You are looking at 1-20 of 33 entries
Andrew Johnson
(1808–75)US politician; 17th President of the USA (1865–69). As the only southern senator to support the Union in the American Civil War he was appointed military governor of Tennessee. Having been ...
Battle of Mexico City
The final campaign of the Mexican War, won by the United States on September 14, 1848. In early 1847, President James K. Polk and Gen. Winfield Scott planned to occupy ...
Civil-Military Relations
Americans have traditionally been suspicious of military governance, a distrust that stems from their belief in individual liberty, representative government, and civilian control of the military. ...
Congress
The national legislative body of the United States, which meets at the Capitol in Washington DC; it was established by the Constitution of 1787 and is composed of the Senate and the House of ...
Constitutional and Political Basis of War and the Military
When the framers met in Philadelphia to draft the U.S. Constitution, they were aware that existing models of government placed the war power squarely in the hands of the king. ...
Democratic Party
One of the two main political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican party, which follows a broadly liberal program, tending to support social reform and minority rights.[...]
Expansionism
Expansionism—the desire of nations and empires to annex lands, peoples, or resources belonging to others—is a peculiar characteristic of a world order where boundaries are subject to the ambitions of ...
George Bancroft
(1800–1891),Massachusetts statesman and scholar, while holding various government posts obtained material for his monumental History of the United States (1834–76). As secretary of navy under Polk, ...
Gideon Johnson Pillow
(1806–78) Confederate army officer. Having befriended James K. Polk, a native of the same Tennessee region, he received a commission as brigadier general of volunteers from Polk after Polk's election ...
Gideon Welles
(1802–1878) U.S. politician and Secretary of the Navy. Born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, on July 1, 1802, Gideon Welles attended the academy at Norwich, Vermont (now Norwich University). In the 1820s ...
Henry Clay
(1777–1852)US statesman and orator. As Speaker of the House of Representatives (1811–14) he played a central role in the agitation leading to the War of 1812, and was one of the commissioners ...
James Buchanan
(1791–1868)US Democratic statesman, 15th President of the USA (1857–61). He consistently leaned towards the pro-slavery side in the developing dispute over slavery. Towards the end of his term the ...
James Gillespie Birney
(b. 4 February 1792; d. 25 November 1857), abolitionist and two-time presidential candidate for the Liberty Party.James Gillespie Birney was born in Danville, Kentucky, to a slaveholding family. He ...
John Charles Frémont
(1813–90)US explorer and politician. He was responsible for exploring several viable routes to the Pacific across the Rockies in the 1840s. He made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1856, ...
John Tyler
(1790–1862)US Whig statesman, 10th President of the USA (1841–45). Successor to William Henry Harrison as President, he was noted for securing the annexation of Texas (1845). Throughout his political ...
Liberty Party
The Liberty party was organized in Warsaw, New York, in 1839 by abolitionists convinced that they must take their decade-long antislavery propaganda campaign into the polling booth to accomplish ...
Mexican War
(1846–48) a war that vastly increased U.S. territory and contributed to the sectional crisis. Elected in 1844 on a platform of expansionism, James K. Polk moved quickly to fulfill his ...
Monroe Doctrine
A principle of US policy, originated by James Monroe (1758–1831), American Democratic Republican statesman, 5th President of the US 1817–25. The Monroe doctrine states that any intervention by ...
Oregon Trail
A route across the central US, from the Missouri to Oregon, some 3,000 km (2,000 miles) in length. It was used chiefly in the 1840s by settlers moving west.
Oregon treaty
1846.The disputed eastern boundary between Canada and the USA was settled by the Ashburton treaty of 1842. The vast area between the Rockies and the Pacific known as the Oregon Territory was covered ...
