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214 Cards in this Set
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- Back
representative democracy
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a government that is composed of representatives of the people
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delegated powers
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powers that are specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution
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elastic clause
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Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution that has been interpreted as giving Congress authority to stretch its delegated powers to address issues not otherwise specified in the document; also known as the “necessary and proper clause”
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reserved powers
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powers retained by the state governments or by citizens
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concurrent powers
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powers that are shared by the federal and state governments
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separation of powers
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the division of governmental power into distinct areas with different branches of government exercising different powers; prevents one branch from becoming too powerful
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apportionment
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the use of population to determine how many legislative representatives an area will have
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impeach
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to vote to bring charges against
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veto
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to cancel
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executive order
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nonlegislative directive issued by the U.S. president in certain circumstances; an executive order has the force of congressional law
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pardon
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freedom from punishment
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cabinet
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group made up of the heads of the executive departments that advises the U.S. president
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petition
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a formal request
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search warrant
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a judge’s order authorizing the search of a person’s home or property to look for evidence of a crime
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due process
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fair application of the law
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indict
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to formally accuse
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double jeopardy
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illegal act of trying a person twice for the same crime
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eminent domain
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the gornment’s power to take personal property to further the public good
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naturalized citizen
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a person born in another country who has been granted citizenship
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deport
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to send an immigrant back to his or her own country
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draft
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a system of required service in the armed forces
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political action committees
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(PACs) organizations that collect money to distribute to candidates who support the same issues as the contributors
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electoral college
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group selected from each of the states to cast votes in presidential elections. The number of each state’s electors is equal to the number of its representatives and senators in Congress. The electors are expected to vote for the candidate chosen by popular vote in their states.
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precedent
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an action or decision that later serves as an example
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George Washington
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1st president of the United States
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Martha Washington
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1st lady of the United States who had to entertain guests and attend social events with her husband
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Judiciary Act of 1789
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legislation passed by Congress that created the federal court system
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national debt
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total amount of money owed by a country to its lenders
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bonds
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certificates that represent money the government has borrowed from private citizens
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speculators
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investors who buy items at low prices in hopes that their value will rise
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protective tariff
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a tax on imported good that raises the price of imports so people will buy domestic goods
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loose construction
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way of interpreting the Constitution that allows the federal government to take actions that the Constitution does not specifically forbid it from taking
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strict construction
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way of interpreting the Constitution that allows the federal government to take only those actions the Constitution specifically says it can take
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Alexander Hamilton
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secretary of the treasury of the U.S., whose challenge was paying off national debt (about $11.7 million) who grew up in the British West Indies; began practicing law after getting married into wealthy New York family.
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Thomas Jefferson
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man who opposed Hamilton’s plan which was to put the federal government on a solid financial footing
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Bank of the United States
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national bank chartered by Congress in 1791 to provide security for the U.S. economy
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privateers
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private ships authorized by a nation to attack its enemies
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right of deposit
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right to transfer goods at a destination without having to pay fees for the cargo
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French Revolution
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French rebellion begun in 1989 in which the French people overthrew the monarchy and made their country a republic
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Neutrality Proclamation
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(1793) statement made by President George Washington that the United States would not side with any of the nations at war in Europe following the French Revolution
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Edmond Genet
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France’s new representative to the U.S. who recruited privateers on American soil
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John Jay
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chief justice who had the task of going to London to work out a peaceful revolution with the British.
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Jay’s Treaty
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(1794) agreement negotiated by John Jay to work out problems between Britain and the United States over the western frontier trade in the Caribbean, British seizure of U.S. ships, and debts owed to British merchants.
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Thomas Pinckney
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U.S. ambassador who asked Spanish officials to reopen New Orleans to U.S. trade and requested right of deposit at port of New Orleans.
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Pinckney’s Treaty
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(1795) agreement between the United States and Spain that changed Florida’s border and made it easier for American ships to use the port of New Orleans
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Little Turtle
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Miami chief and leader of the American Indian confederation who defeated U.S. forces
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Anthony Wayne
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general sent by Washington to the frontier to take charge of the army
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Battle of Fallen Timbers
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(1794) battle between U.S. troops and an American Indian confederation resisting white settlement in the Northwest Territory; led to Treaty of Greenville
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Treaty of Greenville
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(1795) agreement between American Indian confederation leaders and the U.S. government that gave the United States Indian lands in the southeastern part of the Northwest Territory and guaranteed that U.S. citizens could safely travel through the region
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Whiskey Rebellion
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(1794) protests by small farmers in Pennsylvania against new taxes on whiskey and other alcohol
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political parties
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groups of people who organize to help elect government officials and influence government policies
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Federalist party
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political party created in the 1790s that wanted to strengthen the federal government and promote industry and trade
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Democratic-Republican Party
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political party founded in the 1790s that sought to preserve the power of the state governments and promote agriculture
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XYZ affair
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(1797) incident in which French agents attempted to get a bribe and loans from U.S. diplomats in exchange for an agreement that French privateers would no longer attack American ships; it led to an undeclared naval war between the two countries
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Alien and Sedition Acts
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(1798) laws passed by a Federalist-dominated Congress aimed at protecting the government from treasonous ideas, actions, and people; used against members of the Democratic-Republican party
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Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
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(1798-1799) Republican documents that argues the Alien and Sedition acts were unconstitutional
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Twelfth Amendment
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(1804) constitutional amendment that created a separate ballot for president and vice president
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textiles
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cloth
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technology
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tools used to produce goods or to do work
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interchangeable parts
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process developed by Eli Whitney in the 1790s that called for making each vital part of a machine exactly the same
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mass production
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efficient production of large numbers of identical goods
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Industrial Revolution
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period of rapid growth in the use of machines in manufacturing and production that began in the mid-1700s
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Richard Arkwright
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Englishman who patented the water frame, a machine that could create dozens of cotton threads at one time and ran on waterpower; lowered cost of cotton cloth and increased speed of production; 1st machine to make high-quality thread
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Samuel Slater
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skilled British mechanaic who knew how to build textile machines; made the Pawtucket mill a success
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Eli Whitney
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inventor who came up with idea of manufacturing using interchangeable parts (1798)
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trade unions
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workers’ organizations that try to improve pay and working conditions
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strikes
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refusals of workers to perform their jobs until employers meet their demands
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Rhode Island system
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system developed by Samuel Slater in the mid-1800s, in which families were hired as textile workers
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Francis Cabot Lowell
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New England businessman who developed Lowell system
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Lowell system
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the use of water powered textile mills that employed young unmarried women in the 1800s
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Sarah G. Bagley
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mill worker who founded Lowell Female Labor Reform Association in 1844
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Transportation Revolution
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rapid growth in the speed and convenience of transportation; in the U.S. this began in the early 1800s
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Robert Fulton
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American who tested a model steamboat design in 1803 in France
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Clermont
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first full-sized U.S. commercial steamboat; developed by Robert Fulton and tested in 1807
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Gibbons v. Ogden
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(1824) Supreme Court ruling that federal law has priority over equivalent state law; expanded definition of interstate commerce
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Peter Cooper
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built Tom Thumb – small steam-powered train with great power and speed in 1830
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Little Turtle
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Miami chief and leader of the American Indian confederation who defeated U.S. forces
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Anthony Wayne
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general sent by Washington to the frontier to take charge of the army
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Battle of Fallen Timbers
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(1794) battle between U.S. troops and an American Indian confederation resisting white settlement in the Northwest Territory; led to Treaty of Greenville
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Treaty of Greenville
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(1795) agreement between American Indian confederation leaders and the U.S. government that gave the United States Indian lands in the southeastern part of the Northwest Territory and guaranteed that U.S. citizens could safely travel through the region
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Whiskey Rebellion
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(1794) protests by small farmers in Pennsylvania against new taxes on whiskey and other alcohol
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cotton gin
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device invented by Eli Whitney n 1793 to separate cotton plants’ fibers from the seeds; revolutionized the cotton industry
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cotton belt
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region stretching from Georgia to east Texas where most U.S. cotton was produced during the mid-1800s
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Eli Whitney
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northerner who invented cotton gin in 1793
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factors
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crop brokers who managed the trade between southern planters and their customers
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scientific agriculture
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use of scientific techniques to improve crop production
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Jean Étienne Boré
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a French woman who perfected a way of processing Louisiana sugarcane into granulated sugar in 1795, making sugarcane a popular crop
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Joseph R. Anderson
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graduate of West Point Military Academy who became the owner of the Tredegar Iron Works in 1848, making his factory one of the most productive iron companies in the nation by 1860
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Tredegar Iron Works
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large iron factory that operated in Richmond, Virginia, in early mid-1800s
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yeomen
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small landowning farmers
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Mark Twain
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Southern writer who provided a look at southern society during the mid-1800s; real name is Samuel Clemens; pen name based on river slang for shallow water only two fathoms deep; popular books include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, both set in the South
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folktales
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oral stories that often provide a moral lesson
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spirituals
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emotional Christian songs sung by slaves in the South that mixed African and European elements and usually expressed slaves’ religious beliefs
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Nat Turner
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slave from Virginia who believed that God had called on him to end slavery; started the most violent slave revolt (Nat Turner’s Rebellion)
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Nat Turner’s Rebellion
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(1831) rebellion in which Nat Turner led a group of slaves in Virginia in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow and kill planter families
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transcendentalism
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idea that people could rise above the material things in life; philosophy shared by some New England writers in the mid-1800s
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utopian communities
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– places where people worked to establish perfect societies; such communities were popular in the United States during the late 1700s and early to mid-1800s.
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Second Great Awakening
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a period of religious evangelism that began in the 1790s and became widespread in the United States by the 1830s.
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Charles Grandison Finney
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on of the most important leaders of the Second Great Awakening who left his career as a lawyer and began preaching after experiencing a dramatic religious conversion in 1821; challenged some traditional Protestant beliefs
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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writer and thinker who believed in transcendentalism; wrote essay titled “Self-Reliance” in 1841 which said Americans depended too much on institutions and traditions instead of following themselves
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Margaret Fuller
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female writer and thinker who edited transcendentalist publication The Dial; wrote book called Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1845 which said women had right to choose own paths in life
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Henry David Thoreau
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writer and thinker who believed in transcendentalism and expressed most of his ideas in Walden, or Life in the Woods, published in 1854; lived in cabin in Massachusetts for two years so he wrote about experiences living near Walden Pond
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Thomas Cole
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romantic artist who painted the American landscape which contrasted with the large cities and the corruption that many Americans saw in Europe
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
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New England author who wrote romantic literature such as The Scarlet Letter, which describes puritan life in the 1600s
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Edgar Allan Poe
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American romantic author who is best known for his short stories and poetry such as “The Raven”
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Emily Dickinson
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poet who died in 1886; only two poems published in lifetime both anonymously; hundreds of her poems discovered after her death such as “This Is My Letter to the World”
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Walt Whitman
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man who praised both American individualism and democracy in his poetry; Leaves of Grass published in 1855, is known for its distinct style
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nativists
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U.S. citizens who opposed immigration because they were suspicious of immigrants and feared losing jobs to them
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middle class
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social and economic level between the wealthy and the poor
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tenements
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poorly built, overcrowded housing where many immigrants lived
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Know-Nothing Party
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political organization founded in 1849 by nativists who supported measures making it difficult for foreigners to become citizens and to hold office
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temperance movement
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a social reform effort begun in the mid-1800s to encourage people to drink less alcohol
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common-school movement
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social reform efforts begun in the mid-1800s that promoted the idea of having all children educated in a common place regardless of social class or background
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Dorothea Dix
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– a middle-class reformer who helped changed the prison system in the United states by reporting terrible conditions after visiting prisons throughout Massachusetts to the state legislature; as a result, more than 100 state hospitals where mentally ill people received more professional care were built
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Lyman Beecher
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a minister who spoke about the negative sides of alcohol and said that people who drank alcohol were “neglecting the education of their families—and corrupting their morals.”
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Horace Mann
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leader of the common-school movement who was the former state legislator and a former lawyer; became fist secretary of education for Massachusetts in 1837; doubled state school budget, helped teachers earn better salaries, made school year longer, and founded the first school for teacher training
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Catharine Beecher
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daughter of Lyman Beecher who became one of the most effective reformers of women’s education in the early 1800s; believed that women were better at teaching the moral lessons that made good citizens; founded all-female academy in Hartford, Connecticut; wrote several essays, including On the Education of Female Teachers
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Emma Willard
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an educator who founded Troy Female Seminary – the first college-level institution for women; in 1821-1872, more than 12,000 women attended the schools
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Mary Lyon
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founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts in 1837
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Samuel Gridley Howe
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man who worked to improve the education of visually impaired Americans, worked for education reform, prison reform, and care for mentally ill people; opened Perkins Institution in Massachusetts for people with visual impairments in 1831 and ran it for 45 years
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Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
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graduate from Yale College who worked to improve the education and lives of people who were hearing impaired; founded first free American school for people with hearing impairments in Hartford, Connecticut and served as the school’s principal until 1830; after retiring, became professor of philosophy of education at New York University; Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., was named in his honor
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abolition
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an end to slavery
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emancipation
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freedom from slavery
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Robert Finley
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minister who started the American Colonization Society in 1817; many who once favored the movement later turned against it
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American Colonization Society
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society organized in 1817 that established the colony of Liberia in West Africa as a home for free African Americans
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David Walker
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– a person who opposed colonization and expressed his reasons in an 1829 essay, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
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William Lloyd Garrison
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one of the most controversial leaders of the abolitionist movement who published an abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, in 1831; in 1833 he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society and later became the group’s president
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The Liberator
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antislavery newspaper first published by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831
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American Anti-Slavery Society
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group founded in 1833 by William Lloyd Garrison and others to work for immediate abolition and racial equality for African Americans
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Angelina and Sarah Grimké
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two southern women who became known antislavery activists of the 1830s and members of a slaveholding family in South Carolina; moved to Philadelphia and joined the abolition movement; Angelina wrote a pamphlet titled Appeal to the Christian Women of the South in 1836 to spread the cause; became first women to speak before male and female audiences of the Anti-Slavery Society since pamphlet became popular; book American Slavery As It Is became one of the most important antislavery writings of the time
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Frederick Douglass
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antislavery activist who escaped from slavery at age 20, and became on of the most important African American leaders of the 1800s; went on many speaking tours in the U.S. and Europe; published pro-abolition newspaper called North Star and wrote several autobiographies
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Underground Railroad
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network of people who helped thousands of slaves escape to the North by providing transportation and hiding places
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Harriet Tubman
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most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, a former slave who escaped in 1849 and left behind her family; successfully led her family and more than 300 other slaves to freedom and never lost an escapee; about 40,000 slaves used the Underground Railroad to reach freedom between 1810 and 1850
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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(1815-1902) an important leader of the women’s rights movement who married antislavery activists Henry Stanton and while on her honeymoon attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, England, in 1840. Stanton had to watch separately because women could not participate and this treatment angered her enough to help form the Seneca Falls Convention eight years later which launched the first public meeting about women’s rights to be held in the United States; one of the primary writers of Declaration of Sentiments
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Lucretia Mott
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friend and fellow women abolitionist of Elizabeth Stanton who helped form Seneca Falls Convention
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Seneca Falls Convention
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(1848) first national women’s rights convention, at which the Declaration of Sentiments was written
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Declaration of Sentiments
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(1848) statement written and signed by women’s rights supporters at the Seneca Falls Convention; detailed their complaints about social injustice against women
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Lucy Stone
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a well-known member of the Anti-Slavery Society and was one of the most important leaders and gifted speakers of the women’s rights movement during the early ears
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Susan B. Anthony
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a women’s rights activist who was greatly responsible for turning the fight for women’s rights into a political movement; argued that women and men should be treated with equal importance; led campaign to change laws regarding women’s property rights and succeeded; became first American woman to be depicted on U.S. currency in 1979
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Californios
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Spanish colonists in California
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Tejanos
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Spanish settlers who lived in what is now southern Texas
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Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
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a Mexican priest from the town of Dolores who led revolt against Spanish rule; Spanish defeated rebels and killed priest in 1811
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Agustin de Iturbide
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leader of revolt against Spain after Monelos’s capture; defeated Spanish in 1821 and made himself emperor of independent Mexico; army made him step down after 2 ½ years
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empresarios
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agents who were contracted by the Mexican republic to bring settlers to Texas in the early 1800s
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Stephen F. Austin
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son of empresario Moses Austin who continued his father’s work by bringing the Old Three Hundred to a colony site on the lower Colorado River
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Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
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general who was then elected president of Mexico and suspended Mexico’s republican constitution in 1834
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Alamo
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Spanish mission in San Antonio, Texas, that was the site of a famous battle of the Texas Revolution in 1836; the Mexican Army’s Victoria resulted in the deaths of all Texans defending the building
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Battle of Goliad
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Mexican victory during the Texas Revolution in which Mexican leader Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered the execution of Texas soldiers after their surrender
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Sam Houston
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commander in chief of new Texas army and made Texas independent from Mexico
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Battle of San Jacinto
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(1836) final battle of the Texas Revolution; resulted in the defeat of the Mexican army and independence for Texas
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annex
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to take control of land and incorporate into a country, state, etc.
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Republic of Texas
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independent nation of Texas, which lasted from 1836 until 1848, when Texas was annexed to the United States.
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Mirabeau Lamar
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vice president of the Republic of Texas
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mountain men
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men who trapped animals for fur in the Rocky Mountains and other western regions of the United States
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rendezvous
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annual event held by mountain men to trade furs and socialize
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John Jacob Astor
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owner of one of the largest businesses that brought furs from trappers, the American Fur Company
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Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
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missionaries who went to Oregon Country in 1836 to convert American Indians to Christianity; efforts to recruit more people caused settlers to spread an epidemic that killed many Cayuse children and in anger a group of Cayuse killed the Whitmans and at least 10 others
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Oregon Trail
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a 2,000-mile trail stretching through the Great Plains from western Missouri to Oregon Country
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Henry David Thoreau
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transcendentalist writer and philosopher who went to jail for refusing to pay taxes because he believed they would support the war in Mexico
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Stephen Kearny
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general ordered by Polk to attack New Mexico; took Santa Fe without a fight and claimed New Mexico for U.S.
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Bear Flag Revolt
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(1846) revolt against Mexico by American Settlers in California who declared the territory an independent republic
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John C. Fremont
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army explorer who encouraged Americans to revolt
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Winfield Scott
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general known as Old Fuss and Feathers who attacked port of Veracruz and ordered a massive attack on Mexico City
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Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
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(1848) Treaty that ended the Mexican War and gave the United States much of Mexico’s northern territory
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Mexican Cession
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(1848) land that Mexico gave to the U.S. after the Mexican War through the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; included in what is now California, Nevada, and Utah; most of Arizona and New Mexico; and parts of Colorado, Texas, and Wyoming
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Gadsden Purchase
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(1853) U.S. purchase of land from Mexico that included the southern parts of present day Arizona and New Mexico
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manifest destiny
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belief shared by many Americans in the mid-1800s that the United States was meant to expand across the continent to the Pacific Ocean
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John O’Sullivan
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a New York editor who was the first person to use the term manifest destiny
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John Tyler
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man elected president of the United States when William Henry Harrison died in April 1841; idea that annexation of Texas would help by adding another slave state to the country started national debate
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Henry Clay
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senator of Kentucky chosen by the Whigs to join the presidential campaign saying he was against the annexation of Texas, but people became angry when he changed his mind
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James K. Polk
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former Tennessee governor chosen by Democratic party as its presidential candidate; favored acquiring both Texas and Oregon
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Zachary Taylor
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general ordered by Polk to take U.S. troops into the disputed border region of the Rio Grande
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Joseph Smith
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man who founded Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in New York in 1830; told followers that he had found and translated a set of tablets containing religious revelations later known as the Book of Mormon; murdered by anti-Mormon mob
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Mormons
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members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
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Brigham Young
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head of Mormon Church following Smith’s murder
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Mormon Trail
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route by which Mormons traveled west to Utah
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forty-niners
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gold-seekers who moved to California during the gold rush
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prospect
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to search for gold
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California Gold Rush
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migration of thousands of people to California in 1849 after gold was discovered there
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Biddy Mason
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slave brought to California by a Georgia slaveholder during the gold rush years; gained liberty and moved to Los Angeles; saved enough money to buy land that increased in value over time making her one of the wealthiest landowners in California
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sectionalism
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a devotion to the interests of one geographic region rather than those of the country as a whole
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popular sovereignty
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the idea that political authority belongs to the people; also a principle that would allow voters in a particular territory to decide whether to ban or permit slavery
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Wilmot Proviso
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(1846) proposal to outlaw slavery in the territory added to the U.S. by the Mexican Cession; passed in the House of Representatives but was defeated in the Senate
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Free-Soil Party
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political party formed in 1848 by antislavery northerners who left the Whig and Democratic Parties because neither addressed the slavery issue
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Henry Clay
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senator from Kentucky, nicknamed “The Great Compromiser” who helped settle the Missouri crisis of 1819-20 and the nullification of 1832-33 who made a five-part proposal
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Daniel Webster
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senator of Massachusetts who was in favor of Clay’s plan
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Compromise of 1850
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Henry Clay’s proposed agreement that allowed California to enter the Union as a free state and divided the rest of the Mexican Cession in two territories where slavery would be decided by popular sovereignty; also settled land claims between Texas and New Mexico, abolished the slave trade in Washington, and produced a new Fugitive Slave Act
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Fugitive Slave Act
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(1850) law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves; allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in the areas where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders
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Anthony Burns
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fugitive slave of Virginia who was arrested and jailed in Boston and was an example of a violent case
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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(1852) antislavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe that showed northerners the violent reality of slavery and drew many people to the abolitionist cause
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Harriet Beecher Stowe
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author of antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who was born into a religious family in Connecticut and moved to Ohio at the age of 21 where she met with fugitive slaves and learned about the cruelty of slavery, inspiring her to write the novel
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Franklin Pierce
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the president of the Democratic convention who was a little-known politician from New Hampshire whose party promised to honor the Compromise of 1850 and enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, making southerners see him as reliable
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Stephen Douglas
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a man who entered Congress in the mid-1840s who wanted a railroad running from Chicago to the Pacific
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Kansas-Nebraska Act
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(1854) law that allowed voters in the Kansas and Nebraska territories to choose whether to allow slavery
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Pottawatomi Massacre
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(1856) incident in which abolitionist John Brown and seven other men murdered pro-slavery Kansans
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Charles Sumner
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Senator of Massachusetts who gave a speech called “The Crime Against Kansas” in which it criticized pro-slavery efforts in Kansas and insulted Senator Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina
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Preston Brooks
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relative of Senator Andrew Pickens Butler of South Carolina who became upset with Charles Sumner and beat him unconscious with a walking cane causing dozens of southerners to appreciate it and many northerners were left outraged
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Republican Party
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political party formed in the 1850s to stop the spread of slavery in the West
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James Buchanan
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Democratic presidential candidate of Pennsylvania who had served about 20 years in Congress, as Polk’s secretary of state for 4 years, and had not been involved in the Kansas-Nebraska controversy
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John C. Fremont
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Republican candidate chosen at their first presidential nominating convention who had little political experience but had a strong opposition to slavery
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Dred Scott
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slave of an army surgeon from Missouri who went on tours of duty in Illinois and the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase; sued for his freedom arguing that he had become free when he lived in free territory
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Roger B. Taney
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Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who came from a slaveholding family in Maryland and wrote the majority opinion in the Dread Scott decision in March 1857 saying that Scott did not have the right to file suit in federal court
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Dred Scott decision
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(1857) U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared African Americans were not U.S. citizens, that the Missouri Compromise’s restriction on slavery was unconstitutional, and that Congress did not have the right to ban slavery in any federal territory.
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Abraham Lincoln
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Illinois lawyer who was a native of Kentucky and served four terms in the Illinois legislature and one term in congress; joined the Republican Party in 1856 long after being a Whig; the other half of the Lincoln-Douglas debates
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Lincoln-Douglas debates
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series of seven debates between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephen Douglas during the 1858 U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois
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Freeport Doctrine
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(1858) argument made by Stephen Douglas during the Lincoln-Douglas debates that popular sovereignty would determine whether a state or territory could permit slavery
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secession
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act of formally withdrawing from an organization, such as a country
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John Brown’s Raid
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(1859) incident in which abolitionist John Brown and 21 other men captured a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in hopes of starting a slave rebellion
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John C. Breckinridge
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the Union’s vice president from Kentucky who was supported by Southern Democrats and strongly supported slavery but did not think that a Republican victory in the election would give states the right to break up the Union
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Constitutional Union Party
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political party formed in 1860 by a group of northerners and southerners who supported the Union, its laws, and the Constitution
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John Bell
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presidential candidate of the Constitutional Union Party who was a slaveholder but had been against the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854
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John J. Crittenden
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Senator of Kentucky who proposed constitutional amendments to satisfy the South
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Confederate States of America
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nation formed by the southern states on February 4, 1861; also known as the Confederacy
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Jefferson Davis
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president of the Confederate States of America who was from Mississippi, a graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Mexican war, opposed secession, and hoped to be appointed general in command of Mississippi’s troops, not president of the Confederacy
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