AP U.S. History · Summary

Unit 5 summary

1. Manifest destiny drove the annexation of Texas, the Oregon split and the war with Mexico, which won the Mexican Cession.
2. Every new territory reopened the slavery question: the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act each brought it back to Congress, and the 1854 act split the parties.
3. Republicans aimed to stop slavery's spread, not to end it in the states; Dred Scott said Congress could not ban it in the territories.
4. Lincoln's 1860 election triggered secession, and the declarations that several seceding states issued named the defense of slavery as a central cause.
5. The Emancipation Proclamation freed people only in rebel areas but made ending slavery a war aim and opened the army to Black men.
6. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ended slavery, made freed people citizens and barred race-based limits on voting.
7. Without land or lasting federal protection, Reconstruction's gains eroded, and the Compromise of 1877 ended it.