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Manifest destiny
Manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the 19th-century United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. Three main points: emphasize special virtues of the American people, Remake the western image of America, destiny that requires this action. -
Gold Rush
The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy. -
Treaty Guadalupe Hidalgo
A treaty between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War. -
Compromise of 1850
Defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. -
Fugitive Slave Law
It required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate. -
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. -
Ostend Manifesto 1852
described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. The annexation of Cuba was a gold for pro slavery southerners. -
Gadsden Purchase
A region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States acquired from Mexico by the Treaty of Mesilla, which took effect on June 8, 1854. -
Panic of 1857
The Panic of 1857 was a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the interconnectedness of the world economy by the 1850s, the financial crisis that began in late 1857 was the first worldwide economic crisis. -
Emancipation Proc.
Changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the Confederate states from slave to free. -
Homestead Act 1862
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land. -
Pacific Railway Act 1862
The Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 were a series of acts of Congress that promoted the construction of a transcontinental railroad. An Act to aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, and to secure to the government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes. -
Freedmen’s Bureau
Was a U.S. government agency from 1865 to 1872, after the Civil War, to direct"provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children. -
Black codes
Black Codes were part of a larger pattern of whites trying to maintain political dominance and suppress the freedmen, newly emancipated African-American slaves. Black codes were essentially replacements for slave codes in those states. -
Civil Rights Act 1866
First United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. -
Reconstruction Acts
Were four statutes passed during the Reconstruction Era by the Congress addressing requirement for Southern States to be readmitted to the Union. -
Suspension of habeas Corpus
Following the end of the Civil War, numerous groups arose in the South to oppose Reconstruction, including the Ku Klux Klan. One of these, the Civil Rights Act of 1871, permitted the president to suspend habeas corpus if conspiracies against federal authority were so violent that they could not be checked by ordinary means. -
Amnesty Act 1872
The Amnesty Act of 1872 was a United States federal law which reversed most of the penalties imposed on former Confederates by the Fourteenth Amendment. If 2/3 the House of Rep and Congress voted for amnesty the 14th amendment could be overruled. -
Civil Rights Act 1875
The act was designed to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights, providing for equal treatment in public accommodations and public transportation and prohibiting exclusion from jury service. -
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was an unwritten deal, informally arranged among U.S. Congressmen, that settled the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ending the Reconstruction Era.
