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Manifest Destiny
The widespread American belief that God had ordained the United States to occupy all the territory of North America. -
Mexican-American War
Conflict after U.S. annexation of Texas. Mexico considered Texas its own. The victor was the U.S. It granted all land from Texas to California (minus the Gadsden Purchase) in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. -
Wilmot Proviso
Amendment to an appropriations bill proposing that any territory acquired from Mexico be closed to slavery. Although the amendment was defeated in the Senate it started a national debate that ended up as the Civil War. -
Gold Rush
Prospectors, known as forty niners, streamed int California in 1849 after the discovery of gold. -
Compromise of 1850
Attempt to accommodate northerners and southerners over the issue of slavery. This was written by Henry Clay, which admitted California as a free state and called for popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah. This included a strong fugitive slave law and ended the slave trade in D.C. -
Fugitive Slave Law
Law that provided the return of escaped slaves in the North to the owners in the South. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Anti-slavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe that fueled the abolitionist movement in the northern states. -
Gadsden Purchase
Strip of land in present day Arizona and New Mexico that the U.S. purchased from Mexico as a route for building a southern transcontinental railroad. -
KS-NE Act 1854
Law that allowed the Kansas-Nebraska territories to decide the issue of slavery through popular sovereignty. This law led to the civil war in Kansas creating what many called "Bleeding Kansas." -
Panic of 1857
Economic downturn caused by over speculation of western lands, railroads, gold in California, grain. Mostly affected northerners, who called for higher tariffs and free homesteads -
Dred Scott vs. Sandford
After ruling that people of African descent were not citizens and could not sue in court, the Supreme Court under the Chief Justice, Roger Taney, affirmed the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories negating the the doctrine of popular sovereignty, repealing the Missouri Compromise -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
In an election for the U.S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln, a republican, and Stephen Douglas, a democrat, had a series of debates in Illinois. Although Douglas won the election, the debates made Lincoln a national political figure who could articulate the Republican position on slavery. -
First Bull Run
First major battle of the Civil War, in which untrained Northern troops and civilian picnickers fled back to Washington. This battle helped boost Southern morale and made the North realize that this would be a long war. -
Antietam
First major battle of the civil war, it proved to be the bloodiest single day battle in American History with over 26,000 lives lost in that single day. -
Gettysburg
July 1-3, 1863, turning point in war, Union victory, bloodiest battle on American soil. -
13th Amendment
Constitutional amendment that abolished slavery in the United States and its territories -
Black Codes
Laws passed in southern states after the Civil War restricting the rights and activities of free slaves, defining the status of freed slaves as inferior to whites -
14th Amendment
Constitutional amendment that made former slaves citizens and guaranteed them equal protection of the laws. -
15th Amendment
Constitutional amendment that prohibited the states from denying the right to vote due to race or whether the person had once been a slave. A provision to allow women the right to vote -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
Law that prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection, transportation and businesses open to the public. The Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in 1883
