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| elected Vice President and became the 10th President of the United States when Harrison died; 1841-1845; President responsible for annexation of Mexico after receiving mandate from Polk, opposed many parts of the Whig program for economic recovery |
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| protective measure passed by Congressional Whigs, raising tariffs to pre-Compromise of 1833 rates |
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| series of clashes between American and Canadian lumberjacks beginning in 1839 in the disputed territory of northern Maine, resolved when a permanent boundary was agreed upon in 1842 |
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| enthusiasm for emigration to the Oregon Country in the late 1830s and early 1840s; many Eastern and Midwestern farmers and city dwellers were dissatisfied with their lives and began moving up the Oregon trail to the Willamette Valley; this free land was widely publicized |
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| 13th President; Dark-Horse (1844) whose four pronged approach to presidency was: reestablish the independent treasury system, reduce tariffs, acquire Oregon, and acquire California and New Mexico from Mexico |
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| belief that the United States was destined by God to spread its “empire of liberty” across North America; served as a justification for mid-nineteenth-century expansionism |
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| "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" |
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| slogan adopted in 1846 by mid-nineteenth-century expansionists who advocated the occupation of Oregon territory, jointly held by Britain and the United States; though President Polk had pledged to seize all of Oregon, to 54° 40', he settled on the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise with the British |
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| antislavery party that ran candidates in the 1840 and 1844 elections before merging with the Free Soil party in 1848; supporters of the sought the eventual abolition of slavery, but in the short term hoped to halt the expansion of slavery into the territories and abolish the domestic slave trade |
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| revenue-enhancing measure that lowered tariffs from 1842 levels thereby fueling trade and increasing Treasury receipts |
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| measures introduced by Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln in 1846, questioning President James K. Polk's justification for war with Mexico; Lincoln requested that Polk clarify precisely where Mexican forces had attacked American troops |
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| general that was a military leader in Mexican-American War and 12th president of the United States; sent by president Polk to lead the American Army against Mexico at Rio Grande, but defeated |
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| key American victory against Mexican forces in the Mexican-American War in 1847; elevated General Zachary Taylor to national prominence and helped secure his success in the 1848 presidential election |
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| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo |
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| ended the war with Mexico in 1848; Mexico agreed to cede territory reaching northwest from Texas to Oregon in exchange for $18.25 million in cash and assumed debts |
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| "Conscience Whigs"/"Mexican Whigs" |
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| Northern Whigs who opposed slavery on moral grounds. Conscience Whigs sought to prevent the annexation of Texas as a slave state, fearing that the new slave territory would only serve to buttress the Southern “slave power” |
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| amendment in 1846 that sought to prohibit slavery from territories acquired from Mexico; introduced by Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot, the failed amendment ratcheted up tensions between North and South over the issue of slavery |
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