Review Sheet for Final Exam
Expansion: Florida, Monroe Doctrine, Donner Party
Religion: Charles Finney, Second Great Awakening, disestablishmentarianism, Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau.
Andrew Jackson’s Presidency:  Nullification,  states’ rights, Second Bank of the US, Currency Circular Indian Removal, assimilation, Trail of Tears, Cherokee.
Politics: Election of 1824, Election of 1840, Anti-Masons, nominating conventions, Second Party System, universal manhood suffrage, spoils system, Know-Nothings
Expansion:  Manifest Destiny, Texas Revolution, Goliad, Alamo, Donner Party, “54 40 or Fight,” California Gold Rush
Mexican War:  Zachary Taylor, “Spot Resolution,” Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Wilmot Proviso
Immigration:  Irish potato famine, temperance, parochial/Catholic schools, New York City Draft riots
1850s:  Henry Clay, “Omnibus Bill”, Stephen Douglas, Compromise of 1850, Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Slave Power Conspiracy, The Opium War, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Sumner-Brooks Affair, Dred Scott Case, Harper’s Ferry, John Brown
Civil War: Election of 1860, Cooper Union Address, Republican Party, secession, “The Cornerstone Speech,” Antietam, Emancipation Proclamation, Election of 1864
Reconstruction:  Black Codes, 10% Plan, Freedman’s Bureau, Radical Reconstruction, 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, Tenure of Office Act, Election of 1876, Compromise of 1877

Review Questions

  1.  Identify the major ways that politics changes between 1800 and 1840, and explain why a second party system developed between 1820 and 1840.
  2. Describe Andrew Jackson’s Indian and banking policies and assess the significance of Jackson’s presidency.
  3. Discuss the widening gulf between the north and south in terms of politics, immigration, society, and economics.  What role did expansion play in this?  How did the conflicts over Texas, the Mexican War, and expansion of slavery increase the tensions?
  4. How were the Compromise of 1850, the rise of the Republican Party, the Dred Scott case, and the Harper’s Ferry raid linked in terms of creating the preconditions for civil war?
  5. Discuss the basic causes of the Civil War.  Was the war a so-called “irrepressible conflict” (unavoidable) or the result of fanatics and bumbling politicians?
  6. Why did the North win the Civil War?
  7. Describe the major issues faced by the nation during Reconstruction.  Why did it “end” in 1877?

 

Potential Essays:

  1. On the surface, many things had absolutely nothing to do with slavery, and yet had everything to do with it.  Thoroughly identify each and explain their relationship to slavery in the United States:  Indian removal, nullification, westward expansion, Texas’ annexation, and the Mexican War.  Explain how these ALL led to an increase in sectional tensions and helped bring about the US Civil War.
  2. Trace the road to Civil War beginning in the 1850s.  Identify each, and explain how the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott case, and John Brown’s raid cemented a growing rift between the North and South.  What role did expansion play in the road to the Civil War? How did the conflicts over Texas, the Mexican War, and expansion of slavery increase the tensions already existing between the North and South?  Assess the argument that the Civil War was inevitable.