Westward Expansion & Manifest Destiny
This 1803 land deal with France doubled the size of the United States.
What is
the Louisiana Purchase?
This 1850 law enforced the capture and return of escaped enslaved individuals, drastically increasing tensions between the North and South.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act?
This movement worked actively to end the practice of slavery in the United States.
What is the abolition movement?
This Union general led a devastating "March to the Sea" across Georgia, practicing total war to break Southern morale.
Who is William T. Sherman?
This constitutional amendment granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to all persons born or naturalized in the United States.
What is the 14th Amendment?
This 2,000-mile historic trail was used by thousands of pioneers traveling by wagon train to settle in the Pacific Northwest.
What is
The Oregon Trail?
This 1820 agreement drew a line at 36°30' parallel, admitting Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
His election as President in 1860 prompted several Southern states to secede from the Union.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
Delivered in 1863, this famous speech urged listeners to resolve "that these dead shall not have died in vain" and framed the Civil War around a higher purpose for the nation.
What is the Gettysburg Address?
Passed immediately following the Civil War, this constitutional amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States.
What is the 13th Amendment?
The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 triggered this major 19th-century event, leading to a massive population boom and rapid statehood for California.
What is the California Gold Rush?
This principle allowed residents of a territory to vote on whether to permit slavery within their borders.
What is popular sovereignty?
This term describes violent clashes in the 1850s between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers fighting for control of a Midwestern territory.
What is Bleeding Kansas?
This July 1863 victory in Pennsylvania is widely considered the major turning point of the Civil War in favor of the Union.
What is the Battle of Gettysburg?
This federal agency was established in 1865 to assist newly freed African Americans with food, housing, medical care, and education.
What is the Freedmen's Bureau?
Created by Henry Clay, this three-part economic plan aimed to strengthen the U.S. economy through protective tariffs, a national bank, and federally funded internal improvements like roads and canals.
What is the American System?
This 1854 act repealed the Missouri Compromise and led to violent outbreaks known as "Bleeding Kansas."
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
This landmark 1857 Supreme Court ruling declared that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford?
General Robert E. Lee officially surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at this Virginia location in April 1865.
What is Appomattox Court House?
Passed during Reconstruction, this amendment prohibited denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
What is the 15th Amendment?
Completed in 1825, this major engineering feat spurred the Market Revolution by making lucrative East Coast and Midwestern markets far more accessible.
What is the Erie Canal?
Introduced in 1846, this controversial proposal aimed to ban slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War.
What is the Wilmot Proviso?
This formal act of withdrawing from the Union was first carried out by South Carolina in December 1860.
What is secession?
Controlling this city along the Mississippi River was critical for Confederate forces before the Union victory split the South in two.
What is Vicksburg?
Southern state laws passed immediately after the Civil War designed to restrict the freedom of Black Americans and force them into labor contracts.
What are the Black Codes?