American History questions | American History answers |
Noah Webster | a schoolteacher from Ney England who wrote the "Blue-Backed Speller" and other textbooks, as well as the first dictionary of the American language. |
WIlliam H. McGuffey | a Presbyterian preacher, schoolteacher, and college professor from Pennsylvania who wrote a series of Eclectic Readers popularly known as McGuffey's readers |
Horace Mann | an educator from Massachusetts who promoted the idea of public education in the mid-1800s |
Josiah Holbrook | a teacher and itinerant lecturer from Connecticut who pioneered the lyceum movement in the United States |
James Fenimore Cooper | New York author of the early 19th century who wrote stories about American life, famouse for his Leatherstocking Tales, considered to be the first truly American author |
Washington Irving | New York author of the early 19th century who wrote about the life both in American and Europe |
William Cullen Bryant | a key writer from New York, active in the early 19th century as both a poet and an editor, famous for his poem Thanatopis |
Edgar Allan Poe | New York author of the early 19th century known as the first major American Literary critic and a major American fiction author, famous for his short stories and eerie, mystical poems |
Nathaniel Hawthorne | Ney England author of the mid 19th century, famous for Moby Dick and Billy Budd |
Ralph Waldo Emerson | famous essayist and poet from New England, began the Transcendental movement in the mid 19 century, famous for Walden |
Walt Whitman | famous Transcendentalist author of the mid 19th century, known for Leaves of Grass |
George Bancroft | best known American historian, published a multivolume HIstory of the United States, first American historyian to emphasize careful scholarship in his writing |
Francis Prkman | another important American historyian whose works about the French in the New World and about the American Indians are still considered valuable sources of history, famouse for The California and Oregon Trail |
James Gordon Bennet and Horace Greeley | newspaper publishers of the mid 19th century |
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Latrobe | famous American architects, Jefferson designed the capitol of Richmond, and Latrobe helped design the Capitol at Washington |
Gilbert Stuart | American Painter best remembered for his portrait studies of George Washington |
Charles Willson Peale | American Painter who retired from active painting to devote full attention to establishing a natural history museum in Philadelphia, also helped found the Academy of Fine Arts and taught many of his 17 children to paint |
Edward Hicks | an itinerant Quaker preacher who painted a number of works depicting Isaiah's prophecies of the Millennium, which Hicks called "Peaceable Kingdon" |
Samuel F. B. Morse | American painter who invented the telograph |
Stephen Foster | America's most beloved composer of popular songs |
Lowell Mason | carried on the tradition of the singing schools instituted earlier by William Billings |
Louis Agassiz and Benjamin Silliman | American scientist who contrubuted to the field of geology, Agassiz became one of the most distinguished geologists in the world |
Asa Gray | America's leading botanist |
John James Audubon | observed, classified, and painted America's birds. |
John Deere | patented his famous steel plow in the 1830s |
Cyrus McCormick | invented the reaper |
Eli Whitney | New England schoolteacher who revolutionized American cotton production with his invention of the cotton gin |
Samuel Slater | skilled English machinist who helped establish the first American textile factory in Rhode Island in 1790, remembered as the "Father of the American Factory System" |
Francis Cabot Lowell | invented a power loom in 1812 |
Elias Howe | invented a much-improved sewing machine in 1846 |
Isaac Merrit Singer | improved the sewing machine, credited with making it a common household appliance |
James Watt | Scotsman credited with inventing the first practical steam engine |
Oliver Evans | first to develop a high pressure steam engine in the late 1700s |
John Loudon McAdams | British engineer who designed the construction of many roads in the mid 19th century |
Robert Fulton | credited with building the first practical steamboat, the Clermont |
DeWitt Clinton | governor of New York who promoted the construction of the Erie Canal |
matthew Maury | American Naval officer and oceanographer who helped plot the route for a transatlantic telegraph cable from Newfoundland to Ireland |
Cyrus Field | laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1857 |
Stephen Austin | established a large American settlement in Texas |
Sam Houston | led the Texans to victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, winning their independence from Mexico, the first president of the "Lone Star Republic" |
Santa Anna | Mexican dictatory who tried to crush the rebellion in Texas, captured at the Battle of San Jacinto |
william Barret Travis | commander of the Texans who held the Alamo fonearly two weeks before they were all mercilessly killed |
Jim Bowie | inventor of the famed bowie knofe, died defending th Almo |
Jason Lee | Methodist missary who establishe a mission in the Oregon territory in 1833 |
Marcus Whitman | Presbyterian medical missionary who established a work among the Indians of the Northwest, led the "great Migrations" of settlers to Oregon in 1843 |
Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding | the first white woman to journey west of the Rockies |
Henry Clay | presidential canditate for the Whigs in the election of 1844 |
James K. Pold | President from 1845 to 1849 led the nation during the Mexican War |
Jedediah Smith | Christian frontiersman who played an important role in exploring the West and opening it to settlers, discovered South Pass |
Zachary Taylor | commander of U.S. troops sent to guard the Texas border against possible invasion from Mexico |
John Slidell | a special envoy sent by president Polk to Mexico |
Winfield Scott | U.S. general sent by water to attack the Mexican coastal city of Veracruz |
John C. Fremont | U.S. Army catain who took part in the "Bear Flag Revolt" against Mexicaan authorities in California |
Stephen W. Kearny | U.S. general who led forves from Fort Leavenworth, Missouri, across the Rockies and into New Mexico |
Josh Sutter | owned the sawmill where gold was first dicovered in California |
William Taylor | Mehodist preacher who followed the gold rush to California in 1849. eventually ministerd on all of the inhabited continents, had the farthestreaching ministry of any Methodist evangelist |
James Gadsden | U.S. minister to Mexico who negotiated the Gadsden Purchase |
William Lloyd Garrison | New England abolitionist, editor of the abolitionist newspaper The LIberator, demanded the immediate and unconditional freeing of all slaves |
Harriet Tubman | an escaped slave who guided some 300 slaves to freedom in the 1850s, best known leader of the underground railroad |
David Wilmot | Congressman who made a proposal known as the Wilmot Proviso |
Abraham Lincoln | congressman from Illinois from 1847 to 1849, first Republican President, guided the nation through the Civil War |
Lewis Cass | senator who frist proposed the principle of popular sovereigny of squatter sovereignty |
Sachary Taylor | hero of Mexican War, Presidnt form 1849 to 1850 |
Martin Van Buren | former president who led the Free-Siol party in New York state |
Henry Clay | Senator who proposed the compromise tarriff of 1833 and the compromise of 1850 |
John C. Calhoun | senator who became a skillful defender of states rights |
Daniel Webster | senator who promoted the free siol concept, considered to be the greatest oratory of the day |
William H. Seward | a promising young leader in Congress |
Jefferson Davis | senator from Mississippi who was elected president of the Confederacy |
Salmon P. Chase | a promising young leader in Congress |
Stephen A. Douglas | senator f Illinois who introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, known for his "freeport Doctrine" |
Millard Fillmore | Vice President who succeeded President Tylor after his death in 1850, President from 1850 to 1853, gave his full support to the Compromise of 1850 |
Franklin Pierce | President from 1853 to 1857 |
Winfield Scott | Whig candidate in the Presidential elevtion of 1852 |
John Brown | deranged Free Soiler who attacked the proslavery settlement in Pottawatomiecreek and tried to Raid the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia |
John C. Fremont | Republican candidate in the Presidential election of 1856 |
James Buchanan | President from 1857 to 1861 |
Roger Taney | the best-remembered chief justice next to John Marshall |
Robert E. Lee | commander of a company of U.S. Marines sent to Virginia to capture John Brown at Harper's Ferry |
Henry Ward Beecher | one of the most articulate preachers of his dy, preached fiery messages against slavery |
John Greenleaf Whittier | bombarded the reading public with literature that aroused sympathy for the slaves |
Harriet Beecher Stowe | Sister of Henry ward Beecher, Publihed the novel Uncle Toms Cabin in 1852 |
Hinton Rowan Hlper | published a book entitled The Impending Crisis of the South in 1857 |
John C. Breckinridge | chosen by the Democrats to be Buchanan's Vice President |
John Bell | chosen by the Constitutional Union party as its Presidential candiate |
John J. Crittenden | Senator from Kentucky who proposed a Constitutional amendment recognizing slavery in all territories south othe the 36 30 line |
"fifty-four forty or fight" | said by James Polk |
Underground Railroad | a network of escape routes and hiding places which fugitive slaves could escape to |
Where was Americas 1st public high school? | founded in Boston |
What was the 1st State University? | University of North Carolina |
Abolitionists | people against slavery |
Erie canal | ran a distance of 363 miles, connecting the Hudson River to Lake Erie in 1825 |
Liberia | a place for freed African American slaves |
Where was the 1st railroad built? | England |
domesic system | manufacturing at home |
Liberty party | organized by the abolitionists, suppted James Birney for the Presidency in 1840 and again in 1844 |
what was the 1st state to succeed from the Union? | South Carolina |
who was the "Pathfinder of the sea"? | Matthew Murry |
"Blue-Backed Speller" | nickname of Noah Webster's popular American Speller Book |
Uncle Tom's Cabin | written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 |
The Impending Crisis of the South | published by Hinton Rowan Helper in 1857 |
The Liberator | an abolitionist newspaper by William Lloyd Garrison |
The California and Oregon Trail | Francis Parkman wrote these and are still considered valuable sourves of history |
Leaves of Grass | Written by Walt Whitman |
The Scarlet Letter | Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne |
Walden | written by Henry David Thoreau |
Thanatopsis | a poem written by William Cullen Bryant |
Leather Stocking Tales | a story about American life, written by James Fenimore Cooper |
Moby Dick | written by Herman Melville |
History of the United States | a multivolume written by George Bancroft |