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| He served secretary of state and war under President Madison and was elected president. As the latter, he signed the Transcontinental Treaty with Spain which gave the United States Florida and expanded the Louisiana territory's western border to the Pacific coast. In 1823, he established the Monroe Doctrine. This foreign policy proclaimed the American continents were no longer open to colonization and America would be neutral in European affairs. |
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| During his long tenure as chief justice of the Supreme Court (1801-1835), he established the foundations for American jurisprudence, the authority of the Supreme Court, and the constitutional supremacy of the national government over states. |
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| President James Monroe's declaration to Congress on December 2, 1823, that the American continents would be thenceforth closed to colonization but that the United States would honor existing colonies of European nations. |
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| He served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for South Carolina before becoming secretary of war under President Monroe and then John Quincy Adam's vice president. He introduced the bill for the second national bank back to Congress and led the minority of southerners who voted for the Tariff of 1816. However, he later chose to oppose tariffs. During his time as secretary of war under President Monroe, he authorized the use of federal troops against the Seminoles who were attacking settlers. As John Quincy Adam's vice president, he supported a new tariffs bill to win presidential candidate Andrew Jackson additional support. Jackson won the election, but the new tariffs bill passed and Calhoun had to explain why he had changed his opinion on tariffs. |
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| Cherokees' own term for their forced march, 1838-1839, from the southern Appalachians to Indian lands (later Oklahoma); 15,000 forced to march, 4,000 died on the way. |
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| As a representative from New Hampshire, he led the New Federalists in opposition to the moving of the second national bank from Boston to Philadelphia. Later, he served as representative and a senator for Massachusetts and emerged as a champion of a stronger national government. He also switched from opposing to supporting tariffs because New England had built up its manufactures with the understanding tariffs would protect them from foreign competitors. |
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| Another name for revolutionary Patriots. |
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| He was the president of the second Bank of the United States. In response to President Andrew Jackson's attacks on the bank, Biddle curtailed the bank's loans and exchanged its paper currency for gold and silver. He was hoping to provoke an economic crisis to prove the bank's importance. In response, state banks began printing paper without restraint and lent it to speculators, causing a binge in speculating and an enormous increase in debt. |
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| First land engagement of the Civil War took place on July 21, 1861, at Manassas Junction, Virginia, at which surprised Union troops quickly retreated; one year later, on August 29-30, Confederates captured the federal supply depot and forced Union troops back to Washington. |
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| During President Jackson's first term, he served as secretary of state and minister to London. He often politically fought Vice President John C. Calhoun for the position of Jackson's successor. A rift between Jackson and Calhoun led to Van Buren becoming vice president during Jackson's second term. In 1836, Van Buren was elected president, and he inherited a financial crisis. he believed that the government should not continue to keep its deposits in state banks and set up an independent Treasury, which was approved by Congress after several years of political maneuvering. |
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| Complex compromise mediated by Senator Henry Clay that headed off southern secession over California statehood; to appease the South it included a stronger fugitive slave law and delayed determination of the slave status of the New Mexico and Utah territories. |
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| The wife of John Eaton, President Jackson's secretary of war, was the daughter of a tavern owner with an unsavory past. Supposedly her first husband had committed suicide after learning that she was having an affair with John Eaton. the wives of members of Jackson's cabinet snubbed her because of her lowly origins and past. The scandal that resulted was called the Eaton Affair. |
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| As a leader of the transcendentalist movement, he wrote poems, essays, and speeches that discussed the sacredness of nature, optimism, self-reliance, and the unlimited potential of the individual. He wanted to transcend the limitations of inherited conventions and rationalism to reach the inner recesses of the self. |
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| Most important and profitable of the barge canals of the 1820s and 1830s; stretched from Buffalo to Albany, New York, connecting the Great Lakes to the East Coast and making New York City the nation's largest port. |
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| Formed in 1848 to oppose slavery in the territory acquired in the Mexican War; nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848, but by 1854, most of the party's members had joined the Republican party. |
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| After distinguishing himself in the western theater of the Civil War, he was appointed general in chief of the Union Army in 1864. Afterward, he defeated General Robert E. Lee through a policy of aggressive attrition. He constantly attacked Lee's army until it was grind down. Lee surrendered to grant on April 9th, 1865 at the Appomattox Court House. In 1868, he was elected President and his tenure suffered from scandals and fiscal problems including the debate on whether or not greenbacks, paper money, should be from circulation. |
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| In the antebellum South, the owner of a large farm worked by twenty or more slaves. |
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| Union General believed that there was a connection between the South's economy, morale, and ability to wage war. During his March through Georgia, he wanted to demoralize the civilian populace and destroy the resources they needed to fight. His army seized food and livestock that the Confederate Army might have used as well as wrecked railroads and mills and burned plantations. |
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| In 1823, he claimed that the Angel Moroni showed him the location of several gold tablets on which the Book of Mormon was written. Using the Book of Mormon as his gospel, he founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons. Joseph and his followers upset non-Mormons living near them so they began looking for a refuge from persecution. In 1839, they settled in Commerce, Illinois, which they renamed Nauvoo. In 1844, Joseph ad his brother were arrested and jailed for ordering the destruction of a newspaper that opposed them. While in jail, an anti-Mormon mob stormed the jail and killed both of them. |
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| Late eighteenth-century liberal offshoot of the New England Congregationalist church; professed the oneness of God and the goodness of rational man. |
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| He invented the cotton gin which could separate cotton from its seeds. One machine operator could separate fifty times more cotton than worker could by hand, which led to an increase in cotton production and prices. These increases gave planters a new profitable use for slavery and a lucrative slave trade emerged from the coastal South to the Southwest. |
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| Proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican War, but southern senators, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, defeated the measure in 1846 and 1847. |
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| In 1831, he invented a mechanical reaper to harvest wheat, which transformed the scale of agriculture. By hand a framer could only harvest a half an acre a day, while the McCormick reaper allowed two people to harvest twelve acres of wheat a day. |
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| Native American people originally of Florida. Today, most live in Oklahoma with a minority in Florida; there are three federally recognized tribes and independent groups. The nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creek from what are now northern Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, who settled in Florida in the early 18th century. |
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Landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. Though the law, by its language, was generally applicable to all banks not chartered in Maryland, the Second Bank of the United States was the only out-of-state bank then existing in Maryland, and the law was recognized in the court's opinion as having specifically targeted the U.S. Bank. The Court invoked the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution, which allowed the Federal government to pass laws not expressly provided for in the Constitution's list of express powers, provided those laws are in useful furtherance of the express powers of Congress under the Constitution.
This case established two important principles in constitutional law. First, the Constitution grants to Congress implied powers for implementing the Constitution's express powers, in order to create a functional national government. Second, state action may not impede valid constitutional exercises of power by the Federal government. |
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11th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 31, to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a re-match between incumbent President John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, the runner-up in the election of 1824. With no other major candidates, Jackson and his chief ally Martin Van Buren consolidated their bases in the South and New York and easily defeated Adams. The Democratic Party merged its strength from the existing supporters of Jackson and their coalition with the supporters of William H. Crawford (the "Old Republicans") and Vice-President John C. Calhoun. Jackson was the first president whose home state was neither Massachusetts nor Virginia.
The election ushered Jacksonian Democracy into prominence, thus marking the transition from the First Party System (which reflected Jeffersonian Democracy) to the Second Party System. Historians debate the significance of the election, with many arguing that it marked the beginning of modern American politics with the decisive establishment of democracy and the formation of the two-party system. |
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| Was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. Her best-known extemporaneous speech on gender inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?", was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves. |
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14th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 30, to Wednesday, December 2, 1840. It saw President Martin Van Buren fight for re-election during a time of economic depression against a Whig Party unified for the first time behind war hero William Henry Harrison and his "log cabin campaign." Rallying under the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," the Whigs easily defeated Van Buren.
This election was unique in that electors cast votes for four men who had been or would become President of the United States: current President Martin Van Buren; President-elect William Henry Harrison; Vice-President-elect John Tyler, who would succeed Harrison upon his death; and James K. Polk, who received one electoral vote for vice-president, and who would succeed Tyler in 1845. |
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| American social theorist who published racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. He argued that "the negro is but a grown up child"who needs the economic and social protections of slavery. He decried capitalism as spawning "a war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another" – rendering free blacks "far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition." Slavery, he contended, ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized. He practiced law and was a painter for years, but attracted both fame and infamy when he published two sociological tracts for the South. He was a leading pro-slavery intellectual and spoke for many of the Southern plantation owners. Before printing books, he tried his hand at a pamphlet titled "Slavery Justified" (1849). His first book, Sociology for the South (1854) was not as widely known as his second book, Cannibals All! (1857). |
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15th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, November 1, to Wednesday, December 4, 1844. Democrat James K. Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest that turned on foreign policy.
Democratic nominee James K. Polk ran on a platform that embraced American territorial expansionism, an idea soon to be referred to as Manifest Destiny. At their convention, the Democrats called for the annexation of Texas and asserted that the United States had a "clear and unquestionable" claim to "the whole" of Oregon. By informally tying the Oregon boundary dispute to the more controversial Texas debate, the Democrats appealed to both Northern expansionists (who were more adamant about the Oregon boundary) and Southern expansionists (who were more focused on annexing Texas as a slave state). Although Polk's victory is attributed generally to Clay's decision to take a stand against territorial expansion, economic issues were also of importance.
This was the last presidential election to be held on different days in different states. Starting with the presidential election of 1848, all states held the election on the same date in November. It is also the only presidential election in which the winner, Polk, lost both his birth state (North Carolina) and his state of residence (Tennessee). |
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11th President of the United States (1845–1849). He was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.[1] He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, he served as the 17th Speaker of the House of Representatives (1835–1839) and Governor of Tennessee (1839–1841). He was the surprise (dark horse) candidate for president in 1844, defeating Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party by promising to annex Texas. He was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System.
He was the last strong pre–Civil War president, and he is the earliest of whom there are surviving photographs taken during a term in office. He is noted for his foreign policy successes. He threatened war with Britain over the issue of which nation owned the Oregon Country, then backed away and split the ownership of the region with Britain. When Mexico rejected American annexation of Texas, he led the nation to a sweeping victory in the Mexican-American War, which gave the United States most of its present Southwest. He secured passage of the Walker tariff of 1846, which had low rates that pleased his native South, and he established a treasury system that lasted until 1913.
He oversaw the opening of the U.S. Naval Academy and the Smithsonian Institution, the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first postage stamps in the United States. He promised to serve only one term and did not run for reelection. He died of cholera three months after his term ended. |
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| Leader in the Second Great Awakening. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism. He was best known as an innovative revivalist, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of Christian perfectionism, a pioneer in social reforms in favor of women and African-Americans, a religious writer, and president at Oberlin College. |
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| 14th President of the United States (1853–1857) and is the only President from New Hampshire. He was a Democrat and a "doughface" (a Northerner with Southern sympathies)[1] who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. He took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general in the Army. His private law practice in his home state, New Hampshire, was so successful that he was offered several important positions, which he turned down. Later, he was nominated as the party's candidate for president on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention.[2] In the presidential election, He and his running mate William R. King won by a landslide in the Electoral College. They defeated the Whig Party ticket of Winfield Scott and William A. Graham by a 50 percent to 44 percent margin in the popular vote and 254 to 42 in the electoral vote. |
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| Democratic Representative from South Carolina, serving from 1853 until his death in 1857. Brooks was a fervent advocate of slavery. He is primarily remembered for severely beating Senator Charles Sumner (Free Soil-Massachusetts), an abolitionist, with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate, on May 22, 1856. This was in retaliation for an anti-slavery speech by Sumner in which Sumner attacked Brooks' uncle, Senator Andrew Butler (Democrat-South Carolina). His action was applauded by many Southerners, and abhorred in the North.[Although an attempt to oust him from the House of Representatives was made, and he immediately resigned his seat, he received only token punishment and was re-elected by the people of South Carolina (but died before his next term began). Sumner was seriously injured, and unable to serve in the Senate for three years, though eventually he largely recovered. His act and the polarizing national reaction to it to are frequently cited as a major factor in the rising tensions leading up to the American Civil War. |
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Final major military action in the Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Mississippi. When two major assaults (May 19 and May 22, 1863) against the Confederate fortifications were repulsed with heavy casualties, Grant decided to besiege the city beginning on May 25. With no reinforcement, supplies nearly gone, and after holding out for more than forty days, the garrison finally surrendered on July 4. This action (combined with the capitulation of Port Hudson on July 9) yielded command of the Mississippi River to the Union forces, who would hold it for the rest of the conflict.
The Confederate surrender following the siege is sometimes considered, when combined with Gen. Robert E. Lee's defeat at Gettysburg the previous day, the turning point of the war. It also cut off communication with Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department for the remainder of the war. |
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| Act of Congress that significantly expanded the jurisdiction of federal courts. Passed February 5, 1867, the Act amended the Judiciary Act of 1789 to grant the courts the power to issue writs "in all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or any treaty or law of the United States."Prior to the Act's passage, prisoners in the custody of one of the states who wished to challenge the legality of their detention could petition for a writ only in state courts; the federal court system was barred from issuing writs in their cases.The Act also permitted the court "to go beyond the return" and question the truth of the jailer's stated justification for detaining the petitioning prisoner, whereas prior to the Act courts were technically bound to accept the jailer's word that the prisoner was actually being held for the reason stated.The Act largely restored following its 1863 suspension by Congress, ensuring that anyone arrested after its passage could challenge their detention in the federal courts, but denied writs relief to anyone who was already in military custody for any military offense or for having aided the Confederacy. |
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| Slso known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, particularly in the South, fought on Wednesday, September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with 22,717 dead, wounded and missing on both sides combined. |
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| Pioneer American teacher, patent clerk, nurse, and humanitarian. At a time when relatively few women worked outside the home, she built a career helping others. One of her greatest accomplishments was founding the American Red Cross. This organization helps victims of war and disasters. She was never married, but had a relationship with John J. Elwell. |
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| 19th quadrennial presidential election. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860 and served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The United States had been divided during the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners. In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured enough electoral votes to put Abraham Lincoln in the White House without support from the South. Before Lincoln's inauguration, seven Southern states seceded and formed the Confederacy. Secessionists from four additional Border states joined them when Lincoln's call to restore federal property in the South forced them to take sides, and two states (Kentucky and Missouri) tried to remain neutral. Following South Carolina's secessionist movement, the Union admitted Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada as free-soil states. Nevertheless, the Civil War disrupted the entire electoral process to the extent that no Presidential Electoral votes were recognized from all eleven seceded states in 1864. |
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| Established in 1814. Here, the Harmonists built a new town in the wilderness, but in 1824 they decided to sell their property and return to Pennsylvania. Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist and social reformer, purchased the town in 1825 with the intention of creating a new utopian community. While the Owenite social experiment was an economic failure just two years after it began, the community made some important contributions to American society. It became known as a center for advances in education and scientific research. It's residents established the first free library, a civic drama club, and a public school system open to men and women. Its prominent citizens included Owen's sons, Indiana congressman and social reformer Robert Dale Owen, who sponsored legislation to create the Smithsonian Institution; David Dale Owen, a noted state and federal geologist; William Owen; and Richard Owen, state geologist, Indiana University professor, and first president of Purdue University. The town served as the second headquarters of the U.S. Geological Survey and numerous scientists and educators contributed to New Harmony’s intellectual community, including William Maclure, Marie Louise Duclos Fretageot, Thomas Say, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, Joseph Neef, Frances Wright, and others. |
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American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
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| American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence. While she was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Her poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends. |
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| Social movement urging reduced or prohibited use of alcoholic beverages. Movements typically criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence (teetotalism), or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol. |
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