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| the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. |
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| The Texas Annexation was the 1845 annexation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state. |
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| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo |
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| Officially titled the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic. |
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| The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. |
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| Passed by the United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern slave-holding interests and Northern Free-Soilers. |
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| The Gadsden Purchase is a 29,670-square-mile region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States purchased via a treaty that took effect on June 8, 1854. |
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| American abolitionist who believed in and advocated armed insurrection as the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. |
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| American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through the American Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. |
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| Articulated by Stephen A. Douglas at the second of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on August 27, 1858, in Freeport, Illinois. |
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| An unsuccessful proposal introduced by United States Senator John J. Crittenden |
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| Sea fort in Charleston, South Carolina, notable for two battles of the American Civil War. It was one of a number of special forts planned after the War of 1812, combining high walls and heavy masonry, and classified as Third System, as a grade of structural integrity. |
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| East-West, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. |
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| Stemming from the United States' annexation of Texas in 1845 and from a dispute over whether Texas. |
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| Popular sovereignty, or sovereignty of the peoples' rule, is the principle that the authority of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives, who are the source of all political power. |
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| "Fifty-four Forty or Fight |
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| Polk called for expansion that included Texas, California, and the entire Oregon territory. The northern boundary of Oregon was the latitude line of 54 degrees, 40 minutes. "Fifty-four forty or fight!" was the popular slogan that led Polk to victory against all odds. |
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| Anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. |
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| Passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. |
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| The Caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks-Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate when Representative Preston Brooks used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner. |
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| The Supreme Court ruled that Americans of African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court. The Court also ruled that Congress lacked power to ban slavery in the U.S. territories. |
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| Town in West Virginia. Paths wind through Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, which has 19th-century buildings, a Civil War Museum and John Brown's Fort, a key site in an 1859 abolitionist raid. |
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| Confederate States of America |
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| By February 1861, seven Southern states had seceded. On February 4 of that year, representatives from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana met in Montgomery, Alabama, with representatives from Texas arriving later, to form the Confederate States of America. |
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| Any of the slave states that bordered the northern free states during the US Civil War. |
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| The 11th President of the United States. He previously was Speaker of the House of Representatives and Governor of Tennessee. A protégé of Andrew Jackson, he was a member of the Democratic Party and an advocate of Jacksonian democracy. |
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| A proposal to prohibit slavery in the territory acquired by the United States at the conclusion of the Mexican War. |
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| A single-issue party, its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the Western territories, arguing that free men on free soil constituted a morally and economically superior system to slavery. |
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| Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. |
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| Transcontinental railroad |
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| A contiguous network of railroad trackage that crosses a continental land mass with terminals at different oceans or continental borders. |
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| The Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas. |
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| One of the two major political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. |
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| A series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. |
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| American presidential election held on Nov. 6, 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. |
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| American politician who served as the only President of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. |
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