APUSH Period 1 - 4

Cyrus McCormick's Reaper

A horse-drawn machine that greatly increased the amount of wheat a farmer could harvest; it was invented in 1831.

"The Information Revolution"

A large expansion in printing and the dissemination of information to the public that was brought about by the market revolution and political democracy.

"Moral suasion"

A method of reformers attempting to convert people to their cause by highlighting the moral implications of the opposing viewpoint.

"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?"

A motto adopted by abolitionists to highlight the reality that blacks in bondage were no different than the whites in power over them.

Dorr War

A movement in 1841 in Rhode Island led by white democratic reformers who sought to enfranchise all adult white men and ratify a new state constitution; President John Tyler dispatched federal troops to the state and the movement collapsed.

Common School Movement

A movement in the nineteenth century, associated with Horace Mann, to create tax-supported state schools open to all children.

Manifest Destiny

A phrase first used in 1845 to suggest that the annexation of Texas was divinely sanctioned. It was used thereafter to encourage American settlement of Indian lands in the Great Plains and the West and, more generally, as a justification for American empire.

"King Cotton"

A phrase referring to the social, economic, and cultural importance of cotton in the South. The Southern economy in the early and mid nineteenth century was predominantly agricultural, lacking industrialization, containing very few large cities, few immigrants, and reliant on the export of cotton.

The Second Bank of the United States

A private, profit-making corporation that served as the government's financial agent; it was chartered in 1816, but President Andrew Jackson vetoed the recharter bill in 1832.

The American System

A program of internal improvements, protective tariffs, and a National Bank promoted by Speaker of the House Henry Clay in his presidential campaign of 1824; his proposals formed the core of Whig ideology in the 1830s and 1840s.

Liberty Party

Abolitionist political party that nominated James G. Birney for president in 1840 and 1844; merged with the Free Soil Party in 1848.

Sojourner Truth

African American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Turnpikes

Also known as toll roads, they were the first advance in overland transportation and were constructed by localities, states, and private companies. They were an important component of the Market Revolution

Worcester v. Georgia (1832)

An 1832 Supreme Court ruling that held that Indian nations are a distinct people with the right to maintain a separate political identity ("domestic dependent nations"). Ruled that Indians must be dealt with by the federal government, not the states, Georgia's actions violated the Cherokee's treaties with Washington.Refusing the enforce the decision, President Jackson supposedly declared, "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."

The Force Act, 1833

An 1833 law that expanded presidential power by authorizing President Andrew Jackson to use the army and navy to collect customs duties.

Iroquois League

An alliance created in the 15th century between five Indian tribes in modern day Pennsylvania and New York. This alliance created relative peace within the region and was the first form of central authority between Indian tribes. Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca (the Five Nations)

Panic of 1837

Beginning of a major economic depression lasting about six years; touched off by a British financial crisis and made worse by falling cotton prices, credit and currency problems, and speculation in land, canals, and railroads.

Mid-19th Century Immigration

Between 1840 and 1860, over 4 million people entered the United States; the majority were from Ireland and Germany and immigrated to the Northern states where job opportunities were abundant.

The Nullification Crisis

Conflict in the 19th century over a state's rights to invalidate federal law within its borders. This crisis reached its peak in 1932-33 when South Carolina declared the "tariff of abominations" null and void. In response, President Jackson persuaded Congress to enact a Force Act authorizing him to use the army and navy to collect customs duties. The Crisis deescalated in 1833 when Henry Clay helped pass a new law reducing the tariff. South Carolina then rescinded their nullification, but not without nullifying the Force Act (Take that, Andrew Jackson!). The concept of invalidation of a federal law within the borders of a state was first expounded in Thomas Jefferson's draft of Kentucky resolution against Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1798, cited again by South Carolina in its Ordinance of Nullification (1832) of the Tariff of Abominations, and again by southern states to explain their secession from the Union (1861), and cited again by southern states to oppose the Brown vs Board of Education decision (1954).

Democratic Party and Whig Party (the Second Party System)

Established in 1828 and led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the former was a major opponent of the latter until the Civil War; unlike the latter, the former party believed government should adopt a hands-off approach toward the economy. The later party was founded in 1834 to unite factions opposed to President Andrew Jackson, and favored federal responsibility for internal improvements; the party ceased to exist by the late 1850s when its members divided over the slavery issue.

Slave Coffles

Forced marches of (around one million) enslaved, and chained, African Americans from older slave states in the upper South to the deep South where cotton production was expanding throughout.

Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons

Founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, the religion was a product of the intense revivalism of the "burned-over district" of New York; Smith's successor Brigham Young led 15,000 followers to Utah in 1847 to escape persecution.

American Anti-Slavery Society

Founded in 1833 to organize efforts devoted to abolition.

Cotton Gin

Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, the machine separated cotton seed from cotton fiber, speeding cotton processing and making profitable the cultivation of the more hardy, but difficult to clean, short-staple cotton; led directly to the dramatic nineteenth-century expansion of slavery in the South.

Telegraph

Invented during the 1830s by Samuel F. B. Morse, the device made possible instantaneous communication throughout the nation; it was put into commercial operation in 1844.

John Deere's Steel Plow

Invented in 1837 and mass-produced by the 1850s, this new agricultural technology made possible the rapid subduing of the western prairies.

Mound Builders

Members of any of a number of cultures that developed east of the Mississippi River in what is now the United States and that are distinguished by their large earthen mounds, built during the period 2000 B.C.E.-1250 C.E.

Nat Turner's Rebellion

Most important slave uprising in nineteenth-century America, led by a slave preacher who, with his followers, killed about sixty white persons in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

Organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention who advocated for female suffrage

Steamboats

Paddlewheelers that could travel both down-and up-river in deep or shallow waters; they became commercially viable early in the nineteenth century and soon developed into America's first inland freight and passenger service network.They were an important component of the Market Revolution

Asylums

Part of the 1830s and 1840s program of building institutions, these were intended to house the insane, rehabilitate them, and release them back into society as productive citizens.

Three sister "Corn Bean Squash"

Crops that formed the basis of agriculture in the Western Hemisphere about 9000 years ago. These crops provided the Indians of the Western Hemisphere with food and began their agricultural knowledge.

Missouri Compromise of 1820

Deal proposed by Kentucky senator Henry Clay in 1820 to resolve the slave/free imbalance in Congress (the Senate specifically) that would result from Missouri's admission as a slave state; Maine's admission as a free state offset Missouri, and slavery was prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory north of the southern border of Missouri (the 36 30 line).

Fugitive Slaves

Escaped slaves fleeing from recapture by their owners.

Plain Folk of the Old South

Poorer Southern whites who did not own plantations. 75% of Southern white families owned no slaves at all and lived meager lives of self-sufficiency remote from the market revolution. Yet they didn't oppose slavery.

Self-discipline

Popular among mid-nineteenth century reformers, the belief that self-fulfillment came through the practice of self-control.

The Monroe Doctrine, 1823

President James Monroe's declaration to Congress on December 2, 1823, that said the American continents would be thenceforth closed to European colonization, and that the United States would not interfere in European affairs.

Margaret Fuller's Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Published in 1845, this important feminist book sought to apply to women the transcendentalist idea that freedom meant a quest for personal development.

Indian Removal Act of 1830

Signed into law by President Andrew Jackson, this law provided funds for uprooting the so-called Five Civilized Tribes--the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole--with a population of around 60,000 living in NC, GA, AL, and MS. The law marked a repudiation of the Jeffersonian idea that "civilized" Indians could be assimilated into the American population.

Abolitionism

Social movement of the pre-Civil War era that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens

matrilineal societies

Societies where the children of a marriage become part of the mother's family. The difference between European and Indian gender roles caused the Europeans to view the Indians as "backwards" and in need of fixing. They viewed Indian women as mistreated and men as weak when in reality the Indian women had many more rights than European women.

"hard money" vs. "soft money"

The debate over whether gold and silver was a more reliable currency than paper.

Reverend Charles Grandison Finney

The evangelical preacher most associated with the Second Great Awakening who held months-long revival meetings in New York in the 1820s and 1830s.

The Slave Family

The family unit in slave communities, though marriages were not legally recognized; slaves being resold was a constant threat to familial unity.

The Panic of 1819

The financial collapse brought on by sharply falling cotton prices, declining demand for American exports, and reckless western land speculation.

Christian Liberty

The idea that freedom was a moral state reached when one abandoned a life of sin and embraced the teachings of God. Europeans viewed freedom in terms of Christian Liberty. Since the Indians did not conform to this idea, the Europeans viewed them as savage heathens who needed to be forced into a new religion and way of life.

Animism

The idea that sacred spirits can be found in inanimate objects such as water, plants, and wind. This was a very common belief of many Native American tribes. When the Europeans saw that their religions differed in many ways, they believed that the natives were worshipping the devil or were heathens who needed to be saved with Christianity.

"Perfectionism"

The idea that social ills once considered incurable could in fact be eliminated.

"Self Made Man"

The idea that those who achieved success in America did so not as a result of hereditary privilege or government favoritism as in Europe, but through their own intelligence and hard work.

Tenochtitlán

The technologically advanced, highly populated capital of the Aztec empire conquered by Spanish colonists. The city was a center of Aztec culture that was destroyed by the Spanish (disease and warfare).

Internal Improvements

The term used from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century that refers to the creation of a transportation infrastructure: roads, turnpikes, canals, harbors and navigation improvements.

"The Spoils System"

The term—meaning the filing of federal government jobs with persons loyal to the party of the president—originated in Andrew Jackson's first term.

The Bank War of 1832

The war on the Bank of the United States waged by President Andrew Jackson, who believed it unacceptable for Congress to create a source of concentrated power and economic privilege unaccountable to the people; Jackson vetoed the recharter bill proposed by the bank in 1832.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

This important 1852 antislavery novel popularized the abolitionist position.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Chief Justice John Marshall, holding that Maryland could not tax the Second Bank of the United States, supported the authority of the federal government versus the states.

Dartmouth v. Woodward (1819)

U.S. Supreme Court upheld the original charter of the college against New Hampshire's attempt to alter the board of trustees; set the precedent of support of contracts against state interference.

Minstrel Shows

Vaudeville entertainment popular in the decades surrounding the Civil War in which mostly white actors would wear "blackface" and perform comic routines that presented simplistic and demeaning depictions of African-Americans that indirectly justified and endorsed slavery to the audience.

Squatters

Western migrants who set up farms on unoccupied land without a clear legal title.

The Amistad, 1839

While transporting slaves from one port in Cuba to another, this ship was seized by the slaves in 1839. The slaves sailed the ship northward to the United States, where their status became the subject of a celebrated court case; eventually most were able to return to Africa.

"The Tariff of Abominations"

The Southern term for the Tariff of 1828. It taxed imported goods at a very high rate and aroused strong opposition in the South because, unlike the Northern economy which was diversified and increasingly based on manufacturing, the Southern economy was based predominantly on agricultural cash crops like cotton, and it depended on exporting its crops abroad and selling them overseas. But when the U.S. imposed tariffs on imported manufactured good from other countries, those other countries retaliated by imposing tariffs on agricultural products they imported from the U.S.. These "retaliatory tariffs" hurt the southern economy. Moreover, Southerners would have to pay higher prices for the North's manufactured goods.

Cahokia

The central city of Indian culture in the Mississippi River Valley (1200 AD); the largest city in the present day United States until 1800. It was a significant civilization for Indian culture.

Public education

This was viewed by mid-nineteenth century reformers as a crucial avenue to restore equality and to equip the less fortunate for advancement up the social scale.

Gag Rule

Rule adopted by House of Representatives in 1836 prohibiting consideration of abolitionist petitions. The opposition to this rule, led by former president John Quincy Adams, succeeded in having it repealed in 1844.

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

A female assembly held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 which first discussed female suffrage. This is considered to be the beginning of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the U.S.

"Slavery of Sex"

A feminist concept that compared marriage to slavery, critiquing male authority and wives' subordination.

Individualism

A term that entered the language in the 1820 to describe the increasing emphasis on the pursuit of personal advancement and private fulfillment free of outside interference.

Dorothea Dix

A Massachusetts schoolteacher who was the leading advocate of more humane treatment of the insane.

Slave Religion

A distinctive version of Christianity developed by slaves in the face of hardship. A blend of African traditions and Christian belief, slave religion was practiced in secret nighttime meetings on plantations and in "praise meetings."

"The Declaration of Sentiments"

A document advocating for female equality signed and read by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention modeled off of the Declaration of Independence but reading "all men and women are created equal."

Temperance Movement

A reform movement advocating the moderation in consumption of liquor.

Harriet Tubman

A slave who escaped to Philadelphia in 1849 and spent the next ten years making trips back and forth to Maryland to lead her relatives and other slaves to freedom.

Transcendentalists

A small group of mid-nineteenth-century New England writers and thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson (author of Self-Reliance), Henry David Thoreau (author of Walden, and "Civil Disobedience"), and Margaret Fuller, whose philosophy stressed personal and intellectual self-reliance.

"Lords of the Loom and Lords of the Lash"

A system in which New England's early factory owners relied on the cotton supplied by southern slaveowners. In effect, the northern economy was very much complicit in southern slavery. In addition to the North's growing textile industry that turned cotton into cloth, northern ships carried cotton to New York and Europe, northern bankers financed cotton plantations, and northern companies insured slavery property.

Factory System

A system in which large groups of workers were gathered under central supervision using power-driven machinery, which replaced hand tools.

"The American System of Manufactures"

A system that relied on the mass production of interchangeable parts that could be rapidly assembled into standardized finished products.

"The Peculiar Institution"

A term referring to slavery's continued existence in the South after Northern abolition.

"Silent Sabotage"

A widespread hostility to slavery wherein slaves did poor work, broke tools, abused animals, and in other ways disrupted the plantation routine.

Woman Suffrage

A woman's right to vote, an issue raised for the first time at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

The Market Revolution

An economic transformation in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century sparked by a series of innovations in transportation and communication. It lead to increased economic production and greater interconnection of the U.S. economy, particularly between the North and the Old Northwest.

The Pro-Slavery Argument

An ideology professed by many white Southerner by the middle of the 19th century that attempted to justify slavery. Pro-slavery arguments included the idea that the Bible sanctioned slavery, that successful civilizations in the ancient world relied on slavery (Greece and Rome), that Africans were racially inferior and slavery helped to "civilize" them, and that the Declaration of Independence was wrong when it stated that "all men are created equal."

David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829)

An indictment of slavery and racial prejudice that used both secular and religious language to advocate for abolition

Nativism

Anti-immigrant feeling. It was especially prominent in the 1830s through the 1850s against the Irish immigrants, who were mostly Catholic; the largest group was New York's Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, which expanded into the American (Know-Nothing) Party in 1854.

The "cult of domesticity"

In the early nineteenth century, women found many opportunities of the market revolution closed to them as the household declined as the center of economic production and the availability of mass-produced goods undermined their traditional roles. Many women embraced this new definition of femininity which glorified not a woman's contribution to the family's economic well-being but rather her ability to create a private environment shielded from the competitive tensions of the market economy. Woman's "place" was in the home, a site increasingly emptied of economically productive functions as work moved from the household to workshops and factories. Her role was to sustain non-market values like love, friendship, and mutual obligation, providing men with shelter from the competitive marketplace.

"pet banks"

Local banks that received deposits while the charter of the Bank of the United States was about to expire in 1836. The choice of these banks was influenced by political and personal connections.

Railroads

Opened vast new areas of the American interior to settlement while stimulating the mining of coal for fuel and the manufacture of iron for locomotives and rails. Work on the Baltimore and Ohio ("The B&O"), the nation's first commercial one, began in 1828. They were an important component of the Market Revolution

Underground Railroad

Operating in the decades before the Civil War, this was a clandestine system of routes and safe houses through which slaves were led to freedom in the North.

American Colonization Society

Organized in 1816 to encourage colonization of free blacks to Africa; the west African nation of Liberia was founded in 1822 to serve as a homeland for them.

Female Moral Reform Society

Organized in 1834 by middle-class women in New York City, the society sought to redeem prostitutes from lives of sin and to protect the morality of single women.

Second Great Awakening

Reacting to the growth of secularism and rationalism in religion (Deism) during the Revolutionary generation, this was a religious revival movement of the early decades of the nineteenth century that stressed the right of private judgment in spiritual matters and the possibility of universal salvation through faith and good works. Relying on opportunities offered by the market revolution, (preachers embarking on tours by canal, steamboat, and railroad, and flooding the country with mass-produced, inexpensive religious tracts) this movement eventually spread to all regions of the country and democratized American Christianity. It began the predominance of the Baptist and Methodist churches.

Utopian Communities

Reform communities where small groups of men and women attempted to establish a more perfect order within the larger society. Shakers: Equality for men and women, no private property, no traditional family life Oneida: no private property of traditional family life, dictatorial Brook Farm: Transcendentalists New Harmony: Socialism to avoid the conflict of industrialization

Trail of Tears, 1838-39

The Cherokee Indian's own term for their forced removal by Federal soldiers, from 1838-1839, from the Southeast to Indian lands (later Oklahoma); of 18,000 forced to march, over 4,000 died on the way.

"Infant industries"

The manufacturing enterprises that sprang up during the War of 1812 when trade with Britain was suspended; after the war, a younger generation of Republicans argued for these industries to receive national protection.

The Second Middle Passage

The massive internal trade in slaves that developed within the United States in order to replace the slave trade from Africa, which had been prohibited by Congress in 1808. More than two million enslaved African-Americans were sold within the U.S. between 1820-1860, a majority to local buyers, but hundreds of thousands were "sold south" and transported into the Lower South where cotton production was expanding.

Frederick Douglass

The most famous black abolitionists of the nineteenth century whose powerful autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, served as an indictment of slavery.

William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator

The most famous white abolitionist and his radical weekly journal, begun in 1831, published in Boston, that called for abolition and rejected colonization. They greatly spread the idea of immediate abolition to the North.

Erie Canal

The most important and profitable of the canals of the 1820s and 1830s. It stretched from Buffalo to Albany, New York, connecting the Great Lakes to the East Coast making New York City the nation's largest port.

Slaveholders' paternalism

The outlook, often held by Southern slave owners, that the master needed to restrict the freedom of the slave, just like the father does to his children, in order to care for them and to look out for what is in their slaves' best interests.

Cotton Kingdom

This term for the South and it's economy arose during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, when the Northern textile mills increased the demand for cotton, supplied by Southern plantations using slave labor.

Mill Girls

Women who worked at textile mills during the Industrial Revolution who enjoyed new freedoms and independence not seen before.

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Written by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the United States in the early 1830s, this profoundly insightful and classic work examined the political transformation brought about by the rise of democracy in the United States.