L's Flashcards
Land Ordinance of 1784
A law that provided for territorial government and an orderly system by which each territory could progress to full statehood
Land Ordinance of 1785
A law that provided for the orderly surveying and distribution of land into townships six miles square, each composed of 3 one-square-mile (640 acre) sections, one of which was to be set aside for the support of education
Lecompton Constitution
A state constitution allowing slavery in Kansas that was drawn up in 1857 by the proslavery government in Kansas, though largely fraudulent means; Kansas voters, when given a chance to express themselves in a fair election, turned down the Lecompton constitution by an overwhelming margin, choosing to remain a territory rather than become a slave state, with Kansas finally being admitted as a free state in 1861
General Robert E. Lee
Overall commander of the Confederate army
Lewis and Clark
The two men (Meriwether Lewis and William Clark) authorized by President Jefferson to lead an expedition to explore the Western territory to the Pacific; with forty-eight men and a guide named Sacagawea ( a Shoshon Indian woman), they left St. Louis in 1804, and returned two years later with a wealth of scientific and anthropological information, having strengthened the United States’ claim to the Oregon territory
Lexington
the village in which seventy Minutemen awaited General Gage’s troops on their way to destroy a reported stockpile of colonial arms and ammunition in Concord; the Minutemen did not lay down their arms at the command of a British officer, but as they turned to disperse, a shot was fired, the British opened fire and killed eight Americans, most of whom were shot in the back, thereby beginning the War of Independence
Liberal Republicans
A faction of the Republican Party that favored hard money and a laissez-faire approach to economic issues
“Liberator
A paper published by William Lloyd Garrison beginning in 1831 that advocated total and immediate emancipation of slaves, thus giving new life to the abolitionist movement
Liberty Party
the first national antislavery party, it fielded a presidential candidate in 1840 on the platform of “free soil,” or non-expansion of slavery into the new Western territories, and again in 1844 on the platform of opposing the annexing of Texas based on fears that it would become another slave state
Lincoln-Douglas debates
In the 1858 Illinois senatorial race, debates between the incumbent Democratic senator and front-runner for the 1860 presidential nomination, Stephen A. Douglas, and a Springfield lawyer, little known outside the state, named Abraham Lincoln; despite Lincoln’s failure to win the Senate seat, the debates were a major success for him
Line of Demarcation
at Spain’s urging, the line that the pope, in 1493, established 100 leagues west and south of the Cape Verde Islands that divided all land into two equal parts - lands east of the line for Portugal and lands west of it for Spain
Literary Nationalism
Despite American publishers’ preference to print works from British authors or to import books from Europe, the efforts by a few Americans who were willing to pay the costs of publishing their own works and who found a growing number of readers
John Locke
A major English political philosopher of the Enlightenment
Louisbourg
A powerful French fortress at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River
Louisiana Purchase
the transaction whereby Napoleon’s offer to sell the entire French trans-Mississippi territory - including the port city of New Orleans - to the United States for $15 million, was accepted by President Jefferson’s delegation in 1803, thus doubling the territory of the United States
