Famous Americans
Known as the “Great Compromiser,” this senator helped craft both the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850.
Who is Henry Clay?
These independent small landholders of the South and West valued self-sufficiency and limited market engagement, even as the Market Revolution expanded commercial agriculture.
Who were yeoman farmers?
This controversial financial proposal called for federal assumption of state debts and the creation of a national bank, sparking fierce debate over constitutional interpretation.
What was Hamilton’s Bank Plan?
Emerging in the South after the Civil War, this labor system kept formerly enslaved people tied to land through cycles of debt and dependency.
What is sharecropping?
This post-Revolution idea encouraged women to educate themselves so they could raise virtuous, informed citizens.
What is Republican Motherhood?
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for challenging Puritan authority, she helped found Portsmouth in Rhode Island.
Who is Anne Hutchinson?
This intellectual and literary movement—associated with thinkers like Emerson and Thoreau—emerged partly in response to the rapid economic and social changes of the Market Revolution.
What is transcendentalism?
First articulated in response to the Tariff of Abominations, this theory claimed that states could invalidate federal laws they deemed unconstitutional.
What is the Doctrine of Nullification?
Passed in 1828, this highly protective tariff outraged the South and contributed to sectional tensions that would eventually erupt into the Civil War.
What is the Tariff of Abominations?
A 19th-century ideology that idealized women as moral guardians of the home, emphasizing piety, purity, and domesticity.
What is the Cult of Domesticity?
An early Jamestown settler, he helped save the struggling colony’s economy by cultivating a profitable strain of tobacco.
Who is John Rolfe?
In this landmark 1824 Supreme Court case, the Court ruled that only Congress could regulate interstate commerce, helping strengthen a national market economy.
What is Gibbons v. Ogden?
Issued by Washington, this 1793 statement argued that the United States should avoid entanglement in European conflicts, prompting debate between pro-British and pro-French factions.
What is the Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793?
Part of the Compromise of 1850, this law required citizens to assist in the capture of enslaved people who escaped, enraging Northern abolitionists.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act?
Held in 1848 in New York, this first major women’s rights gathering produced the Declaration of Sentiments.
What is the Seneca Falls Convention?
Born into slavery, he became one of the most influential abolitionists of the 19th century and published the newspaper The North Star.
Who is Frederick Douglass?
Invented by Samuel Morse, this communication technology revolutionized long-distance information exchange and helped integrate national markets.
What is the telegraph?
Federalists and Anti-Federalists clashed over this process, which required nine states to approve the new Constitution before it could take effect.
What is ratification?
Southern defenders of slavery argued this pro-slavery justification—claiming that slavery benefited both enslavers and enslaved people.
What is the “positive good” theory?
These Southern sisters became outspoken abolitionists and advocates for women’s rights, linking the two movements in the antebellum period.
Who are Sarah and Angelina Grimké?
His 1776 pamphlet Common Sense helped convince many colonists to support independence from Britain.
Who is Thomas Paine?
Cyrus McCormick’s invention increased the efficiency of grain harvesting, accelerating commercialization and settlement of the Midwest.
What is the mechanical reaper?
Frequently invoked in early republic debates, this principle emphasized power retained by the states as a counterbalance to federal authority.
What are states’ rights?
This 1846–1848 conflict intensified debates over the expansion of slavery, as new western territories reopened bitter political arguments.
What is the Mexican-American War?
Some reform-minded women joined these experimental communities, which aimed to reorganize society around equality and shared labor.
What are Utopian societies?