THE SOUTH
By 1860, this single agricultural product accounted for over 50% of all American exports, making the South a vital part of the global economy.
cotton
Following the Louisiana Purchase, this duo was commissioned to lead the Corps of Discovery to explore the new territory and find a route to the Pacific.
Lewis and Clark
The first shots of the Civil War were fired in April 1861 at this coastal fortification in South Carolina.
Fort Sumter
This amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, officially abolished slavery in the United States.
13th Amendment
In its 1857 ruling, the Supreme Court declared that this man was still a slave and, as an African American, had no right to sue in federal court.
Dred Scott
Unlike the industrial North, the South’s economy was primarily this, a term describing a society based on farming and land ownership.
agrarian
Thousands of settlers traveled westward via this 2,000-mile historic trail, which began in Independence, Missouri, and ended in the Willamette Valley.
Oregon Trail
This 1862 engagement in Maryland remains the single bloodiest one-day battle in American military history.
Battle of Antietam
Established in 1865, this federal agency was created to provide food, medical aid, and education to formerly enslaved people and poor whites in the South.
Freedmen's Bureau
In 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown led a raid on a federal arsenal in this Virginia town, hoping to spark a massive slave uprising.
Harpers Ferry
Traditionally, this person was the employee on a plantation responsible for managing the day-to-day work of laborers and maintaining discipline in the fields.
overseer
This 1848 treaty ended the Mexican-American War and resulted in the U.S. acquiring land that would become California, Nevada, and Utah.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
General William Tecumseh Sherman utilized this military strategy, intended to destroy the South's infrastructure and civilian morale, during his 1864 "March to the Sea."
Total War
This agricultural system, which became dominant in the South after the war, involved laborers farming land in exchange for a portion of the harvest, often leading to a cycle of debt.
sharecropping
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 replaced the Missouri Compromise line with this policy, allowing residents of a territory to vote on whether to allow slavery.
popular sovereignty
This 1793 invention by Eli Whitney revolutionized the Southern economy by drastically speeding up the removal of seeds from cotton fibers.
cotton gin
This famous 1872 painting by John Gast depicts a giant angelic woman leading settlers and telegraph lines westward.
American Progress
Proposed by General Winfield Scott, this initial Union strategy aimed to "suffocate" the South by blockading its coastline and seizing control of the Mississippi River.
Anaconda Plan
Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, this man became the 17th U.S. President and faced impeachment for his clashes with Radical Republicans.
Andrew Johnson
Jackson signed this controversial 1830 legislation, which led to the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans along the "Trail of Tears."
Indian Removal Act
This 3 word slogan was used by Southern politicians and farmers to describe the dominance of cotton in the United States.
"Cotton is King"
This religious group, led by Brigham Young, trekked west to the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847 to escape persecution in the East.
Mormons
This 1867 federal legislation carved the former Confederacy into five military districts, each commanded by a Union general, to oversee the transition back into the Union.
Reconstruction Act
These complex, often unanswerable exams were used by Southern registrars to disqualify Black voters based on their education level.
literacy tests
In 1896, the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson established this legal doctrine, which protected Jim Crow segregation for over 50 years.
"separate but equal"