Chapter 13: A House Divided, 1840-1861

"Fifty-four forty or fight" referred to demands for...

American control of Oregon.

In the 1850's, which action would be in line with Abraham Lincoln's views on race?

An African-American man trains as an artisan and then starts his own business.

After gaining its independence, what resulted in the new independent nation of Texas?

Anglos initially supported Juan Seguín, a Tejano supporter of Texas independence, as mayor of San Antonio.

Abraham Lincoln questioned President Polk's right to declare war by...

introducing a resolution to congress requesting that the president specify the precise spot where blood had first been shed.

One aspect of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 provided for protection of...

large Mexican landowners in California.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates were extremely significant in American political history and had...

lasting consequences to the outcome of the U.S. Senate race.

In the 1850's, adventurer William Walker became famous for...

leading filibustering expeditions in South America.

John Brown was responsible for the 1856 Pottawatomie Creek Massacre in Kansas and...

led the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia in 1859.

As he entered the White House, James K. Polk's goal of settling the slavery dispute...

led to war.

After Texas independence, the Tejanos...

lost rights and access to land.

Under the constitution of independent Texas, people of color had had...

more freedom and rights when Mexico previously controlled Texas.

The caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks actually helped the...

new Republican Party.

On matters related to citizenship, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Dred Scott that...

only white persons could be U.S. citizens.

The Wilmot Proviso never...

passed as a law.

The California gold rush turned San Francisco into...

perhaps, the world's most diverse city.

In the 1860 election, Stephen Douglas was the...

presidential candidate to have significant support in all parts of the country.

The Lecompton Constitution was the...

proslavery constitution proposed for Kansas.

The Democratic Party split in 1860 over the question of whether to...

protect slavery in the territories or allow popular sovereignty in them.

President Martin Van Buren rejected adding Texas to the United States because the presence of slaves there would...

reignite the issue of slavery, and they preferred to avoid it.

Prior to becoming president in 1857, James Buchanan had...

served as America's minister to Great Britain.

By the time Lincoln actually took the oath of office...

seven states had already seceded from the Union.

For the South in the 1830's, making the Texas territory part of the United States could potentially be most beneficial if...

several slave states could be created out of Texas.

Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election without a...

single electoral vote in ten southern states.

In 1846, Congressman David Wilmot proposed to prohibit...

slavery from all territory acquired from Mexico.

The Dred Scott decision of the U.S. Supreme Court declared that congress could not ban...

slavery from the territories.

The Free Soil Party demonstrated that antislavery sentiment had...

spread far beyond abolitionist ranks.

The Appeal of the Independent Democrats proved to be one of the most...

successful pieces of political persuasion in American history.

During his debate with Abraham Lincoln in Freeport, Illinois, Stephen Douglas insisted...

that popular sovereignty was compatible with the Dred Scott decision.

Analyzing the role that the Manifest Destiny played in the California gold rush, the result was that...

the California legislature created a foreign miners' tax.

Until the 1870's Comanches in essence controlled the territory between...

the Nueces River and the Rio Grande.

Henry David Thoreau wrote On Civil Disobedience as a response to...

the U.S. war with Mexico.

The Ostend Manifesto suggested the U.S. purchase Cuba, where slavery was still legal, from Spain. If purchase was not available...

the United States should seize Cuba.

In 1854, the Know-Nothings won all the congressional races as well as...

the governorship in Massachusetts.

The Wilmot Proviso, admission of California into the Union, and the Missouri Compromise focused on...

the idea that the extension of slavery was a volatile issue.

According to John L. O'Sullivan's Democratic Review race was...

the key to the history of nations and the rise and fall of empires.

John Brown perpetuated violence over...

the slavery issue in Kansas and Viginia.

The Republican Party founded in the 1850's strongly endorsed the same policy about slavery in...

the territories that David Wilmot had begun advocating in 1846.

During the secession winter of 1860-1861, John Crittenden offered the most widely supported compromise plan in Congress, which allowed...

the westward extension of the Missouri Comprise line.

John C. Frémont

was the Republican presidential candidate in 1856.

Nativism emerged as a major political movement in 1854 with the sudden appearance of the...

Know-Nothing Party.

Analyzing the maneuvering of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln around Fort Sumter, who was superior?

Lincoln made the South look like the aggressor.

From 1848 to 1860, most of the railroad construction was in the...

Midwest.

When "Fifty-four forty or fight" did not result in gaining all of the Pacific Northwest...

Northern Democrats would most likely have been the angriest.

How did the territory acquired from the Mexican War promote Thomas Jefferson's earlier idea of an Empire of Liberty?

Only people classified as whites gained full rights.

The proponents of the Compromise of 1850 received a boost from...

President Zachary Taylor.

What key component of the 1860 Republican platform had never before been part of a major party's platform?

Slavery should not be extended into new states and territories.

American settlement in Texas in the 1820's and 1830's led...

Stephen Austin to demand more autonomy from Mexican officials.

Why did slavery become more central to American politics in the 1840's?

Territorial expansion raised the question of whether new lands should be slave or free.

When Democrats demanded the "reannexation" of Texas in 1844 they implied that...

Texas had once been part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase.

With the Gadsden Purchase...

Texas territory increased in size.

What was ironic about the Fugitive Slave Act?

The South promoted states' rights, but with this law agreed to strong federal action.

What is an example of the political impact of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

The Whig Party collapsed, and many disgruntled northerners joined the new Republican Party.

By casting their ballots for the Constitutional Unionist candidate John Bell in the 1860 election, what did people in Virginia and Kentucky fear?

The voter worried the an imending civil war would lead to war being fought in their respective states.

What occurred in 1848 in Europe?

There were revolutions against monarchies.

What statement, related to ethnicity, can be said of California in the 1850's?

Thousands of Indian children were declared orphans and treated as slaves.

What became a key component of the Underground Railroad in the 1850's?

Trains were used more frequently to take slaves to Canada and freedom.

During the Mexican War...

U.S. troops occupied the Mexican capital.

The Ostend Manifesto, and 1854 document, called for the...

United States to seize Cuba

Why were the Know-Nothings unable to curb the political influence of Irish immigrants?

Voting rights were being determined by race.

The Republican free labor ideology led to the argument by...

William Seward that free labor and slave labor were essentially incompatible.

Matthew Perry, and American naval officer, negotiated...

a treaty in 1854 that opened two Japanese ports to U.S. ships.

In California after the Mexican-American War, landowners of Spanish heritage had to...

adjust to a new identity as if they were immigrants.

The Texas independence movement was sparked in part because the Mexican government...

alarmed that its grip on the area was weakening, annulled land contracts and barred future emigrants from the United States in 1830.

In 1860, South Carolina became the first to pass...

an ordinance of secession and declare itself separated from the Union.

The opening of Japan to United States trade led to Japan...

becoming a modernized military power.

Stephen Douglas's motivation for introducing the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to...

boost efforts to build a transcontinental railroad.

As it divided over slavery, the Democratic Party...

broke into a northern and southern branch.

The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates took place during the...

campaign for U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1858.

In the late 1850's, a white slaveholder living in Mississippi most likely voted for...

candidates from the Democratic Party.

The Free Soil idea in the West appealed to racist northerners who worried about...

competing against black laborers for jobs.

The movements against European monarchies in 1848 had slight success in their attempts to create more...

democracy, but the movement quickly faded, then died.

Moderate Republicans, like Abraham Lincoln...

detested the Dred Scott decision.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 gave new powers to...

federal officers to override local law enforcement.

The Fugitive Slave Act provided...

for the return of runaway slaves to their owners.

James K. Polk was a...

former governor of Tennessee a close associate of Andrew Jackson, and supported Texas annexation.

The Mexican War was the first American war to be...

fought primarily on foreign soil.

The free labor ideology was based on the assumption that...

free labor could not compete with slave labor and so slavery's expansion had to be halted to ensure freedom for the white laborer.

In the first half of the nineteenth century the United States...

gained the most territory through wars with Mexico.

Abraham Lincoln supported...

increasing economic opportunities for free blacks.

What was a key provision of the Compromise of 1850?

Besides California, other territory acquired from the Mexican-American War would use popular sovereignty to decide about slavery.

Why was the extension of slavery significant politically?

Both the North and the South wanted to control the Senate.

What distinguished John Brown from other abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass?

Brown emphasized violence in freeing slaves.

When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821...

California's Indian population was larger than its non-Indian population.

The explosive population growth and competition for gold brought discontent and bitter fighting amoung...

California's many racial and ethnic groups as they battled for wealth.

The American Civil War began in April 1861, when...

Confederate forces fired upon and captured Fort Sumter.

Winning the Mexican War did what in regard to trade for the United States?

Gaining valuable trade ports tripled trade with China by 1860.

Which two political figures agreed to keep the issue of annexing Texas out of the 1844 presidential campaign if possible?

Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, what view did Stephen Douglas take?

If each state, slave or free, worried only about its own status, then there should be harmony.

What attracted voters to the Know-Nothing Party?

Its denunciation of Roman Catholic immigrants.

Why did Mississippi politician Jefferson Davis object in the 1850's to the original design of the Statue of Freedom that now adorns the U.S. Capitol dome?

Its use of an ancient Roman liberty cap on "Freedom" raised a touchy matter about slaves' longing for freedom.