APUSH Chapter 13 Learning Curve

What was the slogan of Polk's Democratic campaign in 1844?

"Fifty-four forty or fight!" James K. Polk termed the slogan when he campaigned for the "the occupation of Oregon." He insisted that the United States claim "the whole of the territory of Oregon" to the Alaskan border.

In the election of 1860, what proportion of the popular vote did Lincoln win?

40 percent

Lincoln's ambition propelled him into politics after having been raised by what kind of father?

A struggling yeoman farmer.

The Republican Party was least likely to be supported by which group?

Anti-immigration nativists

What positions did Abraham Lincoln support on the Mexican War while serving one term in Congress?

Both the war and the Wilmot Proviso Lincoln voted for war funding and for the Wilmot Proviso, thus supporting the war as long as slavery was not extended into the new territories.

What indigenous animal sustained many Great Plains tribes in the 1800s?

Buffalo

How did Democrats build up support for the annexation of Texas in 1844?

By linking Texas to the Oregon question

How did President John Tyler hope to secure his reelection in 1844?

By running as a Democrat in favor of acquiring both Oregon and Texas.

The admission of what state prompted the Compromise of 1850?

California The Compromise of 1850 was prompted by California's petition to be admitted as a free state.

Why did the discovery of gold in California affect the national debate on slavery?

California sought statehood as a free state in 1850, which would have blocked slavery in the West.

What was the name given to the Mexican elite of California?

Californios

Who were the first Indians to develop a specialized horse culture?

Comanches

What position did John C. Calhoun take on the question of the admission of California?

Congress could not legally ban slavery from any territory.

Instead of agreeing to President Franklin Pierce's offer to buy more Mexican territory, Mexican officials agreed to sell a small amount of land earmarked by James Gadsden that would be used for what purpose?

Construction of a transcontinental railroad

Which of the following assessments correctly describes the election of 1848?

Democrat Lewis Cass dominated the trans-Appalachian west, whereas Zachary Taylor dominated the Northeast.

In the 1860 presidential election, the Democrats split between southerners who supported John Breckinridge and northerners who supported what candidate?

Douglas

Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech was an attack on what event?

Dred Scott decision

Where was the federal arsenal that abolitionist John Brown attacked in 1859?

Harpers Ferry, Virginia

Why did John C. Calhoun, secretary of war under President James K. Polk, oppose the annexation of large swaths of Mexican territory south of the Rio Grande?

He feared that such an annexation would mean the addition of racially inferior people.

Why did President James K. Polk retreat from his demand for "fifty-four forty or fight"?

He had begun a war with Mexico and wanted to avoid a simultaneous one with Britain.

Why did James Buchanan and other Democrats advocate a separate state in southern California in 1850?

He wanted to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean.

What statement describes Abraham Lincoln's politics in 1854?

He was a Republican and former Whig who supported a gradualist view on abolition.

Why did the Whigs select Zachary Taylor as their candidate for the presidency in 1848?

He was a war hero.

Who was Abraham Lincoln's political role model?

Henry Clay Like his political role model, Lincoln promoted education, banks, canals, and railroads.

Why did James K. Polk win the presidential election of 1844?

Henry Clay's stand on Texas cost him the election.

Which statement describes James Buchanan, who was elected president in 1856?

His actions in Kansas raised fears that he was part of a slave owners' conspiracy.

Which part of the Compromise of 1850 was the most controversial after passage?

The terms of the Fugitive Slave Act

What statement describes the outcome of the election of 1860?

The vote was divided along strictly sectional lines.

Why did most Californios who had lived in California before the gold rush lose their land?

Their land claims were ignored or illegally reduced.

How did Americans settling in California in the 1820s and 1830s differ from American settlers in Texas?

They assimilated into Mexican culture.

Why did a number of Whigs oppose the Mexican War?

They believed it was part of an immoral conspiracy to expand slavery.

What impact did the California gold rush have on Native Americans there?

They suffered brutally from the onslaught of fortune seekers.

Conventions met in some southern states in 1850 and considered secession but did not secede. Why?

They were unwilling to take the step as long as no further inroads were made against slavery.

Who was the American merchant who lived in California under the Mexican regime in the early 1820s?

Thomas Larkin

Why did President Franklin Pierce want to buy the land from Mexico that became the Gadsden Purchase?

To build a transcontinental railroad

What book did Harriet Beecher Stowe write that increased northern sentiment against slavery?

Uncle Tom's Cabin

What did the events in Kansas suggest would be the result of the popular sovereignty policy?

Violence

By 1870, what was the major agricultural product of California?

Wheat Farmers in California found that they could grow most eastern crops such as wheat, using the latest technology and scores of hired workers. San Francisco merchants then exported the crop to Europe at high prices. The gold rush gradually turned into a wheat boom.

How was Texas annexed by the United States?

When Congress approved a joint resolution to that effect

When did the Republican Party gain support in the North and Midwest?

When the Democratic Party split over the Lecompton constitution in Kansas.

From which party did political opposition to the Mexican-American War primarily come?

Whigs

In 1849, what group made up most of the migrants who came to California by land and sea to mine for gold?

White men

Which president pursued his ambition of acquiring Texas, New Mexico, and California for the United States even at the risk of war?

James K. Polk

What abolitionist, inflamed by the sack of the free-soil town of Lawrence, Kansas, led the vigilantes who took revenge on proslavery settlers in the "Pottawatomie massacre"?

John Brown

Whom did President James K. Polk dispatch to California in 1845 to lead a heavily armed "exploring" party?

John C. Frémont

Which plains tribe came to dominate the northern Great Plains by the 1830s?

Lakota Sioux

What name is given the belief in a god-given American cultural and racial superiority that lay behind the desire to make the entire continent part of American democracy?

Manifest Destiny

General Winfield Scott led American forces in an invasion of Mexico in 1847 and marched 260 miles to capture what site?

Mexico City

Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, what was the most likely outcome in terms of the balance of free and slave states?

More free than slave states were likely to be added to the Union.

What was the primary agenda of the Know-Nothing Party?

Nativism

Which of the following areas was left unorganized under the Compromise of 1850?

Nebraska Territory

In his letter to John Slidell in November 1845, Secretary of State James Buchanan explained the following to the minister to Mexico: "It is to be seriously apprehended that both Great Britain and France have designs upon California. . . . This Government . . . would vigorously interpose to prevent the latter from becoming either a British or a French Colony. . . . The possession of the Bay and harbor of San Francisco is all important to the United States. . . . Money would be no object." What did Buchanan want John Slidell to do?

Negotiate the purchase of California to keep it out of British and French hands

What caused the Democratic Party to split into northern and southern Democrats at the party's April 1860 convention?

Northern Democrats rejected a proposal to protect slavery in the territories.

Based on the map, where were most of the gold deposits located?

On the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada

In 1818, the U.S. and Great Britain established joint occupation of what areas?

Oregon

What did the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stipulate?

Payment to Mexico of $15 million from the United States in return for vast tracts of land

In response to federal passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, northern states passed what kinds of laws?

Personal-liberty laws

In the 1840s, the U.S. Navy published a glowing report about the harbors in what area?

Puget Sound

What was the cause of "Oregon fever"?

Reports of potential harbors and fertile soil in Oregon

Why did the buffalo herds of the northern plains begin to shrink in the 1830s?

Sioux Indians and other plains tribes began to trade buffalo hides with European fur traders.

John Brown intended to end which institution by his raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859?

Slavery

What position did Whig senators Salmon P. Chase and William Seward take on the question of the admission of California?

Slavery should be limited to its current boundaries and eventually abolished.

What term did Democratic presidential candidate Lewis Case use in 1848 to refer to his plan to allow residents of a territory to decide on slavery?

Squatter sovereignty

What term did Democratic presidential candidate Lewis Cass use in 1848 to refer to his plan to allow residents of a territory to decide on slavery?

Squatter sovereignty

After losing reelection to the House of Representatives and withdrawing from politics, opposition to what event led Abraham Lincoln to return to politics?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

Opposition to what action led some Democrats to join the Republican Party when it formed in the mid-1850s?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

What event proved to be the last nail in the coffin of the Second Party System and contributed directly to the emergence of the Republican Party?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

In the Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Taney ruled that which of the following was unconstitutional?

The Missouri Compromise

What was the name of the written statement, issued by American diplomats in Europe in 1854, that justified the U.S. seizure of Cuba?

The Ostend Manifesto

What was the new party created in 1854 to oppose the expansion of slavery?

The Republican Party The new party created in 1854 to oppose the expansion of slavery was the Republican Party.

Where did the Americans who migrated to Oregon in the 1840s primarily settle?

The Willamette Valley

Which proposal was intended to prohibit slavery in any territories acquired from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War?

The Wilmot Proviso

What was the ruling in the Ableman v. Booth court case?

The Wisconsin Supreme Court declared that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the rights of Wisconsin's citizens.

Why was Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin so successful with readers?

It highlighted the cruelty of slavery with heartrending power. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin conveyed the moral principles of abolitionism in heartrending personal situations by using the familiar literary trope of sentimental domesticity.

Why did the idea of popular sovereignty on the slavery question appeal to so many Americans in 1850?

It linked the resolution of the sectional conflict to republican ideology.

Why did the free-soil concept achieve significant popular support?

It stressed protection of white economic opportunity.

Why was the Liberty Party important in the 1844 presidential election?

Its votes decided the election. In the election of 1844, Henry Clay of the Whig Party ultimately supported the annexation of Texas, a slave state, to the United States. This support cost him crucial northern Whig support. Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney received less than 3 percent of the national vote but took enough Whig votes in New York to cost Clay that state—and the presidency.

Why did Californios raise cattle in the 1820s to the 1840s?

The hide and tallow trade

Why did social divisions among the Kiowa Indians intensify in the 1830s?

The new horse culture created enormous distinctions of wealth.

Why did the Fugitive Slave Act prove to be the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850?

The new law denied people accused of being runaways of fundamental rights.

Why did eight southern states walk out of the Democratic Party Convention of April 1860?

The party had refused to include the protection of slavery in the territories in its platform. At the party's convention in April 1860, northern Democrats rejected Jefferson Davis's proposal to protect slavery in the territories, and delegates from eight southern states quit the meeting.

What connection did John L. O'Sullivan's term "manifest destiny" have to American expansion of the mid-nineteenth century?

The phrase embodied the dreams of American expansionists.