U.S. History Study Guide

New Nation

Washington’s Presidency

Whiskey Rebellion:

  • Washington used federal troops to end farmers rebellion
  • Proof that a stronger federal gov’t had been established

Jay’s Treaty + Pickney’s Treaty(trade in New Orleans…expand use of Miss. R.)

  • Jay’s Treaty: avoided war from Britain, eliminated the British threats to the security of the US with the British agreeing to abandon their military forts in the west

Farewell Address: No foreign entanglements and No political parties

  • Washington warned against the formation of alliances with foreign nations and the formation of political parties
  • US should avoid permanent, entangling alliances.

Hamilton & Federalist vs Jefferson & Democratic-Republicans

  • Hamilton & Federalist believed in “loose interpretation” of the Constitution
  • Hamilton favored Federal power: Federal Banks and Federal Debt
  • Democrat Republicans believed in a “Strict Interpretation” of Constitution
  • Jefferson argued for more State power: state debt & banks
  • Jefferson thought that the National Bank was unconstitutional

Hamilton’s Economic Plan:

  • excise tax on whiskey, creation of a National Bank, and Federal Debt from the assumption of the states’ debt from the Revolutionary War
  • Hamilton’s financial plan created the most tension b/w the North and the South: the federal gov’t would assume state debt from foreign nations
  • Hamilton gained support for his plan to have the federal gov’t pay off foreign and domestic debts after the Revolutionary War by promising the South to move the Capital to the South (Washington D.C.)

Adams Presidency

  • XYZ Affair: French diplomats required payment to talk with US diplomats
  • Alien and Sedition Act – limit freedom of speech
  • Federalist passed to limit speech against gov’t and limit immigration, hurt Democratic-Republican party since they were not the majority party
  • Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (written by Jefferson and James Madison) had a lasting impact on the US in that they introduced the “Doctrine of Nullification” in which states refuse to follow federal laws they feel are in violation of the Constitution
  • Midnight Judges- Adams appoints Federalist the last night of his presidency
  • Jefferson becomes next president and Madison never sends several of the appoints…Supreme Court decides in Marbury v Madison

Jefferson’s Presidency

  • Election of 1800: Hamilton votes for Jefferson, Aaron Burr looses
  • Hamilton vs.Aaron Burr… famous duel that Hamilton is killed

Louisiana Purchase 1803

  • Jefferson unsure he had the power to buy the land from France since he had a “strict interpretation” of Constitution…it did not mention the power
  • Objective of the Lewis and Clark expedition: map out and explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase…Sacagawea –Indian guide
  • Napoleon in Europe: War b/w France and GB continues
  • Embargo Act of 1807- stopped foreign trade, meant to avoid war by preventing impressments of sailors, keep US out of war from GB & France
  • Federalist strongly opposed Jefferson’s Embargo Act because it hurt America more than Britain, it was a economic disaster for Americans dependent on foreign trade,
  • Federalist opposed b/c it hurt New England seamen & merchants

President Madison andWar of 1812

  • Causes: War Hawks and Impressment
  • War Hawks pushed for war between U.S. and G.B.
  • John Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster
  • British Impressment: captured and forced US sailors to work on their ships
  • Westward Expansion: conflicts b/w US and GB in western territories

War of 1812 Battles:

  • Low Point: Burning of Washington, GB destroys US capital city
  • Victories: Lake Erie (Admiral Perry victorious) & Horseshoe Bend(Jackson)
  • Battle of New Orleans: after treaty signed, Andrew Jackson new Hero
  • Treaty of Ghent—peace b/w GB and US same as before the war, nothing won/loss

Native Americans

  • White Settlers vs. Native American’sconflict over the use and ownership of land
  • Battle of Fallen Timbers: General “Mad” Anthony Wayne defeats Tecumseh and Little Turtle…Treaty of Greenville signed Natives pushed in NW Ohio only
  • Tecumseh gone but his Prophet defeated at Battle of Tippecanoe, last major conflict in the East

Sectionalism, Nationalism, & Reform

President Monroe and Nationalism

  • Voting before 1820: only white land property owners
  • By 1820, landless farmers obtained suffrage (right to vote)
  • Removing property requirements for voting was a political issue for apprentices and tenant farmers
  • Sectionalism: division b/w North and South, growing cause of Civil War
  • Points of Tension: slavery, agrarian economy vs. industrial economy, state rights vs. power of the federal gov’t
  • Industrial Revolution: creates differences b/w north and south
  • Two Major Issues by mid-1800s: slavery and state rights

Henry Clay’s American System

  • Program for transportation projects, a protective tariff, and a national bank
  • Henry Clay: “Great Compromiser”…helps easy sectionalism in US
  • National Road, Erie Canal, Tariff of 1816
  • Erie Canal and Robert Fulton’s steam engine: helps NY city replaces Baltimore as major port in US

Nationalism: Supreme Court Cases

  • Chief Justice Marshall: empowered national government through decisions
  • Marbury v. Madison = (power of Judicial Review), Gibbons v. Ogden, & McCulloch v. Maryland: all 3 secured the power to Federal gov’t

Nationalism and Foreign/Domestic Policy

  • Adams-Onis Treaty: gained Spanish Florida and claims to Oregon
  • Monroe Doctrine: warned European Powers that the US considered the Western Hemisphere within its sphere of influence

Nationalism in Literature and Art:

  • Hudson River School for the Arts- focused on American scenic beauty as being superior than that of Europe
  • Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Fennimore Cooper: writers created distinct American literature
  • Webster’s Dictionary (1806) English to American language

Missouri Compromise 1820

  • attempts to solve slavery issue in W. Territories
  • Slavery prohibited north of the 36, 30 parallel in the Louisiana Purchase Territory
  • Maine admitted as a free state and Missouri a slave state
  • Henry Clay: “Great Compromiser”

Jackson’s Presidency

  • Adams vs. Jackson 1824, Jackson looses,House votes for Adams/Jackson wins next
  • Log Cabin President and Spoils System
  • 1st Log Cabin President... “common man” appeal
  • Spoils System example: loyal supporter given gov’t job as a reward

Indian Removal Act 1830

  • Allowed white settlement of Indian lands: Cherokee people/5 civilized tribes
  • Worchester v. Georgia: sided with Cherokee but Jackson said, “Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”

Bank of the United States (BUS)

  • Jackson wanted to do away with the National Bank in favor of state level “pet banks” that ended up printing excessive amounts of money, creating a Recession and after the Panic of 1837

South Carolina Nullification Crisis

  • South Carolina challenged the US authority on the issue of the tariff act of 1828 and 1832… South called it the “Tariff of Abominations” b/c it helped the North more than the South
  • President Jackson sent federal troops to S.C. to end the Nullification Crisis

Reforms in societies and the arts

  • 2nd Great Awakening – 19th century religious movement in which individual responsibility for seeking salvation was emphasized, along with the need for personal and social improvement
  • Reforms: Education: Horace Mann …Prison and Mentally Ill: Dorthea Dix

Women’s Rights: early 1800s

  • Seneca Falls Convention: first women’s rights convention… “All men and Women are created Equal”… Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
  • Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I a Woman” speech
  • Abigail Adams had asked her husband (John Adams) to remember the ladies when they were writing the Constitution

Abolitionist: movement against slavery,

  • William Lloyd Garrison: editor of the “Liberator” newspaper against slavery
  • Garrison angered Southerners by condemning slavery on moral grounds and demanding immediate emancipation and racial equality without compensation to slave owners

Transcendentalism: Literary movement focus on: Nature, Truth, Individualism

  • Civil Disobedience: Thoreau—impacted Gandhi and MLK
  • Famous Authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
  • Religions impact on debate of slavery: Southern women got involved in the abolition movement

Expansion

New Nation and Texas

Texas’s Independence

  • Austin: empressario – sells land, put in prison Mexican leader Santa Anna
  • “Remember the Alamo” Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie die defending a fort, all are killed, no prisoners, becomes the war cry for Texas freedom fighters
  • Sam Houston defeats Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto
  • Texas gains independence and becomes the “Lone Star Republic”
  • President Tyler adds Texas to the Union last days of his presidency

Mexican American War

Tyler to Polk Presidency

  • 54, 40 or Fight: Oregon Territory
  • Northern boundary of US peacefully decided at 49th parallel
  • Polk, election in 1844: his campaign appealed to both the North and the South b/c he supported territorial expansion

Manifest Destiny- America has a destiny and right, by God, to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean

Mexican-American War

  • President Polk favors expansion of US
  • Wilmont Proviso – Increased sectionalism: stated that any land taken from the war would be free territories, no slavery (Failed to pass Congress)
  • Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay taxes for a war which he believed supported the expansion of slavery westward. This motivated him to write “Civil Disobedience”

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

  • New Mexico, Arizona, Cali., Utah, and Nevada gained by the US, Mexico lost ½ its land, US paid 15 million
  • Result: increased sectionalism and tension between North and South because of slavery question, large tracts of land would be open to slavery
  • Territorial expansion led to intense debates about the extension of slavery in the new areas
  • Gadsden Purchase: US paid 10 million for small piece of land set final Southern border and build transcontinental railroal

Slavery in America

  • Middle Passage and Slave Trade from Africa to America
  • Underground Railroad secret transportation to help slaves escape North
  • Harriet Tubman secretly returned to the South 19 times to help free slaves

Abolition Movement Leaders—end slavery

  • Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, and William Lloyd Garrison

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Autobiography of Frederick Douglas

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” which showed Northerners the horrors of slavery: “so you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war”

Economy of the South: plantations and cotton

  • Cotton Ginhelp expand slavery become a thriving institution by 1820
  • Invented by Eli Whitney

Crisis, Civil War, and Reconstruction

Sectionalism and Division

Compromise of 1850

  • California admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico Territories would decide slavery by Popular Sovereignty -people have power to decide/vote
  • Slave Trade abolished in Washington D.C.
  • Extension of slavery westward increases sectionalism
  • Daniel Webster, “state rights and liberty, one and inseparable.”
  • Fugitive Slave Law: enabled slaveholders to recapture slaves who had fled, required free states to help capture and return escaped slaves
  • South believed that slavery, its way of life –was threatened

Dred Scott Decision:

  • Dred Scott vs. Sandford: regardless of location, slaves were not citizens and had no right to sue in the U.S. courts
  • Supreme Court Decision said that Congress had no power to deny slavery in the territories—Declared Missouri Compromise Unconstitutional

Bleeding Kansas

  • Kansas-Nebraska Act: Violence in Kansas (1854-55) symbolized the growing sectional division in the US because it represented a struggle between pro-slavery and free-soil advocates over the extension of slavery
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act led to bloodshed: the legislation left the issue of slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty, so pro-slavery and anti-slavery radicals clashed over the issue

Harpers Ferry

  • John Brown, Harpers Ferry, Virginia: he hoped to steal weapons from a federal arsenal for use in a slave revolt
  • John Brown hanged: North shocked at Southern decision to hang brown, South shocked that the North didn’t realize that Brown tried to kill them

Political Parties

  • Know-Nothings opposed immigration, Nativist-support people born in US
  • Democrat Party split between North and South on slavery issue
  • Republicans: new party, against slavery for territories and new states, formed from Whigs, Free-Soilers, and Northern Democrats

Lincoln v. Douglas debates

  • Freeport Doctrine- Douglas’s argument for Popular Sovereignty
  • Lincoln lost election but gained a reputation as a strong Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1860 Election

Election of 1860: Lincoln and S.C. Secession

  • South Carolina warned they would secede if Lincoln was elected
  • Southern states seceded b/c they thought it was only a matter of time before Lincoln & the Republicans would move to abolish slavery and they wanted to protect their state sovereignty
  • Please remember that the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the Hartford Convention, and the Webster-Hayne Debate all dealt with the issue of states’ rights.
  • Lincoln argued that secession was illegaland the establishment of the Confederate States of America had no legal foundation under the Constitution on the basis that the Constitution of the United States, which formed the Union, represented the collective will of the people and could not be destroyed by state legislatures…once a state ratified the constitution they surrendered their power to the federal gov’t

ivil War

Lincoln president: Beginning of Civil War

  • Abraham Lincoln’s main goal at the beginning of the Civil War was toPreserve the Union
  • Lincoln struggles to find a General of the Union Army
  • General Lee offered to command of Union but couldn’t bring himself to fight against his home state of Virginia
  • Generals McClellan, Hooker, Burnsides, & Meade didn’t attack
  • Finally finds General Grant…Policy of Total War: attack and force the South to surrender unconditionally
  • Anaconda Plan – Union strategy of blockading southern ports, controlling the Mississippi River, cutting the South in half, and surround and cutting off South from supplies and communications

Turning Point Battles

  • 1st Battle of Bull Run: Confederate victory showed war would not be short
  • Vicksburg 1863: Union victory that split the Confederacy in half and the Union could use the Mississippi River
  • Gettysburg – Union victory, last battle in the North, bloodiest battle
  • Gettysburg Address –Lincoln’s speech unified nation
  • Antietam- bloodiest single day battle
  • Sherman’s March to the Sea – Gen. Sherman burns Atlanta, and everything in his pathon the way to and through South Carolina…enforces Total War
  • Helps Lincoln get re-elected
  • Result of the Civil War: confirmed power of National Gov’t and made by making succession illegal

Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln freed slaves in the South

  • Encouraged African Americans to serve in the Union Army as they now saw the war as a battle for people’s freedom
  • Paved the way for the 13th Amendment: abolished slavery

Military Technology:Monitor vs. Merrimack: iron clad ships, submarine, rifle

Income Tax and Military Draft

  • Income tax first time enforced by the Federal Gov’t to pay for war
  • Rich could buy their way out of Conscription (draft)
  • Before 1960: sale of land and tariff = main source of gov’t revenue

Reconstruction

Lincoln assassination hurt the South after the Civil war because Radical Republicans gained more influence over Reconstruction policies such as the establishment of military districts – 5 in the South

  • Amnesty Act – pardoned former Confederates and returned the right to vote and hold public office

Johnson’s Presidency

Radical Republicans wanted to control Reconstruction

  • Reconstruction Act: divided south in military districts: help stop Black Codes that regulated the lives of free blacks
  • Former slaves voted Republican, some elected into Congress – Hiram Revels
  • Civil War Amendments 13th, 14th, 15th
  • 13th -- freed slaves, 14th—“Equal protection under the Law” (citizenship), 15th – right to vote
  • Civil Rights Acts 1866—passed to stop black codes and give rights to African American’s…vetoed by Johnson but passed with Radical Republicans

Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes, Grandfather Clause

  • Jim Crow laws were passed by Southern States as a reaction to Radical Republicans to undermine the 14th and 15th amendments
  • Blacks could not vote because of Poll Taxes, Literacy tests, and Grandfather Clause
  • Black Codes restricted the rights of newly freed slaves.
  • KKK created following reconstruction, viewed as terrorist organization

Johnson Impeached: 1st President to be impeached

  • Johnson angered Radical Republicans by vetoing Civil Rights Acts
  • Congressman Thaddeus Stevens led the call to impeach Johnson after he violated the Tenure of Office Act
  • Johnson needed permission to fire cabinet members
  • Johnson’s presidency was spared by one vote
  • President Grant was surrounded by corruption

Compromise of 1877

  • 1876 election: Hayes elected and end Reconstruction: Republicans gained the presidency, Democrats gained Home Rule in the South
  • Civil War and Reconstruction were victories for the supremacy of the National Gov’t, no state has seceded since the war

The Great West and Populism

  • Wagons West—for furs, for gold, for farms: economic motivation

Gold Rush: 49ers

  • Rapid growth of California in 1849 with the discovery of Gold
  • 1950 California becomes a states
  • Gold Motivated many people to move west in hopes of becoming rich

Mormons and Utah—seek religious freedom

  • Joseph Smith and Brigham Young migrated to Salt Lake City, Utah

Transcontinental Railroad:

  • The construction of the railroad (built by Chinese and Irish immigrants) had the greatest impact on successful settlement of the Great Plains
  • Chinese workers for the Central Pacific Railroad company faced harsh discrimination
  • Railroad killed off the Buffalo…ending the Native American way of life

Homestead Act:strongly supported by Ranchers and Farmers