US History Questions

The process of territorial expansion in the United States between 1800 and 1860 can be said to have been guided by two things: the desire for land, and the ideology of (1.) ______________________ . In 1803, only two decades after the Treaty of Paris had ceded all the land east of the Mississippi River between Canada and Florida to the United States, President Thomas Jefferson was presented with a surprising offer to purchase the huge swath of land west of the Mississippi from France. The resulting (2.) ________________________, which doubled the size of the United States, would go down as one of the biggest real estate bargains in history.

Jefferson had assumed that slavery would disappear once it was “diffused” over a wide area, but the invention of the (3.)__________________ by Eli Whitney in 1793 helped to ensure that slavery would rapidly expand into the southwestern part of the country. The issue of the expansion of slavery in the territories first came to a crisis in the (4.)_______________________ of 1820, which barred slavery north of the 36’30° line. Meanwhile, the advent of the (5). ________________________ in transportation and communication, propelled by inventions like the steamboat (first successfully developed by (6).____________________ ), gave a further boost to the westward movement of white Americans.

Under the presidency of Andrew Jackson, years of sporadic warfare and treaty violations gave way to the policy of Indian Removal, culminating in the deaths of several thousand Indians, mostly Cherokees, on the (7.)_________________________. Another Jacksonian, James K. Polk, led the rallying cry of (8.)”______________________!” in disputes with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory. While Oregon was eventually acquired peacefully, a decade’s worth of American intervention in Texas ultimately led to the outbreak of the (9.)____________________________ in 1846.

With the acquisition of nearly a million square miles as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the specter of slavery in the territories soon reared its ugly head again. Although the (10.) ___________________________ , which proposed banning slavery in the new territories, was rejected, a compromise was eventually reached with the help of the “Great Compromiser,” the Kentucky Whig (11.) ______________________. The
(12.) _____________________________ admitted California as a free state, abolished the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and left decisions about the status of slavery in the remaining territories up to local white inhabitants. It also included a new (13.) _________________________, which put in place stringent new regulations for the capture and return of runaway slaves.

In 1848, the (14.)____________________ Party had formed to contest the expansion of slavery into land they believed rightfully belonged to “free white men.” However, it was another compromise over the issue of slavery in the territories, the (15.) ___________________________ of 1854, brokered by Stephen Douglas, that re-ignited the slavery issue. Far from being a permanent settlement of the slavery issue, as Douglas had hoped, the approach of “popular sovereignty” in the territories soon led to chaos in the bloody episode known as (16.) “__________________________.”

The issue of slavery in the territories was further complicated by the Supreme Court’s decision in the (17.) ______________________, which attempted to permanently settle the question by declaring that African Americans, free or slave, had no rights under the Constitution. With the assault on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, led by (18.) _____________________ and a handful of followers, the country seemed headed for war. After the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, eleven southern states seceded, forming the (19.) __________________________________. With the firing of the first shots at (20.)_______________________, the Civil War began—thus commencing a new era in American history.

The process of territorial expansion in the United States between 1800 and 1860 can be said to have been guided by two things: the desire for land, and the ideology of (1.) manifest destiny. In 1803, only two decades after the Treaty of Paris had ceded all the land east of the Mississippi River between Canada and Florida to the United States, President Thomas Jefferson was presented with a surprising offer to purchase the huge swath of land west of the Mississippi from France. The resulting (2.) Louisiana Purchase...

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