Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal
This 19th-century belief held that the United States was destined by God to expand across the North American continent.
What is Manifest Destiny?
Many Americans opposed the immediate annexation of Texas primarily because it would enter the Union as this kind of state.
What is a slave state?
This overland route brought thousands of American settlers west to the Pacific Northwest in the 1840s.
What is the Oregon Trail?
The land acquired from Mexico in 1848—including California and much of the Southwest—is known by this name.
What is the Mexican Cession?
This crop earned the nickname “King” because it dominated the southern economy and global textile markets.
What is cotton?
On some rice plantations, enslaved workers had more autonomy under this system, completing daily tasks with some control over their time.
What is the task system?
This small, wealthy group of large slaveholders dominated southern politics, economy, and culture.
Who are the planter elite?
Some southern politicians insisted that slavery was not a “necessary evil” but instead this kind of benefit to both races.
What is a “positive good”?
Supporters of Manifest Destiny often claimed expansion would spread this American political and economic system.
What are republican democracy and free-market capitalism? (accept either or both)
This Mexican leader commanded forces against the Texan rebels and would later face U.S. armies in the Mexican-American War.
Who is Antonio López de Santa Anna?
James K. Polk campaigned on this expansionist slogan, referring to the desired northern boundary of Oregon.
What is “Fifty-four forty or fight”?
This 1840s event drew hundreds of thousands of fortune seekers to California and hastened its path to statehood.
What is the California Gold Rush?
This 1793 invention dramatically increased cotton production and thus the demand for enslaved labor.
What is the cotton gin?
Enslaved people used these religious songs to express faith, hope, and sometimes covert messages of resistance.
What are spirituals?
These independent white farmers, who owned little or no enslaved labor, made up the majority of southern white society.
Who are yeoman farmers?
Southern defenders of slavery often claimed they were acting as protective “fathers” to enslaved people, using this term to describe their relationship.
What is paternalism?
Manifest Destiny contributed to growing conflict over this institution as the U.S. acquired new western lands.
What is slavery?
This year marked the official annexation of Texas by the United States.
What is 1845?
The Mexican-American War began after Polk sent troops into this disputed border region between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande.
What is the disputed Texas border / the land between the Nueces and Rio Grande?
This proposed amendment in 1846 sought to ban slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico, intensifying sectional tension.
What is the Wilmot Proviso?
The phrase “King Cotton” captured the belief that the South’s cotton was essential to the economy of this European region.
What is British (or European) industry / textile mills?
This term describes the forced migration of over a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South in the early 19th century.
What is the Second Middle Passage?
Many non slaveholding whites still supported slavery partly because they hoped one day to become slaveholders themselves—this is an example of this social belief.
What is the aspiration to social mobility or the desire to rise into the planter class?
Southern leaders argued that abolitionist attacks on slavery violated this constitutional principle, especially for slaveholding states.
What are states’ rights?
This 1830 law authorized the forced relocation of Native American tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River.
What is the Indian Removal Act?
Indian Removal opened millions of acres of land in these two southern cash-crop regions to cotton cultivation and slavery.
What are the Deep South and the Southwest?
This 1848 treaty ended the Mexican-American War and granted the U.S. vast new territory in the West.
What is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?
This crop earned the nickname “King” because it dominated the southern economy and global textile markets.
What is cotton?
After the international slave trade was banned in 1808, this internal system of buying and selling enslaved people expanded rapidly.
What is the domestic (or internal) slave trade?
Enslaved people frequently resisted slavery in subtle ways, like slowing their work, breaking tools, or feigning illness—these are examples of this kind of resistance.
What is everyday (or passive) resistance?
This cultural code emphasized male honor, reputation, and readiness to defend one’s name, shaping social interactions in the South.
What is the code of honor?
Together, the rise of King Cotton, pro-slavery thought, and southern defensiveness helped intensify this major divide in the United States that ultimately led to the Civil War.
What is sectionalism?
Although the Supreme Court sided with the Cherokee in Worcester v. Georgia, this U.S. president refused to enforce the ruling.
Who is Andrew Jackson?
American settlers in this Mexican province rebelled and declared independence in 1836, leading to a famous last stand at the Alamo.
What is Texas?
The land acquired from Mexico in 1848—including California and much of the Southwest—is known by this name.
What is the Mexican Cession?
Many Gold Rush miners came from outside the United States, including a large number from this Asian country, who faced intense discrimination.
What is China?
This labor system on large plantations used closely supervised groups working long hours in the fields together.
What is the gang labor system?
Despite family separations, enslaved people created strong kin networks, sometimes referring to unrelated adults as “aunt,” “uncle,” or “cousin,” forming this kind of extended structure.
What is a fictive kin network (or extended family)?
Enslaved people who pretended to be sick, broke tools, or worked slowly were engaging in this kind of everyday resistance.
What is passive (or everyday) resistance?
To counter northern “free labor” arguments, pro-slavery advocates often contrasted supposedly “happy, cared-for slaves” with these exploited workers in northern cities.
Who are northern wage laborers (or “wage slaves”)?