Tex-Mex
This empresario is known as the "Father of Texas" for bringing the first American settlers into Mexican territory
Stephen F Austin
This series of laws passed in 1850 attempted to settle the slavery debate by admitting California as a free state while also including a harsh new law requiring the return of escaped enslaved people.
Compramise of 1850
This network of secret routes and safe houses helped enslaved people escape to freedom in the North and Canada before the Civil War.
The Underground Railroad
This Battle was the turning point of the Civil War for the north
Gettysburg
This concept, rooted in the idea that American expansion was divinely ordained, was used to justify the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and westward expansion more broadly.
Manifest destiny
This Mexican general and president led forces against the Texan rebels and later commanded Mexican troops during the war with the United States.
Antonio López de Santa Anna?
The violent conflict that erupted in a western territory after pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers flooded in to influence elections earned this grim nickname.
Bleeding Kansas
This woman escaped from bondage and then returned south to help others escape
Harriet Tubman
This Union strategy aimed to squeeze the Confederacy by blockading its ports and controlling the Mississippi River, cutting off trade and splitting the South in two.
Anaconda Plan
This simple cracker made of flour, water, and salt was a staple ration for Union soldiers, who joked about its rock-like hardness and the weevils often found living inside it.
The United States insisted this was the border of Texas and Mexico
What is the Rio Grande
his new political party formed in the 1850s in direct response to the expansion of slavery into western territories and nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
Republican
The invention of this machine in 1793 dramatically increased the demand for enslaved labor by making short-staple cotton enormously profitable.
Cotton Gin
At the start of the war, this Confederate general turned down an offer to command the Union army, choosing instead to fight for his home state of Virginia
Robert E. Lee
This speech listed slavery and white supremacy as the main reason for the creation of the confederacy
Corner stone speech
This 1845 event, fiercely debated in Congress, directly set the stage for war with Mexico by bringing a slaveholding republic into the Union.
The Annexation of Texas
In 1859, this abolitionist led a raid on a federal arsenal in Virginia, hoping to spark an enslaved people's uprising. He was captured and executed, becoming a martyr for the anti-slavery cause
John Brown
These laws, enacted across Southern states, regulated nearly every aspect of enslaved people's lives restricting movement, assembly, and access to weapons, and defining enslaved people as property
Slave codes
William Sherman marched through this state, burning and destroying Confederate infrastructure
Georgia
These debates helped define the Republican party and made Lincoln Famous
Lincoln Douglas debates
This was the last battle of the Texas Revolution
San Jacinto
This 1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe depicted the horrors of slavery and became one of the most influential books in American history, reportedly prompting Lincoln to call its author "the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."
Uncle Tom's Cabin
This term describes the brutal oceanic voyage that forcibly transported millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas
The Middle Passage
The Confederate surrender of this Mississippi River fortress on July 4, 1863, gave the Union complete control of the river and split the Confederacy.
Vicksburg
He was president of the Confederacy
Jefferson Davis
This treaty ended the Mexican War and gained the United States territory
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
This 1857 Supreme Court decision ruled that enslaved people were not citizens and had no right to sue in federal court, and further declared that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories
Dredd Scott Decision
This former slave escaped to England, and letter became an abolitionist leader
Fredrick Douglas
Issued on January 1, 1863, this executive order declared enslaved people in Confederate states "forever free," transforming the Union's war aims and allowing Black men to enlist in the military
Emancipation proclamation
This refers to the trade of goods, products, and people between Africa, the Americas, and Europe
Triangular trade