Facts and Details in U.S. Political History from 1790 to 1898 - SAT Subject Test in United States History

The Missouri Compromise stated that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state and Maine would be admitted as free in order to keep a balance between states. It also stated that new states admitted out of the Louisiana Purchase would be free if they were north of the Southern border of Missouri.

Franklin Roosevelt. The agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission were created out of the New Deal legislation during FDR’s presidency.

In the election of 1796, John Adams was elected president by the Electoral College, while his political rival and opponent Thomas Jefferson was elected vice president by coming in second place. After the 1796 election, the 12th Amendment was passed to change this. For the 1800 election and all subsequent elections, the president and vice president were elected together.

Dred Scott, a slave brought by his master into the free state of Wisconsin, sued to get his freedom, claiming he was a natural born citizen under the United States Constitution. Scott lost the case, with Chief Justice Roger B. Taney writing an opinion which asserted that people of African descent had no rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The Emancipation Proclamation only abolished slavery in territories currently held by the Confederacy, and would free those slaves when the territories were conquered by the Union army, and was issued in the middle of the war on New Year’s 1863. The Proclamation’s lack of attention to the Border Slave States necessitated the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery throughout the nation, in 1865.

In his initial Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln specifically made slaves free only in territories that were still in open rebellion against the Union. The primary reason for doing so was Lincoln's pragmatic desire not to alienate those slave-owning territories and individuals that were fighting on behalf of the Union. However, the issuing of the Proclamation set the cause in motion and with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, at the end of the war, slavery was declared unconstitutional in all United States territory.

In December of 1860, following the election of Abraham Lincoln, the governing body of South Carolina voted unanimously for secession. Soon after, in early 1861, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Lousiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee followed suit. Secession recieved the majority of popular support in the states of Missouri and Kentucky, but their pro-Union governments prevented this from happening. Lincoln declared the secession legally "void" and thus began the Civil War.

Henry Clay’s American System was a wide ranging economic plan developed and advocated by Clay throughout the 1820s while he was a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The key features were attempts to actively promote economic activities through raising revenues with tariffs and land prices, and economic improvements like the Bank of the United States and building canals and railroads.

Four slave states remained in the Union during the secession crisis of 1860-1861, all of which were the most northern states. The deep south states were the first states to secede, but Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware all remained in the Union despite being slave states.

The plot to assassinate Lincoln was a broad plan by John Wilkes Booth to destabilize the Federal government and rally the fading Confederate cause after Lee's Surrender. Booth himself planned to kill both Lincoln and Grant at the same time, while he sent co-conspirators to kill Secretary of State Seward and Vice President Johnson. Lincoln ended up being the only person killed in the plot, while Seward was severely injured in a knife attack.

Before the Civil War, Jefferson Davis served as a Congressman for the state of Mississippi, and, initially opposed secession from the Union. However, once the Confederate States were formed he was elected without opposition to the position of President. It was an office he would serve for the entirety of the existence of the Confederate States. Historians generally agree that Davis was an ineffectual war-time leader and credit his limited economic understanding with the rapid inflation and impoverishment experienced in the South during the Civil War. Immediately following the war Davis was widely disgraced and disparaged, however in the years since he has regained something of an iconic status among many Southerners, who revere his defiance and war-time spirit.

For the majority of the United States, by the time of Civil War, cultural and political identity was firmly established as either dominantly Northern, pro-Federal power and anti-slavery or Southern, pro-States’ rights and pro-slavery. However, in the border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware, there were large cultural communities of both Northerners and Southerners. In Kentucky and Missouri, in particular, the majority of the population favored secession from the Union and it was only due to the decisions of those in power (in the State Legislature) that they remained part of the Union. Lincoln faced a near constant battle to keep all four states loyal. Virginia, on the other hand, was perhaps the political and ideological centre of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis’ government was run out of Richmond and many of the battles took place on Virginian soil. In 1863 West Virginia split from Virginia to return to the Union – a division that has never been remedied to this day.

It was Vice President Aaron Burr who shot Alexander Hamilton. The two men had had a contentious political and personal relationship that reached a breaking point when Hamilton defamed Aaron Burr during the latter's 1804 New York gubernatorial bid.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo resulted in territory for the states of Caifornia, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming.

Jefferson Davis was the President of the Confederate States of America throughout the U.S. Civil War.

At the Burning of Washington, during the War of 1812, the White House and U.S. Capitol were largely destroyed by British troops.

It was President Andrew Jackson who signed into law the Indian Removal Act, which resulted in the removal of many southern indigenous nations to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi River; this removal was known as the Trail of Tears.

Slavery was the main issue of all seven debates held in Illinois between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858. Lincoln lost the election, but the national attention enabled him to become the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, who would later become the 18th President of the United States, at Appomattox Court House.