Unit 5: 1844-1877, MD, Slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction

• Manifest Destiny


  The belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean
• Westward expansion was needed because Americans needed more access to mineral and natural resources, and there was a gold discovery in California in 1848
• Westward expansion also made sense for people looking for economic and homestead opportunities
• James Polk


  1844, big believer in Manifest Destiny. Had eye on a couple of territories, mainly Texas and Oregon and California
• Polk made an agreement with the British about Oregon, dividing it at the 49th parallel
• Texas


  Was being settled by Americans since the 1820s but still belonged to Mexico, eventually Americans outnumbered Mexicans
• Annexing Texas was difficult because Texas claimed independence but Mexico didn't recognize it, and the first two presidents, Jackson and Van Buren, said no to annexation because it was possible that doing so would cause a war with Mexico
• Sam Houston


  Texans revolted against Mexican authority under Sam Houston, Texas declared independent republic in 1836
• Mexico sent forces north to put down the rebellion, Mexicans won at the Battle of the Alamo
• In retaliation to the Battle of the Alamo, Houston engaged Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto, captured the Mexican general and forced him to sign a treaty granting Texan independence
• In 1829, the Mexican government required two things to live in Texas: convert to Roman Catholicism and outlaw slavery in their territory
• Oregon


  Both the British and Americans laid competing land claims in Oregon, with the British claiming it was theirs because they had established a profitable fur trade and settled there for much longer, while American missionaries and farmers had been moving to the territory and settling in much larger numbers than the British
• The causes of the Mexican-American War were that Texas declared independence from Mexico, fought many battles, and Mexico wasn't happy about the situation. Texas didn't want to remain independent, wanted to be annexed by the US. There were also debates over the southern border of Mexico, with the US saying it was along the Rio Grande and Mexico saying it was along the Nueces River
• Polk sent Zachary Taylor and troops to the Rio Grande, Mexican troops met them there, 11 Americans dead. Polk wanted war, and on May 13, 1846, the Mexican-American War began
• The effects of the Mexican-American War were that the US gained a ton of land from the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which established the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas and outlined the deal for the Mexican Cession, in which Mexico ceded California and New Mexico to the US for $15 million
• The Gadsden Purchase in 1853, combined with the Mexican-American War, resulted in Mexico losing more than half of its territory
• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also stated that any Mexicans living in the now American territory would be granted citizenship, but the Indians weren't
• Wilmot Proviso


  Congress assumed that the United States would gain a lot of land following the Mexican-American War, and the Wilmot Proviso stated that any lands gained from the victory would be off limits to the expansion of slavery
• Free Soil (movement)


  Wanted to acquire additional land for homesteaders to settle on without competition from the system of slavery, composed of northern Democrats and Whigs
• Compromise of 1850


  Said that the Mexican Cession would be further divided into Utah and New Mexico territories and would practice popular sovereignty, California would be admitted as a free state, slave trade is banned in Washington DC, and a stricter fugitive slave law was enacted
• The Compromise of 1850 calmed tensions a little, but the North was against slavery and didn't want to return escaped slaves to plantations
• Abolitionists


  Wanted to ban slavery everywhere, in newly acquired territories but also existing territories where slavery was legal. Minority in the North, but highly influential group because of the effectiveness of their strategies and tactics to make their message heard
• Popular Sovereignty


  Argued that the people living in each territory should decide whether slavery should be legal or not
• Prior to the Civil War, there was a huge number of immigrants, mainly Irish and German, who arrived and settled in cultural enclaves where they kept alive their cultural customs, languages, and religion. They mostly lived in slums where diseases ran rampant, unemployment was growing, and infant mortality rates were among the worst in the country
• Nativist Movement


  Policy of protecting the interests of native-born people against the interests of immigrants. immigrants were Catholic Christians, not Protestants
• Know-Nothing Party

  Strong nativist sentiment became so strong that a group of people organized this party around opposition to immigrants, concerned with limiting immigrants' cultural and political influence
• The North's economy was stimulated by free wage laborers working in manufacturing jobs in factories, and its population was growing faster than the South's, while the South's economy was fueled by enslaved labor working on agricultural plantations
• The Liberator


  William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, extremely influential in the abolitionist community
• Uncle Tom's Cabin


  Harriet Beecher Stowe's publication, a work of fiction that portrayed the dehumanization and brutality of slavery in graphic detail
• Frederick Douglass


  A man who had escaped slavery, able to weave together a compelling argument for abolitionism
• Underground Railroad


  A serious of trails and safe houses by which people enslaved in the South could find a safe passage to the North, with Harriet Tubman as a key figure
• Homestead Act 1862


  Provided 160 acres of cheap land to move out West and settle for 5 years
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise and allowed popular sovereignty in Kansas and Nebraska, leading to many pro-slavery and anti-slavery activists flooding into the territories to sway the vote on slavery. led to bleeding kansas
• Dred Scott 1857


  The Constitution did not extend citizenship to people of African descent, therefore they don't have the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens
• The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, with his free soil platform, was the immediate cause of secession (North Carolina a month later), ultimately leading to the start of the Civil War
• During the Civil War, both the Union and Confederacy used a draft, and Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland
• Habeas Corpus


  A tool preventing the government from unlawfully imprisoning individuals outside of the judicial process
• Emancipation Proclamation


  Changed the purpose of the Civil War - no longer just preserving the Union but getting rid of slavery entirely forever. Helped to keep Europe out of the war, allowed African Americans to fight in the Union army, and could be compared to the Gettysburg Address
• The Union won the Civil War due to improved military leadership, greater population and infrastructure/resources, effective strategies (Anaconda Plan), key victories in Antietam and Gettysburg, and the destruction of the South's environment/infrastructure (Sherman's March to the Sea)
• Anaconda Plan


  Isolate the Confederacy both diplomatically and economically, preventing it from exporting crops and importing weapons, foodstuffs, etc. Invasion along the Mississippi River cut off transportation and communication routes for the Confederates