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| The Bank War started in 1830. It was Andrew Jackson's attack on the Second Bank of the United States during the early years of his presidency. Andrew Jackson viewed the Bank of the United States as a monopoly. The Bank of the United States was a private institution managed by a board of directors. Its president, Nicholas Biddle, exercised vast influence in the nation's financial affairs. |
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| Nicholas Biddle was the president of the Second Bank of the United States. |
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a degrading term for state banks selected by the U.S. Department of Treasury to receive surplus government funds in 1833, when President Andrew Jackson "killed" the Second Bank of the United States. The term implied that the state banks were controlled by Jackson. By 1836 there were 89 "pet banks" or state banks with US Treasury funds. The term gained currency because most of the banks were chosen not because of monetary fitness but on the basis of the spoils system, which rewarded political allies of Andrew Jackson. Most Pet Banks of them eventually lost money and failed. The Pet Banks and smaller "wildcat" banks flooded the country with paper currency. Because this money became so unreliable, Jackson issued the Specie Circular, which required all public lands to be purchased with metallic money. This contributed to the Panic of 1837 where there was a major dip in the economy due to the increased debt created by this banking system. |
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The Anti-Masonic Party (also known as the Anti-Masonic Movement) was a 19th century minor political party in the United States. It strongly opposed Freemasonry, and was founded as a single-issue party, aspiring to become a major party. It introduced important innovations to American politics, such as nominating conventions and the adoption of party platforms. |
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| a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson that arose when the state of South Carolina attempted to nullify a federal law passed by the United States Congress. The crisis developed during the national economic downturn throughout the 1820s that hit South Carolina particularly hard. |
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| (enacted March 2, 1833) authorized U.S. President Andrew Jackson's use of whatever force necessary to enforce tariffs. It was intended to suppress South Carolina's nullification of tariffs. |
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| was proposed by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun as a resolution to the Nullification Crisis. |
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| a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from 1833-34 to 1856, the party was formed to go against the policies of President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. |
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| an executive order issued by U.S. President Andrew Jackson in 1836 and carried out by President Martin Van Buren. It required payment for government lands be in gold and silver specie. |
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| nicknamed Old Kinderhook, was the eighth President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. Before his presidency he served as the eighth Vice President (1833-1837) and the 10th Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson. He was a key organizer of the Democratic Party, a dominant figure in the Second Party System, and the first president who was not of English, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish descent. |
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| an economic plan based on the "American School" ideas of Alexander Hamilton, expanded upon later by Friedrich List, consisting of a high tariff to support internal improvements such as road-building, and a national bank to encourage productive enterprise and form a national currency. |
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| a nineteenth-century American statesman and orator who represented Kentucky in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He was a dominant figure in both the First Party System to 1824, and the Second Party System after that. Known as "The Great Compromiser" and "The Great Pacificator" for his ability to bring others to agreement, he was the founder and leader of the Whig Party and a leading advocate of programs for modernizing the economy, especially tariffs to protect industry, a national bank, and internal improvements to promote canals, ports and railroads. |
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| built on a speculative fever. The bubble burst on May 10, 1837 in New York City, when every bank stopped payment in specie (gold and silver coinage). The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and record high unemployment levels. |
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| William Henry Harrison (Whig) |
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| an American military leader, politician, and the ninth President of the United States (March 4 1841-April 4 1841). He served as the first Governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a U.S. Representative and Senator from Ohio. Harrison first gained national fame for leading U.S forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 and earning the nickname "Tippecanoe" (or "Old Tippecanoe"). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames, which brought the war in his region to a successful conclusion. |
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| the tenth President of the United States. A long-time Democrat-Republican, he was elected Vice President on the Whig ticket and on becoming president in 1841, broke with that party. His term as Vice President began on March 4, 1841 and one month later, on April 4, incumbent President William Henry Harrison died of what is today believed to have been viral pneumonia. |
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| a 19th-century belief that the United States had a mission to expand, spreading its form of democracy and freedom. |
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| trappers and explorers who roamed the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 to the early 1840s. Although primarily of Canadian or American origin, mountain men were of many ethnic, social and religious backgrounds. These men were primarily motivated by profit, trapping beaver and selling the skins, although some were more interested in exploring the West. |
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| First millionaire in the United States. He was the creator of the first trust in America, from which he made his fortune in fur trading, real estate, and opium. |
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| a Mexican political leader who greatly influenced early Mexican and Spanish politics and government, first fighting against independence from Spain, and then becoming its chief general and president at various times over a turbulent 40-year career. He was President of Mexico on eleven non-consecutive occasions over a period of 22 years. |
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| were Anglo-American citizens of Texas when Texas was part of Mexico, and subsequently when it was a sovereign nation. |
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| a 19th century American statesman, politician, and soldier. As President of the Republic of Texas, Senator for Texas after it joined the United States, and finally as governor. |
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| a 19th-century battle between the Republic of Mexico and the rebel Texian forces, including both Anglos (ethnic Europeans) and Tejanos (ethnic Mexicans in Texas), during the Texians' fight for independence — the Texas Revolution. |
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| The Goliad Campaign refers to a series of battles which occurred in 1836 as part of the Texas Revolution, which ultimately led to the Goliad massacre. |
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| fought on April 21, 1836, in present-day Harris County, Texas, was the decisive battle of the Texas Revolution. Led by General Sam Houston, the Texas Army engaged and defeated General Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican forces in a fight that lasted just eighteen minutes. Hundreds of Mexican soldiers were killed or captured, while there were relatively few Texan casualties. |
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| a sovereign state in North America between the United States and Mexico that existed from 1836 to 1845. Formed as a break-away republic from Mexico as a result of the Texas Revolution, the nation claimed borders that encompassed an area that included all of the present U.S. state of Texas, as well as parts of present-day New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming based upon the Treaties of Velasco between the newly created Texas republic and Mexico. |
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| a historic agreement between the United States and Spain that settled a border dispute in North America between the two nations. |
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| The First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was built across North America in the 1860s, linking the railway network of the Eastern United States with California on the Pacific coast. |
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| The eleventh President of the United States. Leader of the successful Mexican–American War. He lowered the tariff and established a treasury system that lasted until 1913. |
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| brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country, which had been jointly occupied by both Britain and the U.S. since the Treaty of 1818. |
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| Mexican American War (1846-48) |
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| an armed military conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas. Mexico did not recognize the secession of Texas in 1836; it considered Texas a rebel province. |
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| Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) |
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| the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico, that ended the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). |
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| introduced on August 8, 1846 in the House of Representatives as a rider on a $2 million appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican-American War. |
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| the belief that the state is created by and therefore subject to the will of its people, who are the source of all political power. |
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| an American military officer and politician. During his long political career, Cass served as a territorial governor, an American ambassador, a U.S. Senator, and was the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States in 1848. |
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| began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in Coloma. As news of the discovery spread, some 300,000 people came to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. |
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| The Nashville Convention (1850) |
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| a political meeting held in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 3 – 11, 1850. Delegates from nine slaveholding states met to consider a possible course of action if the United States Congress decided to ban slavery in the new territories being added to the country as a result of Westward Expansion and the Mexican-American War. The compromises worked out in Nashville paved the way for the Compromise of 1850, and for a time, averted the dissolution of the United States. |
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| a single document that is accepted in a single vote by a legislature but contains amendments to a number of other laws or even many entirely new laws. |
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| was the thirteenth President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853, and the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. |
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| A series of laws that attempted to resolve the territorial and slavery controversies arising from the Mexican-American War (1846–48). The five laws balanced the interests of the slave states of the South and the free states. California was admitted as a free state |
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| an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed series of debates. He was largely responsible for the Compromise of 1850 that apparently settled slavery issues. |
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| Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 |
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| was passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slaveholding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. |
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| American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain |
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| the incumbent President was a Whig who had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of his war hero predecessor; in this case, it was Millard Fillmore who followed General Zachary Taylor. The Whig party passed over the incumbent for nomination — casting aside Fillmore in favor of General Winfield Scott. The Democrats nominated a "dark horse" candidate, this time Franklin Pierce. The Whigs again campaigned on the obscurity of the Democratic candidate, and once again this strategy failed. |
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| an American politician and the fourteenth President of the United States. Democrate. |
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| attempt to extend debate upon a proposal in order to delay or completely prevent a vote on its passage. |
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| Kansas Nebraska Act (1854) |
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| created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands for settlement, and allowed the (white) settlers to decide whether or not to have slavery. |
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| sequence of violent events involving Free-Staters (anti-slavery) and pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" elements that took place in Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri between roughly 1854 and 1858 attempting to influence whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. |
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| was unusually heated. The Republicans crusaded against the Slave Power, while the Democrats warned that the Republicans were extremists whose victory would lead to civil war. |
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| an American military officer, explorer, the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States, and the first presidential candidate of a major party to run on a platform in opposition to slavery. |
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| the fifteenth President of the United States (1857–1861). He was the only President from Pennsylvania and the only President never to marry |
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| Dred Scott Decision (1857) |
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| The decision for the court was written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. The decision sided with border ruffians in the Bleeding Kansas dispute who were afraid a free Kansas would be a haven for runaway slaves from Missouri. It enraged abolitionists. The polarization of the slavery debate is considered one of many factors leading to the American Civil War. The parts of this decision dealing with the citizenship and rights of African-Americans were explicitly overturned by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. |
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| Latin for a statement "said by the way", is a remark or observation made by a judge that, although included in the body of the court's opinion, does not form a necessary part of the court's decision. |
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| a sudden downturn in the economy of the United States that occurred in 1857. The downturn was brief and the recovery strong, so that the impact was small. Over 5,000 businesses failed within a year. Unemployment was accompanied by protest meetings in urban areas. |
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| Lincoln – Douglas Debates (1858) |
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| a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat, for an Illinois seat in the United States Senate. |
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| the first white American abolitionist to advocate and practice insurrection and murder as a means to abolish slavery. |
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| Set the stage for the American Civil War. The political system split four ways and all of them proved unable to hold the nation together as a Union without a violent resolution. |
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| an American politician who served as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. During his presidency, Davis was never able to find a strategy that would defeat the larger, more industrially developed Union. |
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| at 4:30 a.m., confederate batteries opened fire, firing for 34 straight hours, on the fort Sumter. The beginning of the American Civial War. |
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| a Third System masonry coastal fortification located in Charleston harbor, South Carolina, was named after General Thomas Sumter. However, the fort is best known as the site where the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter. |
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| was proposed in 1861 by Union General Winfield Scott to win the American Civil War with minimal loss of life, enveloping the Confederacy by blockade at sea and control of the Mississippi River. The name "Anaconda" is taken from the way an anaconda constricts its prey |
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| a United States Army general, diplomat, and presidential candidate. Came up with the Anaconda Plan. |
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| was an American lawyer, politician, United States Attorney General in 1860-61 and Secretary of War through most of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. Less notable is the debate of whether Stanton served a short term as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. |
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| an American politician and jurist in the Civil War era who served as U.S. Senator from Ohio and Governor of Ohio; as U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and as Chief Justice of the United States. |
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