U.S.

History Midterm Study Guide

 Clay’s American System

o What led to it:
 The war of 1812
 pushed Democratic-Republicans (opposing federalists
at this time had very little power) to also support
manufacturing, but our domestic companies could not
compete with foreign ones price-wise.
 Drained the U.S. economy
 Revealed America’s problem of no dependable national
transport system
 The charter on the first national bank ran out
 America lacked a dependable national transportation system
o What it Was:
 Mercantilist economic plan with three main parts:
 Establishment of a national bank
 Improvement of national transportation
 Protective tariffs (taxes on imports) to encourage
domestic commerce
o Impact:
 Canals were built  reduces the cost of shipping
 Erie Canal Built
o Positives: Transporting goods become a lot
easier/faster/cheaper
o Negatives: Flooded nearby basements, brought
big city problems to small towns nearby, very
expensive to build, diseases spread quicker
 Better Steamboats built  furthers development of interior
 National Transportation improved as a whole National
market improved

 Andrew Jackson
o Nicknamed “Old Hickory” while in office
o Politics:
 As a U.S. army general
 Won the battle of New Orleans (1815) even though the
war of 1812 had ended (the news of the war’s end had
not yet reached New Orleans
 In the late 1810’s was sent into Florida to take it over
and was successful until he executed two treasonous
Brits
o The execution forced president James Monroe to
give Florida back to make it seem that Jackson
had acted on his own
  Republican
 Ran for presidency in 1824
o Won the most popular votes but no candidate
won the most electoral
 Lost the electoral votes tiebreaker
because Henry Clay (who had finished 4th)
threw his support to John Quincy Adams,
who won
 Democrat
 Resigned from senate to run for president in 1828 for
the newly formed democratic party
o Swept the popular/electoral vote despite image
problems
 As President (D) 1829-1837
 Made use of SPOILS SYSTEM
o System of rewarding political supporters with
government jobs
 Used ROTATION IN OFFICE
o Periodically replacing office holders to keep
things fresh
 First president to really allow people from all walks of
life to participate in government
 Voting roles expanded (universal male sufferage)

o Trail of Tears: Campaign forcing Native Americans westward in the

mid-19th century
 Jackson campaigned for pro-indian-removal as a presidential
candidate
 Once in office he allowed whites to move onto Cherokee
land
 He allowed Georgia to extend state law to include
Cherokee land (ending Cherokee’s claims as an
independent nation)
o Supreme Court Case Worcestor vs. Georgia
(1832) declared Cherokees independent again
and thus voided the Indian Removal Act of 1830
which Jackson signed to get the Indians off their
land which housed a large amount of gold
 Eventually a small Cherokee faction
illegally signed a treaty legalizing the
Removal Act
 In 1838 the Trail of Tears forcing
Indians westward began

 Reformers
o Abolitionists: People who wanted slavery abolished
 Fredrick Douglas
 Born into slavery in 1817
 Sold to a family in 1825 that taught him to read/write
o Planned to escape from this family but one of his
co-conspirators betrayed the plan
 Sent to work in Baltimore shipyard for
two years before escaping to freedom in
the north
 Edited the “North Star” (abolitionist newspaper)
 Served as president of Freedmen’s Bank
 William Lloyd Garrison
 Ran the abolitionist newspaper “The Liberator”
o Famous Quote: “I will be heard!”
 Member of American Anti-Slavery Society (A-SS)
o (A-SS) wanted immediate slave freedom (1833)
o (A-SS) were LOBBYISTS
 A lobbyist is a person who tries to
influence legislation on behalf of a special
interest or group
 Harriet Beecher Stowe
 Wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a blunt view of the cruelties
of slavery
 Republicans and Whigs took mostly abolitionist views
 The north was very Republican and Whig
 Free-Soil Party
 Political party founded during the election of 1848 by
northerners who couldn’t support pro-slavery southern
democrats or the opposing Whig candidate Zachary
Taylor (who was a slave owner)
 Formed in support of the WILMOT PROVISO
o (W.P.) flatly prohibited slavery in territories
acquired in Mexican War
 Senators blocked it but the issue wouldn’t
die
 Harriet Tubman
 Helped slaves escape via the underground railroad
 Elijah Lovejoy
 Wrote anti-slavery articles
 His printing press was destroyed by pro-slavery people
 Sojourner Truth
 Former slave
 Abolitionist/Woman’s Rights Activist
o Famous Quote: “Ain’t I a woman”
 Nat Turner
 August 22nd 1831  Him and six co-conspirators killed
his entire slave master’s family while they were
sleeping and went from house to house in Southampton
County, Virginia, killing all the white people they
encountered and recruiting slaves to his force
o Eventually his force consisted of more than 40
slaves mostly on horseback
o By midday Turner and his force were met in the
town of Jerusalem by a militia whom defeated
and scattered them
 The force reorganized in some nearby
slave cabins and tried to attack another
house the next day but they were repelled
and several of the rebels captured
 The remaining rebels were met by
state troopers who killed one of
them and eventually captured the
rest
o In the end Turner’s force
killed more than 55
people total
 As a result of Turner’s rebellion Virginia executed 55
people, banished a lot more, and acquitted a few of
them
o The revolt threw the surrounding area into
hysteria however as around 200 black people in
the state and areas as far away as North Carolina
were killed as well as tried and convicted of
being connected to Turner’s revolt
o Virginia considered abolishing slavery as a
result of this revolt but in a close vote did not
and instead supported a repressive policy
against black people as a whole
 Gabriel Prosser
 Led a failed slave revolt in 1800
 Denmark Vessey
 Evangelical Preacher (After being a sailor and cobbler)
 Lucy Stone
 Abolitionist/Suffragist from Massachusetts
o First woman in Massachusetts w/ a college
degree
o Refused to change her last name for marriage
 Grimke Sisters
 Early 19th century anti-slave lecturers and Quakers
  Quakers in general were abolitionists
 John Brown
 Militant abolitionist
o (1856) Raids a pro-slavery group at
Pottawattamie Creek in Kansas
o (1859) Raided the federal military base in
Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, along with 17 other
people hoping to start a slave rebellion
 13th amendment abolishes slavery (December 6, 1865)

o Declaration of Sentiments
 Written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848 as a result of the
first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York
 The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was primarily
organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
 Modeled after the Declaration of Independence in
structure/objective
 Borrows the D.O.I.’s preamble, including the word
women in the sentence “all men are created equal”
 Stereotypes men as smarter and women as morally better
 Written in a demanding tone for women’s equal rights despite
its blatant stereotyping
o Women’s Suffrage: Movement for women’s right to vote
 Susan B. Anthony
 Arrested for trying to vote
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton
 Organized Seneca Falls Convention
 Wrote the Declaration of Sentiments
 Fredrick Douglas
 Abolitionist/Former Slave/ Suffragist
 Lucy Stone
 Abolitionist/Suffragist from Massachusetts
o First woman in Massachusetts w/ a college
degree
o Refused to change her last name for marriage
 Grimke Sisters
 Early 19th century anti-slave lecturers and Quakers
 Suffragists
 Sojourner Truth
 Former slave
 Abolitionist/Woman’s Rights Activist
o Famous Quote: “Ain’t I a woman”
o Other Reformers
 Horace Mann
  Reformer of public schools
o Called for longer school years(until 16 years old)
o Wanted non-religious education in public
schools
o Schools should not discriminate
o Public schools should be public funded
 Dorothea Dix
 Reformer of treatment for the mentally ill
o Helped create the first mental asylums through
her lobbying of congress
 Henry David Thoreau
 Transcendentalist
o Looking beyond the material and religious value
of things
o Published the transcendentalist novel
WALDEN
 Civil Disobediance
o Refused to pay taxes due to his opposition of
slavery and the Mexican-American war
 Brigham Young
 Part of the Second Great Awakening
o Leader of the Latter Day Saint movement in
America
o Also known as Mormonism
 Founder of Salt Lake City
 First governor of the Utah Territory
o Moved his Mormon followers to Utah
 Walt Whitman
 Transcendentalist
o Wrote the Transcendentalist collection of
poems Leaves of Grass
 Proponent of going to war with Mexico
 Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Transcendentalist
o Published the Transcendentalist essay
NATURE
 Lyman Beecher
 Prohibitionist
 Emily Dickinson
 Great American Poet (considered a Transcendentalist
by a few people)
 Expansion
o Monroe Doctrine
 Issued December 2, 1823 by president James Monroe
  Helps establish the United States as a world power with
a SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
o (S.O.I.) refers to the western hemisphere, in
which the U.S. was the only real world power
 It also referred to how the Monroe
Doctrine stated that the Western
Hemisphere was now closed to further
colonization
 Says that Russia has initiated talks concerning Alaska
(which was dispute territory)
o U.S. likes being taken seriously by a major world
power (Russia)
 States that Spain and Portugal are in obvious crisis
 STATES THAT THE U.S. WANTS NEUTRALITY IN
EUROPEAN WARS
 STATES THAT THE U.S. WILL “ATTACK IF
ATTACKED” (IF IT OR NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES IN
THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE ARE ATTACKED)

o Louisiana Purchase
 Purchase of 828,800 square miles of land from France made by
President Thomas Jefferson for about 15 million dollars
 Jefferson was criticized for this purchase because it was
seen as possibly unconstitutional despite the fact that
the constitution mentioned nothing about acquiring
land
o Jefferson had used the “elastic clause” to make
the purchase
 He used national bank money
 He hated the national bank
 Napoleon completed this transaction because he
wanted to get rid of all his land in the western
hemisphere as well as pay off war debt
o The western hemisphere had proved
problematic to Napoleon due to the slave revolt
in Haiti and yellow fever that his troops were
contracting there as they tried to retake Haiti
and reestablish slavery (failed)
o Also by strengthening the U.S. he hoped to
weaken neighboring Britain
 This purchase more than doubled the size of the U.S.
o Most importantly it gave the U.S. the strategically
well located port of New Orleans which is what it
originally was trying to purchase from France
 o It was supposedly “Building an Empire of
Liberty”
o It gave the U.S. more farmland, which it needed
due to a high amount of farmers crowding the
original land of the thirteen colonies
 EFFECTS:
o Added 13 more states
o Made for the Lewis and Clark expedition
o Removed French threat from North America