Study guide for Mrs . Steven's APUSH Midterm
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| 613582254 | Mexican-American War | Fought between Mexico and the United States from 1846 to 1848; led to devastating defeat of Mexican forces, loss of about one-half of Mexico's national territory to the United States. | |
| 613582255 | Second National Bank | Proposed by Madison in 1816, would issue national currency, private enterprise with 1/5 owned by government, stabilized economy, opposed by Jackson who was a strict constructionist (he was overidden by Congress); he tried to weaken the bank by creating "pet banks" and telling the states to tax the national government | |
| 613582256 | Wade-Davis Bill | 1864 Proposed far more demanding and stringent terms for reconstruction; required 50% of the voters of a state to take the loyalty oath and permitted only non-confederates to vote for a new state constitution; Lincoln refused to sign the bill, pocket vetoing it after Congress adjourned. | |
| 613582257 | Molasses Act | a law that imposed a tax on molasses, sugar, and rum imported from non-British foreign colonies into the North American colonies; it was aimed to reserve a monopoly of the colonies. This caused anger among colonials due to the fear of increased prices of rum, since they felt that the British West Indies could not meet the needs of the colonies. | |
| 613582258 | Boston Tea Party | demonstration (1773) by citizens of Boston who (disguised as Indians) raided three British ships in Boston harbor and dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the harbor | |
| 613582259 | Andrew Jackson/Specie Circular | issued by President Jackson July 11, 1836, was meant to stop land speculation caused by states printing paper money without proper specie (gold or silver) backing it. It required that the purchase of public lands be paid for in specie. It stopped the land speculation and the sale of public lands went down sharply. The panic of 1837 followed. | |
| 613582260 | Elizabeth Cady Stanton | A member of the women's right's movement in 1840. She was a mother of seven, and she shocked other feminists by advocating suffrage for women at the first Women's Right's Convention in Seneca, New York 1848. Stanton read a "Declaration of Sentiments" which declared "all men and women are created equal." | |
| 613582261 | Carpet Baggers | name given to Southerners allied with northern Republicans who came south to take part in the region's political and economic rebirth. | |
| 613582262 | Monroe Doctrine | President James Monroe's statement forbidding further colonization in the Americas and declaring that any attempt by a foreign country to colonize would be considered an act of hostility | |
| 613582263 | Dorthea Dix | Tireless reformer, who worked mightily to improve the treatment of the mentally ill. Appointed superintendant of women nurses for the Union forces. | |
| 613582264 | Supreme Court Decisions 1831-32 | Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, was a United States Supreme Court case. The Cherokee Nation sought a federal injunction against laws passed by the state of Georgia depriving them of rights within its boundaries, but the Supreme Court did not hear the case on its merits. It ruled that it had no original jurisdiction in the matter, as the Cherokee were a dependent nation, with a relationship to the United States like that of a ward to its guardian. The court ruling resulted in the expulsion of the Cherokee nation. Their relocation and route is called the "The Trail of Tears." Of the 15,000 who left, 4000 died on the journey to "Indian Territory" in the present-day state of Oklahoma. | |
| 613582265 | George Washington's Farewell Address | This address warned against long-term "entangling alliances" with other countries and said that America should be free to operate on its own in international affairs. Also warned against internal political divisions. A call for national unity and an end to partisanship was in fact a parting shot at the Democratic Republican opposition. | |
| 613582266 | Alien and Sedition Acts | These consist of four laws passed by the Federalist Congress and signed by President Adams in 1798: the Naturalization Act, which increased the waiting period for an immigrant to become a citizen from 5 to 14 years; the Alien Act, which empowered the president to arrest and deport dangerous aliens; the Alien Enemy Act, which allowed for the arrest and deportation of citizens of countries at was with the US; and the Sedition Act, which made it illegal to publish defamatory statements about the federal government or its officials. The first 3 were enacted in response to the XYZ Affair, and were aimed at French and Irish immigrants, who were considered subversives. The Sedition Act was an attempt to stifle Democratic-Republican opposition, although only 25 people were ever arrested, and only 10 convicted, under the law. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which initiated the concept of "nullification" of federal laws were written in response to the Acts. | |
| 613582267 | "Loose Construction" of the Constitution | a frame of mind in which one allows for some leeway and can stretch the meaning of the Constitution, favored by Alexander Hamilton | |
| 613582268 | Preston Brooks | a Democratic Representative from South Carolina, serving from 1853 until his death in 1857. Brooks was a fervent advocate of slavery. He is primarily remembered for severely beating Senator Charles Sumner (Free Soil-Massachusetts), an abolitionist, with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate, on May 22, 1856. | |
| 613582269 | Manifest Destiny | This expression was popular in the 1840s. Many people believed that the U.S. was destined to secure territory from "sea to sea," from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This rationale drove the acquisition of territory. | |
| 613582270 | Freemen after Civil War | Freedmen's Bureau was created to support education, welfare, and voting rights of freed black slaves after the Civil War | |
| 613582271 | Johnson's impeachment | he intentionally violates Tenure Act because it was set upt to get him impeached by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stantin, at the Trial his lawyer says his only crime is opposing Congress, 12 democrats and 7 republicans vote him "not guilty", so he escaped impeachment by one vote | |
| 613582272 | "popular sovereignty" | people hold the final authority in all matters of government | |
| 613582273 | Northwest Ordinance of 1787 | Created the Northwest Territory (area north of the Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania), established conditions for self-government and statehood, included a Bill of Rights, and permanently prohibited slavery | |
| 613582274 | First Bank of the United States | The First Bank of the United States was a bank chartered by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791. The charter was for 20 years. The Bank was created to handle the financial needs and requirements of the central government of the newly formed United States, which had previously been thirteen individual colonies with their own banks, currencies, and financial institutions and policies. Officially proposed by Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, to the first session of the First Congress in 1790, the concept for the Bank had both its support and origin in and among Northern merchants and more than a few New England state governments. It was, however, eyed with great suspicion by the representatives of the Southern States, whose chief industry, agriculture, did not require centrally concentrated banks, and whose feelings of states' rights and suspicion of Northern motives ran strong. | |
| 613582275 | Reform Movements early-mid 1800's | Causes: citizens religious convictions stemming from the Second Great Awakening, also an intense period of evangelicalism, also women of middle and upper classes who were attempting to rid their societies of the "social evils", and lastly the death of most of the founding fathers which symbolized the death of old thoughts and the birth of social innovation Definition: the reform movements inspired primarily by the Second Great Awakening, these included groups like Temperance Societies, anti gambling and prostitution acts, also work with rehabilitation of criminals as developed by Dorothea Dix, also the Shakers who stemmed off of the Quakers, and they believed they had become too interested in the world and too neglectful of their afterlives, therefore they isolated themselves in communes where they shared work and its rewards and also granted near equal rights to women, however their belief in celibacy (no sex) would lead to their rather quick demise by the early 1850's, also other groups we see being brought to life include but are not limited to the Transcendentalists of Massachusetts in 1841, and the Mormons in1830. also Horace Mann pushed for public education and education reform in general, and perhaps the most important reform movement is the Abolition movement which was supported by the Quakers, also Women, and Northerners after the Second Great Awakening, however white abolitionists were separated into two group: those who were moderates wanted emancipation slowly and with the cooperation of slave owners, and then you have Immediatists who wanted emancipation at once, the most prominent Immediatist was William Lloyd Garrison who published a popular abolitionist newspaper called the Liberator in 1831 Effects: the outlawing of lotteries in the Union by 1860, also the establishment of The Female Moral Reform Society, also the Fugitive Slave Act, also the National Woman Suffrage Society in 1869, also the first Women's rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, also the Declaration of Sentiments, and the Gag Rule adopted by Congress in 1836 | |
| 613582276 | Chesapeake Bay Settlement | Causes: Europe had the resources and technology to establish colonies far from home, new open territory due to the English navy's success in 1588 Definition: the English first attempted settlement in 1587 but it failed and was forever known as the Lost Colony, the English did not try again until 1607 when they settled Jamestown which was funded by a joint-stock company called the Virginia Company, in a sense the beginning of this colony really sucked lots of people were dying off and it looked like they too would become a lost colony however they were saved twice, once by Captain John Smith who imposed martial law to get everyone to work if they wanted to survive, he was later removed, however they were once again saved by John Rolfe who would introduce the cash crop of tobacco which would be extremely successful which led to rapid expansion, and as new settlements sprang up around Jamestown the entire area came to be known as the Chesapeake, and overpopulation in England led to even more settlement in the Chesapeake Effects: the development of a head-right system, and the development of the House of Burgess in 1619 | |
| 613582277 | Civil War African American Soldiers | Causes:News from Fort Sumter set off a rush by free black men to enlist in U.S. military units. They were turned away, however, because a Federal law dating from 1792 barred Negroes from bearing arms for the U.S. army (although they had served in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812). In Boston disappointed would-be volunteers met and passed a resolution requesting that the Government modify its laws to permit their enlistment. By mid-1862, however, the escalating number of former slaves, the declining number of white volunteers, and the increasingly pressing personnel needs of the Union Army pushed the Government into reconsidering the ban. As a result, on July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act, freeing slaves who had masters in the Confederate Army. Two days later, slavery was abolished in the territories of the United States, and on July 22 President Lincoln (photo citation: 111-B-2323) presented the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet. Definition: The history of African Americans in the American Civil War is marked by 186,097 (7,122 officers, 178,975 enlisted) African Americans comprising 163 units who served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and many more African Americans who served in the Union Navy. Both free African Americans and runaway slaves joined the fight. On the Confederate side, both free and slave blacks were used for labor, but the issue of whether to arm them, and under what terms, became a major source of debate, and no significant numbers were ever raised or recruited. Effects: Recruitment was slow until black leaders such as Frederick Douglass encouraged black men to become soldiers to ensure eventual full citizenship. (Two of Douglass's own sons contributed to the war effort.) Volunteers began to respond, and in May 1863 the Government established the Bureau of Colored Troops to manage the burgeoning numbers of black soldiers. | |
| 613582278 | Women Workers early-mid 1800's | With little or no inheritance to look forward to, some women began working between the ages of 8 and 12. Like the underclass women, lower-working class women were often ridiculed by high society because their lives did not permit them to dress with presige and class. Their laborous work schedules did not allow for it. Some of the jobs that were available to them were: domestic service, agricultural laborers, seamstress, washer women, and serving the wealthy residents. Women in this category were expected to fullfil three roles: "mother, housekeeper, and worker" (Huysman, online). Such high expections made for a very high stress environment for these women. The most presitgious of the classes for British women to fall under was upper-working class. These women were immediately distinguished by their strict clothes that consisted of "laces, corsets, veils, and gloves so that their bodies were properly covered" (Huysman, online). These women often had some sort of inheritance passed down to them from their fathers, so they were often courted by men of high standing who wished to increase their own wealth. Even though women were not yet allowed to attend college, these women sometimes received a general education consisting of reading, writing, and arthmitic. In such cases, a woman might decide to take a position as a governess or a lady's companion. | |
| 613582279 | Continental Army | America's patriot army during the Revolutionary War | |
| 613582280 | Hamilton's Financial Programs | The Revolutionary War created major debt for the new country, 1780s inflation was a huge problem and families that were financially crippled by the war could not keep up with the rising cost of living. George Washington chose Alexander Hamilton as his Secretary of Treasury. States refused to pay back their war debts; Hamilton proposed that in order to eliminate the public credit problem, states should pay off all of their debts at full value. In order for states to raise money to pay the debts, Hamilton would issue securities bonds, which would be bought by investors and created the Bank of the United States. This mirrored the Bank of England. He created a protectionist policy, in which mercantilism would be adopted and tariffs on foreign goods would be established and American manufacturing companies would receive subsidies from the government. It strengthened the central government, and issued a standardized paper currency throughout the country(as opposed to state currencies). The bank faced strong opposition and many debates ensued, but it was eventually passed. Mercantilism was adopted in the United States, making the economy gradually more self-sufficient. This increase in manufacturing will also lead to the first American Industrial Revolution. The principles defined by Hamilton are still a basis for today's capitalist economy. | |
| 613582281 | Anti-Federalists | They opposed the ratification of the Constitution because it gave more power to the federal government and less to the states, and because it did not ensure individual rights. Many wanted to keep the Articles of Confederation. The Antifederalists were instrumental in obtaining passage of the Bill of Rights as a prerequisite to ratification of the Constitution in several states. After the ratification of the Constitution, the Antifederalists regrouped as the Democratic-Republican (or simply Republican) party. | |
| 613582282 | Southern Secession | SC secedes when Lincoln becomes Pres. Then MS, AL, GA, TX, FL, and LA. Later, AR, TN, NC, and PA secede. | |
| 613582283 | Stephen Douglas | Senator from Illinois, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Freeport Doctrine, argues in favor of popular sovereignty | |
| 613582284 | Mercantilism | an economic system (Europe in 18th C) to increase a nation's wealth by government regulation of all of the nation's commercial interests | |
| 613582285 | Transportation Revolution 1790-1830 | improvements in: roads-enabled settlers and merchants to reach the west, boats-steamboat made commercial agriculture feasible in the West canals (eerie canal)-connected large cities to each other and made it easier to trade railroads-connected burgeoning cities to rivers and canals | |
| 613582286 | "Join or Die" political cartoon | Famous cartoon drawn by Ben Franklin which encouraged the colonies to join in fighting the British during the French and Indian War | |
| 613582287 | Marbury v. Madison | The 1803 case in which Chief Justice John Marshall and his associates first asserted the right of the Supreme Court to determine the meaning of the U.S. Constitution. The decision established the Court's power of judicial review over acts of Congress, (the Judiciary Act of 1789). | |
| 613582288 | Texas Admission to the U.S. | Texas wanted to be part of the U.S. Northerners objected because they did not want it to be a slave state. Annexed in 1845. Border dispute led to the Mexican American War. | |
| 613582289 | Declaration of Sentiments | series of resolutions issued at the end of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848; modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the list of grievances called for economic and social equality for women, along with a demand for the right to vote. | |
| 613582290 | Proclamation Line of 1763 | Prohibited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, colonists werent allowed to settle the land that was bought there, this led to outrage in the 13 colonies | |
| 613582291 | Maize | Also called 'Indian Corn', maize was one of the staples of the New World. Became the most important crop in early American agriculture. | |
| 613582292 | Massachusetts Bay Company | This organization of influential Puritan investors in England sponsored and organized a large expedition to North America in 1629 for the express purpose of establishing an independent Puritan community, free of what they saw as the corrupting influences of the Church of England. Centered in Boston, this company administered the ___ ___ Colony during the region's early settlement. | |
| 613582293 | Kansas/Nebraska Act | 1854 - Created Nebraska and Kansas as states and gave the people in those territories the right to chose to be a free or slave state through popular sovereignty. | |
| 613582294 | Jamestown | The first successful settlement in the Virginia colony founded in May, 1607. Harsh conditions nearly destroyed the colony but in 1610 supplies arrived with a new wave of settlers. The settlement became part of the Virginia Company of London in 1620. The population remained low due to lack of supplies until agriculture was solidly established. Jamestown grew to be a prosperous shipping port when John Rolfe introduced tobacco as a major export and cash crop. | |
| 613582295 | Great Awakening | religious revival in the American colonies of the eighteenth century during which a number of new Protestant churches were established | |
| 613582296 | Doctrine of Nullification | Idea that a state had the right to nullify, or reject, a federal law that it considers unconstitutional | |
| 613582297 | Puritans | English Protestant dissenters who believed that God predestined souls to heaven or hell before birth. They founded Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. | |
| 613582298 | Uncle Tom's Cabin | Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1853 that highly influenced england's view on the American Deep South and slavery. A novel promoting abolition. Intensified sectional conflict. | |
| 613582299 | Halfway Covenant | A Puritan church document; In 1662, the Halfway Covenant allowed partial membership rights to persons not yet converted into the Puritan church; It lessened the difference between the "elect" members of the church from the regular members; Women soon made up a larger portion of Puritan congregations. | |
| 613582300 | Emancipation Proclamation | issued by Lincoln following Antietam (close enough to a victory to empower the proclamation), declared slaves in the Confederacy free (did not include border states), symbolic gesture to support Union's moral cause in the war | |
| 613582301 | Nat Turner | Slave in Virginia who started a slave rebellion in 1831 believing he was receiving signs from God. His rebellion was the largest sign of black resistance to slavery in America and led the state legislature of Virginia to a policy that said no one could question slavery. | |
| 613582302 | William Lloyd Garrison | 1805-1879. Prominent American abolitionist, journalist and social reformer. Editor of radical abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator", and one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. | |
| 613582303 | Articles of Confederation | Adopted in 1777 during the Revolutionary War, the Articles established the United States of America. The Articles granted limited powers to the central government, reserving most powers for the states. The central government lacked the power to tax, regulate trade, or control coinage. The result was a poorly defined national state that couldn't govern the country's finances or maintain stability. The Constitution replaced them in 1789 | |
| 613582304 | Dred Scott v. Sanford | Supreme Court case that decided US Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories and slaves, as private property, could not be taken away without due process - basically slaves would remain slaves in non-slave states and slaves could not sue because they were not citizens | |
| 613582305 | Slavery 1600s-1865 | The earliest African arrivals were viewed the same way as indentured servants from Europe. This similarity did not long continue. By the later half of the 17th century, clear differences existed in the treatment of black and white servants. A 1662 Virginia law assumed Africans would remain servants for life, and a 1667 act declared that "Baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedome." By 1740, the slavery system in colonial America was fully developed. A Virginia law in that year declared slaves to be "chattel personel in the hands of their owners and possessors... for all intents, construction, and purpose whatsoever." The principle by which persons of African ancestry were considered the personal property of others prevailed in North America for almost two-thirds of the three and a half centuries since the first Americans arrived there. Its influences increased even though the English colonies won independence and articulated national ideals directly in opposition to slavery. In spite of numerous ideological conflicts,however, the slavery system was maintained in the United States until 1865, and widespread antiblack attitudes nurtured by slavery continued thereafter. | |
| 613582306 | "virtual representation" | The British argument that the American colonies were represented in Parliament, since the members of Parliament represented all Englishmen in the empire. | |
| 613582307 | Indentured Servants | People who could not afford passage to the colonies could become indentured servants. Another person would pay their passage, and in exchange, the indentured servant would serve that person for a set length of time (usually seven years) and then would be free. | |
| 613582308 | "Lowell System" | was a paternalistic textile factory system of the early 19th century that employed mainly young women [age 15-35] from New England farms to increase efficiency, productivity and profits in ways different from other methods | |
| 613582309 | Haitian Rebellion | A period of brutal conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, leading to the elimination of slavery and the establishment of Haiti as the first republic ruled by people of African ancestry (1791 - 1804) Toissant L'Ouverture - prominent leader of the rebellion | |
| 613582310 | Constitutional Convention | The meeting of state delegates in 1787 in Philadelphia called to revise the Articles of Confederation. It instead designed a new plan of government, the US Constitution. | |
| 613582311 | Wilmot Proviso | proposed in 1846 that congress ban slavery in all southwestern lands that might become states; passed in the House but not by the Senate; slave states saw it as a northern attack on slavery | |
| 613582312 | Jefferson's Administration | Unsuccessful because Jefferson wanted to avoid being involved in Napoleonic War. Passed Embargo Act. Caused depression so he wasn't reelected. | |
| 613582313 | Yeoman Farmers | family farmers who hired out slaves for the harvest season, self-sufficient, participated in local markets alongside slave owners | |
| 613582314 | Compromise of 1850 | Forestalled the Civil War by instating the Fugitive Slave Act , banning slave trade in DC, admitting California as a free state, splitting up the Texas territory, and instating popular sovereignty in the Mexican Cession | |
| 613582315 | Federalists | Led by Alexander Hamilton, the Federalists believed in a strong central government, loose interpretation, and encouraged commerce and manufacturing. They were staunch supporters of the Constitution during ratification and were a political force during the early years of the United States. The Federalist influence declined after the election of Republican Thomas Jefferson to the presidency and disappeared completely after the Hartford Convention. | |
| 613582316 | Pickney's Treaty | 1795 - Treaty between the U.S. and Spain which gave the U.S. the right to transport goods on the Mississippi river and to store goods in the Spanish port of New Orleans. | |
| 613582317 | John C. Calhoun | (1830s-40s) South Carolina Senator - advocate for state's rights, limited government, and nullification. Leader of the Fugitive Slave Law, which forced the cooperation of Northern states in returning escaped slaves to the south. He also argued on the floor of the senate that slavery was needed in the south. He argued on the grounds that society is supposed to have an upper ruling class that enjoys the profit of a working lower class., | |
| 613582318 | Navigation Acts | A series of British regulations which taxed goods imported by the colonies from places other than Britain, or otherwise sought to control and regulate colonial trade. Increased British-colonial trade and tax revenues. The Navigation Acts were reinstated after the French and Indian War because Britain needed to pay off debts incurred during the war, and to pay the costs of maintaining a standing army in the colonies. | |
| 613582319 | Jacksonian Democracy | this term describes the spirit of the age led by Andrew Jackson. During this period, more offices became elective, voter restrictions were reduced or eliminated, and popular participation in politics increased. The Democratic Part, led by Jackson appealed to the new body of voters by stressing the belief in rotation in office, economy in government, governmental response to popular demands and decentralization of power. | |
| 613582320 | Post Civil War Legislation | Causes: Definition: In the history of the United States, the term Reconstruction Era has two senses: the first covers the complete history of the entire U.S. from 1865 to 1877 following the Civil War; the second sense focuses on the transformation of the Southern United States from 1863 to 1877, as directed by Washington, with the reconstruction of state and society. From 1863 to 1869, Presidents Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson took a moderate position designed to bring the South back to normal as soon as possible, while the Radical Republicans used Congress to block the moderate approach, impose harsh terms, and upgrade the rights of the Freedmen. The views of Lincoln and Johnson prevailed until the election of 1866, which enabled the Radicals to take control of policy, remove former Confederates from power, and enfranchise the Freedmen. A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, with support from the Army and the Freedman's Bureau. The Radicals, upset at President Johnson's opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges but the action failed by one vote in the Senate. President Ulysses S. Grant supported Radical Reconstruction, using both the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. military to suppress white insurgency and support Republican reconstructed states. Southern Democrats, alleging widespread corruption, counterattacked and regained power in each state by 1877. President Rutherford B. Hayes blocked efforts to overturn Reconstruction legislation. Effects: The three amendments added to the Constitution after the Civil War—the 13th, 14th, and 15th but especially the 14th—have been the most important additions to the Constitution since the original Bill of Rights. They—and especially the 14th—have also been among the most puzzling features of the Constitution. Seeing them in the light of their connection to natural rights helps to make sense of the amendments. | |
| 613582321 | Battle of Saratoga | Turning point of the American Revolution. It was very important because it convinced the French to give the U.S. military support. It lifted American spirits, ended the British threat in New England by taking control of the Hudson River, and, most importantly, showed the French that the Americans had the potential to beat their enemy, Great Britain. | |
| 613582322 | Louisiana Purchase | The U.S., under Jefferson, bought the Louisiana territory from France, under the rule of Napoleon, in 1803. The U.S. paid $15 million for the Louisiana Purchase, and Napoleon gave up his empire in North America. The U.S. gained control of Mississippi trade route and doubled its size. | |
| 613582323 | Republican Party Birth | Causes: In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought about the demise of the Whigs, who once again took opposing positions on legislation that involved the issue of slavery. When nativists formed the American Party in 1854, it soon became better known as the Know-Nothing Party. While the Democratic Party courted immigrant voters, nativists voted for Know-Nothing candidates. The Know-Nothing Party did surprisingly well at the polls in 1854. However, like the Whig Party, the Know-Nothings split over the issue of slavery in the territories. Southern Know-Nothings looked for another alternative to the Democrats. Definition: The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Southern Democratic Party and the briefly popular Know Nothing Party. Effects: The Democrats nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. Lincoln, representing the fast-growing western states, won the Republican nomination in 1860 and subsequently won the presidency. The party took on the mission of saving the Union and destroying slavery during the American Civil War and over Reconstruction. In the election of 1864, it united with pro-war Democrats to nominate Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket. |
