APUSH Chapter 13 Learning Curve-etw – Flashcards
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Why was the Liberty Party important in the 1844 presidential election?
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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.
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The admission of what state prompted the Compromise of 1850?
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California ? The Compromise of 1850 was prompted by California's petition to be admitted as a free state.
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What book did Harriet Beecher Stowe write that increased northern sentiment against slavery?
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Uncle Tom's Cabin ? Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), magnified northern opposition to slavery, particularly to the Fugitive Slave Act. By translating the moral principles of abolitionism into heartrending personal situations, Stowe's melodramatic book evoked empathy and outrage throughout the North.
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How did Americans settling in California in the 1820s and 1830s differ from American settlers in Texas?
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They assimilated into Mexican culture. ? Americans settling in California very often married into Mexican families and adopted their customs, even converting to Catholicism. They did not get large land grants, or outnumber the Mexicans, which were all characteristics of the Americans in Texas.
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In 1849, what group made up most of the migrants who came to California by land and sea to mine for gold?
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White men ? By the end of 1849, more than 80,000 people, mostly white men, had arrived in California to mine for gold.
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Where was the federal arsenal that abolitionist John Brown attacked in 1859?
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Harpers Ferry, Virginia ? John Brown attacked a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the hopes of seizing the weapons and using them to stage a widespread slave revolt.
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What connection did John L. O'Sullivan's term "manifest destiny" have to American expansion of the mid-nineteenth century?
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The phrase embodied the dreams of American expansionists. ? O'Sullivan's phrase was the ideology of conquest that proclaimed the God-given duty to extend American republicanism and capitalism to the Pacific Ocean.
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Why did the idea of popular sovereignty on the slavery question appeal to so many Americans in 1850?
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It linked the resolution of the sectional conflict to republican ideology. ? Illinois senator Douglas called his plan "popular sovereignty" to link it to republican ideology, which placed ultimate power in the hands of the people, and it had considerable appeal.
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What did the events in Kansas suggest would be the result of the popular sovereignty policy?
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Violence ? Popular sovereignty showed that compromise was not likely, as violence broke out almost immediately in Kansas.
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After losing reelection to the House of Representatives and withdrawing from politics, opposition to what event led Abraham Lincoln to return to politics?
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The Kansas-Nebraska Act ? After losing reelection to the House of Representatives and going back to private law practice, Lincoln returned to politics because of his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
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Why did social divisions among the Kiowa Indians intensify in the 1830s?
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The new horse culture created enormous distinctions of wealth. ? Some Kiowa men owned hundreds of horses and had several "chore wives" and captive children who worked for them. Poor men owned only a few horses and could not find marriage partners.
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What impact did the California gold rush have on Native Americans there?
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They suffered brutally from the onslaught of fortune seekers. ? When the gold rush began in 1848, there were about 150,000 Indians in California; by 1861, there were only 30,000. As elsewhere in the Americas, European diseases took the lives of thousands. In California, white settlers also undertook systematic campaigns of extermination, and local political leaders did little to stop them. Thousands were sold into slavery as well.
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What statement describes Abraham Lincoln's politics in 1854?
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He was a Republican and former Whig who supported a gradualist view on abolition. ? Lincoln switched from the Whigs to the Republicans in the wake of Kansas-Nebraska Act and held a moderate position on slavery.
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Why did the buffalo herds of the northern plains begin to shrink in the 1830s?
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Sioux Indians and other plains tribes began to trade buffalo hides with European fur traders. ? The number of hides and ropes shipped down the Missouri River each year by the American Fur Company and Missouri Fur Company increased from 3,000 in the 1820s to 45,000 in the 1830s and to 90,000 annually after 1840.
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Why did most Californios who had lived in California before the gold rush lose their land?
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Their land claims were ignored or illegally reduced. ? The Land Claims Commission created by Congress upheld the validity of 75 percent of the Californios' land claims, but in the meantime, hundreds of Americans had set up farms on the sparsely settled grants. They successfully pressured local land commissioners and judges to void or reduce the size of many grants.
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Why did the free-soil concept achieve significant popular support?
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It stressed protection of white economic opportunity. ? The free-soilers quickly organized the Free-Soil Party in 1848, which abandoned the abolitionists' emphasis on the sinfulness of slavery and the natural rights of African Americans and instead depicted slavery as a threat to republicanism and to the Jeffersonian ideal of a freeholder society, arguments that won broad support among aspiring white farmers.
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What position did Whig senators Salmon P. Chase and William Seward take on the question of the admission of California?
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Slavery should be limited to its current boundaries and eventually abolished. ? Chase of Ohio and Seward of New York urged that federal legislation restrict slavery within its existing boundaries and eventually extinguish it completely.
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Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, what was the most likely outcome in terms of the balance of free and slave states?
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More free than slave states were likely to be added to the Union. ? Given the fact that the Oregon and Minnesota territories were already organized as free and the sharp division between free and slave states in the East, which, if extended west, would mean that the Nebraska Territory and the northern half, at least, of the Utah Territory would become free areas, more free states than slave states were likely to join the Union in the future.
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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?
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He feared that such an annexation would mean the addition of racially inferior people. ? Calhoun and other politicians feared that this annexation would require the assimilation of a huge number of Mexicans of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry, so they favored only the annexation of sparsely settled New Mexico and California. "Ours is a government of the white man," proclaimed Calhoun, and should never welcome "into the Union any but the Caucasian race."
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Why did President James K. Polk retreat from his demand for "fifty-four forty or fight"?
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He had begun a war with Mexico and wanted to avoid a simultaneous one with Britain. ? After Polk's deliberate provocations along the Rio Grande with the Army under General Zachary Taylor, war with Mexico had finally begun in May 1846. To avoid simultaneous war with Britain, Polk retreated from his demand for "fifty-four forty or fight" and accepted the British proposal to divide the Oregon country at the forty-ninth parallel.
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The Republican Party was least likely to be supported by which group?
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Anti-immigration nativists ? Republicans drew widespread support from antislavery Whigs, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and Free-Soilers. The Know-Nothings were divided in allegiance--only northern Know-Nothings switched parties to support Republicans; the southern half of the Know-Nothing Party stuck with Millard Fillmore, giving him 21 percent of the vote.
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Why did James Buchanan and other Democrats advocate a separate state in southern California in 1850?
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He wanted to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean. ? The Pennsylvania Democrat was hoping to maintain the uneasy truce between proslavery southerners and free northern states by offering the addition of two different states. When this failed to convince either southerners or northerners, Henry Clay devised the far more complex Compromise of 1850.
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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?
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Manifest Destiny ? The belief in American cultural and racial superiority that lay behind the desire to make the entire continent part of American democracy was called Manifest Destiny.
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What was the cause of "Oregon fever"?
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Reports of potential harbors and fertile soil in Oregon ? Reports of harbors for trade and fertile soil for crops led many Americans to head west to Oregon.
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How did Democrats build up support for the annexation of Texas in 1844?
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By linking Texas to the Oregon question ? Polk and the Democrats made Texas a popular issue by linking its annexation to the end of joint British-American occupation in Oregon, a popular issue with northerners.
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What indigenous animal sustained many Great Plains tribes in the 1800s?
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Buffalo ? The buffalo provided many Plains Indian people such as the Sioux with a diet rich in protein and with hides and robes to use and sell to whites. A buffalo trade increased in the 1820s that led to a decline in the number of buffalo from over 5 million to just 2 million by the late 1860s.
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Why did the discovery of gold in California affect the national debate on slavery?
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California sought statehood as a free state in 1850, which would have blocked slavery in the West. ? Well over 200,000 Americans migrated to California after gold was discovered in 1848. When California petitioned Congress for admission as a free state in 1850, southerners opposed the move because it would have broken the balance of fifteen slave states and fifteen free states in Congress.
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How was Texas annexed by the United States?
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When Congress approved a joint resolution to that effect
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Which part of the Compromise of 1850 was the most controversial after passage?
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The terms of the Fugitive Slave Act. ? The Fugitive Slave Act proved the most controversial element of the Compromise. The plight of the runaways and the presence of slave catchers aroused popular hostility in the North and Midwest. Ignoring the threat of substantial fines and prison sentences, free blacks and white abolitionists protected fugitives.
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Which plains tribe came to dominate the northern Great Plains by the 1830s?
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Lakota Sioux
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Which of the following areas was left unorganized under the Compromise of 1850?
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Nebraska Territory
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Who was the American merchant who lived in California under the Mexican regime in the early 1820s?
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Thomas Larkin
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Why was Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin so successful with readers?
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It highlighted the cruelty of slavery with heartrending power.
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When did the Republican Party gain support in the North and Midwest?
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When the Democratic Party split over the Lecompton constitution in Kansas.
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In response to federal passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, northern states passed what kinds of laws?
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Personal-liberty laws ? Members of northern state legislatures were incensed by the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act and enacted personal-liberty laws that increased the legal rights of their residents, including accused fugitives.
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In the Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Taney ruled that which of the following was unconstitutional?
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The Missouri Compromise
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What did the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stipulate?
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Payment to Mexico of $15 million from the United States in return for vast tracts of land
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What was the ruling in the Ableman v. Booth court case?
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court declared that the Fugitive Slave Act violated the rights of Wisconsin's citizens.
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What statement describes the outcome of the election of 1860?
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The vote was divided along strictly sectional lines. ? Republican Abraham Lincoln won only in the North; southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge won only in the South; and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell won only in the Upper South and border states.
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Conventions met in some southern states in 1850 and considered secession but did not secede. Why?
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They were unwilling to take the step as long as no further inroads were made against slavery. ? A majority of delegates remained committed to the Union—but only on the condition that Congress protect slavery where it existed and grant statehood to any territory that ratified a proslavery constitution.
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Why did James K. Polk win the presidential election of 1844?
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Henry Clay's stand on Texas cost him the election. ? Clay initially dodged the question of Texas annexation but eventually supported it. That stance cost him support of antislavery Whigs, who voted in New York for Liberty Party candidate James Birney, which gave New York's electoral votes—and the presidency—to James K. Polk.
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Why did President Franklin Pierce want to buy the land from Mexico that became the Gadsden Purchase?
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To build a transcontinental railroad ? The primary reason the United States desired the land known as the Gadsden Purchase was so that a transcontinental railroad could be built.
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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?
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Negotiate the purchase of California to keep it out of British and French hands ? Buchanan clearly wanted to prevent France or England from taking over the Pacific Coast at any cost.
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Which of the following assessments correctly describes the election of 1848?
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Democrat Lewis Cass dominated the trans-Appalachian west, whereas Zachary Taylor dominated the Northeast. ? Both parties in 1848 had supporters in the North as well as the South. It was only in the Old Northwest and Old Southwest, however, that the Democratic Party showed a definite lead, while Whig Taylor captured all of the Northeast except Maine and New Hampshire.
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Why did the Whigs select Zachary Taylor as their candidate for the presidency in 1848?
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He was a war hero. ? The Whigs went with Taylor because of his war record and because he had not taken a stand on popular sovereignty or slavery in the territories.
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Opposition to what action led some Democrats to join the Republican Party when it formed in the mid-1850s?
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The Kansas-Nebraska Act ? Some Democrats, who denounced the act as "part of a great scheme for extending and perpetuating supremacy of the slave power," joined the newly forming Republican Party because of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
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Why did the Fugitive Slave Act prove to be the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850?
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The new law denied people accused of being runaways of fundamental rights. ? The new Fugitive Slave Act placed the responsibility to determine the status of alleged fugitives in the hands of federal court officials but denied those accused of being runaways any opportunity to defend themselves from the charges.
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How did President John Tyler hope to secure his reelection in 1844?
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By running as a Democrat in favor of acquiring both Oregon and Texas ? Tyler had hoped to win reelection in 1844 as a Democrat and supported both expansion into Oregon and the annexation of Texas to curry favor with northern and southern Democrats. The party did not trust him, however, and chose James K. Polk, who supported those policies as well.
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Whom did President James K. Polk dispatch to California in 1845 to lead a heavily armed "exploring" party?
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John C. Frémont ? To add military muscle to the scheme of encouraging independence of California from Mexico and its addition to the United States, Polk ordered the war department to send Frémont and an exploration party of heavily armed soldiers into Mexican territory. By December 1845, Frémont's force had reached the Sacramento River Valley.
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Which statement describes James Buchanan, who was elected president in 1856?
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His actions in Kansas raised fears that he was part of a slave owners' conspiracy. ? Buchanan ignored reports that antislavery residents held a clear majority in Kansas, refused to allow a popular vote on the proslavery Lecompton constitution, and in 1858 strongly urged Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state. Angered by Buchanan's machinations, Stephen Douglas, the most influential Democratic senator and architect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, broke with the president and persuaded Congress to deny statehood to Kansas.
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What was the primary agenda of the Know-Nothing Party?
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Nativism ? The Know-Nothing's primary political agenda was nativism.
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Why did a number of Whigs oppose the Mexican War?
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They believed it was part of an immoral conspiracy to expand slavery. ? The so-called conscience Whigs saw the war as part of a plan to extend slavery.
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What was the name of the written statement, issued by American diplomats in Europe in 1854, that justified the U.S. seizure of Cuba?
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The Ostend Manifesto ? President Franklin Pierce's most dramatic foreign policy initiative came in the Caribbean. Secretary of State William L. Marcy tried to buy Cuba from Spain and then prompted American diplomats in Europe to pressure Pierce to seize it. In the Ostend Manifesto (1854), the diplomats sent a message to Pierce declaring that the United States would be justified in seizing Cuba. Quickly leaked to the press by antiexpansionists, the Ostend Manifesto triggered a new wave of northern resentment against the South and forced Pierce to halt his efforts.
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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"?
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John Brown ? In May 1856, proslavery Missourians and free-soil Kansas residents turned to violence in the Kansas elections. A proslavery gang sacked the free-soil town of Lawrence. Taking vengeance for the sack of Lawrence, Brown and a few followers murdered and mutilated five proslavery settlers. The "Pottawatomie massacre," as the killings became known, initiated a guerrilla war in Kansas that cost about two hundred lives.
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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?
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The Kansas-Nebraska Act ? The Kansas-Nebraska Act was so unpopular that it destroyed the Whigs, as well as splintering the Democratic Party to a degree, and motivated the creation of the new Republican Party, thereby ending the Second Party System.
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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?
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Construction of a transcontinental railroad ? To mollify southern expansionists, President Pierce revived Polk's plan to annex a large amount of territory south of the Rio Grande and named James Gadsden as his negotiator. Mexican officials rejected Pierce's annexation bid but agreed to sell a small amount of land that Gadsden wanted in order to construct a southern-based transcontinental railroad to the Pacific.
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From which party did political opposition to the Mexican-American War primarily come?
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Whigs ? Whigs believed in the American System, which valued economic development over expansion. In addition, many Whigs opposed the war because they saw it as an excuse to add territory in which to expand slavery.
