APUSH AMSCO VOCAB

Articles of Confederation

This document served as the United States' first constitution, and was in force from March 1, 1781, until 1789 when the present day Constitution went into effect.

Crop-Price Deflation

Increased crop production and global competition drove prices down while farmers still had mortgages to pay with high interest rates.

New York

The Dutch first settled along the Hudson River in 1624; two years later they established the colony of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. In 1664, the English took control of the area. One of the original 13 colonies,it played a crucial political and strategic role during the American Revolution.

"permanent alliances"

"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world": it was George Washington's Farewell Address to us. The inaugural pledge of Thomas Jefferson was no less clear: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."

Implied Powers

"Necessary and Proper Clause" (sometimes also called the "Elastic Clause") grants Congress a set of so-called implied powers—that is, powers not explicitly named in the Constitution but assumed to exist due to their being necessary to implement the expressed powers that are named in Article I.

Willam Penn

(October 14, 1644-July 30, 1718) founded the Province of Pennsylvania, the British North American colony that became the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The democratic principles that he set forth served as an inspiration for the United States Constitution.

Clean Water Act

.the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution.

Anne Hutchinson

A New England religious leader and midwife,(1591-1643) was born in England, and later followed Puritan leader John Cotton to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. She brought attention to Cotton's spirit-centered theology through biweekly meetings, championing him and her brother-in-law John Wheelwright as true Christian ministers. A ministerial synod cleared Cotton from the charge of heresy, but the radical Hutchinson was punished with banishment by the General Court of Massachusetts and excommunication by the Church of Boston.

Protective Tariff

A duty imposed on imports to raise their price, making them less attractive to consumers and thus protecting domestic industries from foreign competition.

Halfway Covenant

A form of partial church membership created by New England in 1662. It was promoted in particular by the Reverend Solomon Stoddard, who felt that the people of the English colonies were drifting away from their original religious purpose.

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty

A new treaty was signed by Hay and Pauncefote on Nov. 18, 1901, and was ratified by the U.S. Senate on Dec. 16, 1901. The new compromise treaty, superseding the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, provided that the United States might construct a canal and have full control in its management and regulation.

Public School Movement

A reform movement that occurred during the Jacksonian Era that primarily focused an establishing free public schooling for children of all classes. Horace Hann was a leading advocate of the reform movement for public schools.

Wounded Knee

A scuffle over the rifle escalated, and a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry opening fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their fellow soldiers. The Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the attacking soldiers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire. The surviving Lakota fled, but cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed. By the time it was over, more than 150 men, women, and children of the Lakota had been killed and 51 were wounded (4 men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300.

Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

Abraham Lincoln offered a model for reinstatement of Southern states called the 10 percent Reconstruction plan. It decreed that a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10% of the 1860 vote count from that state had taken an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and pledged to abide by Emancipation. Voters could then elect delegates to draft revised state constitutions and establish new state governments. All southerners except for high-ranking Confederate army officers and government officials would be granted a full pardon. Lincoln guaranteed southerners that he would protect their private property, though not their slaves. By 1864, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas had established fully functioning Unionist governments.

"Corrupt Bargain"

After the votes were counted in the U.S. presidential election of 1824, no candidate had received a majority of the Presidential Electoral votes, thereby putting the outcome in the hands of the House of Representatives. There were four candidates on the ballot: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, and William H. Crawford. To the surprise of many, the House elected John Quincy Adams over rival Andrew Jackson. It was widely believed that Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House at the time, convinced Congress to elect Adams, who then made Clay his Secretary of State. Supporters denounced this as a "corrupt bargain." The "corrupt bargain" that placed Adams in the White House and Clay in the State Department launched a four-year campaign of revenge by the friends of Andrew Jackson. Claiming the people had been cheated of their choice, Jacksonians attacked the Adams administration at every turn as illegitimate and tainted by aristocracy and corruption.

French and Indian War

Also known as the Seven Years' War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the long imperial struggle between Britain and France. When France's expansion into the Ohio River valley brought repeated conflict with the claims of the British colonies, a series of battles led to the official British declaration of war in 1756.

Royal Colonies

Also known in the 17th century as royal colony, was a type of colonial administration of the British overseas territories. Crown, or royal, colonies were ruled by a governor appointed by the monarch.

Samuel Gompers

American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, trying to minimize jurisdictional battles. He promoted thorough organization and collective bargaining to secure shorter hours and higher wages, the first essential steps, he believed, to emancipating labor.

Pure Food and Drug Act

An Act— For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes.

Daniel Webster

An American statesman who twice served in the United States House of Representatives, representing New Hampshire (1813-1817) and Massachusetts (1823-1827), served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (1827-1841 and 1845-1850) and was twice the United States Secretary of State, under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler (1841-1843) and Millard Fillmore (1850-1852). He also sought the Whig Party nomination for President three times: in 1836, 1840 and 1852. In the latter two occasions, he declined to serve as running mate for the man who beat him, both of whom would go on to win the election and then die in office.

"Quids"

An abbreviation of the Latin "tertium quid", meaning "third party" and used to denote an anti-Madison part of the Democratic-Republican Party of the United States between 1805 and 1811 who attracted Federalist support with varying success. They were most commonly so called in Pennsylvania and New York, although the term was occasionally used in other states. This term was generally applied reproachfully by political opponents and was rarely used in self-designation. No national party ever developed, and most they continued to regard themselves as Jeffersonian Republicans.

Stamp Act

An act of the British Parliament in 1756 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the British Crown.

Nat Turner

An enslaved African-American who led a rebellion of slaves and free blacks in Southampton County, Virginia on August 21, 1831, that resulted in the deaths of at least fifty white people, and the killing of over 200 black people by white militias and mobs.

Corporate America

An informal phrase describing the world of corporations and big business within the United States.

William Henry Harrison

Before election as president, Harrison served as the first territorial congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory, governor of the Indiana Territory, and later as a U.S. representative and senator from Ohio. He originally gained national fame for leading U.S. forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811,[1] where he earned the nickname "Tippecanoe" (or "Old Tippecanoe"). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812

Quakers

Began at the tail end of Europe's Protestant Reformation in the 17th century. The missionary efforts of the earliest Friends took them to North America, where they became heavily involved in Pennsylvania politics before reversing their views on government participation in the mid-1750s. The Society became the first organization in history to ban slaveholding, and in the 1800s Quakers populated the abolitionist movement in numbers far exceeding their proportion of all Americans.

"King Caucus"

Beginning in 1796, caucuses of the parties' congressional delegations met informally to nominate their presidential and vice presidential candidates, leaving the general public with no direct input. This early nomination system evoked widespread resentment. By 1824 it had fallen into such disrepute that only one-fourth of the Democratic-Republican congressional delegation took part in the caucus that nominated Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford instead of more popular figures such as John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

Popular Campaigning

Candidates for office directed their campaigns to the interests and prejudices of the common people. Politics also became a form of local entertainment. Campaigns of the 1830s and 1840s featured parades of floats and marching bands and large rallies in which voters were treated to free food and drink. To be sure, there was also a negative side to the new campaign techniques. In trying to appeal to the masses, the candidates would often resort to personal attacks and downplay the issues. A politician, for example, might attack an opponent's "aristocratic airs" and make him seem unfriendly to "the common man."

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Congress's show of support for the Supreme Court's Brown decisions, [1] the Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which had eventually led to the integration (desegregation) of public schools. Following the Supreme Court ruling, Southern whites in Virginia began a "Massive Resistance." Violence against blacks rose there and in other states, as in Little Rock, Arkansas where that year President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered in federal troops to protect nine children integrating into a public school, the first time the federal government had sent troops to the South since the Reconstruction era.

Federal Land Grants

During the 19th century, extensive land grants were made to railroads, since their development was seen as a new form of transportation internal improvements. The Land Grant Act of 1850 provided for 3.75 million acres of land to the states to support railroad projects; by 1857 21 million acres of public lands were used for railroads in the Mississippi River valley, and the stage was set for more substantial Congressional subsidies to future railroads. Four out of the five transcontinental railroads in the United States were built using land grant incentives.

First National bank

Establishment of the Bank of the United States was part of a three-part expansion of federal fiscal and monetary power, along with a federal mint and excise taxes, championed by Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton believed a national bank was necessary to stabilize and improve the nation's credit, and to improve handling of the financial business of the United States government under the newly enacted Constitution.

Public Land Act

First important federal land act, adopted on May 18, 1796, to administer public lands in the western territories of the United States. It established the office of surveyor general and provided for a rectangular survey system, as in the Land Ordinance of 1785.

Wampanoags

From 1615 to 1619 theysuffered an epidemic, long suspected to be smallpox, but recent research alternatively theorizes that it was leptospirosis, a bacterial infection also known as Weil's syndrome or 7-day fever. It caused a high fatality rate and nearly destroyed the society. Researchers suggest that the losses from the epidemic were so large that English colonists were more easily able to found their settlements in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in later years. More than 50 years later, King Philip's War (1675-1676) against the English colonists resulted in the deaths of 40 percent of the tribe. Most of the male survivors were sold into slavery in the West Indies. Many women and children were enslaved in New England.

Workingmen's Party

From 1828 onwards, Workingmen's parties flourished throughout the United States, calling for such wide-ranging reforms as a ten-hour workday,[2] free public education, civil service reform, a direct system of election, pensions for Revolutionary War veterans, more equitable taxation, and the abolition of capital punishment, child labor, and imprisonment for debt. Other aims of the Workingmen's parties included improving housing and working conditions, more adequate sanitation facilities, and the provision of free land.

Battle of the Thames River

General William Henry Harrison, who also was the governor of the Indiana Territory and a future president of the United States of America, led an army of 3,500 American troops against a combined force of eight hundred British soldiers and five hundred American Indian warriors at Moraviantown, along the Thames River in Ontario, Canada. The British troops were under the command of Colonel Henry Procter. Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief, commanded many of the American Indian warriors. The British army was retreating from Fort Malden, Ontario after Oliver Hazard Perry's victory in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813.

Corporate Colonies

Had a charter that the English monarch granted to stockholders, but they were essentially governed by the monarch. King James I (1603-25) granted corporate charters for the settlement of Virginia (founded 1607) and Massachusetts (1620).

John Locke

His theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa.

"New" Immigrants

Immigration to America reached a high point between 1880 and 1920. Many of the new immigrants who migrated during this period were from southern and eastern European nations, such as Greece, Italy, Poland, and Russia. They were culturally different from the old immigrants, and this made it more difficult for them to assimilate into American life. They settled in urban ethnic neighborhoods, often living in poor housing called tenements, where they could speak their native language, observe their own traditions, and freely practice their religion.

Commercial Compromise

Imports taxed, but not exports; states prohibited from taxing goods going to or from other states. Northern states wanted tariffs on imports; southern states wanted neither tariffs, nor taxes on exports.

Right of deposit

In 1795, the border was settled and the U.S. and Spain had a trade agreement. New Orleans was reopened and Americans could transfer goods without paying cargo fees when transferring goods from one ship to another.

Irish Immigration

In Ireland almost half of the population lived on farms that produced little income. Because of their poverty, most Irish people depended on potatoes for food. When this crop failed three years in succession, it led to a great FAMINE with horrendous consequences. Over 750,000 people starved to death. Over two million Irish eventually moved to the United States seeking relief from their desolated country. Impoverished, the Irish could not buy property. Instead, they congregated in the cities where they landed, almost all in the northeastern United States.

Tenements

In the 19th century, more and more people began crowding into America's cities, including thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a better life than the one they had left behind. In New York City-where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880-buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population. Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings-many of them concentrated in the city's Lower East Side neighborhood-were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City's population) were living in tenement housing.

Patronage

In the United States during the Gilded Age, patronage became a controversial issue. Tammany boss William M. Tweed was an American politician who ran what is considered now to have been one of the most corrupt political machines in the country's history. Tweed and his cronies ruled for a brief time with absolute power over the city and state of New York. At the height of his influence, Tweed was the third-largest landowner in New York City, a director of the Erie Railway, the Tenth National Bank, and the New-York Printing Company, as well as proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel. At times he was a member of the United States House of Representatives, the New York City Board of Advisors, and the New York State Senate. In 1873, Tweed was convicted for diverting between $40 million and $200 million of public monies.

German Immigration

In the decade from 1845 to 1855, more than a million Germans fled to the United States to escape economic hardship. They also sought to escape the political unrest caused by riots, rebellion and eventually a revolution in 1848. The Germans had little choice — few other places besides the United States allowed German immigration. Unlike the Irish, many Germans had enough money to journey to the Midwest in search of farmland and work. The largest settlements of Germans were in New York City, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee.

Assimilationists

Intense process of consistent integration whereby members of an ethno-cultural group, typically immigrants, or other minority groups, are "absorbed" into an established, generally larger community

Writs of Assistance

Is a written order (a writ) issued by a court instructing a law enforcement official, such as a sheriff or a tax collector, to perform a certain task.

George Calvert

Lord Baltimore was famous and recognized as the founder and patron of the Maryland Colony. George Calvert was at first interested in the colonization of the New World for commercial reasons but later aspired to create a refuge in America for English Catholics. George Calvert was a member of the English Parliament, served as Secretary of State and Privy Counselor for King James I.

Peggy Eaton Affair

Margaret O'Neale (Peggy) Eaton (1799-1879) was the wife of John Eaton, President Andrew Jackson's Secretary of War from 1829 to 1831, and the focus of a Washington sex scandal that divided the Jackson administration. The daughter of a Washington, D.C. tavernkeeper, Peggy Eaton earned a reputation as a beauty.

"Old" Immigrants

Most of the old immigrants migrated from England, France, Ireland, and Germany. Many of these immigrants were culturally similar to each other, literate, and had some wealth. Most were Protestant, believed in democracy, and resembled each other physically. Due to the similarities among these groups, old immigrants were able to adapt to America more easily.

Battle of New Orleans

On December 24, 1814, Great Britain and the United States signed a treaty in Ghent, Belgium that effectively ended the War of 1812. News was slow to cross the pond, however, and on January 8, 1815, the two sides met in what is remembered as one of the conflict's biggest and most decisive engagements. In the bloody Battle of New Orleans, future President Andrew Jackson and a motley assortment of militia fighters, frontiersmen, slaves, Indians and even pirates weathered a frontal assault by a superior British force, inflicting devastating casualties along the way. The victory vaulted Jackson to national stardom, and helped foil plans for a British invasion of the American frontier.

Treaty of Ghent (1814)

On December 24, 1814, The Treaty of Ghent was signed by British and American representatives at Ghent, Belgium, ending the War of 1812. By terms of the treaty, all conquered territory was to be returned, and commissions were planned to settle the boundary of the United States and Canada.

Battle of Bunker Hill

On June 17, 1775, early in the Revolutionary War (1775-83), the British defeated the Americans at the Battle of Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. Despite their loss, the inexperienced colonial forces inflicted significant casualties against the enemy, and the battle provided them with an important confidence boost. Although commonly referred to as the Battle of Bunker Hill, most of the fighting occurred on nearby Breed's Hill.

Virginia

One of the 13 original colonies, it was the first part of the country permanently settled by the English, who established Jamestown on the banks of the James River in 1607.

Connecticut

One of the original 13 colonies and one of the six New England states, is located in the northeastern corner of the country. Initially an agricultural community, by the mid-19th century textile and machine manufacturing had become the dominant industries.

New Hampshire

One of the original 13 colonies, was the first state to have its own state constitution. Its spirit of independence is epitomized in the state motto-"Live Free or Die."

Pennsylvania

One of the original 13 colonies,it was founded by William Penn as a haven for his fellow Quakers. it's capital, Philadelphia, was the site of the first and second Continental Congresses in 1774 and 1775, the latter of which produced the Declaration of Independence, sparking the American Revolution.

Antinomianism

One who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation. One who rejects a socially established morality.

Indian Removal Act

Passed by Congress on May 28, 1830, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their ancestral homelands.

Square Deal

President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program formed upon three basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. These three demands are often referred to as the "three C's" of Roosevelt's Square Deal. Thus, it aimed at helping middle class citizens and involved attacking plutocracy and bad trusts while at the same time protecting business from the most extreme demands of organized labor. A progressive Republican, Roosevelt believed in government action to mitigate social evils, and as president denounced "the representatives of predatory wealth" as guilty of "all forms of iniquity from the oppression of wage workers to defrauding the public."

Trust-Busting

President Theodore Roosevelt's policy of prosecuting monopolies, or "trusts," that violated federal antitrust law. Roosevelt's "trust-busting" policy marked a major departure from previous administrations' policies, which had generally failed to enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and added momentum to the progressive reform movements of the early 1900s.

Sumner-Brooks Incident

Representative Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner with a walking cane in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier. The beating nearly killed Sumner and it drew a sharply polarized response from the American public on the subject of the expansion of slavery in the United States. It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" that eventually led to the American Civil War.

Mugwumps

Republican political activists who bolted from the United States Republican Party by supporting Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland in the United States presidential election of 1884. They switched parties because they rejected the financial corruption associated with Republican candidate James G. Blaine. In a close election, the Mugwumps supposedly made the difference in New York state and swung the election to Cleveland.

Rhode Island

Roger Williams, after being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religious views, settled at the tip of Narragansett Bay, on land granted to him by the Narragansett tribe. He called the site "Providence" and declared it a place of religious freedom.

Homestead Act (1862)

Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, this act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land.

Slavery

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.

Worcester V. Georgia

Supreme Court held in 1832 that the Cherokee Indians constituted a nation holding distinct sovereign powers. Although the decision became the foundation of the principle of tribal sovereignty in the twentieth century, it did not protect the Cherokees from being removed from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast.

Nicholas Biddle

The "Bank War" began when seventh President Andrew Jackson began criticizing the Bank early in his first term. Biddle, at the urging of Henry Clay and other Bank supporters, upped the ante when he applied for the Bank's re-charter in January 1832.[1] This was four years before the charter was scheduled to expire at the end of two decades, and the hope was to force Jackson into making an unpopular decision that might cost him during an election year. But, once challenged, President Jackson decided to veto the bill anyway. Jackson, well known for his stubborn personality and steadfast leadership, still harbored ill-will toward Henry Clay of Kentucky from the earlier "corrupt bargain" accusation following the Presidential Election of 1824 which made him Secretary of State when appointed by the administration of the winner, sixth President John Quincy Adams. Clay's strategy failed, and in November he lost to Jackson, who was reelected to a second term, despite significant financial support from the Bank.

Act of Toleration (1649)

The Act allowed freedom of worship to Nonconformists who had pledged to the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and rejected transubstantiation, i.e., Protestants who dissented from the Church of England such as Baptists and Congregationalists but not to Catholics. Nonconformists were allowed their own places of worship and their own teachers, if they accepted certain oaths of allegiance.

Lexington and Concord

The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoat column. A confrontation on the Lexington town green started off the fighting, and soon the British were hastily retreating under intense fire.

Fort Sumter

The First Battle of Fort Sumter opened on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery fired on the Union garrison. These were the first shots of the war, and continued all day, watched by many civilians in a celebratory spirit. The fort had been cut off from its supply line, and surrendered next day. The Second Battle of Fort Sumter (September 8, 1863) was a failed attempt by the Union to re-take the fort, dogged by rivalry between army and navy commanders. Although the fort was reduced to rubble, it remained in Confederate hands until it was evacuated as Sherman marched through South Carolina in February 1865.

House-Divided Speech

The House Divided Speech was an address given by Abraham Lincoln (who would later become President of the United States) on June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, upon accepting the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's United States senator.

New England Confederation

The United Colonies of New England was a short-lived military alliance of the English colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven.

Civil Rights Cases of 1883

The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights act of 1875, forbidding discrimination in hotels, trains, and other public spaces, was unconstitutional and not authorized by the 13th or 14th Amendments of the Constitution.

Revolution of 1828

The United States presidential election of 1828 was the 11th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 31, to Tuesday, December 2, 1828. It featured a re-match between incumbent President John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, the winner of the electoral college in the election of 1824.

Virginia Plan vs. New Jersey Plan

The Virginia Plan Branches: Three -legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislature was more powerful, as it chose people to serve in the executive and judicial branches. Legislature: Two houses (bicameral). The House of Representatives was elected by the people and the Senate was elected by the state legislatures. Both were represented proportionally. The New Jersey Plan Branches: Three-legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislature appoints people to serve in the executive branch, and the executive branch selects the justices of the Supreme Court. Legislature:One house (unicameral). States would be represented equally, so all states had the same power.

Deism

The belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it and permits his creation to administer itself through natural laws. It thus rejects the supernatural aspects of religion, such as belief in revelation in the Bible, and stresses the importance of ethical conduct.

Triangular Trade

The best-known triangular trading system is the transatlantic slave trade, that operated from the late 16th to early 19th centuries, carrying slaves, cash crops, and manufactured goods between West Africa, Caribbean or American colonies and the European colonial powers, with the northern colonies of British North ...

New Nationalism

The central issue he argued was government protection of human welfare and property rights, but he also argued that human welfare was more important than property rights. He insisted that only a powerful federal government could regulate the economy and guarantee social justice, and that a President can only succeed in making his economic agenda successful if he makes the protection of human welfare his highest priority. Roosevelt believed that the concentration in industry was a natural part of the economy.

James Oglethorpe

The founder of Georgia, was a forward-thinking visionary who demonstrated great skill as a social reformer and military leader,social reformer, and military leader, he conceived of and implemented his plan to establish the colony of Georgia. It was through his initiatives in England in 1732 that the British government authorized the establishment of its first new colony in North America in more than five decades. Later that year he led the expedition of colonists that landed in Savannah early in 1733. He spent most of the next decade in Georgia, where he directed the economic and political development of the new colony, defended it militarily, and continued to generate support and recruit settlers in England and other parts of Europe.

Indian Reorganization Act

The major goal was to reverse the traditional goal of assimilation of Indians into American society, and to strengthen, encourage and perpetuate the tribes and their historic traditions and culture. The Act also restored to Indians the management of their assets—land and mineral rights—and included provisions intended to create a sound economic foundation for the inhabitants of Indian reservations.

Welfare Capitalism

The practice of businesses providing welfare services to their employees. Welfare capitalism in this second sense, or industrial paternalism, was centered on industries that employed skilled labor and peaked in the mid-20th century.

Panic of 1819

The primary cause of the misery seems to have been a change toward more conservative credit policies by the Second Bank of the United States (rechartered in 1816). The wary directors viewed with scorn the unconventional practices of many western banks. The B.U.S. called in its loans, forcing the state banks to do likewise. State loans had been made to land speculators who were unable to repay; banks failed and depositors were wiped out. Conditions were exacerbated by the influx of large quantities of foreign goods into the American market and the slumping cotton market in the South.

The American System

This "System" consisted of three mutually reenforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture.

Roger Williams

Was a Puritan, an English Reformed theologian, and later a Reformed Baptist, who was an early proponent of religious freedom, separation of church and state, and the Free Will Baptist movement.He was expelled by the Puritan leaders because they thought that he was spreading "new and dangerous ideas", so he began the colony of Providence Plantation in 1636, which provided a refuge for religious minorities. He was a member of the first Baptist church in America, the First Baptist Church of Providence.

Sir William Berkley

Was a colonial governor of Virginia, and one of the Lords Proprietors of the Colony of Carolina; he was appointed to these posts by King Charles II of England, of whom he was a favorite. As proprietor of Green Spring Plantation in James City County, he experimented with activities such as growing silkworms as part of his efforts to expand the tobacco-based economy.Berkeley enacted friendly policies toward the Native Americans

Indentured Servant

Was a labor system in which people paid for their passage to the New World by working for an employer for a fixed term of years. It was widely employed in the 18th century in the British colonies in North America and elsewhere.

Thomas Hooker

Was a prominent Puritan colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian suffrage

Sir Edmund Andros

Was an English colonial administrator in North America. He was the governor of the Dominion of New England during most of its three-year existence.

Dominion Of New England

Was an administrative union of English colonies in the New England region of North America.

King Philip's War

Was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675-78. The war is named for the main leader of the Native American side, Metacomet, who had adopted the English name "King Philip" in honor of the previously-friendly relations between his father and the original Mayflower Pilgrims. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay in April 1678.

Bacon's Rebellion

Was an armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley. The colony's dismissive policy as it related to the political challenges of its western frontier, along with other challenges including leaving Bacon out of his inner circle, refusing to allow Bacon to be a part of his fur trade with the Native Americans, and Doeg tribe Indian attacks, helped to motivate a popular uprising against Berkeley, who had failed to address the demands of the colonists regarding their safety.

Providence

Was founded in 1636 by renegade preacher Roger Williams, who was forced to flee Massachusetts because of religious persecution.

Headright System

Was originally created in 1618 in Jamestown, Virginia. It was used as a way to attract new settlers to the region and address the labor shortage. With the emergence of tobacco farming, a large supply of workers was needed. New settlers who paid their way to Virginia received 50 acres of land.

Phillis Wheatley

Was the first published African-American female poet. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven and transported to North America.

Proprietary Colonies

Were grants of land in the form of a charter, or a license to rule, for individuals or groups. They were used to settle areas rapidly with British subjects at the proprietors' expense during the costly settlement years.

Chesapeake Colonies

Were the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, later the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Province of Maryland, later Maryland, both colonies located in British America and centered on the Chesapeake Bay.

"Log Cabin and Hard Cider" Campaign

Whigs, eager to deliver what the public wanted, took advantage of this and declared that Harrison was "the log cabin and hard cider candidate," a man of the common people from the rough-and-tumble West. They depicted Harrison's opponent, President Martin Van Buren, as a wealthy snob who was out of touch with the people. In fact, it was Harrison who came from a wealthy, prominent family while Van Buren was from a poor, working family.

Holy Experiment

William Penn's term for the ideal government he established for Pennsylvania in 1681, when he obtained the charter for that colony from King Charles II of England.

New Zion

Within the Latter Day Saint movement, Zion is often used to connote a utopian association of the righteous. This association would practice a form of communitarian economics called the United Order meant to ensure that all members maintained an acceptable quality of life, class distinctions were minimized, and group unity achieved.

Metacom

Wwas a Wampanoag and the second son of the sachem Massasoit. He became a chief of his people in 1662 when his brother Wamsutta (or King Alexander) died shortly after their father Massasoit.

Elkins Act

a 1903 United States federal law that amended the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The Act authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to impose heavy fines on railroads that offered rebates, and upon the shippers that accepted these rebates.

Hepburn Act

a 1906 United States federal law that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum railroad rates and extend its jurisdiction. This led to the discontinuation of free passes to loyal shippers.

Kellogg-Briand Treaty

a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them." Parties failing to abide by this promise "should be denied of the benefits furnished by this treaty." It was signed by Germany, France and the United States on August 27, 1928, and by most other nations soon after.

Henry Demarest Lloyd

a 19th-century American progressive political activist and pioneer muckraking journalist. He is best remembered for his exposés of the Standard Oil Company, which were written before Ida M. Tarbell's series for McClure's Magazine.

Gadsden Purchase

a 29,640-square-mile (76,800 km2) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was purchased by the United States in a treaty signed on December 30, 1853 by James Gadsden who was the American ambassador to Mexico at that time. It was then ratified, with changes, by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 1854, and signed by 14th President Franklin Pierce, with final approval action taken by Mexico's government and their General Congress or Congress of the Union on June 8, 1854. The purchase was the last territorial acquisition in the contiguous United States to add a large area to the country.

Jacob Riis

a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York with the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller. Additionally, as one of the most famous proponents of the newly practicable casual photography, he is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of flash in photography.

Enlightenment

a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition. It was heavily influenced by 17th-century philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Newton, and its prominent exponents include Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

John Dickinson

a Founding Father of the United States, was a solicitor and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware known as the "Penman of the Revolution" for his twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, published individually in 1767 and 1768. As a member of the First Continental Congress, where he was a signee to the Continental Association, he drafted most of the 1774 Petition to the King, and then as a member of the Second Continental Congress wrote the 1775 Olive Branch Petition, two attempts to negotiate with King George III of Great Britain.

Sitting Bull

a Hunkpapa Lakota holy man who led his people during years of resistance to United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

a Mexican politician and general who greatly influenced early Mexican politics and government. Santa Anna first opposed the movement for Mexican independence from Spain, but then fought in support of it. Though not the first caudillo (military leader) of modern Mexico, he was among the earliest.

Crazy Horse

a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the United States Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people, including leading a war party to victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876.

Carpetbaggers

a Northerner who moved to the South after the American Civil War, during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877).

Social Gospel

a Protestant movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada. The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war.

Second Great Awakening

a Protestant religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800 and, after 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the late 1850s. The Second Great Awakening reflected Romanticism characterized by enthusiasm, emotion, and an appeal to the super-natural. It rejected the skeptical rationalism and deism of the Enlightenment.

Andrew Carnegie

a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He built a leadership role as a philanthropist for the United States and the British Empire.

Monroe Doctrine (1823)

a U.S. foreign policy regarding domination of the Americas in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring U.S. intervention.

George Custer

a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1857, where he graduated last in his class in 1861. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Custer was called to serve with the Union Army.

Munn V. Illinois

a United States Supreme Court case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the power of government to regulate private industries.

Dennis et al. V. United States

a United States Supreme Court case relating to Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA. The Court ruled that Dennis did not have the right under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to exercise free speech, publication and assembly, if the exercise involved the creation of a plot to overthrow the government.

Cherokee nation V. Georgia

a United States Supreme Court case. The Cherokee Nation sought a federal injunction against laws passed by the state of Georgia depriving them of rights within its boundaries, but the Supreme Court did not hear the case on its merits. It ruled that it had no original jurisdiction in the matter, as the Cherokees were a dependent nation, with a relationship to the United States like that of a "ward to its guardian."

Tenure of Office Acts

a United States federal law (in force from 1867 to 1887) that was intended to restrict the power of the President of the United States to remove certain office-holders without the approval of the Senate. The law was enacted on March 3, 1867, over the veto of President Andrew Johnson.

Federal Farm Loan Act

a United States federal law aimed at increasing credit to rural family farmers. It did so by creating a federal farm loan board, twelve regional farm loan banks and tens of farm loan associations. The act was signed into law by President of the United States Woodrow Wilson.

Equal Pay Act

a United States federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program.

Clean Air Act

a United States federal law designed to control air pollution on a national level. It is one of the United States' first and most influential modern environmental laws, and one of the most comprehensive air quality laws in the world.

Chinese Exclusion Act

a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. It was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in US history, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.

Tydings-McDuffie Act

a United States federal law that established the process for the Philippines, an American colony, to become an independent country after a ten-year transition period.

Newlands Reclamation Act

a United States federal law that funded irrigation projects for the arid lands of 20 states in the American West.

Immigration Quota Laws

a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, according to the Census of 1890.

Amnesty Acts of 1872

a United States federal law that removed voting restrictions and office-holding disqualification against most of the secessionists who rebelled in the American Civil War, except for some 500 military leaders of the Confederacy.

Taft-Hartley Act

a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert A. Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr., and became law by overcoming U.S. President Harry S. Truman's veto on June 23, 1947

Interstate Commerce Act

a United States federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices. The Act required that railroad rates be "reasonable and just," but did not empower the government to fix specific rates.

Pendleton Act

a United States federal law, enacted in 1883, which established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation.

Employment Act of 1946

a United States federal law. Its main purpose was to lay the responsibility of economic stability of inflation and unemployment onto the federal government.

Stephan Decatur

a United States naval officer and commodore notable for his many naval victories in the early 19th century. His service in the Navy took him through both Barbary Wars in North Africa, the Quasi-War with France, and the War of 1812 with Britain. During this period he served aboard and commanded many naval vessels and ultimately became a member of the Board of Navy Commissioners. He built a large home in Washington, known as Decatur House, on Lafayette Square, which later became the home to a number of famous Americans, and was the center of Washington society in the early 19th century.

Specie Circular

a United States presidential executive order issued by President Andrew Jackson in 1836 pursuant to the Coinage Act and carried out by his successor, President Martin Van Buren. It required payment for government land to be in gold and silver.

Rationalism

a belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response.

Wade-Davis Bill

a bill proposed for the Reconstruction of the South written by two Radical Republicans, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland. In contrast to President Abraham Lincoln's more lenient Ten Percent Plan, the bill made re-admittance to the Union for former Confederate states contingent on a majority in each Southern state to take the Ironclad oath to the effect they had never in the past supported the Confederacy. The bill passed both houses of Congress on July 2, 1864, but was pocket vetoed by Lincoln and never took effect

Niagara Movement

a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and Niagara Falls, near Fort Erie, Ontario, was where the first meeting took place in July 1905.

Teapot Dome

a bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1922, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and two other locations in California to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. In 1922 and 1923, the leases became the subject of a sensational investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh.

Isolationism

a category of foreign policies institutionalized by leaders who asserted that their nations' best interests were best served by keeping the affairs of other countries at a distance. One possible motivation for limiting international involvement is to avoid being drawn into dangerous and otherwise undesirable conflicts. There may also be a perceived benefit from avoiding international trade agreements or other mutual assistance pacts.

New Freedom

a collection of speeches Woodrow Wilson made during his presidential campaign of 1912. The speeches promised significant reforms for greater economic opportunity for all, while ensuring the tradition of limited government.

Protestant Work Ethic

a concept in theology, sociology, economics and history which emphasizes that hard work, discipline and frugality are a result of a person's salvation in the Protestant faith, particularly in Calvinism, in contrast to the focus upon religious attendance, confession, and ceremonial sacrament in the Catholic tradition.

Geneva Conference

a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle outstanding issues in the Korean peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina. The Soviet Union, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the People's Republic of China were participants throughout the conference while other countries concerned were represented during the discussion of questions of interest to them. These included the countries that contributed troops to the United Nations forces in the Korean War and countries that participated in the resolution of the First Indochina War between France and the Việt Minh.

Military-Industrial Complex

a country typically attempts to marshal political support for continued or increased military spending by the national government. The term military-industrial complex was first used by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961.

Crop Lien System

a credit system that became widely used by cotton farmers in the United States in the South from the 1860s to the 1930s. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers who did not own the land they worked obtained supplies and food on credit from local merchants. The merchants held a lien on the cotton crop and the merchants and landowners were the first ones paid from its sale. What was left over went to the farmer. The system ended in the 1940s as prosperity returned and many poor farmers moved permanently to cities and towns, where jobs were plentiful because of the war.

Schechter V. U.S.

a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that invalidated regulations of the poultry industry according to the nondelegation doctrine and as an invalid use of Congress' power under the commerce clause. This was a unanimous decision that rendered the National Industrial Recovery Act, a main component of President Roosevelt's New Deal, unconstitutional.

Referendum

a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to vote on a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new law.

"Peculiar Institution"

a euphemism for slavery and its economic ramifications in the American South. "Peculiar", in this expression, means "one's own", that is, it refers to something distinctive to or characteristic of a particular place or people.

Bay of Pigs

a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. A counter-revolutionary military, trained and funded by the United States government's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, under the direct command of Prime Minister Fidel Castro.

Webster-Hayne Debate

a famous debate in the United States between Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina that took place on January 19-27, 1830 on the topic of protectionist tariffs. The heated speeches between Webster and Hayne themselves were unplanned, and stemmed from debate over a resolution by Connecticut Senator Samuel A. Foot calling for the temporary suspension of further land surveying until land already on the market was sold (this would effectively stop the introduction of new lands onto the market).

War Powers Act

a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.

Mann-Elkins Act

a federal law passed during the Progressive Movement that extended the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act and the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to set railroad rates and regulate the telecommunications industry.

Tennessee Valley Authority

a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression. The enterprise was a result of the efforts of Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska. TVA was envisioned not only as a provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and electricity to rapidly modernize the region's economy and society.

Panic of 1837

a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. The panic had both domestic and foreign origins. Speculative lending practices in western states, a sharp decline in cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, international specie flows, and restrictive lending policies in Great Britain were all to blame.

Panic of 1873

a financial crisis that triggered a depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 until 1879, and even longer in some countries. In Britain, for example, it started two decades of stagnation known as the "Long Depression" that weakened the country's economic leadership.

Panic of 1857

a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the interconnectedness of the world economy by the 1850s, the financial crisis that began in late 1857 was the first world-wide economic crisis.

David Farragut

a flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War. He was the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral in the United States Navy.[5][6] He is remembered for his order at the Battle of Mobile Bay (in which he was victorious) usually paraphrased as "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" in U.S. Navy tradition.

Moral Diplomacy

a form of diplomacy proposed by US President Woodrow Wilson in his 1912 election. Moral Diplomacy is the system in which support is given only to countries whose moral beliefs are analogous to that of the nation.

Fascism

a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, influenced by national syndicalism. Fascism originated in Italy during World War I and spread to other European countries. Fascism opposes liberalism, Marxism and anarchism and is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left-right spectrum.

National Grange Movement

a fraternal organization in the United States that encourages families to band together to promote the economic and political well-being of the community and agriculture. The Grange, founded after the Civil War in 1867, is the oldest American agricultural advocacy group with a national scope. Major accomplishments credited to Grange advocacy include passage of the Granger Laws and the establishment of rural free mail delivery.

Embargo Act (1807)

a general embargo that made any and all exports from the United States illegal. It was sponsored by President Thomas Jefferson and enacted by Congress. The goal was to force Britain and France to respect American rights during the Napoleonic Wars. They were engaged in a major war; the U.S. wanted to remain neutral and trade with both sides, but neither side wanted the other to have the American supplies. The American goal was to use economic coercion to avoid war and to punish Britain. The policy was highly unpopular with shipping interests, and historians have judged it a failure.

Expeditionary Force

a generic name sometimes applied to a military force dispatched to fight in a foreign country, particularly during World War I and World War II.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation

a government corporation in the United States that operated between 1932 and 1957 which provided financial support to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses.

Lowell System

a labor and production model employed in the United States, particularly in New England, during the early years of the American textile industry in the early 19th century.

Fletcher v. Peck

a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Supreme Court first ruled a state law unconstitutional. The decision also helped create a growing precedent for the sanctity of legal contracts and hinted that Native Americans did not hold title to their own lands

Slave Codes

a set of laws that allowed a slave's master to retrieve their slave from the North (free states) without an authority's permission.

United States v. Nixon

a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. It resulted in a unanimous 8-0 ruling against President Richard Nixon and was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal. It is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any US president.

Gideon V. Wainwright

a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. In it, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by ruling that this right imposed those requirements upon the states as well.

McCulloch v. Maryland

a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. Though the law, by its language, was generally applicable to all banks not chartered in Maryland, the Second Bank of the United States was the only out-of-state bank then existing in Maryland, and the law was recognized in the court's opinion as having specifically targeted the Bank of the United States. The Court invoked the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution, which allowed the Federal government to pass laws not expressly provided for in the Constitution's list of express powers, provided those laws are in useful furtherance of the express powers of Congress under the Constitution.

Gibbons v. Ogden

a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the power to regulate interstate commerce, granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, encompassed the power to regulate navigation.

Miranda V. Arizona

a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court. In a 5-4 majority, the Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights, but voluntarily waived them.

Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law (or "competition law") passed by Congress in 1890. Passed under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison, it prohibits certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be anti-competitive, and requires the federal government to investigate and pursue trusts.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations").

Voting Rights Act of 1965

a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting.[7][8] It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections.[7] Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act secured voting rights for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country.

Public Works Administration

a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. Its goals were to spend $3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to provide employment, stabilize purchasing power, and help revive the economy.

Fordney McCumber Tariff Act

a law that raised American tariffs on many imported goods in order to protect factories and farms. Congress displayed a pro-business attitude in passing the tariff and in promoting foreign trade through providing huge loans to Europe, which in turn bought more American goods.

Jay Gould

a leading American railroad developer and speculator. He has been referred to as one of the ruthless robber barons of the Gilded Age, whose success at business made him the ninth richest U.S. citizen in history.

Jay Gould

a leading American railroad developer and speculator. He has been referred to as one of the ruthless robber barons of the Gilded Age, whose success at business made him the ninth richest U.S. citizen in history. Some modern historians like Walter R. Borneman working from primary sources have discounted his negative portrayal.

Denmark Vesey

a literate, skilled carpenter and leader among African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina. He is notable as the accused and convicted ringleader of "the rising," a major potential slave revolt planned for the city in June 1822; he was executed. Likely born into slavery in St. Thomas, he served a master on Bermuda for some time before being brought to Charleston, where he gained his freedom.

Comstock Lode

a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Nevada (then western Utah Territory). It was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States.

Cattle Drives

a major economic activity in the 19th-century American West, particularly between 1866 and 1886, when 20 million cattle were herded from Texas to railheads in Kansas, for shipments to stockyards in Chicago and points east. The long distances covered, the need for periodic rests by riders and animals, and the establishment of railheads led to the development of "cow towns" across the frontier.

Free Silver

a major policy issue in late 19th century American politics. Its advocates were in favor of an inflationary monetary policy using the "free coinage of silver" as opposed to the deflationary gold standard. Its supporters were "Silverites".

Watergate

a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. and President Richard Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis.

National Security Act

a major restructuring of the United States government's military and intelligence agencies following World War II. The majority of the provisions of the Act took effect on September 18, 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense.

Mountain Men

a male trapper and explorer who lives in the wilderness. Mountain men were most common in the North American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through the 1880s (with a peak population in the early 1840s). They were instrumental in opening up the various Emigrant Trails (widened into wagon roads) allowing Americans in the east to settle the new territories of the far west by organized wagon trains traveling over roads explored and in many cases, physically improved by the mountain men and the big fur companies originally to serve the mule train based inland fur trade.

Mt. Vernon Conference

a meeting of delegates from Virginia and Maryland held March 21-28, 1785, initially in Alexandria, Virginia and adjourned to the Fairfax County estate of George Washington, to discuss navigational rights in the states' common waterways.

McKinley Tariff

a member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio, introduced a tariff bill, which became known as the McKinley Tariff. Tariffs are taxes placed on foreign goods by federal governments. By placing taxes on foreign goods, these products become more expensive

Hudson River School

a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism. The paintings for which the movement is named depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and the White Mountains.

Washington Conference

a military conference called by U.S. President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington, D.C., from 12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922. Conducted outside the auspice of the League of Nations, it was attended by nine nations—the United States, Japan, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal[1]—regarding interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference. It was the first international conference held in the United States and the first arms control conference in history, and as Kaufman, 1990 shows, it is studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement.

Henry Knox

a military officer of the Continental Army and later the United States Army, who also served as the first United States Secretary of War from 1789 to 1794.

Hiram Revels

a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a Republican politician, and college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War.

Absolute Monarch

a monarchical form of government in which the monarch has absolute power among his or her people. An absolute monarch wields unrestricted political power over the sovereign state and its people.

Pullman Strike

a nationwide railroad strike in the United States on May 11, 1894. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.

Infant Industries

a new industry, which in its early stages experiences relative difficulty or is absolutely incapable in competing with established competitors abroad.

National Urban League

a nonpartisan civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest community-based organization of its kind in the nation. Its current President is Marc H. Morial.

American Peace Society

a pacifist group founded upon the initiative of William Ladd, in New York City, May 8, 1828. It was formed by the merging of many state and local societies, from New York, Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, of which the oldest, the New York Peace Society, dated from 1815. Ladd was an advocate of a "Congress and High Court of Nations." The society organized peace conferences and regularly published a periodical entitled Advocate of Peace. The Society was only opposed to wars between nation states; it did not oppose the American Civil War.

Compromise of 1850

a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846-48).

Thomas Paine: Common Sense

a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775-76 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies.

Clayton Antitrust Act

a part of United States antitrust law with the goal of adding further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime; the Clayton Act sought to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incipiency. That regime started with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the first Federal law outlawing practices considered harmful to consumers (monopolies, cartels, and trusts). The Clayton Act specified particular prohibited conduct, the three-level enforcement scheme, the exemptions, and the remedial measures.

"Pet Banks"

a pejorative term for state banks selected by the U.S. Department of Treasury to receive surplus government funds in 1833. Pet banks are sometimes mistaken with wildcat banks; however, the two are distinct types of institutions that arose during the same period of time, although some pet banks were known to engage in the practices of wildcat banking.

Auburn System

a penal method of the 19th century in which persons worked during the day in groups and were kept in solitary confinement at night, with enforced silence at all times. The silent system evolved during the 1820s at Auburn Prison in Auburn, N.Y., as an alternative to and modification of the Pennsylvania system of solitary confinement, which it gradually replaced in the United States. Whigs favored this system because it promised to rehabilitate criminals by teaching them personal discipline and respect for work, property, and other people.

Era of Good Feelings

a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. The era saw the collapse of the Federalist Party and an end to the bitter partisan disputes between it and the dominant Democratic-Republican Party during the First Party System. President James Monroe strove to downplay partisan affiliation in making his nominations, with the ultimate goal of national unity and eliminating parties altogether from national politics. The period is so closely associated with Monroe's presidency (1817-1825) and his administrative goals that his name and the era are virtually synonymous.

Spoilsmen

a person who seeks to profit by the spoils system; a person who supports this system.

Transcendentalists

a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern region of the United States. The movement was a reaction to or protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality. The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was of particular interest.

Modernism

a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.

Vietnamization

a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops."

Party Nominating Convention

a political convention held every four years in the United States by most of the political parties who will be fielding nominees in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The formal purpose of such a convention is to select the party's nominee for President, as well as to adopt a statement of party principles and goals known as the platform and adopt the rules for the party's activities, including the presidential nominating process for the next election cycle.

Halfbreeds

a political faction of the United States Republican Party in the late 19th century. The Half-Breeds were a moderate-wing group, and were the opponents of the Stalwarts, the other main faction of the Republican Party.

Common Man

a political leader who worked his way up to the top from the bottom. Andrew Jackson was the model common man. He had been orphaned, so he fought in the Revolutionary War at age thirteen. In the War of 1812, he became a hero and launched his political career soon after. He was like the rest of the country, and that's why they liked him so much. The common man began to take over during the Jacksonian Democracy.

Liberal Republicans

a political party that was organized in Cincinnati in May 1872, to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872. The Liberal Republican party's candidate was Horace Greeley, longtime publisher of the New York Tribune. Following his nomination by the Liberal Republicans, Greeley was also nominated by the Democratic Party. Greeley was seen as an oddball reformer with little government experience and a long record of vehement attacks against the very Democrats he now called on for support. Greeley was defeated, receiving approximately 43% of the popular vote, and winning only in the states of Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Maryland. Grant received 286 of the 352 electoral college votes.

New Federalism

a political philosophy of devolution, or the transfer of certain powers from the United States federal government back to the states.

Tuskegee Institute

a private, historically black university (HBCU) located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It was established by Booker T. Washington. The campus is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service and is the only one in the U.S. to have this designation. The university was home to scientist George Washington Carver and to World War II's Tuskegee Airmen.

Concentration of Wealth

a process by which newly created wealth, under some conditions, can become concentrated in the possession of wealthy individuals or entities.

Lend-Lease Act

a program under which the United States supplied Free France, the United Kingdom, the Republic of China, and later the USSR and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945. This included warships and warplanes, along with other weaponry. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941 and ended in September 1945. In general the aid was free, although some hardware (such as ships) were returned after the war. In return, the U.S. was given leases on army and naval bases in Allied territory during the war.

Horatio Alger

a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many young-adult fiction novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. His writings were characterized by the "rags to riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on America during the Gilded Age.

Sussex Pledge

a promise made in 1916 during World War I by Germany to the United States prior to the latter's entry into the war. Early in 1915, Germany had instituted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, allowing armed merchant ships, but not passenger ships, to be torpedoed without warning.

Tallmadge Amendment

a proposed amendment to a bill requesting the Territory of Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a free state. This amendment was submitted on February 13, 1819, by James Tallmadge, Jr., a Democratic-Republican from New York.

Tariff of Abominations (1828)

a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828, designed to protect industry in the northern United States. Enacted during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, it was labeled the Tariff of Abominations by its southern detractors because of the effects it had on the antebellum Southern economy.The major goal of the tariff was to protect industries in the northern United States which were being driven out of business by low-priced imported goods by taxing them. The South, however, was harmed directly by having to pay higher prices on goods the region did not produce, and indirectly because reducing the exportation of British goods to the U.S. made it difficult for the British to pay for the cotton they imported from the South.

Compromise of 1877

a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election, pulled federal troops out of state politics in the South, and ended the Reconstruction Era.

Settlement Houses

a reformist social movement, beginning in the 1880s and peaking around the 1920s in England and the US, with a goal of getting the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community. Its main object was the establishment of "settlement houses" in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors. The "settlement houses" provided services such as daycare, education, and healthcare to improve the lives of the poor in these areas.

Mormons

a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity, which began with Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the Mormons followed Brigham Young to what would become the Utah Territory.

Shakers

a religious sect, also known as the Shakers, founded in the 18th century in England, having branched off from a Quaker community. They were known as "Shaking Quakers" because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services. In 1747, women assumed leadership roles within the sect, notably Jane Wardley and Mother Ann Lee. Shakers settled in colonial America, with initial settlements in New Lebanon, New York (called Mount Lebanon after 1861) today they are mostly known for their celibate and communal lifestyle, pacifism, and their model of equality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in their society in the 1780s. They are also known for their simple living, architecture, and furniture.

Jonathan Edwards

a revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. Like most of the Puritans, he held to the Reformed theology. His colonial followers later distinguished themselves from other Congregationalists as "New Lights" (endorsing the Great Awakening), as opposed to "Old Lights" (non-revivalists). He is widely regarded as "one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians". His theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage.

Nullification Crisis

a sectional crisis in 1832-33, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between South Carolina and the federal government. The crisis ensued after South Carolina declared that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state.

Pacific Railroad Act

a series of acts of Congress that promoted the construction of a "transcontinental railroad" (the "Pacific Railroad") in the United States through authorizing the issuance of government bonds and the grants of land to railroad companies. Although the War Department under then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was authorized by the Congress in 1853 to conduct surveys of five different potential transcontinental routes from the Mississippi ranging from north to south and submitted a massive twelve volume report to Congress with the results in early 1855, no route or bill could be agreed upon and passed authorizing the Government's financial support and land grants until the secession of the Southern states removed their opposition to a central route.

Hartford Convention (1814)

a series of meetings from December 15, 1814 - January 5, 1815 in which the New England Federalist Party met to discuss their grievances concerning the ongoing War of 1812 and the political problems arising from the federal government's increasing power.

Insular Cases

a series of opinions by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1901, about the status of U.S. territories acquired in the Spanish-American War. The Supreme Court held that full constitutional rights do not automatically (or ex proprio vigore—i.e., of its own force) extend to all places under American control.

First New Deal

a series of programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1938, and a few that came later. They included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term (1933-1937) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were in response to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians refer to as the "3 Rs," Relief, Recovery, and Reform: relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy to normal levels, and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.

"Bleeding Kansas"

a series of violent political confrontations in the United States involving anti-slavery "Free-Staters" and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements in Kansas between 1854 and 1861. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 called for "popular sovereignty"—that is, the decision about slavery was to be made by the settlers (rather than outsiders). It would be decided by votes—or more exactly which side had more votes counted by officials. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would allow or outlaw slavery, and thus enter the Union as a slave state or a free state. Pro-slavery forces said every settler had the right to bring his own property, including slaves, into the territory. Anti-slavery "free soil" forces said the rich slaveholders would buy up all the good farmland and work it with black slaves, leaving little or no opportunity for non-slaveholders. As such, Bleeding Kansas was a conflict between anti-slavery forces in the North and pro-slavery forces from the South over the issue of slavery in the United States.

Panic of 1893

a serious economic depression in the United States that began in that year.[1] Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures.

Free Soil Movement

a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of anti-slavery former members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. It opposed slavery in the new territories (agreeing with the Wilmot Proviso) and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio.

Dixiecrats

a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States in 1948. It originated as a breakaway faction of the Democratic Party in 1948, determined to protect what they portrayed as the southern way of life beset by an oppressive federal government, and supporters assumed control of the state Democratic parties in part or in full in several Southern states. The States' Rights Democratic Party opposed racial integration and wanted to retain Jim Crow laws and white supremacy in the face of possible federal intervention.

King Cotton

a slogan summarizing the strategy used during the American Civil War by the Confederacy to show that secession was feasible and there was no need to fear a war by the United States. The idea was that control over cotton exports would make an independent Confederacy economically prosperous, ruin the textile industry of New England, and—most importantly—would force Great Britain and perhaps France to support the Confederacy militarily because their industrial economies depended on Southern cotton.

Consumerism

a social and economic order and ideology encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.

Temperance

a social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements typically criticize excessive alcohol consumption, promote complete abstinence (teetotalism), or use its political influence to press the government to enact alcohol laws to regulate the availability of alcohol or even its complete prohibition.

Social Security Act

a social welfare legislative act which created the Social Security system in the United States. Although the program has been altered since its signing, the original purpose was to provide federal assistance to those unable to work.

American Temperance Society

a society established on February 13, 1826 in Boston, MA. Within five years there were 2,220 local chapters in the U.S. with 170,000 members who had taken a pledge to abstain from drinking distilled beverages. Within ten years, there were over 8,000 local groups and more than 1,500,000 members who had taken the pledge. The society benefited from, and contributed to, a reform sentiment in much of the country promoting the abolition of slavery, expanding women's rights, temperance, and the improvement of society. Possibly because of its association with the abolitionist movement, the society was most successful in northern states.

Overland Trails

a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West during the 19th century. While portions of the route had been used by explorers and trappers since the 1820s, the Overland Trail was most heavily used in the 1860s as an alternative route to the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails through central Wyoming. The Overland Trail was famously used by the Overland Stage Company owned by Ben Holladay to run mail and passengers to Salt Lake City, Utah, via stagecoaches in the early 1860s.

Cold War

a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact). Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but 1947-91 is common. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides.

Anthracite Coal Miners' Strike

a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners were on strike asking for higher wages, shorter workdays and the recognition of their union. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to all major cities. President Theodore Roosevelt became involved and set up a fact-finding commission that suspended the strike. The strike never resumed, as the miners received a 10% wage increase and reduced workdays from ten to nine hours; the owners got a higher price for coal, and did not recognize the trade union as a bargaining agent. It was the first labor episode in which the federal government intervened as a neutral arbitrator.

Sharecropping

a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land.

Federal Income Tax

a tax is imposed on income by the federal government, most state governments, and many local governments. The income tax is determined by applying a tax rate, which may increase as income increases, to taxable income as defined. Individuals and corporations are directly taxable, and estates and trusts may be taxable on undistributed income.

Manifest Destiny

a term for the attitude prevalent during the 19th century period of American expansion that the United States not only could, but was destined to, stretch from coast to coast. This attitude helped fuel western settlement, Native American removal and war with Mexico.

Open Door Policy

a term in foreign affairs initially used to refer to the United States policy established in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, as enunciated in Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door Note, dated September 6, 1899 and dispatched to the major European powers. The policy proposed to keep China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, keeping any one power from total control of the country, and calling upon all powers, within their spheres of influence, to refrain from interfering with any treaty port or any vested interest, to permit Chinese authorities to collect tariffs on an equal basis, and to show no favors to their own nationals in the matter of harbour dues or railroad charges.

Market revolution

a term used by historians to describe the expansion of the marketplace that occurred in early nineteenth-century America, prompted mainly by the construction of new roads and canals to connect distant communities together for the first time.

Scientific Management

a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management.

Functionalism

a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. Its core idea is that mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, etc.) are constituted solely by their functional role - that is, they have causal relations to other mental states, numerous sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs.

Trunk Line

a transportation system (as an airline, railroad, or highway) handling long-distance through traffic.

Rush-Bagot Agreement (1817)

a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom limiting naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, following the War of 1812. It was ratified by the United States Senate on April 16, 1818, and was confirmed by Canada, following Confederation, in 1867. The treaty provided for a large demilitarization of lakes along the international boundary, where many British naval arrangements and forts remained. The treaty stipulated that the United States and British North America could each maintain one military vessel (no more than 100 tons burden) as well as one cannon (no more than eighteen pounds) on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain.

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty

a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom, negotiated in 1850 by John M. Clayton and Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, later Lord Dalling. It was negotiated in response to attempts to build the Nicaragua Canal, a canal in Nicaragua that would connect the Pacific and the Atlantic.

Webster-Ashburton Treaty

a treaty resolving several border issues between the United States and the British North American colonies. Signed under John Tyler's presidency, it resolved the Aroostook War, a nonviolent dispute over the location of the Maine-New Brunswick border. It established the border between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods, originally defined in the Treaty of Paris (1783), reaffirmed the location of the border (at the 49th parallel) in the westward frontier up to the Rocky Mountains defined in the Treaty of 1818, defined seven crimes subject to extradition, called for a final end to the slave trade on the high seas, and agreed to shared use of the Great Lakes.

"Old Ironsides"

a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy, named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America. Launched in 1797, Constitution was one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794 and the third constructed. Her first duties with the newly formed U.S. Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.

Habeas Corpus

a writ that is used to bring a party who has been criminally convicted in state court into federal court. Usually, writs of habeas corpus are used to review the legality of the party's arrest, imprisonment, or detention.

Poor Richard's Almanack

a yearly almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of "Poor Richard" or "Richard Saunders" for this purpose. The publication appeared continually from 1732 to 1758. It sold exceptionally well for a pamphlet published in the American colonies; print runs reached 10,000 per year.[

Dawes Severalty Act

adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians.

Charter Of Liberties

also called the Coronation Charter, was a written proclamation by Henry I of England, issued upon his accession to the throne in 1100. It sought to bind the King to certain laws regarding the treatment of nobles, church officials, and individuals.

Glorious Revolution

also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland) by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange).

Sugar Act

also known as the American Revenue Act, was a revenue-raising act passed by the British Parliament in April, 1764. Taxes from the earlier Molasses Act of 1733 had never been effectively collected, largely due to colonial evasion as the molasses trade grew.

Wabash V. Illinois

also known as the Wabash Case, was a Supreme Court decision that severely limited the rights of states to control interstate commerce. It led to the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Whisky Rebellion

also known as the Whiskey Insurrection, was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791, during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government.

Soil Bank Program

am of the late 1950s and early 1960s that paid farmers to retire land from production for 10 years. The predecessor to today's Conservation Reserve Program.

Federal Reserve Act

an Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, and which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes (now commonly known as the U.S. Dollar) and Federal Reserve Bank Notes as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.

Tea Act

an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive.

Sedition Act

an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.

Ida B. Wells

an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Watts Riot

an African-American motorist was arrested for drunk driving. A minor roadside argument broke out, and then escalated into a fight. The community reacted in outrage. Six days of looting and arson followed. Los Angeles police needed the support of nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard to quell the riots, which resulted in 34 deaths (31 of which were at the hands of law enforcement) [2] and over $40 million in property damage. The riots were blamed principally on unemployment, although a later investigation also highlighted police racism. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992.

Henry Cabot Lodge

an American Republican Senator and historian from Massachusetts. Lodge received his PhD in history from Harvard. Lodge was a long-time friend and confidant of Theodore Roosevelt. Lodge had the role (but not the official title) of the first Senate Majority Leader. He is best known for his positions on foreign policy, especially his battle with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 over the Treaty of Versailles. Lodge demanded Congressional control of declarations of war; Wilson refused and blocked Lodge's move to ratify the treaty with reservations. As a result, the United States never joined the League of Nations.

American Protective Association

an American anti-Catholic secret society established in 1887 by Protestants, especially Irish Protestants from Canada. It was strongest in the Midwest, and came under heavy attack from Democrats until its collapse in the mid-1890s.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

an American business magnate and philanthropist who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. Born poor and with but a mediocre education, his luck, perseverance and intelligence led into leadership positions in the inland water trade, and the rapidly growing railroad industry. He is best known for building the New York Central Railroad.

J. Pierpont Morgan

an American financier and banker who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892, Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric. He was instrumental in the creation of the United States Steel Corporation.

Truman Doctrine

an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical hegemony during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey.

Frederick Jackson Turner

an American historian in the early 20th century, based at the University of Wisconsin until 1910, and then at Harvard. He trained many PhDs who came to occupy prominent places in the history profession. He promoted interdisciplinary and quantitative methods, often with a focus on the Midwest. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas formed the Frontier Thesis. He argued that the moving western frontier shaped American democracy and the American character from the colonial era until 1890. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism.

Salutary Neglect

an American history term that refers to the unofficial, long-term seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Crown policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep American colonies obedient to England.

John D. Rockefeller

an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry, and along with other key contemporary industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded Standard Oil Company and actively ran it until he officially retired in 1897

Marshall Plan

an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $130 billion in current dollar value as of March 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning April 8th 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous again, and prevent the spread of communism.

Cyprus McCormick

an American inventor and founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which became part of International Harvester Company in 1902.[

Margaret Fuller

an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Frederic Law Olmsted

an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-known urban parks with his senior partner Calvert Vaux, including Prospect Park and Central Park in New York City, as well as Elm Park (Worcester, Massachusetts), considered by many to be the first municipal park in America.

Alexander H. Stephens

an American lawyer and politician from Georgia, and the Confederate vice president throughout the American Civil War. His Cornerstone Speech of March 1861 defended slavery in the most uncompromising terms, though after the war he tried to distance himself from his earlier sentiments. In the course of the war, he became increasingly critical of Confederate President Jefferson Davis' policies, especially conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus.

Edwin Stanton

an American lawyer and politician who served as Secretary of War under the Lincoln Administration during most of the American Civil War. Stanton's management helped organize the massive military resources of the North and guide the Union to victory. He also organized the manhunt for Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth. However, he was criticized by many Union generals for perceived over-cautiousness and micromanagement.

Scopes Trial

an American legal case in 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.

John C. Fremont

an American military officer, explorer, and politician who became the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, when he led four expeditions into the American West, that era's penny press and admiring historians accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

an American novelist, Dark Romantic, and short story writer.

Standard Oil Trust

an American oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world of its time.[7] Its controversial history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly.

National Negro Business

an American organization founded in Boston in 1900 by Booker T. Washington, with the support of Andrew Carnegie. The mission and main goal of the National Negro Business League was "to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro." It was recognized as "composed of negro men and women who have achieved success along business lines".

John Dewey

an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the founders of functional psychology.

Helen Hunt Jackson

an American poet and writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She described the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor (1881). Her novel Ramona (1884) dramatized the federal government's mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California after the Mexican-American War and attracted considerable attention to her cause.

Ralph Nader

an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.

Know Nothing Party

an American political party that operated on a national basis during the mid-1850s. The movement arose in response to an influx of migrants, and promised to "purify" American politics by limiting or ending the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants, thus reflecting nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, the movement strove to curb immigration and naturalization, but met with little success.

Greenback Party

an American political party with an anti-monopoly ideology which was active between 1874 and 1889.

Barry Goldwater

an American politician and businessman who was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953-65, 1969-87) and the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1964 election. Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.

Dwight Eisenhower

an American politician and general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942-43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-45 from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO.

Sam Houston

an American politician and soldier, best known for his role in bringing Texas into the United States as a constituent state. His victory at the Battle of San Jacinto secured the independence of Texas from Mexico. The only American to be elected governor of two states (as opposed to territories or indirect selection), he was also the only governor within a future Confederate state to oppose secession (which led to the outbreak of the American Civil War) and to refuse an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, a decision that led to his removal from office by the Texas secession convention.

John F. Kennedy

an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Trade Expansion Act to lower tariffs, the Civil Rights Movement, the "New Frontier" domestic program, and abolition of the federal death penalty in the District of Columbia all took place during his presidency. Kennedy also avoided any significant increase in the American presence in Vietnam, refusing to commit combat troops and keeping the level of others, mostly military advisors, to only 16,000, compared to the 536,000 troops committed by his successor, Lyndon Johnson, by 1968.

Olive Branch Petition

drafted on July 5, 1775, was a letter to King George III, from members of the Second Continental Congress, which represents the last attempt by the moderate party in North America to avoid a war of independence against Britain.

Jefferson Davis

an American politician who was a U.S. Representative and Senator from Mississippi, the 23rd U.S. Secretary of War, and the President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He took personal charge of the Confederate war plans but was unable to find a strategy to defeat the more populous and industrialized Union. His diplomatic efforts failed to gain recognition from any foreign country, and at home, the collapsing Confederate economy forced his government to print more and more paper money to cover the war's expenses, leading to runaway inflation and devaluation of the Confederate dollar.

Joseph Smith

an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon; by the time of his death fourteen years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religious culture that continues to the present.

Susan B. Anthony

an American social reformer and feminist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

an American statesman and political leader who served as the President of the United States from 1933 to 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and dominated his party for many years as a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and total war. His program for relief, recovery and reform, known as the New Deal, involved a great expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy. As a dominant leader of the Democratic Party, he built the New Deal Coalition that brought together and united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners in support of the party. The Coalition significantly realigned American politics after 1932, creating the Fifth Party System and defining American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century.

John C. Calhoun

an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina, who now is best remembered for his strong defense of slavery. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. After 1830, his views shifted and he became a greater proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade, as he saw these means as the only way to preserve the Union. He is known for his strong defense of free trade and slavery, his distrust of majoritarianism, and for leading the South toward secession from the Union.

Andrew Jackson

an American statesman who served as the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837. After winning election to the Senate, Jackson decided to run for president in 1824. Although he won more electoral votes and more of the popular votes than any of the other three major candidates, he lost in the House of Representatives to John Quincy Adams, supposedly by a "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Speaker of the House Henry Clay, who was also a candidate. Jackson's supporters then founded what became the Democratic Party. He ran again in 1828 against Adams. Building on his base in the West and with new support from Virginia and New York, he won by a landslide.

John Quincy Adams

an American statesman who served as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829. He also served as a diplomat, a Senator and member of the House of Representatives. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. s president he sought to modernize the American economy and promote education. Adams enacted a part of his agenda and paid off much of the national debt.

Samuel Adams

an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to President John Adams.

Alice Paul

an American suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and the main leader and strategist of the 1910s campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Along with Lucy Burns and others, Paul strategized the events, such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which led the successful campaign that resulted in its passage in 1920.

Ida Tarbell

an American teacher, author and journalist. She was one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is thought to have pioneered investigative journalism. She is best known for her 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, which was listed as No. 5 in a 1999 list by New York University of the top 100 works of 20th-century American journalism. It was first serialized in McClure's Magazine from 1902 to 1904. She depicted John D. Rockefeller as crabbed, miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade.

Eugene V. Debs

an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.

Herbert Spencer

an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.

American Antislavery Society

an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, was a key leader of this society who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown was a freed slave who often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local charters with around 250,000 members.

Bland-Allison Act

an act of United States Congress requiring the U.S. Treasury to buy a certain amount of silver and put it into circulation as silver dollars.

Insurrection

an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.

Hawley-Smoot Tariff

an act sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930, that raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels.The dutiable tariff level (this does not include duty-free imports—see Tariff levels below) under the act was the second highest in the U.S. in 100 years, exceeded by a small margin by the Tariff of 1828. The great majority of economists then and ever since view the Act, and the ensuing retaliatory tariffs by America's trading partners, as responsible for reducing American exports and imports by more than half.

Roosevelt Corollary

an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-03. The corollary states that the United States will intervene in conflicts between European countries and Latin American countries to enforce legitimate claims of the European powers, rather than having the Europeans press their claims directly.

Fair Deal

an ambitious set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address. More generally the term characterizes the entire domestic agenda of the Truman Administration, from 1945 to 1953.

Teller Amendment

an amendment to a joint resolution of the United States Congress, enacted on April 20, 1898, in reply to President William McKinley's War Message. It placed a condition on the United States military's presence in Cuba.

Cowboys

an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of special significance and legend.

Vertical Integration

an arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or (market-specific) service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need.

Gospel Of Wealth

an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner. This approach was contrasted with traditional bequest (patrimony), where wealth is handed down to heirs, and other forms of bequest e.g. where wealth is willed to the state for public purposes. Carnegie argued that surplus wealth is put to best use (i.e. produces the greatest net benefit to society) when it is administered carefully by the wealthy.

Romantic Movement

an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution,[1] the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature.

Watered Stock

an asset with an artificially-inflated value. The term is most commonly used to refer to a form of securities fraud common under older corporate laws that placed a heavy emphasis upon the par value of stock.

Dawes Plan

an attempt in 1924 to solve the World War I reparations problem, which had bedeviled international politics following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles.

Dorothea Dix

an author, teacher and reformer. Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people's perceptions of these populations. Prisons at the time were unregulated and unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with the mentally ill. Inmates were often subject to the whims and brutalities of their jailers. Dix visited every public and private facility she could access, documenting the conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She then presented her findings to the legislature of Massachusetts, demanding that officials take action toward reform.

Samuel Slater

an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" and the "Father of the American Factory System."

Thomas MacDonough

an early-19th-century American naval officer noted for his roles in the first Barbary War and the War of 1812. Serving with Stephen Decatur at Tripoli, he was a member of "Preble's Boys", a select group of U.S. naval officers who served under the command of Commodore Preble during the First Barbary War. He achieved fame during the War of 1812, commanding the American naval forces that defeated the British navy at the Battle of Lake Champlain, part of the larger Battle of Plattsburgh, which helped lead to an end to that war.

Mercantalism

an economic theory and practice, dominant in modernized parts of Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, that promoted governmental regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers.

Missouri Compromise (1820)

an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free.

Injunction

an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties, including possible monetary sanctions and even imprisonment. They can also be charged with contempt of court.

Gilded Age

an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the North and West. As American wages were much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants. The rapid expansion of industrialization led to real wage growth of 60% between 1860 and 1890, spread across the ever-increasing labor force. However, the Gilded Age was also an era of abject poverty and inequality as millions of immigrants—many from impoverished European nations—poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.

Great Awakening

an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Protestantism. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. Pulling away from ritual, ceremony, sacramentalism and hierarchy, iy made Christianity intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual conviction and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.

Morrill Tariff Act (1861)

an increased import tariff in the United States, adopted on March 2, 1861, during the administration of President James Buchanan, a Democrat. It was the twelfth of seventeen planks in the platform of the incoming Republican Party, which had not yet been inaugurated, and it appealed to industrialists and factory workers as a way to foster rapid industrial growth.

Federal Trade Commission

an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act. Its principal mission is the promotion of consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of anticompetitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. The Federal Trade Commission Act was one of President Woodrow Wilson's major acts against trusts. Trusts and trust-busting were significant political concerns during the Progressive Era.

Homestead Strike

an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history, third behind the Ludlow Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers (the AA) and the Carnegie Steel Company. The final result was a major defeat for the union and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers.

Suez Canal Treaty

an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain Western control of the Suez Canal and to remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power. After the fighting had started, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations forced the three invaders to withdraw. The episode humiliated Great Britain and France[18] and strengthened Nasser.

Sons of Liberty

an organization of American colonists that was created in the Thirteen American Colonies. The secret society was formed to protect the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. They played a major role in most colonies in battling the Stamp Act in 1765.

Farmers' Southern Alliance

an organized agrarian economic movement among American farmers that developed and flourished in 1875. The movement included several parallel but independent political organizations. One of the goals of the organization was to end the adverse effects of the crop-lien system on farmers in the period following the American Civil War. The Alliance also generally supported the government regulation of the transportation industry, establishment of an income tax in order to restrict speculative profits, and the adoption of an inflationary relaxation of the nation's money supply as a means of easing the burden of repayment of loans by debtors.

Old Northwest

an organized incorporated territory of the United States spanning most or large parts of six eventual U.S. States. It existed legally from July 13, 1787, until March 1, 1803, when the southeastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of Ohio, and the remainder was reorganized.

Oregon Territory

an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from August 14, 1848, until February 14, 1859, when the southwestern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Oregon. Originally claimed by several countries (See Oregon Country), the region was divided between the U.S. and Great Britain in 1846.

Oklahoma Terrritory

an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 2, 1890, until November 16, 1907, when it was joined with the Indian Territory under a new constitution and admitted to the Union as the State of Oklahoma.

Consumer Goods

any tangible commodity produced and subsequently purchased to satisfy the current wants and perceived needs of the buyer. Consumer goods are divided into three categories: durable goods, nondurable goods, and services.

Morrill Land Grant Act

are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges, including the Morrill Act of 1862

Marbury v. Madison

as a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution. The landmark decision helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the American form of government.

Tampico Incident

as a minor incident involving U.S. sailors and Mexican land forces loyal to Mexican dictator General Victoriano Huerta during the guerra de las facciones (faction wars) phase of the Mexican Revolution. A misunderstanding occurred on April 9, 1914, but developed into a breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries. As a result, the United States invaded the port city of Veracruz, occupying it for more than six months. This contributed to the fall of President Victoriano Huerta, who resigned in July 1914.

Administration of Justice Act

as an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. It is one of the measures (variously called the Intolerable Acts, the Punitive Acts or the Coercive Acts by many colonists) that were designed to secure Britain's jurisdiction over the American dominions. The Act allowed the royally appointed governor to remove any acquisition placed on a royal official by a patriot, if the governor did not believe the official would have a fair trial. The Act was referred to as the "Murder Act" because the patriots believed that the official could get away with capital offences.

U.S.-Japenese Security Treaty

as first signed in 1952 at the San Francisco Presidio following the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco (commonly known as the Peace Treaty of San Francisco) at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. Then, the Security Treaty was later amended further on January 1960 between the US and Japan in Washington.

Proclamation of 1763

as issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains.

Constitutional convention

at the Annapolis Convention, delegates from five states called for a Constitutional Convention in order to discuss possible improvements to the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787.

Indian Self-Determination Act

authorized the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and some other government agencies to enter into contracts with, and make grants directly to, federally recognized Indian tribes. The tribes would have authority for how they administered the funds, which gave them greater control over their welfare.

Selective Service Act

authorized the federal government to raise a national army for the American entry into World War I through the compulsory enlistment of people. It was envisioned in December 1916 and brought to President Woodrow Wilson's attention shortly after the break in relations with Germany in February 1917.

Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act

began in the United States House of Representatives as a bill raising certain tariffs on goods entering the United States. The high rates angered Republican reformers, and led to a deep split in the Republican Party.

Railroad Strike of 1877

began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States and ended some 45 days later, after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops. Labor unions were not involved; these were spontaneous outbreaks in numerous cities of violence against railroads.

Rosenberg Case

begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union).

Fredericksburg

between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General Ambrose Burnside. The Union Army's futile frontal attacks on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates.

Immigration Act

changed the way quotas were allocated by ending the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Representative Emanuel Celler of New York proposed the bill, Senator Philip Hart of Michigan co-sponsored it, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts helped to promote it.

Municipal Reforms

changes in city governments made to encourage greater efficiency, honesty, and responsiveness. Although municipal governments have been in flux since their creation, the greatest era of municipal reform came in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

New South

coined in 1874 by Atlanta Constitution managing editor Henry W. Grady, refers to the economic shift from an exclusively agrarian society to one that embraced industrial development.

Impressment

colloquially, "the press" or the "press gang", refers to the act of taking men into a navy by force and with or without notice. Navies of several nations used forced recruitment by various means.

Copperheads

comprised a vocal faction of Democrats in the Northern United States of the Union who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. Republicans started calling anti-war Democrats "Copperheads", likening them to the venomous snake.

Cuban Missle Crisis

confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning Soviet ballistic missiles deployment in Cuba. Along with being televised worldwide, it was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The initial purpose was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. The popular sovereignty clause of the law led pro- and anti-slavery elements to flood into Kansas with the goal of voting slavery up or down, resulting in Bleeding Kansas.

Treaty of Paris

ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there.

American Colonization Society

established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey, was founded by groups otherwise opposed to each other on the issue of slavery. The ACS intended to support the colonization of free African Americans because their presence served as "a perpetual excitement" to the enslaved blacks and threatened the slave societies of the South. All of the early organizers of the Society were slaveholders; according to annual reports of the Society, they hoped in this effort to strengthen the institution of slavery. It helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821-22 on the coast of West Africa as a place for free-born American blacks.

Fair Labor Standards Act

establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and youth employment standards affecting employees in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments. Covered nonexempt workers are entitled to a minimum wage of not less than $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009.

Jones Act

formally Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916, statute announcing the intention of the United States government to "withdraw their sovereignty over the Philippine Islands as soon as a stable government can be established therein."

Treaty of Portsmouth

formally ended the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905 after negotiations lasting from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, in the United States.

Union and Central Pacific

former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah, US, that built eastwards from the West Coast in the 1860s, to complete the western part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Antietam

fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland and Antietam Creek as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It is the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

granted citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude."

Fundamentalism

has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs. However, fundamentalism has come to apply to a tendency among certain groups—mainly, though not exclusively, in religion—that is characterized by a markedly strict literalism as applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions, leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established "fundamentals" and their accepted interpretation within the group is often the result of this tendency.

Frame of Government

of Pennsylvania was a constitution for the Province of Pennsylvania, a proprietary colony granted to William Penn by Charles II of England.

Domino Theory

held that a communist victory in one nation would quickly lead to a chain reaction of communist takeovers in neighboring states. In Southeast Asia, the United States government used the domino theory to justify its support of a non-communist regime in South Vietnam against the communist government of North Vietnam, and ultimately its increasing involvement in the long-running Vietnam War (1954-75).

Revivalism

in a Christian context generally refers to a specific period of spiritual renewal in the life of the Church. While elements such as mass conversions and perceived beneficial effects on the moral climate of a given

Dingley Tariff

increased duties by an average of 57 percent. Tariff rates were hiked on sugar, salt, tin cans, glassware, and tobacco, as well as on iron and steel, steel rails, petroleum, lead, copper, locomotives, matches, whisky, and leather goods.

Paris Accords of 1973

intended to establish peace in Vietnam and an end to the Vietnam War. It ended direct U.S. military combat, and temporarily stopped the fighting between North and South Vietnam. The governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and the United States, as well as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries, signed the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam on January 27, 1973. The agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate.

Algeciras Conference

international conference of the great European powers and the United States, held at Algeciras, Spain, to discuss France's relationship to the government of Morocco. The conference climaxed the First Moroccan Crisis (see Moroccan crises).

Antitrust Movement

is a collection of federal and state government laws that regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers.

War hawks

is a term used in politics for someone favoring war in a debate over whether to go to war, or whether to continue or escalate an existing war.

Port Act

is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which became law on March 25, 1774, and is one of the measures (variously called the Intolerable Acts, the Punitive Acts or the Coercive Acts) that were designed to secure Great Britain's jurisdictions over her American dominions.

Tariff of 1816

is notable as the first tariff passed by Congress with an explicit function of protecting U.S. manufactured items from foreign competition. Prior to the War of 1812, tariffs had primarily served to raise revenues to operate the national government.

Shays' Rebellion

is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt.

Unicameral Legislature

is the practice of having one legislative or parliamentary chamber. A legislature which consists of one chamber or house.

Servicemen's Readjustment Act

known informally as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s).

Dollar Diplomacy

of the United States—particularly during President William Howard Taft's term— was a form of American foreign policy to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries.

Omaha Platform

was the party program adopted at the formative convention of the Populist (or People's) Party held in Omaha, Nebraska on July 4, 1892.

Dartmouth College v Woodward

landmark decision from the United States Supreme Court dealing with the application of the Contract Clause of the United States Constitution to private corporations. The case arose when the president of Dartmouth College was deposed by its trustees, leading to the New Hampshire legislature attempting to force the college to become a public institution and thereby place the ability to appoint trustees in the hands of the governor of New Hampshire. The Supreme Court upheld the sanctity of the original charter of the college, which pre-dated the creation of the State.

Sectionalism

loyalty to the interests of one's own region or section of the country, rather than to the country as a whole. It is often a precursor to separatism. It increased steadily in 1800-1850 as the North industrialized, urbanized and built prosperous factories, while the deep South concentrated on plantation agriculture based on slave labor, together with subsistence farming for poor whites who owned no slaves.

Battle of Saratoga

marked the climax of the Saratoga campaign giving a decisive victory to the Americans over the British in the American Revolutionary War.

Mexican War

marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a "manifest destiny" to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. A border skirmish along the Rio Grande started off the fighting and was followed by a series of U.S. victories. When the dust cleared, Mexico had lost about one-third of its territory, including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

Millennialism

much of religious enthusiasm of the time was based on the widespread belief that the world was about to end with the second coming of Christ; preacher William Miller gained tens of thousands of followers by predicting a specific date when the second coming would occur (didn't happen-Millerites will become Seventh Day Adventists)

Stephen Austin

n American empresario born in Virginia and raised in southeastern Missouri. Known as the Father of Texas, and the founder of Texas, he led the second, and ultimately successful, colonization of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States to the region in 1825. In addition, he worked with the Mexican government to support immigration from the United States.

Coercive Acts

names used to describe a series of laws relating to Britain's colonies in North America, and passed by the British Parliament in 1774. Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of December 1773.

Treaty Of Paris

negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, ended the revolutionary war and recognized American independence. The Continental Congress named a five-member commission to negotiate a treaty-John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and Henry Laurens.

U-2 Incident

occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. The aircraft, flown by Central Intelligence Agency pilot Francis Gary Powers, was performing photographic aerial reconnaissance when it was hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile and crashed in Sverdlovsk. Powers parachuted safely and was captured.

Credit Mobilier

of 1872 involved the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company in the building of the eastern portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.The scandal's origins dated back to Abraham Lincoln's presidency, when in 1864 the Union Pacific Railroad was chartered by the federal government and the associated Crédit Mobilier was established.

Judiciary Act (1789)

officially titled "An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States," was signed into law by President George Washington on September 24, 1789. Article III of the Constitution established a Supreme Court, but left to Congress the authority to create lower federal courts as needed.

Crittenden Compromise

on the eve of the Civil War, Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden (1787-1863) introduced legislation aimed at resolving the looming secession crisis in the Deep South. The "Crittenden Compromise," as it became known, included six proposed constitutional amendments and four proposed Congressional resolutions that Crittenden hoped would appease Southern states and help the nation avoid civil war. The compromise would have guaranteed the permanent existence of slavery in the slave states by reestablishing the free-slave demarcation line drawn by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Though Crittenden's plan drew support from Southern leaders, its rejection by many Northern Republicans, including President-elect Abraham Lincon, led to its ultimate failure.

Tet Offensive

one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian commands and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name of the offensive comes from the Tết holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, when the first major attacks took place.

Ghost Dance Movement

originated among the Paiute Indians around 1870. However, the tide of the movement came in 1889 with a Paiute shaman Wovoka (Jack Wilson). Wovoka had a vision during a sun eclipse in 1889. In this vision he saw the second coming of Christ and received warning about the evils of white man.

Quebec Act

passed by the British Parliament to institute a permanent administration in Canada replacing the temporary government created at the time of the Proclamation of 1763. It gave the French Canadians complete religious freedom and restored the French form of civil law.

Smith Act

passed by the U.S. Congress as the Alien Registration Act of 1940. The act, which made it an offense to advocate or belong to a group that advocated the violent overthrow of the government, was the basis of later prosecutions of members of the Communist and Socialist Workers parties.

Sherman Silver Purchase Act

passed by the U.S. Congress to supplant the Bland-Allison Act of 1878. It not only required the U.S. government to purchase nearly twice as much silver as before, but also added substantially to the amount of money already in circulation.

Atlantic Charter

pivotal policy statement issued on 14 August 1941, that, early in World War II, defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. The leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States drafted the work and all the Allies of World War II later confirmed it. The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people, self-determination; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of aggressor nations.

Native American Removal

policy of the United States government in the 19th century whereby Native Americans were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River, thereafter known as Indian Territory. That policy has been characterized by some scholars as part of a long-term genocide of Native Americans by European settlers to North America in the colonial period and citizens of the United States until the mid-20th century. The policy traced its direct origins to the administration of James Monroe, though it addressed conflicts between whites and Native Americans that had been occurring since the 17th century, and were getting worse by the early 19th century as white settlers were increasingly pushing west.

Highway Act

popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. With an original authorization of US$100,000 for the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System supposedly over a 10-year period, it was the largest public works project in American history through that time.

Revivalists

preached fundamentalist ideals for religious revival via radio (and new form of widespread communication).

Wilmot Proviso

proposed an American law to ban slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War. The conflict over the proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.

Nixon Doctrine

put forth during a press conference in Guam on July 25, 1969 by U.S. President Richard Nixon and later formalized in his speech on Vietnamization on November 3, 1969. According to Gregg Brazinsky, Nixon stated that "the United States would assist in the defense and developments of allies and friends," but would not "undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world." This doctrine meant that each ally nation was in charge of its own security in general, but the United States would act as a nuclear umbrella when requested. The Doctrine argued for the pursuit of peace through a partnership with American allies. The Nixon Doctrine implied the intentions of Richard Nixon shifting the direction on international policies in Asia, especially aiming for "Vietnamization of the Vietnam War."

Underwood Tariff

re-imposed the federal income tax following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and lowered basic tariff rates from 40% to 25%, well below the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909. It was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on October 3, 1913, and was sponsored by Alabama Representative Oscar Underwood.

Anti-Federalists

refers to a movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the 1787 Constitution. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Confederation, gave state governments more authority.

Eisenhower doctrime

refers to a speech by President Dwight David Eisenhower on 5 January 1957, within a "Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East." Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a Middle Eastern country could request American economic assistance or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces "to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism."

Warren Court

refers to the Supreme Court of the United States during the period when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until he retired in 1969. Warren was succeeded as Chief Justice by Warren Burger. Warren led a liberal majority that used judicial power in dramatic fashion, to the consternation of conservative opponents. The Warren Court expanded civil rights, civil liberties, judicial power, and the federal power in dramatic ways.

Pragmatism

rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.[3] Instead, pragmatists consider thought an instrument or tool for prediction, problem solving and action. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. The philosophy of pragmatism "emphasizes the practical application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human experiences". Pragmatism focuses on a "changing universe rather than an unchanging one as the Idealists, Realists and Thomists had claimed".

Granger Laws

series of laws passed in several midwestern states of the United States, namely Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The Granger Laws were promoted primarily by a group of farmers known as The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry.

William Howard Taft

served as the 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and as the 10th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1921-1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft chief justice, a position in which he served until a few weeks before his death.

Camp David Accords

signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on 17 September 1978, following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David. The two framework agreements were signed at the White House, and were witnessed by United States President Jimmy Carter.

Immigration Reform and Control Act

signed into law by Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986, is an Act of Congress which reformed United States immigration law. The Act required employers to attest to their employees' immigration status; made it illegal to hire or recruit illegal immigrants knowingly; legalized certain seasonal agricultural illegal immigrants, and; legalized illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously with the penalty of a fine, back taxes due, and admission of guilt; candidates were required to prove that they were not guilty of crimes, that they were in the country before January 1, 1982, and that they possessed minimal knowledge about U.S. history, government, and the English language.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era to guarantee African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and to prohibit exclusion from jury service.

Battle of Lake Erie

sometimes called the Battle of Put-in-Bay, was fought on 10 September 1813, in Lake Erie off the coast of Ohio during the War of 1812. Nine vessels of the United States Navy defeated and captured six vessels of British Royal Navy. This ensured American control of the lake for the rest of the war, which in turn allowed the Americans to recover Detroit and win the Battle of the Thames to break the Indian confederation of Tecumseh. It was one of the biggest naval battles of the War of 1812.

National Debt

started with federal government debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War by the federal government of the United States, after its formation in 1789. The United States has continuously had a fluctuating public debt since then, except for about a year during 1835-1836.

Segregation Laws

state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965.

James K. Polk

the 11th President of the United States (1845-49). Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 13th Speaker of the House of Representatives (1835-39)—the only president to have served as House Speaker—and Governor of Tennessee (1839-41). Polk was the surprise (dark horse) candidate for president in 1844, defeating Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party by promising to annex the Republic of Texas. Polk was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System. His nickname was "Young Hickory" because of his close association with "Old Hickory", Andrew Jackson.

Millard Fillmore

the 13th President of the United States (1850-53), the last Whig president, and the last president not to be affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. Fillmore was the only Whig president who did not die in office or get expelled from the party, and Fillmore appointed the only Whig Supreme Court Justice. As Zachary Taylor's vice president, he assumed the presidency after Taylor's death. Fillmore was a lawyer from western New York state, and an early member of the Whig Party.

Andrew Johnson

the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson became president as he was vice president at the time of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. A Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union ticket, Johnson came to office as the Civil War concluded. The new president favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. His plans did not give protection to the former slaves, and he came into conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives. The first American president to be impeached, he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.

Election of 1860

the 19th quadrennial presidential election. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860, and served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The United States had been divided during the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners. In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting Abraham Lincoln in the White House with almost no support from the South. Before Lincoln's inauguration in 1861, seven slave-holding Southern states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. This precipitated a civil war that lasted until 1865. Contents

James Garfield

the 20th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881, until his assassination later that year. Garfield had served nine terms in the House of Representatives, and had been elected to the Senate before his candidacy for the White House, though he declined the senatorship once he was president-elect. He is the only sitting House member to be elected president.

Calvin Coolidge

the 30th President of the United States (1923-29). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His response to the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th vice president in 1920 and succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative, and also as a man who said very little, although having a rather dry sense of humor.

Herbert Hoover

the 31st President of the United States (1929-33). He was a professional mining engineer and was raised as a Quaker. A Republican, Hoover served as head of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I, and became internationally known for humanitarian relief efforts in war-time Belgium. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no elected-office experience.

Harry S. Truman

the 33rd President of the United States (1945-53), an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a United States Senator from Missouri (1935-45) and briefly as Vice President (1945) before he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was president during the final months of World War II, making the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was elected in his own right in 1948. He presided over an uncertain domestic scene as America sought its path after the war, and tensions with the Soviet Union increased, marking the start of the Cold War.

Lyndon Johnson

the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States under President John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. Johnson was a Democrat from Texas, who served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and as a United States Senator from 1949 to 1961. He spent six years as Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader, and two as Senate Majority Whip.

Richard Nixon

the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974 when he became the only U.S. president to resign the office. Nixon had previously served as a U.S. Representative and Senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.

Thomas Dewey

the 47th Governor of New York (1943-1954). In 1944 he was the Republican candidate for President, but lost to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the closest of Roosevelt's four presidential elections. He was again the Republican candidate in 1948, but lost to the incumbent president Harry S. Truman in one of the greatest upsets in presidential election history.

Non-intercourse Act (1809)

the Congress replaced the Embargo Act of 1807 with this almost unenforceable act. This Act lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those bound for British or French ports. Its intent was to damage the economies of the United Kingdom and France. Like its predecessor, the Embargo Act, it was mostly ineffective, and contributed to the coming of the War of 1812. In addition, it seriously damaged the economy of the United States.

Rotation in Office

the President put his own supporters, many of them poor and uneducated westerners. Jackson called this policy "rotation of office." He defended it on the ground that government officials paid less attention to the people when they remained in office too long. Jackson argued that it was in the interests of democracy to replace them with "new blood" every few years. Jackson also pointed out that a newly elected President needed officials whom he could trust to carry out his policies.

Trade Expansion Act

the United States Congress granted the White House unprecedented authority to negotiate tariff reductions of up to 50%. It paved the way for the Kennedy Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ("GATT") negotiations, concluding on June 30, 1967, the last day before expiration of the Act. It is one aspect for which the John F. Kennedy administration was known.

Alaska Purchase

the United States reached an agreement to purchase Alaska from Russia for a price of $7.2 million. The Treaty with Russia was negotiated and signed by Secretary of State William Seward and Russian Minister to the United States Edouard de Stoeckl.

War of 1812

the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country's future. Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy's impressment of American seamen and America's desire to expand its territory. The United States suffered many costly defeats at the hands of British, Canadian and Native American troops over the course of the War of 1812, including the capture and burning of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in August 1814. Nonetheless, American troops were able to repulse British invasions in New York, Baltimore and New Orleans, boosting national confidence and fostering a new spirit of patriotism. The ratification of the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815, ended the war but left many of the most contentious questions unresolved.

Mobilization

the act of assembling and making both troops and supplies ready for war. The word mobilization was first used, in a military context, in order to describe the preparation of the Russian army during the 1850s and 1860s.

Disarmament

the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms.

The Frontier Thesis

the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process.

Great Plains

the broad expanse of flat land (a plain), much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, that lies west of the Mississippi River tallgrass prairie states and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts, but not all, of the states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The region is known for supporting extensive cattle ranching and dry farming.

Bill of Rights

the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the oftentimes bitter 1787-88 battle over ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and crafted to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically delegated to Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people.

Great Depression

the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors.

Judicial Review

the doctrine under which legislative and executive actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with judicial review power may invalidate laws and decisions that are incompatible with a higher authority, such as the terms of a written constitution.

Roger Taney

the fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, holding that office from 1836 until his death in 1864. He is most remembered for delivering the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), that ruled, among other things, that African-Americans, having been considered inferior at the time the Constitution was drafted, were not part of the original community of citizens and, whether free or slave, could not be considered citizens of the United States, which created an uproar among abolitionists and the free states of the northern U.S.

James Monroe

the fifth President of the United States, serving between 1817 and 1825. Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States and the last president from the Virginian dynasty and the Republican Generation. As president, he bought Florida from Spain and sought to ease partisan tensions, embarking on a tour of the country that was generally well received. With the ratification of the Treaty of 1818, under the successful diplomacy of his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the United States extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, giving America harbor and fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest. The United States and Britain jointly occupied the Oregon Country.

Liberty Party

the first antislavery party. Formed at a national convention in Albany, New York, in April 1840, the party sought to achieve abolitionist goals through political means. Its first presidential candidate was a former Alabama slave holder, James G. Birney.

National Labor Union

the first national labor federation in the United States. Founded in 1866 and dissolved in 1873, it paved the way for other organizations, such as the Knights of Labor and the AFL (American Federation of Labor). It was led by William H. Sylvis.

Selective Training and Service Act

the first peacetime conscription in United States history. This Selective Service Act required that men between the ages of 21 and 35 register with local draft boards. Later, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men aged 18 to 45 were made subject to military service, and all men aged 18 to 65 were required to register.

Good Neighbor Policy

the foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt towards Latin America. Although the policy was implemented by the Roosevelt administration, 19th-century politician Henry Clay paved the way for it and coined the term "Good Neighbor".

Lost Generation

the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises.

Iron Curtain

the imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolized efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas.

Works Progress

the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects,[1] including the construction of public buildings and roads. In a much smaller but more famous project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.

Indian War

the multiple conflicts between American settlers or the United States government and the native peoples of North America from the time of earliest colonial settlement until 1924. In some cases, wars resulted from conflicts and competition for resources between the European colonists and Native Americans. There was population pressure as settlers expanded their territory, generally pushing indigenous people northward and westward. Warfare and raiding also took place as a result of wars between European powers; in North America, these enlisted their Native American allies to help them conduct warfare against each other's settlements.

Anaconda Plan

the name applied to an outline strategy for suppressing the Confederacy at the beginning of the American Civil War.[1] Proposed by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized the blockade of the Southern ports, and called for an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by the vociferous faction who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war, and who likened it to the coils of an anaconda suffocating its victim.

Sherman's March

the name commonly given to the military Savannah Campaign in the American Civil War, conducted through Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army. The campaign began with Sherman's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia, on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21. His forces destroyed military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property and disrupted the Confederacy's economy and its transportation networks. Sherman's bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be revolutionary in the annals of war.

"Barnburners" and "Hunkers"

the names of two opposing factions of the New York state Democratic Party in the mid-19th century. The main issue dividing the two factions was that of slavery, with them being the anti-slavery faction. While this division occurred within the context of New York politics, it reflected the national divisions in the United States in the years preceding the American Civil War.

Crime of 1873

the omission of the standard silver dollar from the coinage law of 12 February 1873. The sixty-seven sections of the law constituted a virtual codification of the then extant laws relating to the mints and coinage.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

the peace treaty signed on February 2, 1848, in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo (now a neighborhood of Mexico City) between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican-American War (1846-48).

Bonus March

the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media called it the Bonus Army. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former army sergeant.

Popular Sovereignty

the principle that the authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives (Rule by the People), who are the source of all political power.

Horizontal Integration

the process of a company increasing production of goods or services at the same part of the supply chain. A company may do this via internal expansion, acquisition or merger. The process can lead to monopoly if a company captures the vast majority of the market for that good or service.

Social Welfare

the provision of a minimal level of well-being and social support for all citizens, sometimes referred to as public aid. In most developed countries welfare is largely provided by the government, and to a lesser extent, charities, informal social groups, religious groups, and inter-governmental organizations.

Universal Male Suffrage

the rise of Jacksonian democracy from the 1820s to 1850s led to a close approximation of universal manhood suffrage among whites being adopted in most states (notably excepting Rhode Island until the aftermath of the Dorr Rebellion), and poorer citizens being better represented. Most African-American males remained excluded; though the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1870, upheld their voting rights, they were denied the right to vote in many places for another century until the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) gained passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Congress.

Second Bank of the U.S.

the second federally authorized Hamiltonian national bank in the United States during its 20-year charter from February 1816 to January 1836. The bank's formal name, according to section 9 of its charter as passed by Congress, was "The President, Directors, and Company, of the Bank of the United States."

Lecompton Constitution

the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas (it was preceded by the Topeka Constitution and was followed by the Leavenworth and Wyandotte Constitutions, the Wyandotte becoming the Kansas state constitution). The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates.

Income Distribution

the smoothness or equality with which income is dealt out among members of a society. If everyone earns exactly the same amount of money, then the income distribution is perfectly equal.

Redeemers

the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business faction in the Democratic Party, who pursued a policy of Redemption, seeking to oust the Radical Republican coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags".

Declaration of Independence

the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies,[2] then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer under British rule. Instead they formed a new nation—the United States of America. John Adams was a leader in pushing for independence, which was passed on July 2 with no opposing vote cast.

Australian Ballot

the system of voting in which voters mark their choices in privacy on uniform ballots printed and distributed by the government or designate their choices by some other secret means.

John Tyler

the tenth President of the United States (1841-45). He was elected vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket with William Henry Harrison, and became president after Harrison's death in April 1841. Tyler was known as a supporter of states' rights, which endeared him to his fellow Virginians, yet his acts as president showed that he was willing to support nationalist policies as long as they did not infringe on the rights of the states. Still, the circumstances of his unexpected rise to the presidency and his possible threat to the ambitions of other potential presidential candidates left him estranged from both major parties in Washington. A firm believer in manifest destiny, President Tyler sought to strengthen and preserve the Union through territorial expansion, most notably the annexation of the independent Republic of Texas in his last days in office.

Progressive Movement

the term applied to a variety of responses to the economic and social problems rapid industrialization introduced to America. Progressivism began as a social movement and grew into a political movement. The early progressives rejected Social Darwinism.

Second New Deal

the term used by commentators at the time and historians ever since to characterize the second stage, 1935-36, of the New Deal programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his address to Congress in January 1935, Roosevelt called for five major goals: improved use of national resources, security against old age, unemployment and illness, and slum clearance, as well as a national work relief program (the Works Progress Administration) to replace direct relief efforts. It is usually dated 1935-36, and includes programs to redistribute wealth, income and power in favor of the poor, the old, farmers and labor unions. The most important programs included Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act ("Wagner Act"), the Banking Act of 1935, rural electrification, and breaking up utility holding companies.

Industrial Revolution

the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. Important American technological contributions during the period of the Industrial Revolution were the cotton gin and the development of a system for making interchangeable parts, the latter aided by the development of the milling machine in the US. The development of machine tools and the system of interchangeable parts were the basis for the rise of the US as the world's leading industrial nation in the late 19th century.

National Labor Relations Act

this bill was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on July 5, 1935. It established the National Labor Relations Board and addressed relations between unions and employers in the private sector.

Slave Trade

took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 15th through 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported to the New World, mainly on the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, were West Africans from the central and western parts of the continent who had been sold by other western Africans to western European slave traders, with a small minority being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids, and brought to the Americas.

Panama Canal Treaty

uaranteed that Panama would gain control of the Panama Canal after 1999, ending the control of the canal that the U.S. had exercised since 1903. The treaties are named after the two signatories, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Commander of Panama's National Guard, General Omar Torrijos.

New Frontier

used by liberal, Democratic[1] presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 United States presidential election to the Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the Democratic slogan to inspire America to support him. The phrase developed into a label for his administration's domestic and foreign programs.

Great American Desert

used in the 19th century to describe the western part of the Great Plains east of the Rocky Mountains in North America to about the 100th meridian.

Black Muslims

used to refer to African-American Black nationalist organizations that describe themselves as Muslim. Some of these groups are not considered to be Muslim within mainstream Islam.

Jingoism

various meetings between representatives of some or all of the independent states of the Western Hemisphere (Canada usually excluded). Between 1826 and 1889, several meetings between American states were held to discuss problems of common defense and juridical matters.

Pan-American Conference

various meetings between representatives of some or all of the independent states of the Western Hemisphere (Canada usually excluded). Between 1826 and 1889, several meetings between American states were held to discuss problems of common defense and juridical matters.

George Dewey

was Admiral of the Navy, the only person in U.S. history to have attained the rank. Admiral Dewey is best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.

Jay Treaty

was a 1795 treaty between the United States and Great Britain that is credited with averting war, resolving issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783 (which ended the American Revolutionary War), and facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which began in 1792.

Washingtonians

was a 19th-century fellowship founded on April 2, 1840 by six alcoholics (William Mitchell, David Hoss, Charles Anderson, George Steer, Bill M'Curdy, and Tom Campbell) at Chase's Tavern on Liberty Street in Baltimore, Maryland. The idea was that by relying on each other, sharing their alcoholic experiences and creating an atmosphere of conviviality, they could keep each other sober. Total abstinence from alcohol was their goal.

Edward Braddock

was a British officer and commander-in-chief for the 13 colonies during the actions at the start of the French and Indian War which is also known in Europe as the Seven Years' War.

Ex Parte Milligan

was a U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled the application of military tribunals to citizens when civilian courts are still operating is unconstitutional. In this particular case the Court was unwilling to give President Abraham Lincoln's administration the power of military commission jurisdiction, part of the administration's controversial plan to deal with Union dissenters during the American Civil War. Justice David Davis, who delivered the majority opinion, stated that "martial rule can never exist when the courts are open" and confined martial law to areas of "military operations, where war really prevails," and when it was a necessity to provide a substitute for a civil authority that had been overthrown.

Blanche K. Bruce

was a U.S. politician who represented Mississippi as a Republican in the U.S. Senate from 1875 to 1881; of mixed race, he was the first elected black senator to serve a full term.

Winfield Scott

was a United States Army general, and unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Whig Party in 1852.

Ecobedo V. Illinois

was a United States Supreme Court case holding that criminal suspects have a right to counsel during police interrogations under the Sixth Amendment. The case was decided a year after the court held in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963) that indigent criminal defendants had a right to be provided counsel at trial.

Force Acts

was a United States federal law written to empower the President with the legal authority to enforce the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment throughout the United States.

Columbian Exposition

was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.

Aroostook War

was a confrontation in 1838-1839 between the United States and the United Kingdom over the international boundary between the British colony of New Brunswick and the US state of Maine. Top-level diplomats from the US and Britain met in Washington and forged a peaceful compromise, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842, which fixed the permanent border. The term "war" was rhetorical; local militia units were called out but never engaged in combat. The event is best described as an international incident.

Second Continental Congress

was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that, soon after warfare, declared the American Revolutionary War had begun.

Suffolk Resolves

was a declaration made on September 9, 1774 by the leaders of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, of which Boston is the major city. The declaration rejected the Massachusetts Government Act and resolved on a boycott of imported goods from Britain unless the Intolerable Acts were repealed.

The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms

was a document issued by the Second Continental Congress on July 6, 1775, to explain why the Thirteen Colonies had taken up arms in what had become the American Revolutionary War.

Declaration of Rights and Grievances

was a document written by the Stamp Act Congress and passed on October 19, 1765. It declared that taxes imposed on British colonists without their formal consent were unconstitutional. It raised fourteen points of colonial protest but was not directed exclusively at the Stamp Act 1765, which required that documents, newspapers, and playing cards be printed on special stamped and taxed paper.

Proclamation of Neutrality (1793)

was a formal announcement issued by U.S. President George Washington in May 1793, declaring the nation neutral in the conflict between France and Great Britain. It threatened legal proceedings against any American providing assistance to any country at war.

Plessy V. Ferguson

was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal". The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan.

Dred Scott V. Sandford

was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves", whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an enslaved man of "the negro African race" who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7-2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the court denied Scott's request. The decision was only the second time that the Supreme Court had ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional.

James Otis

was a lawyer in colonial Massachusetts, a member of the Massachusetts provincial assembly, and an early advocate of the Patriot views against British policy that led to the American Revolution. His catchphrase "Taxation without representation is tyranny" became the basic Patriot position.

Stamp Act Congress

was a meeting held between October 7 and 25, 1765 in New York City, consisting of representatives from some of the British colonies in North America; it was the first gathering of elected representatives from several of the American colonies to devise a unified protest against new British taxation.

Annapolis Conference

was a meeting of 12 delegates from five states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia) that called for a constitutional convention. The formal title of the meeting was a Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government.

First Continental Congress

was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution.

American Federation of Labor

was a national federation of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in May 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association.

Chesapeake-Leopard Affair

was a naval engagement that occurred off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, on 22 June 1807, between the British warship HMS Leopard and American frigate USS Chesapeake, when the crew of Leopard pursued, attacked and boarded the American frigate looking for deserters from the Royal Navy.[1] Chesapeake was caught unprepared and after a short battle involving broadsides from Leopard, her commander, James Barron, surrendered his vessel to the British after firing only one shot. Four crew members were removed from the American vessel and were tried for desertion, one of whom was subsequently hanged. Chesapeake was allowed to return home where James Barron was court martialed and suspended from command.

"New Imperialism"

was a period of colonial expansion—and its accompanying ideologies—by the European powers, the United States of America and the Empire of Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Second Industrial Revolution

was a phase of the larger Industrial Revolution corresponding to the latter half of the 19th century until World War I. It is considered to have begun with Bessemer steel in the 1860s and culminated in mass production and the production line.

Alamo

was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar (modern-day San Antonio, Texas, United States), killing all of the Texian defenders. Santa Anna's cruelty during the battle inspired many Texians—both Texas settlers and adventurers from the United States—to join the Texian Army. Buoyed by a desire for revenge, the Texians defeated the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ending the revolution.

Albany Plan of Union

was a plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin, then a senior leader (age 45) and a delegate from Pennsylvania, at the Albany Congress on July 10, 1754 in Albany, New York.

Ocala Platform

was a platform for economic and political reform that was later adopted by the People's Party. In December, 1890, the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, more commonly known as the Southern Farmers' Alliance, its affiliate the Colored Farmers' Alliance, and the Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association met jointly in the Marion Opera House in Ocala, Florida, where they adopted the Ocala Demands.

XYZ Affair

was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the administration of John Adams, involving a confrontation between the United States and Republican France that led to an undeclared war called the Quasi-War.

Black Panthers

was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982, with its only international chapter operating in Algeria from 1969 until 1972.

Great Society

was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964-65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. President Johnson first used the term "Great Society" during a speech at Ohio University, then unveiled the program in greater detail at an appearance at University of Michigan. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, and transportation were launched during this period. The program and its initiatives were subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s and years following. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Thomas Stonewall

was a war hero and one of the South's most successful generals during the American Civil War (1861-65). After a difficult childhood, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in time to fight in the Mexican War (1846-48). He then left the military to pursue a teaching career. After his home state of Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, Jackson joined the Confederate army and quickly forged his reputation for fearlessness and tenacity during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign later that same year. He served under General Robert E. Lee (1807-70) for much of the Civil War. Jackson was a decisive factor in many significant battles until his mortal wounding by friendly fire at the age of 39 during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.

Pontiac's Rebellion

was a war that was launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of elements of Native American tribes primarily from the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, and Ohio Country who were dissatisfied with British postwar policies in the Great Lakes region after the British victory in the French and Indian War (1754-1763).

Deborah Sampson

was a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

Declaratory Act

was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, which accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act 1765 and the changing and lessening of the Sugar Act.

Thomas Jefferson

was an American Founding Father who was principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776).

Timothy Dwight

was an American academic and educator, a Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He was the eighth president of Yale College (1795-1817).

George Washington Carver

was an American botanist and inventor. The exact day and year of his birth are unknown; he was born into slavery in Missouri, either in 1861, or January 1864. Carver's reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life.

William Vanderbilt

was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was the eldest son of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and a prominent member of the Vanderbilt family.

Henry Clay

was an American lawyer and planter, politician, and skilled orator who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate and House of Representatives. He served three non-consecutive terms as Speaker of the House of Representatives and served as Secretary of State under President John Quincy Adams from 1825 to 1829. Clay ran for the presidency in 1824, 1832 and 1844, while also seeking the Whig Party nomination in 1840 and 1848. However, he was unsuccessful.

Woodrow Wilson

was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Born in Staunton, Virginia, he spent his early years in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina. Wilson earned a PhD in political science at Johns Hopkins University, and served as a professor and scholar at various institutions before being chosen as President of Princeton University, a position he held from 1902 to 1910. In the election of 1910, he was the gubernatorial candidate of New Jersey's Democratic Party, and was elected the 34th Governor of New Jersey, serving from 1911 to 1913. Running for president in 1912, Wilson benefited from a split in the Republican Party, which enabled his plurality of just over forty percent to win him a large electoral college margin. He was the first Southerner elected as president since 1848, and Wilson was a leading force in the Progressive Movement, bolstered by his Democratic Party's winning control of both the White House and Congress in 1912.

Charles Sumner

was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. As an academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War working to destroy the Confederacy, free all the slaves, and keep on good terms with Europe. During Reconstruction, he fought to minimize the power of the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the freedmen.

Stephen A. Douglas

was an American politician from Illinois and the designer of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He was a U.S. representative, a U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party nominee for president in the 1860 election, losing to Republican Abraham Lincoln. Douglas had previously defeated Lincoln in a Senate contest, noted for the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. He was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short in physical stature, but a forceful and dominant figure in politics.

Martin Van Buren

was an American politician who served as the eighth President of the United States (1837-41). A member of the Democratic Party, he served in a number of senior roles, including eighth Vice President (1833-37) and tenth Secretary of State (1829-31), both under Andrew Jackson. Van Buren's inability as president to deal with the economic chaos of the Panic of 1837 and with the surging Whig Party led to his defeat in the 1840 election.

Horace Greeley

was editor of the New-York Tribune, among the great newspapers of its time. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York, and was the candidate of the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties in the 1872 presidential election. He was defeated by President Ulysses S. Grant, and died before the casting of the electoral vote.

Joseph Galloway

was an American politician. Galloway became a Loyalist during the American War of Independence, after serving as delegate to the First Continental Congress from Pennsylvania. For much of his career in Pennsylvanian politics he was a close ally of Benjamin Franklin, and he became a leading figure in the colony. As a delegate to the Continental Congress Galloway was a moderate, and he proposed a Plan of Union which would have averted a full break from Britain. When this was rejected, Galloway moved increasingly towards Loyalism.

George McClellan

was an American soldier, civil engineer, railroad executive, and politician. A graduate of West Point, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican-American War, and later left the Army to work in railroads until the outbreak of the American Civil War. Early in the war, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army, which would become the Army of the Potomac; he served a brief period (November 1861 to March 1862) as general-in-chief of the Union Army.

John C. Calhoun

was an American statesman and political theorist from South Carolina, who now is best remembered for his strong defense of slavery. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs. After 1830, his views shifted and he became a greater proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade, as he saw these means as the only way to preserve the Union.

John Jay

was an American statesman, Patriot, diplomat, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, signer of the Treaty of Paris, and first Chief Justice of the United States (1789-95).

Theodore Roosevelt

was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century.

George Whitefield

was an English Anglican cleric who helped spread the Great Awakening in Britain and, especially, in the American colonies.

John Davenport

was an English Puritan clergyman and co-founder of the American colony of New Haven.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States (the Confederation Congress), passed July 13, 1787. The ordinance created the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States, from lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains, between British North America and the Great Lakes to the north and the Ohio River to the south. The upper Mississippi River formed the Territory's western boundary. It was the response to multiple pressures: the westward expansion of American settlers, tense diplomatic relations with Great Britain and Spain, violent confrontations with Indians, the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and the empty treasury of the American government.

Populist Party

was an agrarian-populist political party in the United States. For a few years, 1892-96, it played a major role as a left-wing force in American politics. It was merged into the Democratic Party in 1896; a small independent remnant survived until 1908. It drew support from angry farmers in the West and South and operated on the left-wing of American politics. It was highly critical of capitalism, especially banks and railroads, and allied itself with the labor movement.

Connecticut Plan

was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. It retained the bicameral legislature as proposed by Roger Sherman, along with proportional representation in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equally between the states. Each state would have two representatives in the upper house.

Harpers Ferry Raid

was an effort by white abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Brown's raid, accompanied by 21 men in his party,[1] was defeated by a platoon of U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his formative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness, and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan would fail.

Gentleman's Agreement

was an informal agreement between the United States and the Empire of Japan whereby the United States of America would not impose restriction on Japanese immigration, and Japan would not allow further immigration to the U.S. The goal was to reduce tensions between the two powerful Pacific nations. The agreement was never ratified by Congress, and was ended by the Immigration Act of 1924.

Treaty of 1818

was an international treaty signed in 1818 between the United States and the United Kingdom. Signed during the presidency of James Monroe, it resolved standing boundary issues between the two nations. The treaty allowed for joint occupation and settlement of the Oregon Country, known to the British and in Canadian history as the Columbia District of the Hudson's Bay Company, and including the southern portion of its sister district New Caledonia.

Freeport Doctrine

was articulated by Stephen A. Douglas at the second of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on August 27, 1858, in Freeport, Illinois. Former one-term U.S. Representative Abraham Lincoln was campaigning to take Douglas' U.S. Senate seat by strongly opposing all attempts to expand the geographic area in which slavery was practiced. Lincoln tried to force Douglas to choose between the principle of popular sovereignty proposed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which left the fate of slavery in a U.S. territory up to its inhabitants), and the majority decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, which stated that slavery could not legally be excluded from U.S. territories (since Douglas professed great respect for Supreme Court decisions, and accused the Republicans of disrespecting the court, yet this aspect of the Dred Scott decision was contrary to Douglas' views and politically unpopular in Illinois). Instead of making a direct choice, Douglas' response stated that despite the court's ruling, slavery could be prevented from any territory by the refusal of the people living in that territory to pass laws favorable to slavery. Likewise, if the people of the territory supported slavery, legislation would provide for its continued existence.

Committee on Civil Rights

was established by Executive Order 9808, which Harry Truman, who was then President of the United States, issued on December 5, 1946.[1] The committee was instructed to investigate the status of civil rights in the country and propose measures to strengthen and protect them. After the committee submitted a report of its findings to President Truman, it disbanded in December 1947.

Freedmen's Bureau

was established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65).

Democratic-Republican Party

was formed by Thomas Jefferson and others who believed in an agrarian-based, decentralized, democratic government. The party was established to oppose the Federalists who had supported and pushed through the ratification of the US Constitution.

Colored Farmers' National Alliance

was formed in 1886 in the American state of Texas. Despite the fact that both black and white farmers faced great difficulties due to the rising price of farming and the decreasing profits which were coming from farming, the protective organization known as the Southern Farmers' Alliance did not allow black farmers to join. A group of black farmers decided to organize their own alliance, to fill their need. The organization rapidly spread across the Southern United States, peaking with a membership of 1.2 million in 1891.

Bull Run

was fought on July 21, 1861 in Prince William County, Virginia, near the city of Manassas, not far from Washington, D.C. It was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The Union's forces were slow in positioning themselves, allowing Confederate reinforcements time to arrive by rail. Each side had about 18,000 poorly trained and poorly led troops in their first battle. It was a Confederate victory followed by a disorganized retreat of the Union forces.

Battle of Tippecanoe

was fought on November 7, 1811, near present-day Lafayette, Indiana between United States forces led by Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory and Native American warriors associated with the Shawnee leader Tecumseh. Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (commonly known as "The Prophet") were leaders of a confederacy of Native Americans from various tribes that opposed US expansion into Native territory. As tensions and violence increased, Governor Harrison marched with an army of about 1,000 men to disperse the confederacy's headquarters at Prophetstown, near the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers.

Espionage Act

was intended to prohibit interference with military operations or recruitment, to prevent insubordination in the military, and to prevent the support of U.S. enemies during wartime. In 1919, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled through Schenck v. United States that the act did not violate the freedom of speech of those convicted under its provisions. The constitutionality of the law, its relationship to free speech, and the meaning of its language have been contested in court ever since.

Lewis Cass

was nationally known in the late antebellum period as a leading spokesman for the controversial Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. It proposed allowing voters in the United States territories to determine whether to allow slavery in each jurisdiction rather than having Congress determine this.

Restoration Colonies

was one of a number of land grants in North America given by King Charles II of England in the later half of the 17th century, ostensibly as a reward to his supporters in the Stuart Restoration. The grants marked the resumption of English colonization of the Americas after a 30-year hiatus.

Benjamin Franklin

was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, he was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions.

Prohibitory Act

was passed as a measure of retaliation by Great Britain against the general rebellion then going on in the American colonies, which became known as the American Revolutionary War (or, to the British, the American War of Independence).

Platt Amendment

was passed as part of the 1901 Army Appropriations Bill. It stipulated seven conditions for the withdrawal of United States troops remaining in Cuba at the end of the Spanish-American War, and an eighth condition that Cuba sign a treaty accepting these seven conditions.

Massachusetts Government Act

was passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, receiving royal assent on 20 May 1774. The act effectively abrogated the Massachusetts Charter of 1691 of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and gave its royally-appointed governor wide-ranging powers.

Pinckney Treaty

was signed in San Lorenzo de El Escorial on October 27, 1795 and established intentions of friendship between the United States and Spain. It also defined the boundaries of the United States with the Spanish colonies and guaranteed the United States navigation rights on the Mississippi River. The treaty's full title is Treaty of Friendship, Limits, and Navigation Between Spain and the United States. Thomas Pinckney negotiated the treaty for the United States and Don Manuel de Godoy represented Spain. Among other things, it ended the first phase of the West Florida Controversy, a dispute between the two nations over the boundaries of the Spanish colony of West Florida.

Zachary Taylor

was the 12th President of the United States, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850. Before his presidency, Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general. Taylor's status as a national hero as a result of his victories in the Mexican-American War won him election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died seventeen months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, which had been inflaming tensions in Congress.

Knights of Labor

was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence V. Powderly.

Franklin Pierce

was the 14th President of the United States (1853-57). He was a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation. His polarizing actions in championing and signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act failed to stem intersectional conflict, setting the stage for Southern secession.

Warren Burger

was the 15th Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986. Although Burger was a conservative, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a variety of liberal decisions on abortion, capital punishment, religious establishment, and school desegregation during his tenure.

James Buchanan

was the 15th President of the United States (1857-61), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War. He represented Pennsylvania in the United States House of Representatives and later the Senate, then served as Minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson. He was named Secretary of State under President James K. Polk, and is to date the last former Secretary of State to serve as President of the United States. After Buchanan turned down an offer to sit on the Supreme Court, President Franklin Pierce appointed him Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in which capacity he helped draft the Ostend Manifesto.

Rutherford B. Hayes

was the 19th President of the United States (1877-81). As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Election of 1864

was the 20th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1864. Incumbent president Republican Abraham Lincoln was running for re-election against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, who ran as the "peace candidate" without personally believing in his party's platform. Lincoln was re-elected president by a landslide in the Electoral College.

Grover Cleveland

was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He was the winner of the popular vote for president three times - in 1884, 1888, and 1892 - and was one of the three Democrats (with Andrew Johnson and Woodrow Wilson) to serve as president during the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1933. He is the only President in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation, imperialism, and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans. His crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era.

Samuel J. Tilden

was the 25th Governor of New York and the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Presidency in the disputed election of 1876, winning a popular vote majority, but ultimately being denied victory by the electoral college. A political reformer, he was a Bourbon Democrat who worked closely with the New York City business community and led the fight against the corruption of Tammany Hall.

William Mckinley

was the 25th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897, until his assassination in September 1901, six months into his second term. McKinley led the nation to victory in the Spanish-American War, raised protective tariffs to promote American industry, and maintained the nation on the gold standard in a rejection of inflationary proposals.

Haymarket Bombing (1892)

was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago.

Trent Affair

was the diplomatic crisis that potentially brought Great Britain and the United States closest to war during the first year of the American Civil War. Although war seemed possible, both sides managed to avoid an armed conflict, and in the process gained greater confidence in one another.

Land Ordinance of 1785

was the effort of a five-person committee led by Thomas Jefferson. The ordinance established a systematic and ubiquitous process for surveying, planning and selling townships in the western frontier.

Battle of Fallen Timbers

was the final battle of the Northwest Indian War, a struggle between Native American tribes affiliated with the Western Confederacy against the United States for control of the Northwest Territory (an area north of the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi River, and southwest of the Great Lakes). This land had been ceded to the United States in accordance with the Treaty of Paris (1783), but the British and Indians refused to comply with the treaty and likewise refused to relinquish control. British army bases were maintained there to support their Native allies. This ultimately led to the American offensive and subsequent British-Indian withdrawal from the territory altogether. The battle, which was a decisive victory for the United States, ended major hostilities in the region.

Anti-Masonic Party

was the first "third party" in the United States.[1] It strongly opposed Freemasonry as a single-issue party, and later aspired to become a major party by expanding its platform and positions on other issues. After the negative views of Freemasonry among a large segment of the public began to wane in the late 1830s, most members of the Anti-Masonic Party joined the Whigs, the party most in line with its views on other issues. Although lasting only a decade, the Anti-Masonic Party introduced important innovations to American politics, such as nominating conventions and the adoption of party platforms.

Cecil Calvert

was the first Proprietor and Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland, and ninth Proprietary Governor of the Colony of Newfoundland and the colony of Avalon (in the southeast). His title was ", Second Baron Baltimore, First Lord Proprietary, Earl Palatine of the Provinces of Maryland and Avalon in America". He received the proprietorship after the death of his father, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore,

Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)

was the first constitution to be adopted by the American colonies in 1639. It established the structure and boundaries of the newly formed government and ensured the rights of free men to elect their public officials—principles that were later embraced within the U.S. Constitution.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union

was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." It was influential in the temperance movement, and supported the 18th Amendment.

Scalawags

were Southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, after the American Civil War. Like the similar term "carpetbagger," the word has a long history of use as a slur in Southern partisan debates.

Townshend Acts

were a series of acts passed — beginning in 1767 — by the Parliament of Great Britain relating to the British colonies in North America. The acts are named after Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the program.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

were a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Illinois, and incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate. At the time, U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were trying for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the aftermath of his victory in the 1860 presidential election. Although Illinois, itself, was a free state, the main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery in the United States.

Navigation Acts

were efforts to put the theory of mercantilism into actual practice. Beginning in 1650, Parliament acted to combat the threat of the rapidly growing Dutch carrying trade. Later laws were passed in 1651, 1660, 1662, 1663, 1670 and 1673. A companion enforcement law was enacted in 1696.

Laird Rams

were ironclad warships ordered by the Confederate States Navy in 1862 and seized in 1863 by the British to prevent their delivery. This would have violated the Foreign Enlistment Act, which forbade British subjects to build or arm any ships for governments at war with governments friendly to Great Britain.

Confiscation Acts

were laws passed by the United States Congress during the Civil War with the intention of freeing the slaves still held by the Confederate forces in the South. The Confiscation Act of 1861 authorized the confiscation of any Confederate property by Union forces ("property" included slaves).

Federalists

were originally those forces in favor of the ratification of the Constitution (text) and were typified by: A desire to establish a strong central government (unlike that which existed under the Articles of Confederation) A corresponding desire for weaker state governments.

Alien and Sedition Acts

were passed by the Federalist Congress in 1798 and signed into law by President Adams. These laws included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote.

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional.

Minutemen

were private colonists who independently organized to form well-prepared militia companies self-trained in weaponry, tactics and military strategies from the American colonial partisan militia during the American Revolutionary War. They were also known for being ready in a minute's notice. They provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that allowed the colonies to respond immediately to war threats, hence the name.

Committees of Correspondence

were shadow governments organized by the Patriot leaders of the Thirteen Colonies on the eve of the American Revolution.

Intolerable Acts

were the American Patriots' term for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor.

Macon's Bill No. 2

which became law in the United States on May 14, 1810, was intended to motivate Great Britain and France to stop seizing American vessels during the Napoleonic Wars.

Modern Republicanism

which preserved individual freedom and the market economy yet insured that government would provide necessary assistance to workers who had lost their jobs or to the ill or aged, who through no fault of their own, could not provide for themselves.

Proclamation to the people of South Carolina

written by Edward Livingston and issued by Andrew Jackson on December 10, 1832. Written at the height of the Nullification Crisis, the proclamation directly responds to the Ordinance of Nullification passed by the South Carolina legislature in November 1832. Its purpose was to subdue the Nullification Crisis created by South Carolina's ordinance and to denounce the doctrine of nullification.