Early Presidents
This president established many traditions that future presidents followed, including creating a Cabinet.
George Washington
The expansion of voting rights to more white men helped create this political era.
Jacksonian Democracy
What religious movement encouraged many Americans to try to improve society during the early 1800s?
Second Great Awakening
What was Manifest Destiny?
The belief that the United States was destined to expand across North America.
The Missouri Compromise attempted to maintain a balance between what two groups of states?
Free states and slave states
Washington warned Americans about becoming too involved in the political conflicts of other countries. What foreign-policy idea does this represent?
Neutrality / avoiding permanent foreign alliances
What was the spoils system?
Giving government jobs to political supporters.
The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention helped bring national attention to what movement?
Women's rights
Which president is most closely associated with the major expansion of the United States during the 1840s?
James K. Polk
What controversial law required escaped enslaved people to be returned to slavery?
Fugitive Slave Act
This president signed laws that made it easier to deport foreigners and punished some criticism of the federal government.
John Adams — Alien and Sedition Acts
Andrew Jackson strongly opposed this institution because he believed it benefited wealthy Americans.
Second Bank of the United States / National Bank
This abolitionist published The Liberator and demanded the immediate end of slavery.
William Lloyd Garrison
Why did large numbers of Americans move to California beginning in 1849?
The California Gold Rush
The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed settlers to vote on slavery. What was this idea called?
Popular sovereignty
Britain's practice of stopping American ships and forcing sailors into British service helped cause what war?
Henry Clay wanted tariffs, a national bank, and transportation improvements to strengthen the U.S. economy. What was this plan called?
The American System
After Nat Turner's Rebellion, how did many Southern governments respond?
They passed stricter laws controlling enslaved and free Black people.
What war resulted in the United States gaining a huge amount of territory in the Southwest and West?
Mexican-American War
Why did Kansas become known as “Bleeding Kansas”?
Proslavery and antislavery settlers fought violently over whether Kansas would allow slavery.
Why did the Battle of New Orleans have little effect on the actual outcome of the War of 1812?
The peace treaty had already been signed before the battle was fought.
Explain one way a protective tariff was supposed to help American businesses.
It made imported goods more expensive, encouraging Americans to buy goods made in the United States.
The cotton gin made cotton much more profitable. What happened to the demand for enslaved labor as cotton production expanded?
It increased.
Why did gaining western territory from Mexico create a major political problem for the United States?
Americans disagreed over whether slavery should expand into the new territories.
What major event immediately pushed South Carolina to secede from the United States in 1860?
Abraham Lincoln's election as president