Chapter 12 Reading Key Terms

Front 1

Eli Whitney (p. 321)

Back 1

-Invented the cotton gin which could separate cotton from seeds.
-Gin could separate 50 times more cotton than a worker could by hand which lead to an increase in cotton production and prices.
-These increases have planters a new profitable use for slavery and a lucrative slave trade emerged from the coastal South to the Southwest.

Front 2

Conestoga wagons (p. 326)

Back 2

-these large horse-drawn wagons were used to carry people or heavy freight long distances, including from the East to the western frontier settlements.

Front 3

Cyrus Hall McCormick (p. 331)

Back 3

-In 1831, he invented a mechanical reaper to harvest wheat, which transformed the scale of agriculture. By hand a farmer could only harvest a half an acre a day, while the McCormick reaper allowed two people to harvest twelbe ares of wheat a day.

Front 4

Erie Canal (p.336)

Back 4

-Most important and profitable of the barge canals of the 1820's and 1830's; stretched from Buffalo to Albany NY, connecting the Great Lakes to the East Coast and making New York City the nation's largest port.

Front 5

Samuel F.B. Morse (p.331)

Back 5

-In 1832, he invented the telegraph and revolutionized the speed of communication.

Front 6

Lowell system (p. 332)

Back 6

-The first mills to bring all the processes of spinning and weaving cloth together under one roof and have every aspect of production of mechanized.
-Designed to be model factory communities that provided the young woman employees with meals, a boardinghouse, moral discipline, and educational and cultural opportunities.

Front 7

minstrelsy (p.338)

Back 7

-A form of entertainment that was popular from the 1830's to the 1870's. The performances featured white performers who were made up as African-Americans or "blackfaces". They preformed banjo and fiddle music, "shuffle" dances and lowbrow humor that reenforced racial stereotypes.

Front 8

Irish potato famine (p.340)

Back 8

-In 1845 an epidemic of potato rot brought a famine to rural Ireland that killed over 1 million peasants and instigated a huge increase in the number of Irish immigrating to America.
-By 1850 the Irish made up 43% of the foreign-born population in the United States; and in the 1850's, they made up over half the population of New York City ad Boston.

Front 9

coffin ships (p. 340)

Back 9

-Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine had to endure a six week journey across the Atlantic to reach America. During these voyages, thousands of passengers died of disease and starvation, which led to the ships being called "coffin ships".

Front 10

Levi Strauss (p. 342)

Back 10

-A jewish tailor who followed miners to California during the gold rush and began making durable work pants that were later dubbed blue jeans or Levi's.

Front 11

nativism (p. 343)

Back 11

-Anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feeling in the 1830's through the 1850's; the largest group was New York's Order of the Star Spangled Banner, which expanded into the American, or Know-Nothing party in 1854.
-In the 1920's, there was a surge in nativism as Americans grew to fear immigrants who might be political radicals. In response new strict immigration regulations were established.

Front 12

Know-Nothing Party (p. 344)

Back 12

-Nativist, anti-Catholic third party organized in 1854 in reaction to large-scale German and Irish immigration; the party's only presidential candidate was Millard Fillmore in 1856.