Antebellum America

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: North and South, 1820

• The term antebellum refers to the time period before the Civil War.
• The Erie Canal created easy transportation of goods from the Northeast to the Midwest, allowing goods to move to the frontier quickly and affordably.
• The cotton gin made it much easier to remove the seeds from the fibers of cotton, making the crop (and therefore slavery) much more profitable.
• In Lowell, Massachussetts, cotton mills produced cloth from southern cotton and provided income for young women (known as mill girls) who worked in the mills.
• Enslaved people who tried to escape did so at great personal risk. Some brave individuals like Harriet Tubman were willing to help others try to escape along the Underground Railroad, a system of abolition supporters who helped transport runaway slaves north to freedom.
• Slavery would eventually become not only an economic issue but also a moral issue as the abolition movement (the movement opposing slavery, also referred to as the abolitionist movement) grew in the North.

Lesson 2: The Rise of Capitalism

• The Bank of the United States helped to regulate currency and the nation's economy. Andrew Jackson strongly opposed the bank and ran his election campaign around the idea of ending it.
• The Whig Party opposed Jackson and supported the Bank of the United States.
• A protective tariff is a tax charged on imported goods that makes them more expensive, allowing domestic manufacturers to compete with overseas manufacturers in terms of price.

Lesson 3: Technology and Infrastructure

• Infrastructure refers to the physical structures required for the operation of a society or industry. Roads, factory buildings, canals, utility systems, and computer networks are all examples of infrastructure.
• The Industrial Revolution led to mechanized factory-based manufacturing, completely changing the way that things were made, the availability of consumer goods, and the lives of American workers.

Lesson 4: Immigration and Migration

• The Irish Potato Famine from 1845 to 1852 reduced the population of Ireland both through death from starvation and families deciding to leave Ireland to seek opportunities in other countries. The famine was caused by a disease that destroyed much of the potato crop, which was the primary source of food for a large percentage of the Irish population.
• Some slaves risked everything by running away from the South, sometimes traveling with guides and receiving help from sympathetic supporters along the way. This network of helpers who assisted enslaved people in finding freedom in the North became known as the Underground Railroad.

Lesson 5: Education and Women's Rights

• In 1850, many children were homeschooled, but American children attended school at a higher rate than the children of any European country.
• The Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848 brought together around 300 people in support of women's rights.
• Sojourner Truth was a powerful speaker who pointed out that while some men thought women were weak and physically frail, enslaved women could plow and do the work of any man, showing their strength and equality.

Lesson 6: Art and Literature

• The early nineteenth century was a time of great artistic and literary expression in America.
• Transcendentalism was a literary and philosophical movement of the early 1800s that emphasized intuition, self-reliance, independence, the goodness of people, and nature. Notable transcendentalist writers included Fuller, Thoreau, and Emerson.

Lesson 7: The Agrarian Economy and Slavery

• While the North grew increasingly urban and industrialized in the early 19th century, the South remained largely agrarian with an economy that emphasized the production of cotton by slaves.
• Those who opposed slavery were called abolitionists.

Lesson 8: Building Tensions

• Secession is the departure of a state from the union. In the 1850s, there was talk of southern states seceding and forming their own country where slavery would be protected.
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act nullified the Missouri Compromise and made it possible for residents of the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide for themselves on the issue of slavery. After the act passed, slaveholders and abolitionists both rushed to the territory trying to ensure that they would have sufficient numbers to make the territory either a slave or free one when the time came to vote.

Final Project: A Poster Session

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