Apush Chapter 17

Front 1

A shortest administration

Back 1

Harrison contracted pneumonia. He died four weeks after coming to office. The shortest administration in American history.

Front 2

"a Democrat at heart"

Back 2

Tyler should have never runned in the ticket with Harrison. He was always at odds with the majority of the Whig party in major issues. He was the ex-Democrat who was still largely democratic.

Front 3

"Executive Ass"

Back 3

Was the nickname given to Tyler when he refused to give into the Whig party and pass a bank bill that proposed a "Fiscal Bank" He keep vetoing the bill. He was given numerous death threats and was expelled from his party. There was an attempted to impeach him and his cabinet resigned in a body except for Webster who was in England.

Front 4

"War of Words"

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Hatred toward Britain had to be lanced by treaty settlement or by war. Outbursts from America when crude reviews in travel book written by the British were published. The red coats launched a sneering attack on Yankee shortcomings. The Americans fought back with "you're another" arguments. This was the third War with England. The British authors were also denied rich royalties due to a lack of an American copyright law.

Front 5

Caroline

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A provocative incident on the Canadian frontier brought passions of the war of words to a boil in 1837. An American steamer, the Caroline, was carrying supplies to the
insurgents across the swift Niagara River. It was finally attacked on the New York shore by a determined British force, which set the vessel on fire.They were supporting the Canadian minority that lead an insurrection against the British. American painters depicted the burning. This lead to alarming aftermath effects. Such as McLeod case.

Front 6

McLeod

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The Caroline incident was revived in 1840 in New York. A Canadian named McLeod, after allegedly boasting in a tavern of his part in the Caroline raid, was arrested and indicted for murder. The London Foreign Office, which regarded the Caroline raiders as members of a sanctioned armed force and not as criminals, made clear that his execution would mean war.

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"Aroostock War"

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was an undeclared confrontation in 1838-39 between the United States and Great Britain over the international boundary between British North America (Canada) and Maine. The dispute resulted in a mutually accepted border between the state of Maine and provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec. It is called a war because not only were tensions high and rhetoric heated in Maine and New Brunswick, but troops were raised and armed on both sides and marched to the disputed border. Only the timely intervention of the U.S. and British governments prevented bloodshed by local militias.

Front 8

Lord Ashburton

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As the British and American tensions rose, Britain send nonproffesional diplomat in 1842 to Washington. Conciliatory financier Lord Ashburton who married a wealthy American. He speedily established
cordial relations with Secretary Webster, who had
recently been lionized during a visit to Britain.They finallie agreed on a border for Maine.

Front 9

Compromise on the Maine boundary

Back 9

Lord Ashburton and Secretary Webster finally agreed to compromise on the Maine boundary. On the basis of a rough, split-thedifference
arrangement, the Americans were to retain some 7,000 square miles of the 12,000 square miles of wilderness in dispute. The British got less
land but won the desired Halifax-Quebec route.the British, in adjusting the
U.S.-Canadian boundary farther west, surrendered
6,500 square miles. The area was later found to contain
the priceless Mesabi iron ore of Minnesota

Front 10

Lame Duck

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lame duck is an elected official who is approaching the end of his or her tenure, and especially an official whose successor has already been elected. The status can be due to:having lost a re-election bid, choosing not to seek another term at the expiration of the current term a term limit which keeps the official from running for that particular office again the abolishment of the office, which must nonetheless be served out until the end of the official's term. Lame duck officials tend to have less political power, as other elected officials are less inclined to cooperate with them. However, lame ducks are also in the peculiar position of not facing the consequences of their actions in a subsequent election, giving them greater freedom to issue unpopular decisions or appointments.

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Annexation by a joint resolution

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The acquisition of Texas was not yet finalized. Many Whigs feared that it would once again bring the slave issue front and center. Aware of their opposition, Tyler despaired of securing the needed two-thirds vote for a treaty in the Senate. He therefore arranged for annexation by a joint resolution. This solution required only a simple majority in both houses of Congress. After a spirited debate, the resolution passed early in 1845, and Texas was formally invited to become the twenty eighth star on the American flag.

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"Oregon Fever/ Lopsided population race

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Oregon fever represents the large numbers of middle class individuals who made the move to the west. “Oregon fever’’ seized hundreds of restless pioneers. In increasing numbers, their creaking covered wagons jolted over the two-thousand-mile Oregon Trail as the human rivulet widened into a stream. The British could not compete with their own migration. Only 700 or so subjects were in their north of the Colombia. Losing out lopsidedly in the population race, they were beginning to see the wisdom of arriving at a peaceful settlement in the Oregon ordeal before being engulfed by their neighbors

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"Dark-horse"

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is a term used to describe a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence. Polk was the first surprise presidential candidate in America.

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Manifest Destiny/ Democrat platform in 1844

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is a term that was used in the 19th century to designate the belief that the United States was destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes Manifest Destiny was interpreted so broadly as to include the eventual absorption of all North America: Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Central America. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only ethical but that it was readily apparent ("manifest") and inexorable ("destiny"). Although initially used as a catch phrase to inspire the United States' expansion across the North American continent, the 19th century phrase eventually became a standard historical term. It began with the annexation of Texas and was a theoretical justification for expansion. This was the basis of the Democrat platform for the reannexation of Texas and Oregon.

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Liberty Party

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was a minor political party in the United States in the 1840s. The party was an early advocate of the abolitionist cause. It broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society due to grievances with William Lloyd Garrison's leadership. The party first gathered in Warsaw, New York, and its first national convention took place in Albany on April 1, 1840. They changed the course of the outcome of the Polk/Clay election. Clay would have won New York and the election by 5,000 and the Liberty Party gave 16,000 votes to their candidate James G. Birney, a Kentuckian and former slaveholder. This hastened the annextion of Texas.

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Walker Traiff of 1846

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was a Democratic bill that reversed the high rates of tariffs imposed by the Whig-backed "Black Tariff" of 1842 under the tenth president, John Tyler. It was one of the lowest tariffs in American history and primarily supported by Southern Democrats who had little industry in their districts. The act is named after Robert J. Walker, a Mississippi politician who served as Secretary of the Treasury under president James K. Polk. The tariff's reductions (35% to 25%) coincided with Britain's repeal of the Corn Laws earlier that year, leading to a decline in protection in both and an increase in trade.

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Independent Tresury

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second objective of Polk was the restoration of the independent treasury, unceremoniously dropped by the Whigs in 1841. Pro-bank Whigs in Congress raised a storm of opposition, but victory at last rewarded the president’s efforts in 1846.

Front 18

Compromise Line

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Polk's must list constituted of the settlement of the Oregon dispute. Reoccupation’’ of the “whole’’ of Oregon had been promised northern Democrats in the campaign of 1844. But southern Democrats, once they had annexed Texas, rapidly cooled off. Polk had no intention of insisting on the 54° 40' pledge of his own platform. But feeling bound by the three offers of his predecessors to London, he again proposed the compromise line of 49°. The British minister in Washington, on his own initiative, brusquely spurned this olive branch. British ant expansionists (“Little Englanders’’) were now persuaded that the Columbia River was not after all the St. Lawrence of the West and that the turbulent American hordes might one day seize the Oregon Country. Early in 1846 the British came around and themselves proposed the line of 49°. President Polk, irked by the previous rebuff, threw the decision squarely into the lap of the Senate. The senators speedily accepted the offer and approved the subsequent treaty, despite a few diehard shouts of “Fifty-four forty forever!’’ A reasonable compromise without a rifle.

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U.S. claims against Mexico

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Polk was eager to buy California from Mexico, but relations with Mexico City were dangerously embittered. Among other friction points, the United States had claims against the Mexicans for some $3 million in damages to American citizens and their property. The revolution-riddled regime in Mexico had formally agreed to assume most of this debt but had been forced to default on its payments.

Front 20

Nueces and Rio Grande River

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Deadlock with Mexico over Texas was further tightened by a question of boundaries. During the long era of Spanish-Mexican occupation, the southwestern boundary of Texas had been the Nueces River. But the expansive Texans, on rather farfetched grounds, were claiming the more southerly Rio Grande instead. Polk, for his part, felt a strong moral obligation to defend Texas in its claim, once it was annexed. Polk was careful to keep American troops out of virtually all of the explosive no-man’s-land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, as long as there was any real prospect of peaceful adjustment.

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John Slidell

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(1793-1871) was an American politician, lawyer and businessman. Originally a native of New York, Slidell moved to Louisiana as a young man and became a staunch defender of southern rights as a U.S. Representative and Senator.Polk dispatched him as a representative in 1845 in order to gamble on California. He was instructed to offer 25 million for California and territory to the east. The Mexicans found this insulting.

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May 9, 1846: U.S. declares war

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On January 13, 1846, he ordered four thousand men, under General Zachary Taylor, to march from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande, provocatively near Mexican forces. He wanted a clash in order to declare war. When none occurred after an anxious wait, he informed his cabinet on May 9, 1846, that he proposed to ask Congress to declare war on the basis of (1) unpaid claims and (2) Slidell’s rejection. These, at best, were rather flimsy pretexts. Not soon after a clash was confirmed.

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"Spot Resolution"

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The "spot" resolutions were offered in the United States House of Representatives on 22 December 1847 by Abraham Lincoln, Whig representative from Illinois. The resolutions requested President James K. Polk to provide Congress with the exact location (the "spot") upon which blood was spilt on American soil, as Polk had claimed in 1846 when asking Congress to declare war on Mexico. So persistent was Lincoln in pushing his "spot resolutions" that some began referring to him as "spotty Lincoln." Lincoln's resolutions were a direct challenge to the validity of the president's words, and representative of an ongoing political power struggle between Whigs and Democrats.

Front 24

Double Crossing Santa Anna

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Santa Anna was exiled in Cuba. He let it be known that if the American blockading squadron would permit him to slip into Mexico, he would sell out his country. Incredibly, Polk agreed to this discreditable intrigue. But the double-crossing Santa Anna, once he returned to Mexico, proceeded to rally his countrymen to a desperate defense of their soil.

Front 25

Stephen W. Kearny

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(1794-1848) was one of the foremost antebellum frontier officers of the United States Army, and is remembered for his significant role in the Mexican-American War, especially the conquest of California. The Kearny code, which sought to govern government behavior towards Californios, was named after him. In 1846 he lead a detachment of seventeen hundred troops over the famous Santa Fe Trail from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe which was easily captured. Before he reached California it had already been won.

Front 26

John C. Fremont

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(1813-1890) was an American military officer, explorer, the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States, and the first presidential candidate of a major party to run on a platform in opposition to slavery. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder, which remains in use, sometimes as "The Great Pathfinder". When Kearny captured Santa Fe he was in California with several dozen armed men. In helping to overthrow Mexican rule in 1846, he collaborated with American naval officers and with the local Americans, who had hoisted the banner
of the short-lived California Bear Flag Republic.

Front 27

Nicholas P. Trist

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(1800-1874) was an American diplomat who married Thomas Jefferson's graddaughter and was Andrew Jackson's secretary. He was cursed with an overfluid pen. Polk send him to secure the territorial claims. He was ordered to arrange an armistice with Santa Anna for $10,000,000 Mexican pesos. President Polk was unhappy with his envoy's conduct and prompted him to order Trist to return to the United States. General Winfield Scott was also unhappy with Trist's presence in Mexico, although he and Scott quickly reconciled and began a lifelong friendship. However, the wily diplomat ignored the instructions. Known to have an over-fluid pen, he wrote a 65 page letter back to Washington, D.C. explaining his reasons for staying in Mexico. He capitalized on a brilliant opportunity to continue bargaining with Santa Anna. Trist successfully negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848

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Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

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is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico, that ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). From the standpoint of the United States, the treaty provided for the Mexican Cession, in which Mexico ceded 55% of its pre-war territory, not including Texas) to the United States in exchange for US$15 million From the standpoint of Mexico, the treaty included Texas as Mexico had never recognized Texan independence nor its annexation by the U.S.

Front 29

Wilmot Proviso

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one of the major events leading to the Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession, but which some proponents construed to also include the disputed lands in south Texas and New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. Representative
David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, fearful of the southern “slavocracy,’’ introduced a fateful amendment. It stipulated that slavery should never exist in
any of the territory to be wrested from Mexico.The
“Wilmot Proviso,’’ eventually endorsed by the legislatures
of all but one of the free states, soon came to symbolize the burning issue of slavery in the territories.