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Manifest Destiny
The Manifest Destiny was a belief that was widely held that the destiny of American settlers was to expand and move across the continent to spread their traditions and their institutions, while at the same time enlightening more primitive nations. -
Mexican American War
What led to this war was the dispute revolving around the American's belief that it was their right to expand westward. The was the first U.S armed conflict to to occur on foreign soil. In result America paid 15 million in return received authority over the territories: Texas, New Mexico, and California. -
Free Soil Movement
The Free Soil Party was an American political party that only survived through two presidential elections. This party's purpose was dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery to new states and territories in the West, which attracted a very dedicated following. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
This treaty, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the war between the United States and Mexico. By its terms, Mexico ceded 55 percent of its territory, including parts of present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah, to the United States. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
This was a novel written to express the profound effects of slavery. The message this novel carried out was that slavery was fundamentally evil, corrupting everyone it touched and destroying the lives of good, pious men like Uncle Tom. This novel lead to the outbreak of the Civil War. -
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase, or Treaty, was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, in which the United States agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico. -
"Bleeding Kansas"
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. Kansas is an important staging ground for what some people argue is the first battles of the Civil War, because it is this battlefield on which the forces of anti-slavery and the forces of slavery meet. -
KS-NE Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
Pottawatomie Creek
The radical abolitionist John Brown, five of his sons, and three other associates murdered five pro-slavery men at three different cabins along the banks of Pottawatomie Creek, near present-day Lane, Kansas. By the end of 1856, over 200 people would be gunned down in cold blood. Property damage reached millions of dollars. Federal troops were sent in to put down the fighting, but they were too few to have much effect. -
Dred Scott v. Sandford
A supreme court case that ruled that Americans with African descent whether they were free or enslaved could not sue in federal court and weren't recognized as American citizens -
Panic of 1857
This was a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Due to interconnections of the world economy by the 1850's, this led to the world's first worldwide economic crisis. -
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter is historically significant because it is the place where the first battle of the American Civil War was fought. After a 33-hour bombardment by Confederate cannons, Union forces surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. -
Border States
The Border States were vital to the success of the Union. They contained significant deposits of mineral resources and were major agricultural areas producing both livestock and grain. Additionally, these states contained transportation and communication lines that were vital to the war. -
Anaconda Plan
The Anaconda Plan was the Union's strategic plan to defeat the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War. The main purpose of the Anaconda plan was to defeat the rebellion by blockading southern ports and controlling the Mississippi river. This would cut off and isolate the south from the outside world. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” -
Pacific Railway Act
The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 authorized the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad to build a railroad and a telegraph line beginning in Omaha, Nebraska, and ending in Sacramento, California. The act also provided land from the public domain and government bonds to help pay for the construction. -
10% Plan
Lincoln's blueprint for Reconstruction included the Ten-Percent Plan,which specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. -
Black Codes
The best known of them were passed in 1865 and 1866 by Southern states, after the American Civil War, in order to restrict African Americans' freedom, and to compel them to work for low wages. -
Civil Rights Act
This act was passed by Congress on April 9th 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. This act declared that everyone born in the United States were citizens no matter the race, color, or previous condition. -
Reconstruction Acts
These acts laid out the process for readmitting Southern states into the Union. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) provided former slaves with national citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) granted black men the right to vote. -
15th Amendment
The purpose of this amendment was to ensure that states were not denying men the right to vote simply based on their race. -
Sharecropping 1870's-1950's
Following the Civil War, plantation owners were unable to farm their land. They did not have slaves or money to pay a free labor force, so sharecropping developed as a system that could benefit plantation owners and former slaves. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping. -
Amnesty Act
This act removed voting restrictions and office-holding disqualification against most of the secessionists who rebelled in the American Civil War.
