Yeoman Farmer

Sounds fancy, right? It's actually much duller than you think: the yeoman farmer is the Jeffersonian ideal of happy, healthy, and industrious small farmers. It was held up as the embodiment of the American spirit by Free Soilers (a more radical abolitionist political party) and other idealists, but they added an Antebellum twist to make those ideal small farmers of the non-slaveholding variety.

For more on yeoman farmers, check this out.

Secession

Eleven Southern states, dependent on slavery-run agriculture (not that that was the only reason for the Civil War), withdrew from the nation over a period of about six months from 1860 to 1861. They set up the Confederate States of America and elected Jefferson Davis as President.

The Union and Confederacy were at each other’s throats until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Note that the Homestead Act came after secession, making that bearing arms against the Union clause very, very significant.

Homesteader

Anyone crazy (or desperate) enough to leave civilization and take the government up on their offer of 160 acres.

They had to go build a house and a couple of outbuildings on their own while trying to work the land, produce crops to live off of, and generally survive pioneer life. The word is still around, even if the meaning has shifted a bit through time. Nowadays, it’s more about being self-sufficient and living off the land, since modern conveniences (and neighbors) are pretty hard to avoid.

Sharecropper

This is the post-Civil War term for a new form of slavery. Plantation owners had a lot of land to plant and harvest (but no more slaves), while most of those former slaves now had no land or means to support themselves.

So sharecropping cropped up: freed Blacks rented land (and seeds, and tools, and animals) from white landowners, worked the land, and got a small percentage, or share, of the crop after the harvest. (Hence the name.)

Free Soil Party

Think America has always had a two-party political system? Think again. The Free Soil Party played politics from 1848 to 1854.

Note that the years of its existence are critically Antebellum. The Free Soil Party was adamant that the western territories be declared "free" or that slavery was verboten within their borders.

Their platform was "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." Quite a few members gained seats in Congress, and the party was critical to the success of the Republican Party later on. (Source)

Whig Party

Nothing like creating and naming a political party purely to poke fun at your opposition. The British Whig party was the anti-monarchy crowd and the American version was formed in 1834 to draw monarchical parallels against Andrew Johnson’s Presidency.

It was rapidly successful, but tensions in the party over slavery led to its demise by 1854 with "cotton Whigs" becoming Democrats and "conscience Whigs" becoming Republicans. (Source)

Republican Party

In the early years of the U.S., there were sometimes half a dozen parties floating in and out of favor. By 1854, some Northerners focused on abolition (which had destroyed other parties) and other progressive issues formed the Republican Party. The driving issue was opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which proposed slavery into those territories.

It seemed more like a hub for the cast-offs and radicals of other parties, especially the Whigs and Free-Soilers, than a true threat to the established Democratic Party. Color them shocked when the second Republican presidential candidate swept away the prize: Abe Lincoln.

(Check this out for more Shmoopy details.)

Democratic Party

The Democrats take their name from Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party, although his actual political philosophy is more in-line with the Republicans of today—go figure.

By 1824, the Democratic-Republican Party had fractured into the Democrats and Whigs. The Democrats were initially pro-industry and pro-farming in the west…which is ironic considering they blocked the Homestead Act so many times.

The Compromise of 1850 was a Democratic invention to fence-sit on the slavery issue: no slaves in western territories was balanced by the Fugitive Slave Act. Slavery took its toll however, especially with the secession of the mostly Democratic South. The Northern Democrats, already under pressure from opposing southern proposals, split into the War Democrats and the Copperheads over Lincoln’s policies during the Civil War.

Want more? Go here.

Liberty Party

Another minor party in the Antebellum period, that messy period of social and political upheaval.

The Liberty Party was formed in 1840 purely to fight against slavery. It never really gained enough votes to elect candidates, but it had an impact on elections, especially in the North. Votes for Liberty candidates probably took away the Presidency from Whig candidate Henry Clay and, as the party lost cohesion, most members became Free Soilers, influencing the abolitionist agenda of that party.

The moral of this story? Never overlook the power of the few.

Manifest Destiny

This was the doctrine that resulted in "Go West, young man" and helped spur on the pursuit of the Homestead Act.

It was first coined in 1845 over annexing Texas, but then took over the imagination of the country. God had obviously given all this land in order for the U.S. to spread out and become a strong contender on the world stage.

(More on Manifest Destiny and its issues here.)