England--provoke reactions from Britain
    2. Propagandists and philosopher-politicians paint King George III as a "tyrant" who is violating the colonists' "natural rights" and has therefore broken the "social contract"
  • Events/Acts after French & Indian War

    • Sugar Act
    • Proclamation of 1763
    • Stamp Act
    • Sons of Liberty
    • No taxation without representation
    • Nonimportation movement
    • Daughters of Liberty
    • Social contract theory/natural rights/Enlightenment influence/John Locke
    • Boston Tea Party
    • Intolerable Acts/Coercive Acts
    • Thomas Paine
  • The question remains: was the revolution more about money (i.e. taxation) or principle (i.e. lack of representation)?
  • Adoption of the Constitution

    The newly independent "United States of America" still think of themselves as separate sovereign states, tied together in something more like a strong alliance ("firm league of friendship") than a single nation
  • The central government of the Articles of Confederation proves pathetically weak, prompting a convention to "revise" them that ends up producing a whole new Constitution
  • New Constitution

    The national government is"supreme" and sovereign over the state governments--meaning that the states now form a single large Republic, even though somehow the states still retain their sovereignty too
  • Debates at Constitutional Convention

    1. How to structure such a national government and balance power in a country where states vary so much in population, economy, and culture (e.g. slave vs. free)
    2. Even after the Constitution was proposed, there was a further debate in each state about whether they wanted to ratify this new Constitution
  • Key events/concepts related to adoption of Constitution

    • Articles of Confederation
    • Shays Rebellion
    • Three-fifths Compromise
    • Great Compromise
    • Enumerated powers
    • State sovereignty/national sovereignty
    • Federalist Papers (Madison, Jay, Hamilton)
    • Ratification debates (federalist vs. anti-federalists)
    • "Tyranny of the majority"
    • Bill of Rights
  • Market Revolution

    Between 1800 and 1860, Americans went from mainly living on small farms or working in their own small shops to participating in a mass "market economy" where many are working for a wage and producing things for people far away
  • Changes during Market Revolution

    1. As farmers go from subsistence to commercial-scale production, many leave the farms to work in cities and factories (many of them are joined by waves of immigrants)
    2. Americans start "going to work" (rather than working for themselves) and buying stuff (rather than producing their own)
    3. Gender roles become more sharply defined
    4. New classes (owners/workers) become more sharply defined too
  • Factors enabling Market Revolution

    • Transportation Revolution linking different regions of the rapidly-expanding country
    • Southern cotton production linked to booming textile mills in the north
  • Key events/concepts related to Market Revolution

    • Hamilton (commercial economy) vs. Jefferson (agrarian economy)
    • Internal improvements (e.g. Erie Canal) and transportation revolution
    • American System (H. Clay's plan of funding internal improvements with high tariffs and a national bank)
    • Lowell Mills
    • Cotton Gin/King Cotton/Cotton Exports
    • Tariffs to protect domestic industries
    • Immigration through 1850 (Irish and German)
    • Connection to westward expansion (although fueled by romantic visions of yeoman farmer, expansion actually leads to more commercial farming, links to markets across both oceans)
    • Expansion of banking sector
    • Urbanization
    • "Cult of Domesticity" / Rise of middle class
  • Foreign Relations during Early Republic
    George Washington counsels "neutrality"--avoiding entangling alliances--but that proves harder than it sounds
  • Challenges to neutrality

    1. France is upset that the U.S. is trading again with Britain, resulting in a "Quasi-War"
    2. Britain is upset that the U.S. is still trying to trade with France, resulting in the impressment of sailors and the War of 1812
  • War of 1812

    Gives Americans a new sense of nationalism and confidence that feeds into notions of "American Exceptionalism"
  • American Exceptionalism

    Shielded from the Empires of Europe and Asia by two Oceans, Americans think of themselves as destined to dominate the Americas (the Western Hemisphere)
  • Key events/concepts related to foreign relations

    • Washington's Farewell Address (no permanent alliances/neutrality/exceptionalism)
    • Jay Treaty
    • Quasi-War with France
    • XYZ Affair
    • Alien & Sedition Act
    • Impressment
    • War of 1812
    • Monroe Doctrine
  • Age of Jackson

    Jackson is a rough-and-tumble "westerner" who was orphaned as a kid and walked to Tennessee, where he made his own fortune. He embodies the "common man" -- the masses of property-less white men who had just recently been allowed to vote and who helped propel Jackson to power
  • Key events/concepts related to Age of Jackson

    • Corrupt Bargain
    • Universal white male suffrage
    • "Common Man"
    • Veto of bill to recharter Second Bank of the United States
    • Spoils System
    • Tariff of Abominations
    • Nullification Crisis
    • Democrats vs. Whigs
    • Indian Removal / Trail of Tears
  • Age of Reform

    With the nation pretty well-established by 1820, Americans began to develop movements designed to improve--even perfect--both themselves and their society
  • Key reform movements

    • Second Great Awakening
    • Abolitionism (William Lloyd Garrison, Grimke sisters, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth)
    • Women's Rights (Seneca Falls Convention, 1848)
    • Temperance
    • Utopian Communities (e.g. Brook Farm)
    • Transcendentalism (Emerson, Thoreau)
  • Manifest Destiny

    The idea that you can always "Go west, young man!" and start a new life becomes a central and enduring feature of American culture
  • Westward expansion

    1. Waves of migrants "settle" the West both before the Civil War (think Oregon trail) and after the Civil War (think Homestead Act)
    2. Conflicts between settlers and Indians become full-scale wars on the Plains, which end with negotiations (think Fort Laramie Treaty) that produce a reservation system; promises made in those negotiations are later ignored (think Custer's Wars in the Black Hills and the Dawes Act)
  • Settlers' vision vs. reality

    Settlers set out with a vision of realizing Jefferson's romantic vision of a nation of yeoman farmers, but ultimately they become links in the interconnected trade network that defines the Hamiltonian Market Revolution
  • Key events/concepts related to Manifest Destiny

    • Louisiana Purchase/Lewis & Clark
    • 54-40 or fight / Oregon
    • Annexation of Texas
    • James K. Polk
    • Mexican-American War / Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo / Mexican Cession
    • Thoreau and "Civil Disobedience"
    • Purchase of Alaska/Seward's folly
    • Transcontinental Railroad / grant of lands to railroads
    • Homestead Act
    • Plains Wars / Fort Laramie Treaty / Reservation System / Custer's Wars / Dawes Act
    • Connection to slavery/sectionalism (fights over status of slavery in territories)
  • Slavery in America

    American slavery was distinctive because it was defined in racial terms. The concept of race was used to drive a wedge between captive African laborers and white indentured servants after Bacon's Rebellion
  • Evolution of slavery

    1. Although slavery helped fuel the plantation/cash crops economies of the southern states, it was arguably in decline by the time of the Revolution/Constitution: banned in the northwest territory by the Confederation Congress and phased out throughout the north during the early 1800s
    2. As the southern economy shifted toward cotton production, the economic importance of slavery intensified and the justifications began to shift; now southerners defended slavery paternalistically as a positive good for slaves, whom they claimed were better off than wage workers in the North
  • Key events/concepts related to slavery

    • Bacon's Rebellion and Slave Codes
    • Invention of race as a "social construct"
    • Abolition of slavery in the North/Northwest Ordinance / ban on importation of slaves in 1808
    • Cotton Gin/King Cotton/slavery as foundation of export economy in south AND north
    • Founding Fathers' (e.g. Jefferson's) embarrassment about slavery ("Wolf by the ear")
    • American Colonization Society / Liberia
    • Nat Turner's rebellion and fears of slave revolts/violence
    • Paternalism / wage slavery argument / slavery as a "positive good"
    • Reactions to "radicalism" of abolitionists
  • Sectionalism and Causes of Civil War

    Although some northerners supported slavery (and profited from it economically because northern industry was tied to cheap southern cotton), between 1820 and 1860 a growing number of northerners in the United States began to fear that a "slave power" conspiracy threatened to spread slavery across the whole country
  • Attempts to preserve balance of power

    1. Southerners saw that they were far outnumbered by northerners, whom they saw as hostile to the southern "way of life"
    2. As the country expanded, both sections sought to preserve a fragile balance of power through a series of temporary compromises
  • Key events/concepts related to sectionalism and Civil War

    • Missouri Compromise
    • Compromise of 1850 (especially Fugitive Slave Act)
    • Kansas-Nebraska Act/Popular Sovereignty/Bleeding Kansas
    • John Brown's Raid
    • "Slave Power" (northerners' fear of conspiracy to spread slavery everywhere)
    • Wilmot Proviso (rejected proposal to prohibit slavery in the Mexican Cession territory)
    • Caning of Charles Sumner on floor of Senate
    • Rise of Republican Party
    • Dred Scott Decision
    • Connection to westward expansion/status of slavery in the territories
    • Election of 1860
  • Reconstruction

    Even during the Civil War, the issue of what to do with the former Confederate states came up. How to integrate those states back into the union and how to integrate freed slaves into the larger society?
  • Approaches to Reconstruction

    1. Lincoln pardons the ex-Confederates if they'll accept emancipation and launches the Freedmen's Bureau to provide relief, education, and protection to freedmen
    2. Johnson continues Lincoln's leniency but also tries to gut the Freedmen's Bureau
    3. Radical Republicans in Congress seize power and have an ally in Grant, passing the Reconstruction Amendments, which guarantee Blacks legal equality and the right
  • ejected proposal to prohibit slavery in the Mexican Cession territory
  • Caning of Charles Sumner on floor of Senate
  • Connection to westward expansion/status of slavery in the territories
  • Wartime Reconstruction

    Even during the Civil War, the issue of what to do with the former Confederate states came up. How to integrate those states back into the union and how to integrate freed slaves into the larger society?
  • Lincoln's 10 percent plan
    Lincoln pardons the ex-Confederates if they'll accept emancipation
  • Radical Republicans

    • Sumner
    • Stevens