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Question 1 of 50
In 1845, a New York journalist wrote that it was the nation’s God-given right to spread across the whole continent, and the phrase became the slogan of expansionists who wanted Texas, Oregon, and California. It was used to justify war with Mexico and the displacement of Native peoples. This belief is called
Question 2 of 50
In 1844, the Democrats nominated a little-known Tennessean who promised to annex Texas and take all of Oregon. In one term he settled the Oregon boundary, provoked and won a war with Mexico, and added more territory to the United States than any president except Jefferson. This president was
Question 3 of 50
After winning independence from Mexico in 1836, a former Mexican province spent nine years as an independent republic because northern politicians refused to admit another slave state. In 1845, Congress brought it into the Union by joint resolution, and Mexico, which had never recognized its independence, broke off relations. This action was the
Question 4 of 50
Expansionists demanded the entire Pacific Northwest up to the 54°40′ line and threatened war with Britain to get it, but in 1846 President Polk, already on the brink of war with Mexico, accepted a compromise that split the region at the 49th parallel. This agreement was the
Question 5 of 50
In 1846, after Mexican troops clashed with American soldiers whom Polk had sent into disputed territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, Congress declared war. American armies captured New Mexico, California, and finally Mexico City, while Whigs such as Abraham Lincoln denounced the war as a land grab. This conflict was the
Question 6 of 50
In 1848, Mexico ended the war by recognizing the Rio Grande as the Texas border and ceding California and the present-day Southwest to the United States in exchange for $15 million and the assumption of claims by American citizens. The land it transferred immediately reopened the question of slavery’s expansion. This treaty was the
Question 7 of 50
The roughly 525,000 square miles that Mexico surrendered in 1848, including all of California, Nevada, and Utah and most of Arizona and New Mexico, increased the size of the United States by nearly one-third and completed the nation’s reach to the Pacific. This territory is known as the
Question 8 of 50
In 1846, a Pennsylvania Democrat attached an amendment to a war appropriations bill declaring that slavery would never exist in any territory taken from Mexico. It passed the House, where the North had more votes, and died in the Senate, where the sections were balanced. This proposal was the
Question 9 of 50
In 1853, the United States paid Mexico $10 million for a strip of desert in what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico, because southern leaders wanted a practical route for a transcontinental railroad that would run through the South. It completed the boundaries of the continental United States. This acquisition was the
Question 10 of 50
In 1848, antislavery Whigs, northern Democrats, and former Liberty Party members formed a party that did not call for abolishing slavery in the South but demanded that it be kept out of the western territories so that free white farmers could settle there. It ran Martin Van Buren for president. This party was the
Question 11 of 50
Michigan senator Lewis Cass and later Stephen Douglas argued that the fairest way to settle the slavery question in the territories was to let the settlers of each territory vote on it themselves, keeping Congress out of the decision. The idea sounded democratic but set off a violent competition to control territorial elections. This principle is called
Question 12 of 50
In January 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, and within two years some 300,000 people from the East, Latin America, Europe, and China poured into California. The population explosion let California skip the territorial stage and apply for statehood as a free state in 1850. This event was the
Question 13 of 50
In 1850, Henry Clay proposed and Stephen Douglas pushed through a package of laws that admitted California as a free state, organized Utah and New Mexico under popular sovereignty, ended the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and gave the South a tougher fugitive slave law. This package was the
Question 14 of 50
As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress required federal officials and ordinary northern citizens to help capture runaways, denied accused fugitives a jury trial, and paid commissioners more for ruling that a person was a slave than for ruling that he was free. This law was the
Question 15 of 50
In 1852, the daughter of a famous New England minister published a novel about an enslaved man sold away from his family and beaten to death by a brutal master. It sold 300,000 copies in its first year and was staged in theaters across the North. This book was
Question 16 of 50
In 1854, Stephen Douglas, who wanted a northern route for a transcontinental railroad, won southern votes for organizing two new territories by agreeing that their settlers could vote on slavery, even though both lay north of the line where slavery had been banned since 1820. This law was the
Question 17 of 50
From 1855 to 1856, proslavery “border ruffians” from Missouri and antislavery settlers sent by New England emigrant societies set up rival territorial governments, and the violence included the sack of the free-state town of Lawrence and John Brown’s killing of five proslavery men at Pottawatomie Creek. This episode is known as
Question 18 of 50
In 1854, northern Whigs, Free-Soilers, and antislavery Democrats outraged by the Kansas-Nebraska Act formed a new party dedicated to keeping slavery out of the territories. It drew almost no support in the South, finished a strong second in the 1856 presidential election, and won the White House four years later. This party was the
Question 19 of 50
In the early 1850s, a secret nativist society alarmed by the flood of Irish and German Catholic immigrants grew into a political party that demanded a 21-year waiting period for citizenship and the exclusion of Catholics from office. It won several state elections before splitting over slavery. This party was the
Question 20 of 50
In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that an enslaved man who had lived for years in free territory was still a slave, that no African American could be a citizen, and that Congress had never had the power to ban slavery in the territories, making the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. This case was
Question 21 of 50
In 1858, a Republican lawyer challenged the most powerful Democrat in the Senate to seven public debates across Illinois, arguing that slavery was a moral wrong that must not spread, while his opponent defended popular sovereignty. The Republican lost the race but became a national figure. These events were the
Question 22 of 50
In October 1859, a radical abolitionist who had already killed proslavery settlers in Kansas led 21 men in seizing a federal arsenal in Virginia, hoping to arm enslaved people for a general uprising. The raid was crushed within two days and its leader was hanged. This event was
Question 23 of 50
With the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings and a fourth candidate running on a platform of simply preserving the Union, a Republican won the presidency with about 40 percent of the popular vote and not a single electoral vote from the South. This contest was the
Question 24 of 50
Between December 1860 and February 1861, seven Deep South states held conventions and voted to leave the Union, arguing that the states had created the federal government and could withdraw when their rights, above all the right to hold slaves, were threatened. This act is called
Question 25 of 50
n February 1861, delegates from the seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, wrote a constitution that explicitly protected slavery and stressed state sovereignty, and chose Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis as president. The new government later moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia. This government was the
Question 26 of 50
In December 1860, a Kentucky senator proposed constitutional amendments that would extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, protect slavery south of it forever, and bar Congress from ever interfering with slavery in the states. President-elect Lincoln told Republicans to reject any plan that let slavery expand. This plan was the
Question 27 of 50
In April 1861, Lincoln notified South Carolina that he would send food but no arms or reinforcements to a federal garrison in Charleston Harbor, forcing the Confederacy to choose between tolerating a Union fort and firing the first shot. Confederate guns opened fire on April 12, and the war began. This fort was
Question 28 of 50
At the start of the war, the aging general-in-chief Winfield Scott proposed defeating the South not by invading it but by blockading its ports, seizing the Mississippi River, and slowly squeezing it until it collapsed. Newspapers mocked the strategy as too slow. This strategy was the
Question 29 of 50
Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware allowed slavery but never seceded, and Lincoln handled them with extreme care, suspending habeas corpus in Maryland and delaying any move against slavery so as not to drive them into the Confederacy. Their loyalty gave the Union vital manpower and control of the Ohio River. These states are called the
Question 30 of 50
In September 1862, Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the North was stopped in Maryland in a battle that produced about 23,000 casualties in a single day, the bloodiest in American history. The Union victory was incomplete, but it was enough to let Lincoln announce the Emancipation Proclamation. This battle was
Question 31 of 50
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln used his powers as commander in chief to declare all enslaved people in areas still in rebellion to be free, while leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states and Union-occupied regions. It also opened the army to Black soldiers. This order was the
Question 32 of 50
In July 1863, Lee’s second invasion of the North ended in a three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania that climaxed in a failed Confederate assault across open ground against the Union center. Lee lost a third of his army and never again went on the offensive. This battle was
Question 33 of 50
In November 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery in Pennsylvania, Lincoln delivered a speech of roughly 270 words that dated the nation’s birth to the Declaration of Independence and described the war as a test of whether government “of the people, by the people, for the people” could survive. This speech was the
Question 34 of 50
After a six-week siege, a Confederate fortress on a bluff above the Mississippi River surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863, the day after the Union victory at Gettysburg. Its fall gave the Union control of the entire river and cut Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana off from the rest of the Confederacy. This stronghold was
Question 35 of 50
In July 1863, after Congress passed a conscription law that let wealthy men avoid service by paying $300 or hiring a substitute, mobs of mostly Irish immigrant workers rampaged for four days, lynching Black residents and burning an orphanage, until troops fresh from Gettysburg restored order. This event was the
Question 36 of 50
After capturing Atlanta in September 1864, a Union general led 60,000 men across Georgia to Savannah, living off the land and deliberately destroying railroads, crops, barns, and factories across a path up to sixty miles wide in order to break the South’s ability and will to keep fighting. This campaign was
Question 37 of 50
On April 9, 1865, with his starving army surrounded in Virginia, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in a private home in a small village. Grant allowed the Confederates to keep their horses and sidearms and go home, and the remaining southern armies gave up within weeks. This surrender took place at
Question 38 of 50
In 1862, with southern Democrats no longer in Congress to block it, the Republican majority passed a law offering 160 acres of public land to any adult citizen or intending citizen who would live on it and farm it for five years, paying only a small filing fee. This law was the
Question 39 of 50
In December 1863, Lincoln announced that a seceded state could form a new government and return to the Union as soon as one-tenth of the men who had voted in 1860 swore an oath of loyalty and accepted the end of slavery. Radical Republicans considered the terms far too lenient. This proposal was the
Question 40 of 50
Because the Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure that did not reach the border states and might not survive a court challenge, Lincoln pressed Congress to end slavery permanently, and in 1865 the states ratified an amendment declaring that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States. This amendment was the
Question 41 of 50
In March 1865, Congress created an agency within the War Department to distribute food and clothing, settle labor disputes, run hospitals, and establish schools for formerly enslaved people and poor whites in the South. It founded thousands of schools but never delivered the “forty acres” many freedpeople expected. This agency was the
Question 42 of 50
In 1865 and 1866, the southern state governments formed under President Johnson’s lenient plan passed laws that required freedpeople to sign annual labor contracts, allowed the arrest of the unemployed as vagrants, and barred Black southerners from owning land, serving on juries, or testifying against whites. These laws were the
Question 43 of 50
In 1868, the states ratified an amendment declaring that everyone born in the United States is a citizen, forbidding any state to deny a person equal protection of the laws or due process, and reducing the representation of states that denied Black men the vote. The former Confederate states had to ratify it to be readmitted. This amendment was the
Question 44 of 50
A group of congressional Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner argued that the defeated South should be treated as conquered territory, that freedpeople must have full civil and political rights, and that Confederate leaders should be barred from power. They repeatedly overrode Andrew Johnson’s vetoes. These politicians were the
Question 45 of 50
In March 1867, Congress passed over the president’s veto a law that dissolved the southern governments Johnson had recognized, divided the ten remaining former Confederate states into five military districts under army generals, and required each state to guarantee Black male suffrage and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before rejoining the Union. These laws were the
Question 46 of 50
In 1868, after the president fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act in order to obstruct military Reconstruction, the House voted eleven articles against him and the Senate tried him, falling one vote short of the two-thirds needed to remove him. This event was the
Question 47 of 50
In 1870, the states ratified an amendment declaring that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, extending Black male suffrage to the North as well as the South. It said nothing about literacy tests, poll taxes, or women. This amendment was the
Question 48 of 50
After the war, landowners who had land but no money and freedpeople who had labor but no land settled on an arrangement in which a family farmed a plot in exchange for a share of the crop, usually a third to a half, while buying supplies on credit from the landowner or a local merchant. This system is called
Question 49 of 50
Founded in Tennessee in 1866 by former Confederate soldiers, a secret society spread across the South and used whippings, arson, and murder to keep Black men from voting, drive Republican officials from office, and restore white Democratic control. Congress answered with the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871. This group was the
Question 50 of 50
The 1876 presidential election ended with disputed returns from three southern states and no clear winner, and the deadlock was broken by an informal bargain in which Democrats accepted Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president in exchange for the withdrawal of the last federal troops from the South. This bargain was the
