551. Cyrus McCormic, mechanical reaper
McCormic built the reaping machine in 1831, and it make farming more efficient. Part of the industrial revolution, it allowed farmers to substantially increase the acreage that could be worked by a single family, and also made corporate farming possible.

552. Elias Howe (1819-1869)
Invented the sewing machine in 1846, which made sewing faster and more efficient.

553. Ten-Hour Movement
Labor unions advocated a 10-hour workday. Previously workers had worked from sun up to sundown.

554. Clipper ships
Long, narrow, wooden ships with tall masts and enormous sails. They were developed in the second quarter of the 1800s. These ships were unequalled in speed and were used for trade, especially for transporting perishable products from distant countries like China and between the eastern and western U.S.

555. Cyrus Field (1819-1892)
An American financier who backed the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic. After four failed attempts in 1857, 1858 and 1865, a submarine cable was successfully laid between Newfoundland and Ireland in July, 1866.

556. Robert Fulton, steamships
A famous inventor, Robert Fulton designed and built America’s first steamboat, the Clermont in 1807. He also built the Nautilus, the first practical submarine.

557. Samuel F.B. Morse, telegraph
Morse developed a working telegraph which improved communications.

558. Walker Tariff
1846 - Sponsored by Polk's Secretary of Treasury, Robert J. Walker, it lowered the tariff. It introduced the warehouse system of storing goods until duty is paid.

559. Independent Treasury System, Van Buren and Polk
Meant to keep government out of banking. Vaults were to be constructed in various cities to collect and expand government funds in gold and silver. Proposed after the National Bank was destroyed as a method for maintaining government funds with minimum risk. Passed by Van Buren and Polk.

560. American Colonization Society
Formed in 1817, it purchased a tract of land in Liberia and returned free Blacks to Africa.

561. Abolitionism
The militant effort to do away with slavery. It had its roots in the North in the 1700s. It became a major issue in the 1830s and dominated politics after 1840. Congress became a battleground between pro and anti-slavery forces from the 1830's to the Civil War.

562. Sectionalism
Different parts of the country developing unique and separate cultures (as the North, South and West). This can lead to conflict.

563. William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
A militant abolitionist, he came editor of the Boston publication, The Liberator, in 1831. Under his leadership, The Liberator gained national fame and notoriety due to his quotable and inflammatory language, attacking everything from slave holders to moderate abolitionists, and advocating northern secession.

564. The Liberator
A militantly abolitionist weekly, edited by William Garrison from 1831 to 1865. Despite having a relatively small circulation, it achieved national notoriety due to Garrison's strong arguments.

565. American Anti-slavery Society
Formed in 1833, a major abolitionist movement in the North.

566. Theodore Weld (1802-1895)
Weld was devoted to the abolitionism movement. He advised the breakaway anti-slavery Whigs in Congress and his anonymous tract "American Slavery as It Is" (1839) was the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin.

567. Theodore Parker (1810-1860)
A leading transcendentalist radical, he became known as "the keeper of the public's conscience". His advocation for social reform often put him in physical danger, though his causes later became popular.

568. The Grimke sisters
Angelina and Sarah Grimke wrote and lectured vigorously on reform causes such as prison reform, the temperance movement, and the abolitionist movement.

569. Elijah Lovejoy (1802-1837)
An abolitionist and editor. The press he used was attacked four time and Lovejoy was killed defending it. His death was an example of violence against abolitionists.

570. Wendell Phillips
An orator and associate of Garrison, Phillips was an influential abolitionist lecturer.

571. Nat Turner's Insurrection
1831 - Slave uprising. A group of 60 slaves led by Nat Turner, who believed he was a divine instrument sent to free his people, killed almost 60 Whites in South Hampton, Virginia. This let to a sensational manhunt in which 100 Blacks were killed. As a result, slave states strengthened measures against slaves and became more united in their support of fugitive slave laws.

572. David Walker (1785-1830), "Walker's Appeal"
A Boston free black man who published papers against slavery.

573. Sojourner Truth
Name used by Isabelle Baumfree, one of the best-known abolitionists of her day. She was the first black woman orator to speak out against slavery.

574. Gabriel Prosser (1775-1800)
A slave, he planned a revolt to make Virginia a state for Blacks. He organized about 1,000 slaves who met outside Richmond the night of August 30, 1800. They had planned to attack the city, but the roads leading to it were flooded. The attack was delayed and a slave owner found out about it. Twenty-five men were hanged, including Gabriel.

575. Denmark Vesey
A mulatto who inspired a group of slaves to seize Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, but one of them betrayed him and he and his thirty-seven followers were hanged before the revolt started.

576. Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
A self-educated slave who escaped in 1838, Douglas became the best-known abolitionist speaker. He edited an anti-slavery weekly, the North Star.

577. Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Virginia
An iron mill in Richmond. It was run by skilled slave labor and was among the best iron foundry in the nation. It kept the Confederacy alive until 1863 as its only supplier of cannons. It was also the major munitions supplier of the South and was directly responsible for the capitol of the Confederacy being moved to Richmond.

578. Mountain Whites in the South
Rednecks. Usually poor, aspired to be successful enough to own slaves. Hated Blacks and rich Whites. Made up much of the Confederate Army, fighting primarily for sectionalism and states' rights.

579. Prigg v. Pennsylvania
1842 - A slave had escaped from Maryland to Pennsylvania, where a federal agent captured him and returned him to his owner. Pennsylvania indicted the agent for kidnapping under the fugitive slave laws. The Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for bounty hunters or anyone but the owner of an escaped slave to apprehend that slave, thus weakening the fugitive slave laws.

580. "King Cotton"
Expression used by Southern authors and orators before the Civil War to indicate the economic dominance of the Southern cotton industry, and that the North needed the South's cotton. In a speech to the Senate in 1858, James Hammond declared, "You daren't make war against cotton! ...Cotton is king!".

581. Free Soil Party
Formed in 1847 - 1848, dedicated to opposing slavery in newly acquired territories such as Oregon and ceded Mexican territory.

582. John Sutter (1803-1880)
A German immigrant who was instrumental in the early settlement of Califonria by Americans, he had originally obtained his lands in Northern California through a Mexican grant. Gold was discovered by workmen excavating to build a sawmill on his land in the Sacramento Valley in 1848, touching off the California gold rush.

583. Forty-Niners
Easterners who flocked to California after the discovery of gold there. They established claims all over northern California and overwhelmed the existing government. Arrived in 1849.

584. California applies for admission as a state
Californians were so eager to join the union that they created and ratified a constitution and elected a government before receiving approval from Congress. California was split down the middle by the Missouri Compromise line, so there was a conflict over whether it should be slave or free.

585. Compromise of 1850: provisions, impact
Called for the admission of California as a free state, organizing Utah and New Mexico with out restrictions on slavery, adjustment of the Texas/New Mexico border, abolition of slave trade in District of Columbia, and tougher fugitive slave laws. Its passage was hailed as a solution to the threat of national division.

586. Fugitive Slave Law
Enacted by Congress in 1793 and 1850, these laws provided for the return of escaped slaves to their owners. The North was lax about enforcing the 1793 law, with irritated the South no end. The 1850 law was tougher and was aimed at eliminating the underground railroad.

587. Anthony Burns (1834-1862)
A slave who fled from Virginia to Boston in 1854. Attempts to return him led to unrest in Boston. He was successfully returned at a cost $100,000. He was bought a few months later by a Boston group intent on setting him free.

588. Ablemann v. Booth
1859 - Sherman Booth was sentenced to prison in a federal court for assisting in a fugitive slave's rescue in Milwaukee. He was released by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on the grounds that the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overturned this ruling. It upheld both the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act and the supremacy of federal government over state government.

589. Webster's 7th of March Speech
Daniel Webster, a Northerner and opposed to slavery, spoke before Congress on March 7, 1850. During this speech, he envisioned thatg the legacy of the fugitive slave laws would be to divide the nation over the issue of slavery.

590. Nashville Convention
Meeting twice in 1850, its purpose was to protect the slave property in the South.

591. Henry Clay (1777-1852)
Clay helped heal the North/South rift by aiding passage of the Compromise of 1850, which served to delay the Civil War.

592. John C. Calhoun
Formerly Jackson's vice-president, later a South Carolina senator. He said the North should grant the South's demands and keep quiet about slavery to keep the peace. He was a spokesman for the South and states' rights.

593. Underground Railroad
A secret, shifting network which aided slaves escaping to the North and Canada, mainly after 1840.

594. Harriet Tubman (1821-1913)
A former escaped slave, she was one of the shrewdest conductors of the underground railroad, leading 300 slaves to freedom.

595. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
She wrote the abolitionist book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. It helped to crystalize the rift between the North and South. It has been called the greatest American propaganda novel ever written, and helped to bring about the Civil War.

596. Election of 1852: end of the Whig party
By this time the Whig party was so weakened that the Democrats swept Franklin Pierce into office by a huge margin. Eventually the Whigs became part of the new Republican party.

597. Perry and Japan
Commodore Matthew Perry went to Japan to open trade between it and the U.S. In 1853, his armed squadron anchored in Tokyo Bay, where the Japanese were so impressed that they signed the Treaty of Kanagania in 1854, which opened Japanese ports to American trade.

598. Ostend Manifesto
The recommendation that the U.S. offer Spain $20 million for Cuba. It was not carried through in part because the North feared Cuba would become another slave state.

599. Kansas - Nebraska Act
1854 - This act repealed the Missouri Compromise and established a doctrine of congressional nonintervention in the territories. Popular sovereignty (vote of the people) would determine whether Kansas and Nebraska would be slave or free states.

600. Birth of the Republican Party
A coalition of the Free Soil Party, the Know-Nothing Party and renegade Whigs merged in 1854 to form the Republican Party, a liberal, anti-slavery party. The party's Presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, captured one-third of the popular vote in the 1856 election.

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