Westward Expansion Vocab
The belief that the United States was destined by God to expand all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Manifest Destiny
The "Expansionist President" known for his aggressive western campaign slogan: "54° 40' or Fight!"
James K. Polk
President Martin Van Buren earned this mocking nickname because he was heavily blamed for the economic crisis called the Panic of 1837.
Breaking down into "Re-" (again) and "-form" (to shape), this word means to fix parts of society that are broken or immoral.
Reform
This historic 1848 meeting was the very first major organized convention to explicitly demand legal equality and voting rights (suffrage) for women.
Seneca Falls Convention
The official act of adding a new territory to an existing country.
Annexation
This president used the "Log Cabin Campaign" to convince regular voters that he was a relatable, everyday "common man".
William Henry Harrison
This event sparked President Polk to ask Congress for war: Mexican troops crossing the Rio Grande and "shedding American blood on American soil".
Border dispute
This religious movement taught that individuals could actively save their own souls by doing good deeds and fixing societal evils.
Second Great Awakening
This movement's primary goal was to protect families by strictly limiting or eliminating the consumption of alcohol.
Temperance Movement
A political system where the people living in a territory vote to decide whether or not slavery should be allowed.
Popular Sovereignty
This political party was formed in 1848 with the primary goal of stopping the spread of slavery into the western territories.
Free Soil Party
The massive river dispute that started a war: the U.S. claimed this river was the border, while Mexico claimed the Nueces River was the true border.
Rio Grande
For a reformer in the 1800s, this four-word phrase meant that citizens had a personal responsibility to act and clean up society's problems.
"Your choices matter?"
Education reformers wanted to build these tax-funded institutions to provide free education to all children so they could become responsible citizens.
Common schools
Having loyalty to your own specific region (like the North or the South) rather than to the whole nation.
Sectionalism
This strict law required all government land to be paid for exclusively in gold or silver.
Specie Circular
In John Gast's famous painting "American Progress," the large angelic figure named Columbia is carrying these two specific items to represent progress moving west.
School book and telegraph wires.
Reformer Dorothea Dix famously took a stand against the government to protect this specific group of vulnerable people from being locked in cages and treated like criminals.
Mentally ill / insane persons
Elizabeth Cady Stanton famously altered this historic American document to boldly state that "all men and women are created equal".
Declaration of Independence
A reason that attracts people to move to a new place (like cheap land), AND the economic belief that the government should keep its "hands off" the economy.
Pull Factor and Laissez-Faire
[🔥 DAILY DOUBLE] This fundamental disagreement over the status of slavery in the West turned the victory of the Mexican Cession into a "poisonous" argument between North and South.
"Poisonous Question" (Expansion of slavery)
The name given to the massive region of land Mexico was forced to give up to the United States after losing the war.
Mexican Cession
[🔥 DAILY DOUBLE] These experimental communes or societies were built in the 1800s with the design of creating a perfect social and political system.
Utopian communities
Many of the prominent women who organized the early Women’s Rights movement first gained their political activism skills working inside this major movement.
Abolitionist movement.