Stacy/Ellington, Fabric of a Nation 1E - Chapters 1-8

Muller v. Oregon

1908 Supreme Court ruling that upheld an Oregon law establishing a ten-hour workday for women.

Quartering Act

1765 act ensuring British troops would remain stationed in the colonies after the end of the Seven Years' War.

Coercive Acts

1774 acts of Parliament passed in response to the Boston Tea Party. The acts closed the port of Boston until residents paid for the damaged property and moved Massachusetts court cases against royal officials back to England in a bid to weaken colonial authority.

Northwest Ordinances

1785 act of the confederation congress that provided for the survey, sale, and eventual division into states of the Northwest Territory. A 1787 act then clarified the process by which territories could become states.

Petticoat Affair

1829 political conflict over Andrew Jackson's appointment of John Eaton as secretary of war. Eaton was married to a woman of allegedly questionable character, and the wives of many prominent Washington politicians organized a campaign to snub her.

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia

1831 Supreme Court ruling that denied the Cherokee claim to be a separate independent nation, ruling that all American Indian nations were "domestic dependent nations" rather than fully sovereign governments.

Force Bill

1833 bill passed by Congress in response to South Carolina's Ordinance of Nullification. It gave the president the authority to use military force to enforce national laws.

Ostend Manifesto

1854 letter from U.S. ambassadors and the secretary of state to President Franklin Pierce urging him to conquer Cuba. When it was leaked to the press, northerners voiced outrage at what they saw as a plot to expand slave territories.

Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

1863 proclamation that established the basic parameters of President Abraham Lincoln's approach to Reconstruction. Lincoln's plan would have readmitted the South to the Union on relatively lenient terms.

Haymarket riot

1866 rally in Haymarket Square that resulted in violence. In its aftermath, the union movement in the United States went into temporary decline.

Treaty of Medicine Lodge

1867 treaty that provided reservation lands for the Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, and Southern Arapaho to settle. Despite this agreement, white hunters soon invaded this territory and decimated the buffalo herd.

Sixteenth Amendment

1913 amendment providing a legal basis for a graduated income tax, which had been previously deemed unconstitutional.

Selective Service Act

1917 act authorizing a nationwide draft.

Espionage Act

1917 act that prohibited antiwar activities, including opposing the military draft. It punished speech critical of the war as well as deliberate actions of sabotage and spying.

National Origins Act

1924 act establishing immigration quotas by national origin. The act was intended to severely limit immigration from southern and eastern Europe as well as prohibit all immigration from East Asia.

Public Works Administration (PWA)

1933 New Deal administration created to oversee the rebuilding of America's infrastructure, such as roads, schools, and libraries.

War Powers Act

1942 act passed after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It authorized the president to reorganize federal agencies any way he thought necessary to win the war.

War Powers Act (1942)

1942 act passed after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It authorized the president to reorganize federal agencies any way he thought necessary to win the war.

Freedom Summer

1964 civil rights project in Mississippi launched by SNCC, CORE, the SCLC, and the NAACP. Some eight hundred volunteers, mainly white college students, worked on voter registration drives and in freedom schools to improve education for rural black youngsters.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

1964 congressional resolution giving President Lyndon Johnson wide discretion in the use of U.S. forces in Vietnam. The resolution followed reported attacks by North Vietnamese gunboats on two American destroyers.

Bandung Conference

A conference of twenty-nine Asian and African nations held in Indonesia in 1955, which declared their neutrality in the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union and condemned colonialism.

Vox Populi

A group of American colonists dedicated to repealing the Stamp Act. The Vox Populi took its name from the Latin phrase, which means "voice of the people."

Progressivism

A movement that emerged during the late nineteenth century whose adherents were united by the belief that if people joined together and applied human intelligence to the task of improving the nation, progress was inevitable. Progressives advocated governmental intervention, yet sought change without radically altering capitalism or the democratic political system.

Yamasee War

A pan-American Indian war from 1715 to 1717 led by the Yamasee who intended, but failed, to oust the British from South Carolina.

Inquisition

A religious judicial institution designed to find and eliminate beliefs that did not align with official Catholic practices. The Spanish Inquisition was first established in 1478.

mariners

A term for sailors.

boomtown

Areas that rapidly developed following the swift arrival of capital, typically from mining enterprises or the railroad, in the west.

Tuskegee Institute

African American educational institute founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington. Following Washington's philosophy, the institute focused on teaching industrious habits and practical job skills.

siege of Vicksburg

After a prolonged siege, Union troops forced Confederate forces to surrender at Vicksburg, Mississippi, leading to Union control of the rich Mississippi River valley.

"big stick" diplomacy

Aggressive foreign diplomacy backed by the threat of force. Its name comes from a proverb quoted by Theodore Roosevelt: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

conquistadors

Also known as encomenderos, Spanish soldiers who were central to the conquest of the civilizations of the Americas. Once conquest was complete, conquistadors often extracted wealth from the people and lands they came to rule.

patriots

American colonists who favored the movement for independence during the 1770s.

white supremacy

An ideology promoted by southern planters and intellectuals that maintained that all white people, regardless of class or education, were superior to all black people.

Battle of Shiloh

April 1862 battle in Tennessee that provided the Union entrance to the Mississippi valley. Shiloh was the bloodiest battle in American history to that point.

Battle of Fallen Timbers

Battle at which U.S. General Anthony Wayne won a major victory over a multi-tribe coalition of American Indians in the Northwest Territory in 1794.

War Production Board

Board established in 1942 to oversee the economy during World War II. It was part of a larger effort to convert American industry to the production of war materials.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Civil rights organization that grew out of the sit-ins of 1960. The organization focused on taking direct action and political organizing to achieve its goals.

Leisler's Rebellion

Class revolt by urban artisans and landless renters led by Merchant Jacob Leisler in 1689 New York over new taxes and centralized rule.

Pentagon Papers

Classified report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam leaked to the press in 1971. The report confirmed that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had misled the public about the origins and nature of the Vietnam War.

Old Light clergy

Colonial clergy from established churches who supported the religious status quo in the early eighteenth century.

settlement houses

Community centers established by urban reformers in the late nineteenth century. Settlement house organizers resided in the institutions they created and were often female, middle-class, and college educated.

three-fifths compromise

Compromise between northern and southern delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention to count enslaved persons as three-fifths of a free person in deciding the proportion of representation in the House of Representatives and taxation by the federal government.

Vietnam War

Conflict between the Communist nationalist government in North Vietnam backed by the Soviet Union and China, against the United Nations and U.S. backed South Vietnam government. The war is seen as part of a series of proxy wars as a result of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union between 1954 to 1975.

Calvinism

Developed in Switzerland by John Calvin, a version of Protestantism in which civil magistrates and reformed ministers ruled over a Christian society.

Second Great Awakening

Evangelical revival movement that began in the South in the early nineteenth century and then spread to the North. The social and economic changes of the first half of the nineteenth century were a major spur to religious revivals, which in turn spurred social reform movements.

National Organization for Women (NOW)

Feminist organization formed in 1966 by Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and other like-minded activists.

Knights of Labor

Founded in 1869, a labor federation that aimed to unite workers in one national union and challenge the power of corporate capitalists.

Palmer raids

Government roundup of some 6,000 suspected alien radicals in 1919-1920, ordered by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and his assistant J. Edgar Hoover. The raids resulted in the deportation of 556 immigrants.

Daughters of Liberty

Group of female patriots who sought to challenge the imposition of new taxes on the colonists through economic boycotts and the homespun movement.

unions

Groups of workers seeking rights and benefits from their employers through their collective efforts.

civic housekeeping

Idea promoted by Jane Addams for urban reform using women's traditional skills as domestic managers; caregivers for children, the elderly, and the needy; and community builders.

America First Committee

Isolationist organization founded by Senator Gerald Nye in 1940 to keep the United States out of World War II.

Tet Offensive

January 31, 1968 offensive mounted by Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces against population centers in South Vietnam. The offensive was turned back, but its ferocity shocked many Americans and increased public opposition to the war.

Battle of New Orleans

January 8, 1815 battle during the War of 1812, resulting in an American victory. The Treaty of Ghent, which had technically ended the war, had been signed two weeks prior to the battle, but forces on neither side knew the war had ended.

Shepherd-Towner Act

Legislation passed in 1921 that allowed nurses to offer material and infant health care information to mothers.

Selective Training and Service Act of 1940

Legislation requiring men between the ages of 18 and 35 to register for the draft, later expanded to age 45. It was the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.

Enrollment Act

March 1863 Union draft law that provided for draftees to be selected by an impartial lottery. A loophole in the law allowing wealthy Americans to escape service by paying $300 or hiring a substitute created widespread resentment.

Wounded Knee massacre

Massacre committed by U.S. military in South Dakota, December 29, 1890. The Plains Indians, on the edge of starvation, began the "Ghost Dance," which they believed would protect them from bullets and restore their old way of life. Following one of the dances, a rifle held by an American Indian misfired. In response, U.S. soldiers invaded the encampment, killing some 250 people.

Grangers

Members of an organization founded in 1867 to meet the social and cultural needs of farmers. Grangers took an active role in the promotion of the economic and political interests of farmers.

patriarchal family

Model of the family in which fathers have absolute authority over wives, children, and servants. Most colonial Americans accepted the patriarchal model of the family, at least as an ideal.

transcendentalism

Movement founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830s that proposed that individuals look inside themselves and to nature for spiritual and moral guidance rather than to formal religion. Transcendentalism attracted a number of important American writers and artists to its vision.

Church of England

National church established by King Henry VIII after he split with the Catholic Church in 1534.

Food Administration

New government agency created during World War I to regulate food production and consumption. Its head, Herbert Hoover, sought to increase the military and civilian food supply through a massive public campaign of voluntary conservation measures such as family gardens and "meatless Mondays."

Field Order Number 15

Order issued by General William Sherman in January 1865 setting aside more than 400,000 acres of Confederate land to be divided into plots for freedpeople. Sherman's order came in response to pressure from African American leaders.

spoils system

Patronage system introduced by Andrew Jackson in which federal offices were awarded on the basis of political loyalty. The system remained in place until the late nineteenth century.

Reconstruction

Period from 1865 to 1877, during which the eleven ex-Confederate states were subject to federal legislative and constitutional efforts to remake their societies as they were readmitted to the Union.

Allies (WWI)

Political allies during World War I consisting primarily of Great Britain, France, and Russia. Italy joined in 1915 and the United States in 1917.

Great Society

President Lyndon Johnson's vision of social, economic, and cultural progress in the United States.

Federal Employee Loyalty Program

Program established by President Truman in 1947 to investigate federal employees suspected of disloyalty and Communist ties.

conservationism

Progressive Era political and social movement whose supporters worked for the preservation of America's wildlife and natural lands.

To Secure These Rights

Report issued by President Harry Truman's Committee on Civil Rights in 1947 that advocated extending racial equality. Among its recommendations was the desegregation of the military, which Truman instituted by executive order in 1948.

Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions

Resolutions passed by legislatures in Virginia and Kentucky that declared the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) "void and of no force" in their states.

National Road

Road constructed using federal funds that ran from western Maryland through southwestern Pennsylvania to Wheeling, West Virginia; also called the Cumberland Road. Completed in 1818, it was part of a larger push to improve the nation's infrastructure.

Lincoln-Douglas debates

Series of debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during the 1859 Illinois Senate race that mainly focused on the expansion of slavery.

baby boom

Sharp population increase between 1946 and 1964 as a result of the end of World War II, increased economic prosperity, improvements in healthcare, and a trend toward marriage at younger age.

Hetch Hetchy valley

Site of controversial dam built to supply San Francisco with water and power in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake. The dam was built over the objections of preservationists such as John Muir.

yeomen farmers

Southern independent landowners who were not slaveholders. Although yeomen farmers had connections to the South's plantation economy, many realized that their interests were not always identical to those of the planter elite.

Aztecs

Spanish term for the Mexica, an indigenous people who built an empire in present-day Mexico in the centuries before the arrival of the Spaniards.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

Student activist organization formed in the early 1960s that advocated the formation of a "New Left" that would overturn the social and political status quo.

mission system

System established by the Spanish in 1573 in which missionaries, rather than soldiers, directed all new settlements in the Americas.

Middle Passage

The brutal voyage of slave ships laden with human cargo from Africa to the Americas. It was the middle segment in a triangular journey that began in Europe, went first to Africa, then to the Americas, and finally back to Europe.

Tariff of 1828

Tariff that extended duties to include raw materials such as wool, hemp, and molasses. It was passed despite strong opposition from southeastern states.

poll tax

Tax that required each person to pay a fee in order to cast a ballot in elections. The taxes were designed to disenfranchise the poor and minority voters who could often not afford to pay.

contraband

Term first used by Union general Benjamin Butler in May 1861 to describe enslaved people who had fled to Union lines to obtain freedom. By designating enslaved people as property forfeited by the act of rebellion, the Union was able to strike at slavery without proclaiming a general emancipation.

imperial presidency

Term used to describe the growth of presidential powers during the Cold War, particularly with respect to war-making powers and the conduct of national security.

Holocaust

The Nazi regime's genocidal effort to eradicate Europe's Jewish population during World War II, which resulted in the death of 6 million Jews and millions of other "undesirables" — Slavs, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, and Communists.

Billion Dollar Congress

The Republican-controlled Congress of 1890 that spent huge sums of money to promote business and other interests.

Dominion of New England

The consolidation of Northeastern colonies by King James II in 1686 to establish greater control over them, resulting in the banning of town meetings, new taxes, and other unpopular policies. The Dominion was dissolved during the Glorious Revolution.

Kent State massacre

The killing of four students and wounding of nine others by the National Guard during a 1970 Kent State campus protest about the U.S. invasion of Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War. The incident sparked further anti-war sentiment and massive protests.

Puritan Migration

The mass migration of Puritans from Europe to New England during the 1620s and 1630s.

"Rough Riders"

The nickname of Theodore Roosevelt's regiment of the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, which fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

New Deal

The policies and programs that Franklin Roosevelt initiated to combat the Great Depression. The New Deal represented a dramatic expansion of the role of government in American society.

internment

The relocation of persons seen as a threat to national security to isolated camps during World War II. Nearly all people of Japanese descent living on the West Coast were forced to sell or abandon their possessions and relocate to internment camps during the war.

total war

The strategy promoted by General Ulysses S. Grant in which Union forces destroyed civilian crops, livestock, fields, and property to undermine Confederate morale and supply chains.

convict lease

The system used by southern governments to furnish mainly African American prison labor to plantation owners and industrialists and to raise revenue for the states. In practice, convict labor replaced slavery as the means of providing a forced labor supply.

gross domestic product

The yearly output of all of a nation's goods and services.

Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas)

This battle took place from April 28-30, 1862, and resulted in a Union defeat, which led President Lincoln to relieve General Pope of command and replace him with George B. McClellan.

totalitarianism

Type of government that puts the state first, with all other parts of life designed to support and sustain the government first and foremost.

Truman Doctrine

U.S. pledge to contain the expansion of communism around the world. Based on the idea of containment, the Truman Doctrine was the cornerstone of American foreign policy throughout the Cold War.

separate spheres

Widespread social belief that emerged in the late 1700s and early 1800s that men and women had separate roles and should occupy separate places in society. According to this belief, men should occupy the social public sphere and work, while women belonged in the domestic private sphere, caring for their family and household.