13th Amendment

• December 6^th, 1865
• abolished and continues to prohibit slavery  and involuntaryservitude
•  first of the Reconstruction Amendments
• used as a war measure

14th Amendment

• July 9th, 1868
• 2nd of the Reconstruction Amendments
• provides a broad definition of citizenship
• Equal Protection Clause: state must provide equal protection of all peoples within their jurisdiction
  

15th Amendment

• February 7^th, 1870
• 3rd Reconstruction Amendment
• prohibits the government from denying anyone the right to vote based on their race, color, or previous condition of servitude

3/5 Compromise

• compromise between the north and south reached during the Philadelphia Convention of1787 that was meant to balance the power of free and slave states
  
• 3/5 of the slave population would be counted for due to enumeration purposes in regards to taxes and representative appointment to the House of Representatives
• those opposed to slavery only wanted to count freed slaves and those in favor of slavery wanted to count slaves in their actual numbers
• major effect on political affairs as there was disproportionate representation of slaveholding states
• favored south
• section 2 of the 14^th Amendment stated that representatives would be appointed by WHOLE persons

Andrew Johnson

• president after Lincoln was assassinated
• Unionist who was effective in fighting the rebellion and took charge of Presidential Reconstruction which lasted until the Radical Republicans took control of congress in 1866
• his conciliatory policies towards the South of
  
• quickly reincorporating the Confederate states back into the Union and vetoing of  the Civil Rights act angered Republicans
• Radicals impeached him in 1868
• thought blacks did not possess the capacity to govern and the white man alone should govern the south
• looked to weaken the Freedman’s Bureau

Charles Sumner

• leader of the Radical Republicans
• devoted his energy to the destruction of slave owners ability to control the federal government and block blacks’ liberties
• during reconstruction he fought hard to provide equal rights and voting rights for freedmen
• President Grant’s Senate supporters took away his chairmanship/power
• supported Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican candidate in 1872, and lost his power in the Republican party because of it

***Compromise of 1850***

  a politically popular and complex compromise of 5 bills:

1. California was admitted as a free state
2. the slave trade was abolished
3. territories of New Mexico and Utah were organized under the rule of popular sovereignty
4. The Fugitive Slave Act was passed
5. Texas gave up western lands and received compensation of $10 million  to pay off its national debt

Confiscation Acts

• First Confiscation Act passed in 1861 and authorized the confiscation of any Confederate property by Union forces (including slaves) which meant all slaves that worked for Confederate forces were freed when property was “confiscated”
• The Second Confiscation Act was passed in 1862 and stated that the slaves of any Confederate official who did not surrender within 60 days of the Act’s passage would be freed, only applicable in Confederate territories which had already been occupied by the Union Army 
• Lincoln opposed these acts fearing they would push the border states towards siding with the Confederacy, therefore the Acts eventually led to the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863

Dred Scott

*Bleeding Kansas*

• also known as the “the Border War”
• violence between pro and antislavery settlers in the Kansas Territory from 1854-58 in regards to whether or not Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state
• set into action by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

Emancipation Proclamation

• 1863... began the freedom of slaves

• consisted of twoexecutive orders issued by Lincoln during theCivil War
• The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863
• The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named ten specific states where it would apply and also authorized the enrollment of black soldiers into the Union army
• Criticized for only freeing the slaves over which the Union did not have power

Era of Good Feelings

• 1817-1825
• characterization of the administration of popular Republican president James Monroe
• the Federalists largely had dissolved, and were no longer attacking the president, and caused an era of good feeling because there was only 1 political party
• instilled a sense of nationalism

Erie Canal

• most important/profitable of the canals in the 1820s/30s
• stretched from Buffalo to Albany connection the Great Lakes to the East Coast and making New York City the nation’s largest port
• increased trade westward throughout the nation by opening eastern/overseas markets

Federalists/Republicans

• 1^st Party System 1792-1824, ended during the Era of Good Feelings
• Federalists: created by Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and George Washington, favored a strong central government
• Republicans: created by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, favored state rights and yeomen farmers over bankers, merchants, etc

Frederick Douglass

• slave who gained his freedom by escaping to the north
• became an abolitionist and believed all people whether white, black, female, native American or recent immigrant, should be treated equally

Fugitive Slave Act

• gave federal government authority in cases involving runaway slaves, aroused opposition in the north
• part of the Compromise of 1850

Paternalism

• generally: the assumption that the more powerful and the better-off in any society have obligations towards the less powerful and the poor
• the idea that it is the responsibility of the more powerful to demonstrate concern for the less powerful, but without disturbing existing power relations or taking steps to ensure that those in weaker social positions are enabled to improve their situations

• specifically:Paternalism is said to be characterized by an implicit contract wherein landowners provided a multitude of benefits to workers. Workers responded by supplying "good and faithful labor," including a long-term commitment to the landowner. Cheaper to landlords than the available alternatives, paternalism thus helped to sustain the agricultural economy of the South for nearly a century after the disappearance of slavery in the U.S

*Popular Sovereignty*

• rooted in the American Revolutionary belief that a whole people, rather than a monarch or single individual, could serve as the sovereign (ruler) of the nation

• both before and after the Revolution, Americans believed “that the people in a republic, like a king in a monarchy, exercised plenary authority as the sovereign. This interpretation persisted from the revolutionary period up to the Civil War.”
• the term “popular sovereignty” became part of the rhetoric for leaving it up to residents of the American territories (and not Congress) to decide whether or not to accept or reject slavery à this left it up to the people of the territories to resolve the controversy over expansion of slavery in the United States
• Illinois U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas is most closely associated with the idea of popular sovereignty as a solution to the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories
• popular sovereignty is commonly linked with the failed attempt to accommodate slavery à pejorative connotation

Presidential Reconstruction

• (1865–77) Period after the American Civil War in which attempts were made to solve the political, social, and economic problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 Confederate states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war.
• Pres. Abraham Lincoln planned to readmit states in which at least 10% of the voters had pledged loyalty to the Union. This lenient approach was opposed by the Radical Republicans, who favoured the harsher measures passed in the Wade-Davis Bill. Pres.
• Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln's moderate policies, but enactment in the South of the black codes and demand in the North for stricter legislation resulted in victories for Radical Republicans in the congressional elections of 1866.
• Congress then passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which established military districts in the South and required the Southern states to accept the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
• Southern resentment of the imposed state governments, which included Republicans, carpetbaggers, and scalawags, and of the activities of the Freedmen's Bureau led to the formation of terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia.
• By the 1870s conservative Democrats again controlled most state governments in the South. Though Reconstruction has been seen as a period of corruption, many constructive legal and educational reforms were introduced.
• The Reconstruction era led to an increase in sectional bitterness, dissension regarding the rights of blacks, and the development of one-party politics in the South

Radical Reconstruction

Events

1867 Congress passes First and Second Reconstruction Acts Congress passes Tenure of Office Act

1868 House of Representatives impeaches Andrew Johnson Senate acquits Johnson Fourteenth Amendment is ratified Ulysses S. Grant is elected president

1870 Fifteenth Amendment is ratified

Key People

Andrew Johnson -  17th U.S. president; impeached by the House of Representatives in 1868 but later acquitted by the Senate

Edwin M. Stanton -  Secretary of War under Lincoln and Johnson; was dismissed by Johnson, prompting House Republicans to impeach Johnson

Ulysses S. Grant -  18th U.S. president; formerly a Union general and, briefly, secretary of war under Johnson

After sweeping the elections of 1866, the Radical RepublicansAndrew Johnson. This political ascension, which occurred in early 1867, marked the beginning of Radical Reconstruction gained almost complete control over policymaking in Congress. Along with their more moderate Republican allies, they gained control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and thus gained sufficient power to override any potential vetoes by President

Congress began the task of Reconstruction by passing the First Reconstruction Act in March 1867. Also known as the Military Reconstruction Act or simply the Reconstruction Act, the bill reduced the secessionist states to little more than conquered territory, dividing them into five military districts, each governed by a Union general. Congress declared martial law in the territories, dispatching troops to keep the peace and protect former slaves

Congress also declared that southern states needed to redraft their constitutions, ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and provide suffrage to blacks in order to seek readmission into the Union. To further safeguard voting rights for former slaves, Republicans passed the Second Reconstruction Act, placing Union troops in charge of voter registration. Congress overrode two presidential vetoes from Johnson to pass the bills

Was an improvement on President Johnson’s laissez-faire Reconstruction Plan, but the daily lives of blacks and poor whites changed little. While Radicals in Congress successfully passed rights legislation, southerners all but ignored these laws. The newly formed southern governments established public schools, but they were still segregated and did not receive enough funding. Black literacy rates did improve, but marginally at best

House Republicans, tired of presidential vetoes that blocked Military Reconstruction, impeached Johnson by a vote of 126–47 for violating the Tenure of Office Act. The Senate then tried Johnson in May 1868 in front of a gallery of spectators. However, the prosecutors, two Radical Republicans from the House, were unable to convince a majority of senators to convict the president. Seven Republican senators sided with Senate Democrats, and the Republicans fell one vote shy of convicting Johnson

Tecumseh

• A Native American of the Shawnee tribe
• Head of Native American Northwest Confederacy (Shawnee, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek tribes, and more), which he formed with his brother Tenskwatawa (“the prophet”)
• Tried to unite all of the tribes in the Mississippi Valley region against the settlers
• During the War of 1812, Tecumseh and his confederacy allied with the British in Canada and helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. The Americans, led by Harrison, launched a counter assault and invaded Canada, killing Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames. Tecumseh has subsequently become a folk legend and is remembered as a hero by many Canadians for his defense of their country

Trail of Tears

• A symbol for the harsh treatment of the Indians at the hands of the federal government
• The relocation and movement of Native Americans, including many members of the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole,and Choctaw nations among others in the United States, from their homelands to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in the Western United States
• Result of  President Andrew Jackson’s passing of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which implemented the removal of the Native Americans
• Many Native Americans suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their destinations, and tens of thousands died, including 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee
• Almost 1,000 miles long – traveled ON FOOT

Union League

• One of a number of organizations established in 1863 and 1864 during the American Civil War to promote loyalty to the Union side and the policies of Abraham Lincoln
• Also known as Loyal Leagues
• Comprised upper middle class men who supported the United States Sanitary Commission, which helped treat wounded soldiers after battle. The Clubs supported the Republican Party, with funding, organizational support, and political activism
• During Reconstruction, Union Leagues were formed across the South after 1867 as working auxiliaries of the Republican Party. They mobilized freedmen to register to vote and to vote Republican
• Membership in the League is selective, and is comparable in social status to membership in a country club

James K. Polk

• Famous for leading the nation into the Mexican–American War, in which the US was victorious
• Mexican-American War: the first major conflict driven by the idea of "Manifest Destiny"; following the earlier Texas War of Independence from Mexico, tensions between the two largest independent nations on the North American continent grew as Texas eventually became a U.S. state. Disputes over the border lines sparked military confrontation, helped by the fact that President Polk eagerly sought a war in order to seize large tracts of land from Mexico
• a Democrat committed to geographic expansion (or Manifest Destiny)
• Achieved the second-largest expansion of the nation's territory by securing the Oregon Territory (including Washington, Oregon and Idaho), amounting to about 285,000 square miles (738,000 km²)
• Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War in 1846, the US purchased 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 km²) of territory in the Southwest and California
• Expansion reopened a furious national debate over allowing slavery in the new territories
• The controversy was inadequately arbitrated by the Compromise of 1850, and finally found its ultimate resolution on the battlefields of the U.S. Civil War

William Llyod Garrison

• A prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer
• Best known as the editor of the radical abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society
• The liberator – a weekly anti-slavery newspaper
• Promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United States
• Was also a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement and a notable critic of the prevailing conservative religious orthodoxy that supported slavery and opposed suffrage for women

Wilmot Proviso

• Congressman David Wilmot’s 1846 proposal to ban slavery in the western lands that were yielded to the US after the Mexican War
• At the end of the Mexican War, many new lands west of Texas were yielded to the United States, and the debate over the westward expansion of slavery was rekindled. Southern politicians and slave owners demanded that slavery be allowed in the West because they feared that a closed door would spell doom for their economy and way of life. Whig Northerners, however, believed that slavery should be banned from the new territories. Pennsylvanian congressman David Wilmot proposed such a ban in 1846, even before the conclusion of the war. Southerners were outraged over this Wilmot Proviso and blocked it before it could reach the Senate.

John Brown

• Radical abolitionist who incited a slave uprising in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859
• On October 16, 1859, Brown—the infamous Free-Soiler who had killed five proslavery men at the Pottawatomie Massacre in Kansas in 1856—stormed an arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), with twenty other men in the hopes that the raid would prompt slaves throughout Virginia and the South to rise up against their masters
• Was convicted of treason and hanged
• People in the South viewed him as a criminal and a traitor, and people in the North saw him as a martyr for so boldly denouncing slavery

Lincoln/Douglas Debates

• A series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, and the incumbent Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat, for an Illinois seat in the United States Senate
• The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the 1860 presidential election. The main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery
• After losing the election for Senator in Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book. The widespread coverage of the original debates and the subsequent popularity of the book led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by the 1860 Republican National Convention

Manifest Destiny

• A term that was used in the 19th century to designate the belief that the United States was destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean
• Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only ethical but that it was readily apparent ("manifest") and inexorable ("destiny"). Although initially used as a catch phrase to inspire the United States' expansion across the North American continent, the 19th century phrase eventually became a standard historical term
• First coined in 1845 by a New York journalist, John L. O'Sullivan, to call for the annexation of Texas

Missouri Compromise

• An agreement passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories
• Prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30' north except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively nullified the Missouri Compromise and opened up the Nebraska and Kansas territories to popular sovereignty
• The Dred Scott decision ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and affirmed the status of slaves as simple property

Kansas Nebraska Act

• Proposed in January 1854 by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois to organize Nebraska (part of the Louisiana Purchase) as a territory, in order to facilitate the building of a transcontinental railroad along a northern route from Chicago to the West
• Because the Nebraska Territory lay above the 36º30' line, set by the Missouri Compromise to disallow slavery, Nebraska would automatically become a candidate for admission as a free state. Southerners therefore planned to oppose the bill unless Douglas made some concessions
• To ensure passage of the bill, Douglas yielded to Southerners who desired to void the Missouri Compromise’s 36º30' line. He inserted in his Nebraska bill an explicit repeal of the Missouri Compromise so that no territory would be automatically designated non-slaveholding
• As an alternative, the bill declared that the slavery issue in the Nebraska region would be decided by popular sovereignty, thus extending the Compromise of 1850’s concept of popular sovereignty
• Both Northern abolitionist groups and Southern interests (“BORDER RUFFIANS”) rushed into the territory to try to control the local elections. In March 1855, during the first election of the territorial legislature, thousands of pro-slavery inhabitants of Western Missouri crossed into Kansas to tilt the vote in favor of slaveholding interests (which led to John Brown and “Bleeding Kansas”)

Stephen Douglas

• Douglas was an ardent expansionist
• To settle the bitter dispute over the extension of slavery to the territories, he developed the policy of “popular sovereignty” and popularized the term
• Douglas urged the doctrine's acceptance as a solution to the problems of the extension of slavery in the territories
• He was influential in the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Short and heavyset, he was dubbed "the Little Giant" for his oratorical skill

John O'Sullivan

• A New York journalist who coined the term “manifest destiny”

• He wrote of "our manifest Destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of our continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty."
• Aimed to promote the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Country to the United States
• O'Sullivan's original conception of Manifest Destiny was not a call for territorial expansion by force. He believed that the expansion of U.S.-style democracy was inevitable, and would happen without military involvement as whites (or "Anglo-Saxons") emigrated to new regions

Whigs/Democrats

Second party system parties

• Democrats were more farming oriented while the Whigs were more industrialists
• Both parties definitely wanted what they thought was best for America, but they disagreed on what that was
• Whigs were nationalists and wanted the big business and commerce pushing the states forward while the Democrats favored the common man and farming

DEMOCRATS

• The party of tradition
• Looked backward to the past
• Spoke to the fears of Americans
• Opposed banks and corporations as. state-legislated economic privilege
• Opposed state-legislated reforms and preferred individual freedom of choice
• Were Jeffersonian agrarians who favored farms and rural independence and the right to own slaves
• Favored rapid territorial expansion over space by purchase or war.
• Believed in progress through external growth
• Democratic ideology of agrarianism, slavery, states rights, territorial expansion was favored in the South

WHIGS

• The party of modernization
• Looked forward to the future
• Spoke to the hopes of Americans
• Wanted to use federal and state government to promote economic growth, especially transportation and banks
• Advocated reforms such as temperance and public schools and prison reform
• Were entrepreneurs who favored industry and urban growth and free labor
• Favored gradual territorial expansion over time and opposed the Mexican War
• Believed in progress through internal growth
• Whig ideology of urbanization, industrialization, federal rights, commercial expansion was favored in the North