Alyssa Gill

APUSH, Per. 1
Mr. Brusch
11-14-2010

Chapter 14
ID’s and Objectives

ID’s

1) James K. Polk
Polk was the president of NC during the 1840’s and was
responsible for the conflict with Mexico. During annexation Polk
urged Texans to seize all land to the Rio Grande and claim the river
as their Southern and Western border. Polk was determined to fulfill
“manifest destiny” and wanted all the land from Mexico’s territory
to the pacific and all of Oregon country. As President he used
diplomacy. Refusing boundary 54 40, he pressured the British to
accept the 49th parallel. During 1846, Britain agreed and land was
given to the 10th President, James Polk. James K Polk was the 10th
president, the 6th president to own slaves, and one who secretly
bought and sold slaves through an agent from the White House.

2) The War with Mexico

The war of Mexico happened because Polk was aggressive and
ordered troops to defend the Rio Grande and he wanted California
so he attempted to buy a track of land from Mexico but failed. So
Polk awaited war. The negotiations had to be put in French because
no American spoke Spanish and no Mexican spoke English. On April
24th 1846, Mexican Calvary ambushed a US Calvary unit north of the
river; 11 Americans were killed and 63 were taken captive. Polk
alarmed congress that Mexico had crossed US territory. Two days
later, on May 13th the house recognized a state of war with Mexico
by a vote of 174 to 14. The war of Mexico was all Polk’s fault.

3) The Wilmot Proviso

In 1846, David Wilmot proposed an amendment/proviso to a
military appropriations bill saying, that slavery of any kind should
not be enforced in any gained territory from Mexico. The Proviso
never passed but it transformed the debate of expansion of slavery.
Southerners suddenly began to work hard to save slavery. The
proviso brought up many problems with slavery and how it
originated in the Bible. The argument for slavery was that they had
a part in the 5th amendment allowing them to take slaves wherever
they wanted to and treat them as property. In the North, the Wilmot
proviso became a rallying cry for abolitionists. Eventually 14
northern states endorsed the proviso but not just because a lot of
supporters were abolitionists. Surprisingly, Wilmot was neither a
Whig nor an abolitionist; all he wanted was to protect the rights of a
free white man. Wilmot made it clear that it was possible to be a
racist and to be an opponent of antislavery.

4) The Compromise of 1850

The compromise had 5 essential measures: California became a
free state; the Texas boundary was set at its present limits and the
US paid Texas 10 million dollars in compensation for the loss of NM
territory; the territories of NM and Utah were organized on a basis
of popular sovereignty; the fugitive slave law was strengthened;
and the slave trade was abolished in the district of Columbia.
Because of the compromise many people were happy and in joy
together as states and as a nation. The compromise was also seen
as just a way to delay any disputes and Douglass had to find a way
to pass the 5 proposals without them actually agreeing to the
fundamentals.

5) Uncle Toms Cabin

Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe from pure moral conviction.
Her book was about the agony of slave families everywhere and the
troubles a mom had making a daring dash for freedom with her
family. Her book also touched base on how slaves affected the way
that slaveholders were and it focused more on the industry of it all
than anything else. To get her information she went to plantations
and found out real things with real people. In just nine months, the
book sole 300,000 copies. Her book inspired many others to write
stories just like it and those stories made people think more deeply
about slavery when they had never really given it much thought
before. She brought home the dark secrets of slavery and how it
affected everyone. This popularity alarmed southerners because
they were terrified it would change the way they could live. After
this to protect slavery, many proslavery novels were made and
published.

6) The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was not underground nor was it a
railroad. It was a network of civil disobedience spiriting runaways to
freedom. Many slaves escaped this way but many did so by their
own wit and courage and ideas. The Underground Railroad was
created and started by Harriet Tubman. There were many different
men in many different areas that were helping with the
Underground Railroad who were all black abolitionists. Eventually,
because of Harriet Tubman, many white abolitionists usually
Quakers helped as well. And the Underground Railroad also had
ships with sailors for the slaves to be saved and transported.

7) Franklin Pierce
Pierce, a democrat, easily won over the Whig, General Winfield
Scot in the election of 1852. Pierce supported each section’s frights
as essential to the nation’s unity, and southerners hoped that his
firm support for the Compromise of 1850 might end the season of
crisis. The want of Pierce was unknown so it was thought that he
would have a positive wide spread for the compromise. He won not
because of the Whig’s weakness, but because of his strengths.
Since President Pierce supported the compromise so much, it
appalled northerners. He enforced the Fugitive Slave Act vigorously
and thus shocking many slaves and many commoners. He used
military to enforce the slave act and would pay a lot of money to put
one black man back into slavery. Through everything else though,
his plan still failed and he was never quite 100% successful.

8) Stephen A. Douglas
Douglas was one of the architects of the Compromise of 1850
and introduced a bill to establish the Kansas and Nebraska
territories. Douglas was known for compromise not sectional
quarreling. He didn’t view slavery as a fundamental problem and he
was willing to risk some controversy to win economic benefits for
Illinois, his home state. The interest in promoting the construction
of such a railroad drove Douglas to introduce a bill called the
Kansas-Nebraska bill that inflamed sectional passions.

9) The Kansas- Nebraska Bill

 The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 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. The act
established that settlers could vote to decide whether to allow
slavery, in the name of popular sovereignty or rule of the people.

10) Bleeding Kansas

Bleeding Kansas refers to the time between 1854 and 1858
when the Kansas territory was the site of much violence over
whether the territory would be free or slave. The Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854 set the scene by allowing the territory of Kansas to
decide for itself whether it would be free or slave, a situation known
as popular sovereignty. With the passage of the act, thousands of
pro- and anti-slavery supporters flooded the state. Violent clashes
soon occurred, especially once "border ruffians" crossed over from
the South to sway the vote to the pro-slavery side.

11) John Brown

He was a radical abolitionist from the United States, who
advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish
slavery for good. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856 in
Bleeding Kansas and made his name in the unsuccessful raid at
Harpers Ferry in 1859. John Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a
liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers
Ferry, Virginia electrified the nation. He was tried for treason
against the state of Virginia, the murder of five proslavery
Southerners, and inciting a slave insurrection and was subsequently
hanged.
12) James Buchanan
James Buchanan of Pennsylvania was chosen as the democratic
nominee for the Presidential election of 1856. This election
demonstrated how extreme the polarization had become. His chief
virtue was that for the past four years he had been ambassador to
Britain, uninvolved in territorial controversies. The superior party
organization helped Buchanan win 1.8 million votes and the
election, but he owed his victory to the southern support. Hence, he
was labeled as “a northern man with southern principles”.

13) The Dred Scott Case

Dred Scott was a Missouri slave who sued his owner for his
freedom. Scott based his clam on the fact that his former owner, an
army surgeon, had taken him for several years into Illinois, a free
state, and into the Wisconsin Territory, from which slavery had been
barred by the Missouri Compromise. Scott first won and then lost
his case as it moved on appeal through the state courts into the
federal system and, finally, after eleven years, to the Supreme
Court. In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks, slaves as well
as free, were not and could never become citizens of the United
States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise
unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's
territories.

14) The Presidential election of 1860

In the Presidential Election of 1860, the four candidates were
Abraham Lincoln, John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A.
Douglas. Abraham Lincoln was elected from the state of Illinois and
was a Republican, John Breckinridge represented the southern
states and was nominated by the Democratic Party, John Bell
represented the Constitutional Union, and Stephen Douglas
candidate for the Democrats. Abraham Lincoln was from the state of
Illinois. Lincoln had failed to win a majority of the popular vote.
Abraham Lincoln won the election and became the sixteenth
president of the United States.

15) The confederate states of America

The Confederate States of America was an unrecognized state
set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven southern slave states of the
United States of America that had declared their secession from the
U.S. The U.S. government rejected secession as illegal, and after
four years of fighting in the American Civil War, the Confederate
armies surrendered, its government collapsed, and its slaves were
emancipated. The Confederacy's control over its claimed territory
shrank steadily during the course of the war, as the Union took
control of much of the seacoast and inland waterways.

16) The attack on Fort Sumter

　The crisis of southern states seceding from the Union escalated
into a shooting war when Confederate guns began shelling Fort
Sumter in the early morning hours of April 12, 1861.
The attack on Fort Sumter lasted less than two days, and the island
fort at Charleston, South Carolina, held no great military
significance. But the impact of the bombardment was felt
profoundly in all regions of the nation. After the attack on Fort
Sumter, there was no turning back. The North and the South were at
war.
 Alyssa Gill
Mr. Brusch
APUSH, Per. 1

Objective Questions
1) Explain the dissension and fears that emerged as a result of the
Mexican War, and discuss the political, social and economic
consequences of the war.

Results of the War with Mexico

 During the twentieth century there was enmity between the
U,S. and Mexico.
 Thirteen thousand American soldiers had died, mainly from
disease.
 South westerners were pleased with the war while New
Englanders had greatly opposed it.
 Northerners began to fear the expansion from the war would
just lead to more slave states.
Political consequences of the War
 Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the Southern border of
Mexico and the U.S gave Mexico $15 million dollars.
 Whigs declared that the President Polk had started an
unnecessary war and usurped the power of Congress.
 Abolitionists felt that Polk’s purpose of the war was to “render
slavery secure in Texas.”
 Southern states began to practice “state sovereignty” which
was were a state could take its slaves anywhere in the territory.
Social consequences of the war
 Many people feared that large land seizures would bring many
Mexicans into the United States, they thought that this would upset
racial order.
 Most of the state leaders where very racist and they were
opposed to any new race in America besides white and black.
 After the war America gained from Mexico California, New
Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado.
 Abolitionists began to rally to keep slave holding out of the
newly seized territories.
The economic consequences of the war
 The main reason that abolitionist fought slavery in the newly
won states was to keep the economy open to the whites, they
thought that in new states white men needed to be employed,
rather than free labor done by slaves.
 Many believed that slave labor would degrade the hones toil of
free men and render them unemployed and without property.

2) Explain the political, social, and economic philosophy of the

Republican party, the reasons for its appeal among northern voters,
and the forces that led to the party’s success in the election.

The appeal to Northern voters

 The North was upset by the fact that Stephen A. Douglas had
proposed a bill that allowed slave states in the South to determine
all matters about slavery themselves.
 The Northerners were angry with this Kansas-Nebraska bill and
rallied their support behind the Republicans, who attacked
Douglas’s legislation.
 Many previous Whigs, Democrats, and other parties from the
North turned to republicanism to keep out slavery.
The political, social and economic philosophy of the Republican
party.
 Republicans had a strong appeal to those who wanted
economic development of the West, they preached, “ free soil, free
labor, free men.”
 The Republicans ideas were similar with the North’s ideals of
equality, liberty and opportunity under self-government.
 The Republicans believed that the way to a successful
economy was through free labor rather than slave labor, they
believed that a hard-working and virtuous man would work the land
himself.
 Republicans also believed in the concept of the common man,
who they said represented the backbone of America.
 They portrayed their party as one that was the guardian of
economic opportunity, giving individuals a chance to work, acquire
land, and attain success.
 They said that the door of the Republicans was open to even
the poorest person from the humblest of origins.
 Many of their ideals were the resentment of southern political
power, devotion to unionism, and antislavery based on free labor
arguments.
Forces that lead to the parties win of the election
 One of the main reasons that people elected the Republican
was due to their opposition to slavery.
 Republicans were perceived to be less violent and opinionated
than the other parties.