Ch. 13: Pre- Civil War

Helpign Slaves escape

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, David ruggles, Sojourner Truth, and William Stilll helped organize the effort to assist fugitive slaves to escape to free territory in the North or to Canada, where slavery was prohibited.

Romanticism

originated in the salons of Europe and England; emphasized imagination over reason, nature over civilization, intuition over calculation, and the self over society.

Martin Van Buren

(VP of Jackson) was Jacksons choice for appointment as his successor in 1836.

American peace society

protested war with Mexico in 1846.

Clipper ships

In 1840s and 1850s, Americans created Clipper ships- long and narrow, they glided across the sea under towering masts; they could outrun any steamer.

Boston

pioneered a sewer system in 1823; NY in 1842 abandoned wells for piped- in water supply → city eliminated breeding places of many disease- carrying mosquitoes.

Mexico & slavery

Emancipated its slaves in 1830 and prohibited the further importation of slaves into Texas, as well as further colonization by Americans.

Justice John Marshall

Under Chief Justice John Marshall, the US Supreme Court vigilantly protected contract rights by requiring state govs.

Mormons

voted as a unit, drilled militia for defense, and polygamy → made people mad (were pariahs in American society)

Eli Whitney

built a crude machine called the cotton gin that was more effective than hand picking cotton.

Samuel FB Morses telegraph

helped business world →instant communication w /separated people → revolutionized news gathering, diplomacy, and finance.

Lancaster Turnpike

In the 1790s, a private company completed the Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania- stretched from Philadelphia to Lancaster.

Southerners

sold their cotton and other farm produce in a world market completely unprotected by tariffs but were forced to buy their manufactured goods in an American market heavily protected by tariffs.

Robert fulton

installed a steam engine in a vessel- the Clermont; success of steamboat= sensational → people could now navigate streams of Mississippi.

Cyrus Field

organized a joint Anglo- American- Canadian venture to stretch a cable under deep North Atlantic waters from Newfoundland to Ireland → the cable went dead after 3 weeks → heavier cable laid in 1866 permanently linked American and Euorpean continents.

Seneca Falls Convention

Womans Rights Convention at Seneca Falls: Feminists met in 1848 at Seneca Falls, NY.

Dorothea Dix

was a petitioner for better asylum conditions for the insane.

President Franklin Pierce

In 1852, President Franklin Pierce tried dispatching 3 american diplomats to Ostend, Belgium to negotiate to buy Cuba from Spain → angered antislavery members of Congress.

Transcendentalism

Rejected empiricist theory; truth transcends the senses- it can not be observation alone; commitment to self- reliance, self- culture, and self- discipline; hostile to authority and to formal institutions.

Henry David Thoreau

Close associates w /Emerson, poet, mystic, transcendentalist, noncomforist; did not support slavery- refused to pay MA poll tax and jailed for a night.

South + Europe

South raised cotton for export to New England; West grew grain and livestock to feed factory workers in the East and in Europe; the East made machines and textlilse for the South and WEst.

Urban Frontier

western cities arose because of railroads, mineral wealth, and farming

Principle of interchangeable parts

________ became widely adopted by 1850 → revolver by Samuel Colt.

Brook Farm

started in 1841 with brotherly and sisterly cooperation of about 20 intellectuals committed to the philosophy of transcendantlism.

Bank War

The Bank War erupted in 1832, when Daniel Webster and Henry Clay presented Congress with a bill to renew the Bank of the US charter.

Second Great Awakening

episodes in history of American religion; tidal wave of spiritual fervor resulted in converted people, many shattered and reorganized churches, and numerous new sects.

Slavery

________= allwoed in Texas; Northeners= opposed to annexation.

Manifest Destiny

belief that US had divine mission to extend its power and civilization across Northh America → driven by nationalism, population increase, rapid economic development, tech advances, and reform ideals; northern critics= argued against expansionism and Southerners wanted to spread slavery into western lands.

Indian Removal Act

In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, providing for transplanting of all Native Tribes then resident east of Mississippi.

Emma Willard

early advocate of womens education → Founded Troy Female Seminary, Americas first women's school of higher education.

Ecological Imperialism

Exploitation of Wests natural resources.

Francis Perkman

Historian; Wrote brilliant series of volumes beginning in 1851; he chronicled the struggle between France and Britain in colonial times for mastery of North America.

Scarlet Letter

describes Puritan practice of forcing an adulteress to wear a scarlet A on her clothing.

Age of Reason

Thomas Paines anticlerical treatise that accused churches of seeking to acquire "power and profit "and to "enslave mankind.

Catharine Beecher

sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Toms Cabin)- urged women to enter teaching profession;

Nativists

-those who believed that native born Americans are superior to foreigners- movement based on hostility to immigrants.

Shakers monastic customs

The Shakers monastic customs prohibited both marriage and sexual relations, so they went extinct in 1940.

Prison Reformers

Reformers also tackled criminal codes in states- they succeeded in reducing the number of capital offenses and helped and helped eliminate brutal punishments prison= reformatories, house of correction, penitentiaries.

Erie Canal

On its completion in 1825, the canal stretched from Buffalo, on Lake Erie to Hudson River and NY harbor.

Free Soil Party

consisted of whigs who opposed slavery and antislavery dems.