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| Mission and fort that was the site of a siege and battle during the Texas Revolution, which resulted in the massacre of all its defenders; the event helped galvanize the Texas rebels and eventually led to their victory at the the Battle of San Jacinto and independence from Mexico. |
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| ANTONIO LOPEZ DE SANTA ANNA |
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| Political opportunist and general who served as president of Mexico eleven different times and commanded the Mexican army during the Texas Revolution in the 1830s and the war with the US in the 1840s. |
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| Northern Democratic president with southern principles, 1853-1857, who signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and sought sectional harmony above all else. |
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| Formed from the remnants of the Liberty Party in 1848; adopting a slogan of "free soil, free speech, free labor and free men," it opposed the spread of slavery into territories and supported homesteads, cheap postage, and internal improvements. It ran Martin Van Buren (1834) and John Hale (1852) for president and was absorbed into the Republican party by 1856. |
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| US acquisition of land south of the Gila River from Mexico for $10M; the land was needed for a possible transcontinental railroad line through southern US. However, the route was never used. |
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| Democratic president from 1845 to 1849. Nicknamed "Young Hickory" because of his close political and personal ties to Andrew Jackson. He pursued an aggressive foreign policy that led to the Mexican War, settlement of Oregon and the acquisition of the Mexican Cession. |
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| Influential editor of the Democratic Review who coined the phrase "Manifest Destiny" in 1845. |
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| Democratic senator who proposed popular sovereignty to settle the slavery question in the territories; he lost the presidential election in 1848 against Taylor but continued to advocate his solution to the slavery issue throughout the 1850s. |
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| Meeting of representatives of nine southern states in the summer of 1850 to monitor the negotiations over the Compromise of 1850; it called for extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean and a stronger Fugitive Slave Law. The convention accepted the Compromise but laid the groundwork for a southern confederacy in 1860-1861. |
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| A statement by American envoys abroad to pressure Spain into selling Cuba to the US; the declaration suggested that if Spain would not sell Cuba, the US would be justified in seizing it. It was quickly repudiated by the US government but it added to the belief that a "slave power" existed and was active in Washington. |
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| Leader of the Texas revolutionaries, 1853-1836, first president of the Republic of Texas and later a US senator from the state of Texas; he was a close political and personal ally of Andrew Jackson. |
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| Leader of American immigration to Texas in the 1820s; he negotiated land grants with Mexico and tried to moderate growing Texan rebelliousness in the 1830s. After Texas became an independent nation, he served as its secretary of state. |
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| Arguably the finest military figure in America from the War of 1812 to the Civil War; he distinguished himself in the Mexican War and ran unsuccessfully for president (1852), and briefly commanded the Union armies at the beginning of the Civil War. |
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