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48 Cards in this Set
- Front
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COTTON GIN
1793 |
Eli Whitney's invention which made the rapid separation of short-staple cotton seeds and fiber possible and thus revolutionized the southern economy. Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. Whitney's simple machine provided a mechanical means of extracting the difficult-to-remove seeds. Thus the invention of the cotton gin increased the area where cotton was produced, making it the king of staple crops in the South. Whitney's invention allowed slavery to spread across the south.
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CHARLES G FINNEY
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One-time lawyer who, after a religious conversion experience in 1821, became a Presbyterian minister and the "father of modern revivalism." Known as the greatest evangelist of the 1820s and 30s, Finney brought the Second Great Awakening (which had begun in Connecticut in the 1790s and then moved to Kentucky ca. 1800) to new heights in upper New York state. He rejected the strict Calvinism of predestination and original sin and instead argued for free will and salvation by good works. His message was therefore a form of religious perfectionism and soon provided support for social reforms such as temperance and abolitionism. Certain standards of personal behavior (what became known as middle class morality) were identified with religious beliefs so that people would control themselves socially (at work, at home, in the community) for religious reasons.
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interchangeable parts
1798 |
Around 1798, Eli Whitney built ten guns, all containing the same parts and mechanisms. He then took them apart before Congress, placed the parts in a pile, and, with help, reassembled the guns. The principle of interchangeable parts made mass production possible based on the use of templates by semi-skilled labor to construct parts rather than making them by hand.
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AMERICAN SYSTEM
proposed 1816 |
Henry Clay's Neo-Federalist, nationalist program to promote US economic growth and tie the country together by government-sponsored protective tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank. Proposed in 1816, the American System reflected the nationalist fervor of the years after the War of 1812. The American System is an example of the strong nationalist feeling in the US in the years after the War of 1812--the so-called Era of Good Feelings--and it indicates that in the 19th century the US did not have a laissez faire, free trade economic policy but instead continued with a neo-mercantilist, protectionist economic policy, including a substantial and important government involvement in the economy.
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RUSH-BAGOT AGREEMENT
1817 |
1817 agreement between the United States and Great Britain which limited the number of naval ships each could have on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. This agreement led to the longest undefended border in the world, the border between the United States and Canada.
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CONVENTION OF 1818
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Treaty with England which set the northern boundary of the Louisiana Territory at the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods in Minnesota westward to the Rockies. When agreement could not be reached on the border west of the Rockies, Britain and the United States settled on joint occupation of the Oregon Territory for ten years.
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ADAMS-ONIS TREATY
1819 |
This Treaty with Spain, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, was negotiated by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Luis de Onis and was signed in 1819. By this agreement Spain recognized U.S. possession of West Florida and ceded East Florida to the United States for $5 million. In addition, the southwestern border of the Louisiana Territory was set. By the terms of this treaty, the U.S. also gave up her claims to Texas, while Spain abandoned her claims to Oregon.
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Missouri Compromise
1820 |
Congressional agreement of 1820 which provided a settlement (temporarily) of the question of whether slavery would be allowed to expand into the territories, an issue which was central to bringing secession and Civil War in 1861. The compromise allowed Maine to apply for admission as a free state and for the admission of Missouri as a slave state. The compromise thereby kept the number of slave and free states equal.
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Monroe Doctrine
1823 |
US foreign policy position on Latin America devised by, then, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and declared in President James Monroe's State of the Union Address in December, 1823. It had two primary parts: the non-colonization principle and the non-intervention principle. Non-colonization declared that the Americas were no longer open to European colonization. Non-intervention stated that the US would not intervene in the affairs of Europe if the Europeans stayed out of the Americas.
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Ordinance of Nullification
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A Declaration which stated that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 would not be enforced in South Carolina. In response, South Carolina's legislature passed laws nullifying both tariffs. The resulting nullification crisis found President Jackson willing to use force to collect the tariff duties as South Carolina.
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Nat Turner Revolt
1831 |
The August, 1831, slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia, led by Nat Turner. Turner, a slave and lay preacher, believed that he had been chosen by God to lead a slave rebellion. Turner hoped that this action would precipitate a massive slave uprising, but only about 75 joined in the rebellion. Turner was captured about six weeks later and executed in November, 1831. Nat Turner's rebellion inspired great fear in the South.
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Horace Mann
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Mann, Horace (1796-1859): Massachusetts reformer and statesman who fought for universal public education as a means of preserving democracy and instilling American values. He believed public school children should be taught Christian ethnical principles but not doctrines about which sects disagreed. In 1851, he became the first President of Antioch College in Ohio, where he served until his death.
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SANTA FE TRAIL
1821-1822 |
Trade route followed by Americans between Missouri and New Mexico. This trail was first pioneered by William Becknell in 1821 and 1822. After 1821, it was used regularly from merchant-traders from Missouri who took manufactured goods, textiles, and printed materials and a host of manufactured items to Santa Fe to exchange for furs, gold and silver, blankets, and even livestock. After the Mexican War (when it served in 1846 as the U.S. invasion route into New Mexico), it was a vital domestic trade route, connecting the Southwest economically to the rest of the nation.
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ERIE CANAL
1819-1825 |
Canal built between 1819 and 1825, running 364 miles from Albany, New York on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York on Lake Erie. Built by the state of New York (for $7.5 million) at the urging of Governor DeWitt Clinton, it is an example of the involvement of the states in encouraging, funding, and constructing internal improvements such as roads, canals, railroads, and harbors which brought about a transportation revolution in the early 19th century in the US. The canal opened the interior of the US, tying the coast to the Great Lakes by a water route.
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TARIFF OF ABOMINATIONS
1828 |
protectionist policies of the American System and raised duties on imports and therefore was an abomination to the South. Proposed by Jacksonians for political rather than economic reasons. When it passed, the South denounced it and it bought the secessionist crisis of 1832-1833. The Tariff of Abominations is significant in that it shows how political groups were prepared to sacrifice the public good for limited political objectives.
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EXPOSITION AND PROTEST
12/1828 |
(Also known as South Carolina Exposition and Protest) Essay by John C. Calhoun, published anonymously in December 1828, advocating two doctrines, that of Interposition (nullification) and that of the Concurrent Majority, as means by which the people of the various states could protect themselves from harmful national action. Following the line of argument in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, Calhoun contended that the Union was a social compact of the states and that the true sovereign bodies in the United States were the people of the various states.
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WEBSTER HAYNE DEBATE
1830 |
Senate exchange in 1830 which resulted from a controversy involving public land policy and which concerned the theory of nullification and the nature of the Union. The exchange was cenetered around two principles; was the union a union of states or ws it a union of the people. The Webster-Hayne Debate provides one of the clearest ennunciations of the ideological controversy over the nature of the union which was at the intellectual crux of the Civil War.
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WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
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(1805-1879) Editor and anti-slavery advocate who published his own newspaper, Liberator, beginning January 1, 1831, and called for "immediate emancipation" which became known as abolition. Garrison saw slavery as sinful and therefore an evil which had to be eliminated without compromise. This did not mean that he thought slavery could be abolished overnight, but he did want people to recognize that its existence was intolerable and therefore gradualism and colonization needed to be replaced with emancipation and legal equality for blacks.
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COMPROMISE OF 1833
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Following the passage of the Tariff of 1828 (Tariff of Abominations), the tariff remained a principle issue between the North and South. In 1832, another tariff measure was passed which retained significant taxes on imported goods. Although infant industries, such as factories in the North, benefited from this tariff, Southern cotton farmers lost business. South Carolina then passed an ordinance of nullification, which declared that the federal tariff was null and void within the boundaries of the state.
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SPECIE CIRCULAR
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Jackson's announcement that the government would accept only gold and silver in payment for public lands. The primary reason Jackson issued the Specie Circular was high inflation, a result of his policy of withdrawing federal funds from the Second BUS and placing them in pet banks, which used these funds to back speculative loans to industrialists and farmers. The government didn't want to accept currency that was quickly declining in value for federal land, hence the Specie Circular. The immediate effect of the Specie Circular was to prevent working-class Americans from purchasing federal land in the West due to a shortage of gold and silver. The Specie Circular was thus partly responsible for the Panic of 1837 and the depression which followed.
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Robert Owen
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Secular communalist who attempted to create a model society with good schools and healthy work for all citizens as in New Harmony in Indiana. Believing that a person's character was the product of his environment, he thought he could produce rational, good, and humane people by treating them better. He thus built a school in New Lanark and insisted that young children attend school rather than work and that older children, while working, would also be given time and opportunity to pursue and education.
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MANIFEST DESTINY
emerged 1830-40's |
Doctrine which emerged in the 1830s and 1840s providing a justification for US expansionism. It held that the clear, God-given, and inevitable future of the US was to spread across the whole continent, perhaps around the world. This idea that the US would and should expand and incorporate more territory was the result of Romanticist attitudes and of arguments such as the US had a superior civilization including the best economic and political systems (capitalism and democracy) and the true faith (Protestant Christianity) and as such its enlargement would increase the area of liberty and make proper use of the land.
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rendezvous
ENDED AROUND 1840 |
Annual summer meeting held in the Rocky Mountains of traders from St. Louis with mountain men and Indian trappers to exchange trade goods and beaver pelts. In the early years of the fur trade, trappers transported their furs from the Rocky Mountains back to St. Louis, where they sold them or traded them for supplies and equipment. The rendezvous came to an end around 1840, in part due to the depletion of the beaver, in part due to the changing fashion in hat styles.
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UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
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The Underground Railroad was the name given to the network of routes, homes and individuals who helped slaves escape from the South to the North and Canada. By the 1840s, railroad terminology was used to describe various aspects of the operation. Conductors also included individuals such as Harriet Tubman who went south to guide slaves to freedom. Estimates of the number of fugitives who escaped to freedom via the Underground Railroad vary widely--from 6000 (the Census figure) to 30,000 to 100,000 people.
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DORTHEA DIX
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(1802-87): Leader of the effort to improve conditions in asylums and prisons to promote rehabilitation. In 1841, Dix, back in Boston, volunteered to teach a Sunday School class of twenty women inmates at the Cambridge, Massachusetts jail. At this point, Dix decided to make improvement of the conditions of the mentally ill her life's work, at once starting a campaign to have stoves placed in cells and inmates fully clothed. From Massachusetts, she expanded her crusade internationally. During the Civil War, her duties included organizing hundreds of women volunteers into a nursing corps, establishing and inspecting hospitals, and raising money for medical supplies. The reforms she initiated have been continued and still profoundly affect the treatment of the mentally ill today.
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Oregon Question
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The dispute with Great Britain over the northern boundary of the United States from the Rock Mountains to the Pacific. The issue had been temporarily resolved with the Convention of 1818. As a result, the two countries compromised and agreed to extend the 49th parallel boundary westward.
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UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
1852 |
Novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about slavery which popularized the anti-slavery cause in the North. Stowe wrote the novel because she was angry about the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which punished those caught aiding runaway slaves and diminished the rights of free blacks as well as slaves. The novel, published on March 20, 1852. Nevertheless, it contributed to the creation and spread of stereotypes about African Americans.
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Webster-Ashburton Treaty
1842 |
Treaty between the US and Britain, signed August 9, 1842, setting the boundary line between the US and Canada from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains and especially the boundary between the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick. By settling a long-festering problem, the treaty re-enforced the movement toward a non-defended border between Canada and the US, and it eliminated any possibility of US expansion toward the northeast. The treaty granted most of the disputed territory, including the Aroostook valley, to the US. The treaty is also significant because it represents the mutual interests of British investors and American developers. The treaty was also important because President Tyler, who wanted to run for president in 1844, hoped to point to it as an accomplishment.
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OREGON TRAIL
MAJOR USE BEGAN AROUND 1843 |
The route west from Missouri and Iowa along the Platte River, through South Pass, and down the Snake and Columbia Rivers to the Willamette Valley. Major use of the Oregon Trail began around 1843. In the next twenty-five years, more than 50,000 pioneers traveled its 2000 miles to new homes in the Northwest. The Oregon Trail was essential to the implementation perceived Manifest Destiny of building the United States into a nation that spanned the North American continent.
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SENECA FALLS CONVENTION
1848 |
Meeting convened in 1848 in New York by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott to discuss problems confronting women which issued the Declaration of Sentiments concerning the treatment of women and inaugurated the women's rights movement. A social visit which included Mott, Stanton, Wright , Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt led to the calling of the Seneca Falls Convention. These women were discussing, among other things, the recent passage of the New York Married Woman's Property Rights Act, which, while important, was limited in its provisions. The time had come, Stanton argued, for women's wrongs to be laid before the public, and women themselves must shoulder the responsibility. The 11 resolutions drawn up by Stanton passed unanimously except for the 9th, the one on woman suffrage, which passed after some debate, largely as the results of the efforts of Frederick Douglass. Many also signed Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence. The Seneca Falls Convention inaugurated the women's rights movement
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TREATY OF GUADALUPE-HIDALGO
1848 |
Treaty between the US and Mexico, signed February 2, 1848, ending the Mexican War (May 1846-February 1848). The treaty granted the northern half of Mexico to the US and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas in return for $15 million. Known as the Mexican Cession, this territory included California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The addition of so much territory to the Union made the question of extending slavery into the territories a primary political issue until the Civil War broke out, largely over that issue, in 1861.
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popular sovereignty
1848 |
Doctrine (initially called "Squatter Sovereignty") developed in 1848. Developed in reaction to the Wilmot Proviso, the doctrine of "Popular Sovereignty" stipulated that the people of a territory would decide for themselves whether they would enter the Union as a slave or free state. Because the doctrine did not stipulate when the decision about slavery would be made--when a territorial legislature first met or later when a state constitution was drafted--both northerners and southerners could interpret it the way they wanted to. It became the principle used for organizing the territories of New Mexico and Utah under the Compromise Act of 1850. It became an issue in his debates with Abraham Lincoln in their race for the US Senate in 1858.
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COMPROMISE OF 1850
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Also known as the Omnibus Bill of 1850, it was a response to the national secession crisis of 1850 which grew out of the question of whether slavery should be allowed in the new territories acquired from Mexico at the end of the Mexican War (1846-1848) and the need to organize California in the wake of the Gold Rush of 1849. The bill admitted California as a free state, organized the rest of the Mexican Cession into the New Mexico and Utah territories without restrictions on slavery, settled the Texas-New Mexico border in favor of New Mexico with a $10 million payment to Texas, abolished the slave trade (but not slavery) in the District of Columbia, and passed a new, more vigorous Fugitive Slave Law (1850).
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GADSEN PURCHASE
1854 |
An area of southern New Mexico and Arizona which was bought by the U.S. from Mexico in 1854 in order to build a transcontinental railroad linking the Deep South with the Pacific Coast. The location of the border was of major concern primarily because the Mesilla Valley appeared to be the best route for a southern transcontinental railroad to the Pacific. Pierce had the American minister to Mexico, James Gadsden, negotiate the purchase. By the terms of the purchase, the U.S. paid $10 million for approximately 30,000 square miles of land thereby aiding the resolution of the border dispute and paving the way for the construction of a southern railroad to the Pacific.
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Kansas-Nebraska Act
1854 |
Legislation sponsored by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and passed in 1854, organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska on the basis of popular sovereignty. By using popular sovereignty, the act overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which had banned slavery north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes north latitude, except for Missouri, and thereby it opened up the whole question of slavery in the territories again. This led to an influx of pro-slavery and anti-slavery immigrants into Kansas, and by 1855-1856 these groups were engaged in a civil war for control of Kansas.
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DRED SCOTT CASE
decided 1857 |
(1799-1858): Supreme Court decision of 1857 which declared that slaves were not citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The case involved Dred Scott, who was born a slave in Virginia in 1799. In 1846, Harriet and Dred Scott sued Mrs. Emerson (later the Emerson estate) for their freedom. After a long court battle, the case ultimately found its way to the Supreme Court which handed down a decision in 1857. The Court ruled that Scott should remain a slave because as a slave he was not a citizen of the United States and thus not eligible to bring suit in federal court; as a slave, he was personal property and thus had never been free. Dred Scott was set free shortly before his death from tuberculosis in 1858.
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Lincoln-Douglas Debates
1858 |
A series of seven formal political debates between the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, and Democratic candidate, Stephen A. Douglas, for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 1858 which discussed the issue of slavery. Although Lincoln lost the election, these debates launched him into national prominence which eventually led to his election as President in 1860.
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JOHN BROWN RAID
1859 |
The attack led by John Brown (1800 - 1859) on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia on October 16, 1859, which was intended to inspire a slave uprising but which ended in the deaths of the attackers and increased tensions between North and South.
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FT. SUMTER
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Federal installation in Charleston harbor which Lincoln attempted to resupply in 1861, and, as a result, the Civil War began. This was the first battle of the Civil war. South Carolina fired on Federal forces which allowed Lincoln the high moral ground. Lincoln called in Federal Troops and on April 13, Fort Sumter was surrendered to the Confederacy.
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Emancipation Proclamation
1863 |
The announcement by Lincoln on New Year's Day, 1863, that slaves in states still in rebellion against the Union were forever free. In the fall of 1862, after the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation warning that on January 1, 1863, he would free all slaves in those states still in rebellion. Intended as a war and propaganda measure, Lincoln's Proclamation initially had more symbolic than real impact because the federal government had no means to enforce it at the time.
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GETTYSBURG
1863 |
Battle fought in southern Pennsylvania between July 1 and July 3, 1863. Lee hoped an invasion would fuel the northern peace movement and disrupt the Union war effort. The battle at Gettysburg was the largest ever fought in North America. The Battle of Gettysburg was a decisive engagement in that it arrested the Confederates' second and last major invasion of the North, destroyed their offensive strategy.
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VICKSBURG
1863 July 4 |
Major victory by Union forces under Grant on July 4, 1863 which completed the Union campaign to gain control of the Mississippi River and to divide the South. On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege. With the loss of Pemberton’s army and this vital stronghold on the Mississippi, the
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SPOILS SYSTEM
19th century |
Popular name in the 19th century for patronage, the practice of office-holders rewarding supporters for their support during campaigns by appointing them to a job in the government. Expanded by Jackson during his presidency, the spoils system became the primary method for filling government positions before the Civil Service Act was passed in 1883.
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BREAD AND BUTTER ISSUES
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Issues such as hours, wages, working conditions, and benefits which labor can negotiate directly with management. While employers make the decisions about these issues, labor unions in the ante-bellum era tended to focus on other issues which could only be dealt with by the government, thereby limiting their effectiveness.
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TRANSCENDENTALISTS
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Philosophic movement in the US which argues that truth in the world can best be gained by relying on one's own instincts and intuition because there is in each person a spark of God which is reflected in that intuition. Truth can transcend the material or physical universe and appear directly to the human heart through a person's own consciousness (which could also be interpreted as God). A combination of Enlightenment rationalism and Romanticist intuition, Transcendentalism defined "Reason" not as rational thought but as a kind of immediate revelation of truth from God.
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HENRY DAVID THOROEAU
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(1817–62: Transcendentalist and friend of Emerson's who wrote "On Civil Disobedience" and Walden and who attempted to live a life of principle and in protest of unjust laws and wars. Thoreau, built a small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, where he lived for more than two years. "On Civil Disobedience" resulted from his overnight stay in prison, a result of his refusal to pay a poll tax that supported the Mexican War. Thoreau's advocacy of civil disobedience as a means for the individual to protest those actions of government he considers unjust had an influence, on Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. A supreme individualist, he stands as an individual who championed the human spirit against materialism and social conformity.
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PROTECTIVE TARIFF
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Tax on imported goods designed to protect American businessmen, wage earners, and farmers from the competition and products of foreign labor. Under Henry Clay's American Plan, Congress was urged to remedy this evil and encourage American production, self-sufficiency, and regional specialization. They responded with the Tariff of 1816 and subsequent tariffs, which some argued went beyond protection and created an American monopoly on the domestic market to the disadvantage of farmers, shippers, and the poor. For the next thirty years, the tariff was a major issue in American politics.
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WILMOT PROVISO
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Amendment to the army appropriations bill of 1846 offered by Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman David Wilmot which stipulated that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory" (that is any territory acquired by the US from Mexico). This is significant because it reveals that one of the primary questions raised by the Mexican War was whether slavery would be allowed in any territory acquired from Mexico, thereby allowing for the entry of new slave states into the Union. It is also significant because it framed political debate for the next fifteen years and revealed a growing division between North and South.
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