Page 429 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Virginia Plan Offered by James Madison and the Virginia delegation at the Whigs The second-party system began in the 1830s and ended in the 1850s
Constitutional Convention, this proposal called for a strong executive office with the demise of the Whigs and the rise of the Republican party.
and two houses of Congress, each with representation proportional to a state’s Whiskey Rebellion Protests in 1794 by western Pennsylvania farmers
population. against a federal tax on whiskey. The uprising was suppressed when President
Virgin of Guadalupe Apparition of the Virgin Mary that has become a George Washington called an army of 15,000 troops to the area.
symbol of Mexican nationalism. Wilmont Proviso In 1846, shortly after the outbreak of the Mexican-
Wade-Davis Bill In 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis bill to counter American War, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania introduced this
Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for Reconstruction. The bill required that a major- amendment banning slavery in any lands won from Mexico.
ity of a former Confederate state's white male population take a loyalty oath XYZ Affair A diplomatic incident in which American peace commission-
and guarantee equality for African Americans. President Lincoln pocket- ers sent to France by President John Adams in 1797 were insulted with bribe
vetoed the bill. demands from their French counterparts, dubbed X, Y, and Z in American
War Hawks Congressional leaders who, in 1811 and 1812, called for war newspapers. The incident heightened war fever against France.
against Britain. yeomen Southern small landholders who owned no slaves, and who lived
War of 1812 War between Britain and the United States. U.S. justifications primarily in the foothills of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains. They were
for war included British violations of American maritime rights, impressment self-reliant and grew mixed crops, although they usually did not produce a
of seamen, provocation of the Indians, and defense of national honor. substantial amount to be sold on the market.
Whigs In mid-eighteenth century Britain, the Whigs were a political faction Yorktown Virginia market town on a peninsula bounded by the York and
that dominated Parliament. Generally, they opposed royal influence in gov- James rivers, where Lord Cornwallis’s army was trapped by the Americans
ernment and wanted to increase the power of Parliament. In America, a Whig and French in 1781.
party coalesced in the 1830s in opposition to President Andrew Jackson. The Young America In the 1840s and early 1850s, many public figures—
American Whigs supported federal power and internal improvements but not especially younger members of the Democratic Party—used this term to
territorial expansion. The Whig party collapsed in the 1850s. describe their program of territorial expansion and industrial growth.

G-4