Moodle+CH+11




 * Terms:**


 * "Manifest Destiny" -** the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American Continent, from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. It was used by Democrats in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico; the concept was denounced by Whigs, and fell into disuse after the mid-19th century.


 * The Panic of 1837 -** a financial crisis in the United States built on a speculative fever The end of the Second Bank of the United States had produced a period of runaway inflation, but in May 10, 1837 in New York City, when every bank began to accept payment only in specie, forcing a dramatic, deflationary backlash. This was based on the assumption by former president, Andrew Jackson, that government was selling land for state bank notes of questionable value. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and then-record-high unemployment levels.


 * Prairie Schooners -** Although covered wagons were commonly used for shorter moves within the United States, in the mid-nineteenth century thousands of Americans took them across the Great Plains to Oregon and California. Overland immigrants typically used farm wagons, fitting them with five or six wooden bows that arched from side to side across the wagon bed, then stretching canvas or some other sturdy cloth over the bows, creating the cylindrical cover. Sometimes, these wagons would be as long as 15 feet.


 * Oregon Trail -** a 2,000 miles east-west wagon route that connected various towns on the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon and locations in between. It was the oldest of the northern commercial and emigrant trails and was originally discovered and used by fur trappers and traders in the fur trade from about 1811 to 1840. In its earliest days much of the future Oregon trail was not passable to wagons but was passable everywhere only to men walking or riding horses and leading mule trains. Early parties of fur traders and settlers gradually made improvements over or through barriers on the trail that converted the original mule paths into a rough but contiguous wagon road. By 1836 when the first Oregon wagon trains were organized at Independence, Missouri, the trail had been improved so much that it was possible to take wagons to Fort Hall Idaho. By 1843 a rough wagon trail had been cleared to The Dalles, Oregon and by 1846 all the way around Mount Hood to the Willamette Valley in Oregon.


 * Tejanos -**a Texan of Mexican and/or Latin-American descent. //Tejano// has been used to identify different groups of people. During the Spanish Colonial times, the term applied to Spanish settlers of the region now known as Texas (first as part of the New Spain and then in 1821 as part of Mexico). During the times of independent south Texas, the term also applied to other Spanish-speaking Texans and hispanicized Germans and other Europeans. In 1821, at the end of the Mexican War of Independence, there were about 4,000 Tejanos living in what is now the state of Texas alongside a lesser number of immigrants. In the 1820s, many settlers from the United States and other nations moved to Texas from the United States. By 1830, the 30,000 settlers in Texas outnumbered the Tejanos six to one. The Texians and Tejanos alike rebelled against the totalitarian authority of Mexico City and the measures implemented by the Santa Anna regime. Tensions between the central Mexican government and the settlers eventually led to the Texas Revolution.


 * Empresario -** a person who, in the early years of the settlement of Texas, had been granted the right to settle on Mexican land in exchange for recruiting and taking responsibility for new settlers. The word is Spanish for entrepreneur. In the late 18th century, Spain stopped allocating new lands in much of Spanish Texas, stunting the growth of the province. The policy was reversed in 1820, when Spanish law allowed colonists of any religion to settle in Texas. Only one man, Moses Austin, was granted an //empresarial// contract under Spanish law. Before he could begin his colony, however, Mexico achieved its independence from Spain. At this time, about 3500 people lived in Texas, mostly congregated at San Antonio and La Bahia.


 * Santa Anna -**


 * Sam Houston -** elected as the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, US Senator for Texas after it joined the United States, and finally as governor of the state. Although a slaveholder and opponent of abolitionism, he had unionist convictions. He refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union, and resigned as governor. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of a Union army to put down the Confederate rebellion. Instead, he retired to Huntsville, Texas, where he died before the end of the Civil War. A fight with a US Congressman, followed by a high-profile trial, led to his emigration in 1832 to Mexican Texas. There he soon became a leader of the Texas Revolution. He supported annexation by the United States. The city of Houston is named after him. Houston's reputation was honored after his death: posthumous commemoration has included a memorial museum, a U.S. Army base, a national forest, a historical park, a university, and the largest free-standing statue of an American.


 * James Russel Lowell -**Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838, despite his reputation as a troublemaker, and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard Law School. He published his first collection of poetry in 1841 and married Maria White in 1844. He and his wife had several children, though only one survived past childhood. The couple soon became involved in the movement to abolish slavery, with Lowell using poetry to express his anti-slavery views and taking a job in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the editor of an abolitionist newspaper. After moving back to Cambridge, Lowell was one of the founders of a journal called //The Pioneer//, which lasted only three issues. He gained notoriety in 1848 with the publication of //A Fable for Critics//, a book-length poem satirizing contemporary critics and poets. The same year, he published //The Biglow Papers//, which increased his fame. He would publish several other poetry collections and essay collections throughout his literary career.


 * The "Wilmot Proviso" -**one of the major events leading to the Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession, but which some proponents construed to also include the disputed lands in south Texas and New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. Congressman David Wilmot first introduced the Proviso in the United States House of Representatives on August 8, 1846 as a rider on a $2 million appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican–American War. (In fact this was only three months into the two-year war.) It passed the House but failed in the Senate, where the South had greater representation. It was reintroduced in February 1847 and again passed the House and failed in the Senate. In 1848, an attempt to make it part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also failed. Sectional conflict over slavery in the Southwest continued up to the Compromise of 1850.

approximately half arrived by sea and half came overland. The gold-seekers, called "Forty-niners" (as a reference to 1849), often faced substantial hardships on the trip. While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the Gold Rush attracted tens of thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and China. At first, the prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, such as panning. More sophisticated methods of gold recovery developed which were later adopted around the world. At its peak, technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required, increasing the proportion of gold companies to individual miners. Gold worth tens of billions of today's dollars was recovered, which led to great wealth for a few. However, many returned home with little more than they had started with.
 * The California Gold Rush -**began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California. News of the discovery brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. Of the 300,000,


 * Forty-Niners -** Miners who took part in the Gold Rush in 1849. (I couldn't find a lot of information on them, but this is basically who they were)


 * Nat Turner's Rebellion -**a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia during August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed anywhere from 55-65 white people, the highest number of fatalities caused by slave uprisings in the South. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for several months afterward. In the aftermath, there was widespread fear, and white militias organized in retaliation against slaves. The state executed 56 slaves accused of being part of the rebellion. In the frenzy, many innocent enslaved people were punished. At least 100 blacks, and possibly up to 200, were killed by militias and mobs. Across the South, state legislators passed new laws prohibiting education of slaves and free blacks, restricting rights of assembly and other civil rights for free blacks, and requiring white ministers to be present at black worship services.


 * The Compromise of 1850 -**an intricate package of five bills, passed in September 1850, defusing a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North that arose following the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). The compromise, drafted by Whig Henry Clay and brokered by Democrat Stephen Douglas avoided secession or civil war at the time and quieted sectional conflict for four years. The Compromise was greeted with relief, although each side disliked specific provisions. Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico but received debt relief and the Texas Panhandle, and retained the control over El Paso that it had established earlier in 1850. California was permitted to be admitted to the Union as a free state, instead of being split at the Missouri Compromise Line. In addition, the South avoided the humiliating Wilmot Proviso. As compensation, the South received the possibility of slave states by popular sovereignty in the new New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory, which, however, were unsuited to plantation agriculture and populated by non-Southerners; a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, which in practice outraged Northern public opinion; and preservation of slavery in the national capital, although the slave trade was banned there except in the portion of the District of Columbia that rejoined Virginia.


 * Uncle Tom's Cabin -**an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist, focused the novel on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters—both fellow slaves and slave owners—revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. //Uncle Tom's Cabin//was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, and the second best-selling book of that century.


 * The Ostend Manifesto -** a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain and implied the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Cuba's annexation had long been a goal of U.S. expansionists, particularly as the U.S. set its sights southward following the admission of California to the Union. However, diplomatically, the country had been content to see the island remain in Spanish hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as Britain or France. A product of the debates over slavery in the United States, Manifest Destiny, and the Monroe Doctrine, the Ostend Manifesto proposed a shift in foreign policy, justifying the use of force to seize Cuba in the name of national security.


 * Kansas-Nebraska Act -** created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries. The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to create opportunities for a Mideastern Transcontinental Railroad. It became problematic when popular sovereignty was written into the proposal. The act was designed by Democratic Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.


 * Dred Scott Decision -** a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves (or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves) were not protected by the Constitution and could never be U.S. citizens. The court also held that the U.S. Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories and that, because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Furthermore, the Court ruled that slaves, as chattels or private property, could not be taken away from their owners without due process. The Supreme Court's decision was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.


 * Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 -**a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for Senate in Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the aftermath of his victory in the 1860 presidential election. The main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery. In agreeing to the debates, Lincoln and Douglas decided to hold one debate in each of the nine congressional districts in Illinois. Because both had already spoken in two —Springfield and Chicago — within a day of each other, they decided that their "joint appearances" would be held only in the remaining seven districts.


 * John Brown's Raid -** was an attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to join him when he attacked the armory, but illness prevented Tubman from joining him and Douglass believed his plan would fail and did not join him for that reason. In 1794, George Washington selected the site of Harpers Ferry for the location of a federal arsenal. John H. Hall was contracted to manufacture his rifle in the town.