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Mason Dixon line plan
A boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, laid out by two English surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, in the 1760s. Before and during the Civil War, the line was symbolic of the division between slaveholding and free states. -
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Manifest Destiny
the belief or doctrine, held chiefly in the middle and latter part of the 19th century, that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to extend and enhance its political, social, and economic influences. -
Liberty Party Established
an antislavery political organization founded in 1840. It was formed by those abolitionists , under the leadership of James G. Birney and Gerrit Smith , who repudiated William Lloyd Garrison's nonpolitical stand. -
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California Gold Rush
a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. -
Compromise of 1850
a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War -
Ostend Manifesto
document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused.