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The widespread American belief that God had ordained the United States to occupy all the territory of North America.
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Conflict after U.S. annexation of Texas. Mexico considered Texas its own. The victor was the U.S. It granted all land from Texas to California (minus the Gadsden Purchase) in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
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Amendment to an appropriations bill proposing that any territory acquired from Mexico be closed to slavery. Although the amendment was defeated in the Senate it started a national debate that ended up as the Civil War.
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Prospectors, known as forty niners, streamed int California in 1849 after the discovery of gold.
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Attempt to accommodate northerners and southerners over the issue of slavery. This was written by Henry Clay, which admitted California as a free state and called for popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah. This included a strong fugitive slave law and ended the slave trade in D.C.
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Law that provided the return of escaped slaves in the North to the owners in the South.
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Anti-slavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe that fueled the abolitionist movement in the northern states.
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Strip of land in present day Arizona and New Mexico that the U.S. purchased from Mexico as a route for building a southern transcontinental railroad.
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Law that allowed the Kansas-Nebraska territories to decide the issue of slavery through popular sovereignty. This law led to the civil war in Kansas creating what many called "Bleeding Kansas."
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Economic downturn caused by over speculation of western lands, railroads, gold in California, grain. Mostly affected northerners, who called for higher tariffs and free homesteads
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After ruling that people of African descent were not citizens and could not sue in court, the Supreme Court under the Chief Justice, Roger Taney, affirmed the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories negating the the doctrine of popular sovereignty, repealing the Missouri Compromise
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In an election for the U.S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln, a republican, and Stephen Douglas, a democrat, had a series of debates in Illinois. Although Douglas won the election, the debates made Lincoln a national political figure who could articulate the Republican position on slavery.
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First major battle of the Civil War, in which untrained Northern troops and civilian picnickers fled back to Washington. This battle helped boost Southern morale and made the North realize that this would be a long war.
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First major battle of the civil war, it proved to be the bloodiest single day battle in American History with over 26,000 lives lost in that single day.
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July 1-3, 1863, turning point in war, Union victory, bloodiest battle on American soil.
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Constitutional amendment that abolished slavery in the United States and its territories
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Laws passed in southern states after the Civil War restricting the rights and activities of free slaves, defining the status of freed slaves as inferior to whites
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Constitutional amendment that made former slaves citizens and guaranteed them equal protection of the laws.
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Constitutional amendment that prohibited the states from denying the right to vote due to race or whether the person had once been a slave. A provision to allow women the right to vote
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Law that prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection, transportation and businesses open to the public. The Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in 1883
