AP US

Oliver Evans

(1755-1819) developed the first application of steam power in an industrial setting. He also developed a method of automating flour mills

Edgar Allen Poe

(1809-1849) He was an American poet, short-story writer, editor and literary critic, and is considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. Failing at suicide, he began drinking and then died in Baltimore shortly after being found drunk in a gutter.

Fletcher v Peck

(1810) the Supreme Court struck down a state law as unconstitutional. In the Yazoo Land Fraud Georgia claimed a bunch of land from the Louisiana Purchase that it had no right to claim. Georgia then sold the land to speculators who sold it to farmers. The Federal government stepped in and takes back the land and tells Georgia to give back the money. Legislature cancelled it, said constitution forbid state laws imparing contracts

John C. Calhoun

(1830s-40s) Leader of the Fugitive Slave Law, which forced the cooperation of Northern states in returning escaped slaves to the south. He also argued on the floor of the senate that slavery was needed in the south. He argued on the grounds that society is supposed to have an upper ruling class that enjoys the profit of a working lower class.

American Anti-slavery Society

(1833-1870) It was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass was a key leader of the society and often spoke at its meetings. It promoted the greater good for slaves, and was not welcomed by American society.

Virginia and Kentucky Resolves

-VP Jefferson led the opposition to Alien and Sedition Acts - him and Madison drafted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions -argued that the states had the right to judge the constitutionality of federal laws

Bison extermination

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Kansas Constitutional Crisis

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William Lloyd Garrison

1805-1879. Prominent American abolitionist, journalist and social reformer. Editor of radical abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator", and one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Dartmouth v Woodward

1816- A Supreme Court case, under John Marshall. The state of New Hampshire tried to turn private university Dartmouth into a public school. The Supreme Court decided that Dartmouth's charter was a contract between private parties, and could not be interfered with by the government.

McCulloch v Maryland

1819, Cheif Justice John Marshall limited of the US constition and of the authority of the federal and state governments. One side was opposed to establish a national bank, and challenged the authority of the federal government to establish one. Supreme court ruled that power of the federal government had supremacy over the states so that states could not interfere

Maysville Road Veto

1830 - The Maysville Road Bill proposed building a road in Kentucky (Clay's state) at federal expense. Jackson vetoed it because he didn't like Clay, and Martin Van Buren pointed out that New York and Pennsylvania paid for their transportation improvements with state money. Applied strict interpretation of the Constitution by saying that the federal government could not pay for internal improvements.

Force Bill

1833 - The Force Bill authorized President Jackson to use the army and navy to collect duties on the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832. South Carolina's ordinance of nullification had declared these tariffs null and void, and South Carolina would not collect duties on them. The Force Act was never invoked because it was passed by Congress the same day as the Compromise Tariff of 1833, so it became unnecessary. South Carolina also nullified the Force Act.

Sitting Bull

1834-1890, a Hunkpapa Sioux medicine man and chief, was the political leader of his tribe at the time of the Custer massacre and during the Sioux War of 1875-1876.

Lincoln Douglas Debates

1858 Senate Debate, Lincoln forced Douglas to debate issue of slavery, Douglas supported pop-sovereignty, Lincoln asserted that slavery should not spread to territories, Lincoln emerged as strong Republican candidate

Crittenden Compromise

1860 - attempt to prevent Civil War by Senator Crittenden - offered a Constitutional amendment recognizing slavery in the territories south of the 36º30' line, noninterference by Congress with existing slavery, and compensation to the owners of fugitive slaves - defeated by Republicans

Pacific Railway Act

1862 legislation to encourage the construction of a transcontinental railroad, connecting the West to industries in the Northeast (Union Pacific and Central Pacific RR)

Wade Davis Bill

1864 Proposed far more demanding and stringent terms for reconstruction; required 50% of the voters of a state to take the loyalty oath and permitted only non-confederates to vote for a new state constitution; Lincoln refused to sign the bill, pocket vetoing it after Congress adjourned.

Pendleton Act

1883 law that created a Civil Service Commission and stated that federal employees could not be required to contribute to campaign funds nor be fired for political reasons

McKinley Tariff

1890 tariff that raised protective tariff levels by nearly 50%, making them the highest tariffs on imports in the United States history

Plessy v Ferguson

1896 Supreme Court decision which legalized state ordered segregation so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal

Red Scare

1919-1920 was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism, as well as the effects of the American labor movement. At the war's end, following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, American authorities saw the threat of revolution in the actions of organized labor, including such disparate cases as the Seattle General Strike and the Boston Police Strike and then in the bomb campaign directed by anarchist groups at political and business leaders. Fueled by labor unrest and the anarchist bombings, and then spurred on by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's attempt to suppress radical organizations, it was characterized by exaggerated rhetoric, illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and detentions, and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists.

Fordney-McCumber Tariff

1922 raised American tariffs 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.

Smith Act

1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government and required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the government. Within four months, 4,741,971 aliens had registered.

Rutherford B. Hayes

19th President of the United States, was famous for being part of the Hayes-Tilden election in which electoral votes were contested in 4 states, most corrupt election in US history

W.E.B. DuBois

1st black to earn Ph.D. from Harvard, encouraged blacks to resist systems of segregation and discrimination, helped create NAACP in 1910

Relief, Recovery, & Reform

3 R's - Immediate action taken to halt the economies deterioration. "Pump - Priming" Temporary programs to restart the flow of consumer demand. Permanent programs to avoid another depression and insure citizens against economic disasters.

James Monroe

5th President of the U.S. 1817-1825 acquired Florida from Spain; declared Monroe Doctrine to keep foreign powers out. President during the time of good feelings.

Western land problem

7 of the 13 original states had made claims to areas in the West. The "landed" states had a great advantage over the six "landless" states. It was assumed that the future sale of western lands would enrich the landed states and possibly allow them to operate without any form of taxation. The landless states feared that they would lose residents and dwindle into insignificance.

Elkins Act

A 1903 United States federal law that amended the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. It authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission to impose heavy fines on railroads that offered rebates, and upon the shippers that accepted these rebates. The railroad companies were not permitted to offer rebates.

"Birth of a Nation"

A 1915 American silent film based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr. It was originally released on February 8, 1915. The film was originally presented in two parts, separated by an intermission. The film chronicles the relationship of two families in Civil War and Reconstruction-era America: the pro-Union northern Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy southern Camerons over the course of several years. The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth is dramatized.

Zimmerman Telegram

A 1917 diplomatic proposal from the German Empire to Mexico to make war against the United States. The proposal was declined by Mexico, but angered Americans and led in part to a U.S. declaration of war in April. The message came as a coded telegram dispatched by the Foreign Secretary of the German Empire, Arthur Zimmermann, on January 16, 1917, to the German ambassador in Washington, D.C., Johann von Bernstorff, at the height of World War I. On January 19, Bernstorff, per Zimmermann's request, forwarded the telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt.

Norris-LaGuardia Anti-injunction Act

A 1932 United States federal law that banned yellow-dog contracts, barred federal courts from issuing injunctions against nonviolent labor disputes, and creating a positive right of noninterference by employers against workers joining trade unions. The common title followed from the names of the sponsors of the legislation: Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska and Representative Fiorello H. La Guardia of New York, both Republicans.

NSC-68

A 58-page formerly-classified report issued by the United States National Security Council on April 14, 1947, during the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Written during the formative stage of the Cold War, it was top secret until the 1970s when it was made public. It was one of the most significant statements of American policy in the Cold War. NSC-68 largely shaped U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War for the next 20 years.

Emilio Aguinaldo

A Filipino general, politician, and independence leader. He played an instrumental role during the Philippines' revolution against Spain, and the subsequent Philippine-American War that resisted American occupation. He became the Philippine's first president.

Marcus Garvey

A Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League

Panay incident

A Japanese attack on the United States Navy gunboat USS Panay while she was anchored in the Yangtze River outside Nanking (now known as Nanjing) on December 12, 1937. Japan and the United States were not at war at the time. The Japanese claimed that they did not see the United States flags painted on the deck of the gunboat, apologized, and paid an indemnity. Nevertheless, the attack and the subsequent Allison incident in Nanking caused U.S. opinion to turn against the Japanese.

General Victoriano Huerta

A Mexican military officer and president of Mexico. Huerta's supporters were known as Huertistas during the Mexican revolution. Huerta is still vilified by modern-day Mexicans, who generally refer to him as El Chacal — "The Jackal".

Native-American Rights Movement

A Native American activist organization in the United States. In October 1973 the American Indian Movement gathered its forces from across the country onto the Trail of Broken Treaties, championing Indian unity. The national AIM agenda focused on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty.

Upton Sinclair

A Pulitzer Prize-winning American author who wrote over 90 books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the 20th century, acquiring particular fame for his 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle. It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

Lucretia Mott

A Quaker who attended an anti-slavery convention in 1840 and her party of women was not recognized. She and Stanton called the first women's right convention in New York in 1848

Wabash v. IL

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.

Adkins v Children's Hospital

A Supreme Court opinion in 1923 holding that federal minimum wage legislation for women was an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract, as protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Escobedo v. Illinois

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 (1963) that indigent criminal defendants had a right to be provided counsel at trial.

Schenck v United States

A United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the Espionage Act of 1917 and concluded that a defendant did not have a First Amendment right to freedom of speech against the draft during World War I. Ultimately, the case established the "clear and present danger" test.

McCarran Internal Security Act

A United States federal law of the Second Red Scare era. It required the registration of Communist organizations with the United States Attorney General and established the Subversive Activities Control Board to investigate persons suspected of engaging in subversive activities or otherwise promoting the establishment of a "totalitarian dictatorship," fascist or communist. Members of these groups could not become citizens, and in some cases, were prevented from entering or leaving the country. Citizen-members could be denaturalized in five years.

Espionage Act of 1917

A United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It prohibited any attempt to interfere with military operations, to support U.S. enemies during wartime, to promote insubordination in the military, or to interfere with military recruitment. In 1919, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Schenck v. United States that the act did not violate the freedom of speech of those convicted under its provisions.

Newlands Act

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

Mann-Elkins Act

A United States federal law that is among the Progressive reforms. The Act extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to include communications. Supported by President William Howard Taft, it also made the long-short haul clause of the original act more effective in that it strengthened government regulation of the railroads.

Taft-Hartley Act

A United States federal law that monitors the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr. and legislated by overriding U.S. President Harry S. Truman's veto on June 23, 1947; labor leaders called it the "slave-labor bill" while President Truman argued that it was a "dangerous intrusion on free speech," and that it would "conflict with important principles of our democratic society," Nevertheless, Truman would subsequently use it twelve times during his presidency.

Interstate Commerce Act of 1887

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. It also required that railroads publicize shipping rates and prohibited short haul/long haul fare discrimination, a form of price discrimination against smaller markets, particularly farmers.

Mann Act

A United States law which in its original form prohibited white slavery and the interstate transport of females for "immoral purposes". Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking. While its ambiguous immorality language allowed selective prosecutions for many years, it was later amended by Congress to apply only to transport for the purpose of prostitution or illegal sexual acts.

Saratoga

A battle that took place in New York where the Continental Army defeated the British. It proved to be the turning point of the war. This battle ultimately had France to openly support the colonies with military forces in addition to the supplies and money already being sent.

Corporation

A business owned by stockholders who share in its profits but are not personally responsible for its debts

Niagara Group

A call for opposition to racial segregation and disenfranchisement as well as policies of accommodation and conciliation promoted by African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington.

Freedom Summer

A campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, which up to that time had almost totally excluded black voters. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools and Freedom Houses in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. Opposed by the NAACP and SCLC.

Downes v Bidwell

A case in which the United States Supreme Court decided whether United States territories were subject to the provisions and protections of the United States Constitution. This question is sometimes stated as "does the Constitution follow the flag?". The resulting decision narrowly held that the U.S. Constitution did not necessarily apply to territories. Instead, the United States Congress had jurisdiction to create law within territories in certain circumstances, particularly dealing with revenue, that would not be allowed by the U.S. Constitution for proper states within the union. It has become known as one of the "Insular Cases".

Open Door Policy

A concept in foreign affairs, which usually refers to the policy around 1900 allowing multiple Imperial powers access to China, with none of them in control of that country. As a theory, the Open Door Policy originates with British commercial practice, as was reflected in treaties concluded with Qing Dynasty China after the First Opium War (1839-1842). Although the Open Door is generally associated with China, it was recognized at the Berlin Conference of 1885, which declared that no power could levy preferential duties in the Congo basin.

Hoover Dam

A concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression, and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives.

Spanish American War

A conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States. It ultimately ended with the Americans defeating the Spaniards. Revolts against Spanish rule had been endemic for decades in Cuba and were closely watched by Americans; there had been war scares before, as in the Virginius Affair in 1873. By 1897-98, American public opinion grew angrier at reports of Spanish atrocities, magnified by "yellow journalism". After the mysterious sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor, political pressures from the Democratic Party pushed the government headed by President William McKinley, a Republican, into a war McKinley had wished to avoid.

Cuban Missile Crisis

A confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War. In September 1962, after some unsuccessful operations by the U.S. to overthrow the Cuban regime, the Cuban and Soviet governments began to surreptitiously build bases in Cuba for a number of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles with the ability to strike most of the continental United States.

Annapolis Convention

A convention held in September 1786 to consider problems of trade and navigation, attended by five states and important because it issued the call to Congress and the states for what became the Constitutional Convention

Rosie the Riveter

A cultural icon of the United States, representing the American women who worked in factories during World War II, many of whom worked in the manufacturing plants that produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who were in the military. The character is considered a feminist icon in the U.S.

Harlem Renaissance

A cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced.

Causes of the Great Depression

A deflation in asset and commodity prices, dramatic drops in demand and credit, and disruption of trade, ultimately resulting in widespread unemployment and hence poverty. However, historians lack consensus in describing the causal relationship between various events and the role of government economic policy in causing or ameliorating the Depression.

John Slidell

A diplomat sent by Polk to buy California, New Mexico, and Texas from the Mexicans. Mexico rejected his offer and Polk sent Taylor's army into Mexico

Ballinger-Pinchot controversy

A dispute between U.S. Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Achilles Ballinger that contributed to the split of the Republican Party before the 1912 Presidential Election and helped to define the U.S. conservation movement in the early 20th century.

Tecumseh

A famous chief of the Shawnee who tried to unite Indian tribes against the increasing white settlement (1768-1813)

Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916

A federal law that established twelve regional Farm Loan Banks to serve members of Farm Loan Associations. The act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. Under the act, farmers could borrow up to 50% of the value of their land and 20% of the value of their improvements. Each bank was given an initial $500,000 deposit of Federal funds to use. The biggest benefit of the act was to allow small farmers to be more competitive with larger businesses. Banks were to provide loans at a competitive rate to small businessmen.

Panic of 1907

A financial crisis that occurred in the United States when the New York Stock Exchange fell close to 50% from its peak the previous year. Panic occurred, as this was during a time of economic recession, and there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies.

Dwight Eisenhower

A five-star general in the United States Army and the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961, and the last to be born in the 19th century. During World War II, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-45, from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.

Republicanism

A form of government in which people elect representatives to create and enforce laws

Lunch counter sit-ins

A form of protest that involves occupying seats or sitting down on the floor of an establishment

Declaration of War

A formal performative speech act or signing of a document by an authorized party of a government in order to initiate a state of war between two or more nations. The legality of who can declare war varies between nations and forms of government. In many nations, power is given to the head of state or sovereign; in other cases, something short of a full declaration of war, such as a letter of marque or a covert operation, may authorise war-like acts by privateers or mercenaries.

Chisholm Trail

A former cattle trail from San Antonio in Texas to Abilene in Kansas

Big Bill Haywood

A founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America.

Little Rock School integration

A group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. On their first day of school, troops from the Arkansas National Guard would not let them enter the school and they were followed by mobs making threats to lynch.

The Ohio Gang

A group of politicians and industry leaders who came to be associated with Warren G. Harding, the twenty-ninth President of the United States of America.

Charles Beard

A historian who believed that the ideology presented in the Constitution was a result of the economic needs of the land-owning Founding Fathers (rather than philosophical principles). His ideas fell out of favor in the 1950's, when other historians pointed out problems with his research.

Oregon Trail

A historical route to the western United States extending from various cities on the Missouri River to Oregon and the West coast.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

A joint resolution which the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964 in response to a sea battle between the North Vietnamese Navy's Torpedo Squadron 135 and the destroyer USS Maddox on August 2 in the Tonkin Gulf. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution is of historical significance because it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia.

Credit Mobilier

A joint-stock company organized in 1863 and reorganized in 1867 to build the Union Pacific Railroad. It was involved in a scandal in 1872 in which high government officials were accused of accepting bribes.

Miranda v. Arizona

A landmark 5-4 decision of the United States Supreme Court. 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 prior to questioning by police, and that the defendant not only understood these rights, but voluntarily waived them. This had a significant impact on law enforcement in the United States, by making what became known as the Miranda rights part of routine police procedure to ensure that suspects were informed of their rights.

Gideon v. Wainwright

A landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. In the case, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state courts are required under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford their own attorneys.

Griswold v. Connecticut

A landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy".

Roe v. Wade

A landmark controversial decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests for regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting the mother's health. Saying that these state interests become stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the mother's current trimester of pregnancy.

Muller v. Oregon

A landmark decision in United States Supreme Court history, as it justifies both sex discrimination and usage of labor laws during the time period. The case upheld Oregon state restrictions on the working hours of women as justified by the special state interest in protecting women's health. Curt Muller, the owner of a laundry business, was convicted of violating Oregon labor laws by making a female employee work more than ten hours in a single day. Muller was fined $10. Muller appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, both of which upheld the constitutionality of the labor law and affirmed his conviction.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

A landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9-0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Civil Rights Act of 1964

A landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. Congress asserted its authority to legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One, its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

A landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.

March on Washington

A large political rally in support of civil and economic rights for African Americans that took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony at the Lincoln Memorial during the march.

Watts Riot

A large-scale riot which lasted 6 days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in August 1965. By the time the riot subsided, 34 people had been killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,438 arrested. It would stand as the most severe riot in Los Angeles history until the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The riot is viewed by some as a reaction to the record of police brutality by the LAPD and other racial injustices suffered by black Americans in Los Angeles, including job and housing discrimination.

Judiciary Act of 1801

A law that increased the number of federal judges to 16

Emiliano Zapata

A leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910, and which was initially directed against the president Porfirio Díaz. He formed and commanded an important revolutionary force, the Liberation Army of the South, during the Mexican Revolution. Followers of Zapata were known as Zapatistas.

Betty Friedan

A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century. In 1966, Friedan founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women, which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men".

Ida Tarbell

A leading muckraker and magazine editor, she exposed the corruption of the oil industry with her 1904 work A History of Standard Oil.

Black lists

A list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition.

Carrie Nation

A member of the temperance movement, which opposed alcohol in pre-Prohibition America. She is particularly noteworthy for promoting her viewpoint through vandalism.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A member of the women's right's movement in 1840. She was a mother of seven, and she shocked other feminists by advocating suffrage for women at the first Women's Right's Convention in Seneca, New York 1848. Stanton read a "Declaration of Sentiments" which declared "all men and women are created equal."

Korean War

A military conflict between the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China (PRC), with military material aid from the Soviet Union. The war was a result of the physical division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II.

Liberty Party

A minor political party in the United States originating in the 1840s. The party was an early advocate of the abolitionist cause. It broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) to advocate the view that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document. The party included abolitionists who were willing to work within electoral politics to try to influence people to support their goals.

V-J Day

A name chosen for the day on which the Surrender of Japan occurred, effectively ending World War II, and subsequent anniversaries of that event. The term has been applied to both the day on which the initial announcement of Japan's surrender was made in the afternoon of August 15, 1945, in Japan, and because of time zone differences, to August 14, 1945 in the West.

Chesapeake-Leopard Affair

A naval battle involving a British ship and an American ship. The Leopard attacked the Chesapeake when the Americans would not let them search their ship.

Interstate Highway System

A network of limited-access roadways (also called freeways or expressways) in the United States. It is named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who championed its formation. As of 2006, the system has a total length of 46,876 miles.

Nominating conventions

A new way of choosing candidates. Each state would send delegates to choose the party's candidate, allowing common people to become more involved with the selection of the candidate and the election itself.

Carpetbaggers

A northerner who went to the South immediately after the Civil War; especially one who tried to gain political advantage or other advantages from the disorganized situation in southern states;

Halfway Covenant

A partial church membership led by Solomon Stoddard who believed people were drifting away from the original beliefs.

Factionalism

A party or group (as within a government) that is often contentious or self- seeking (clique); party spirit especially when marked by dissension

National (Cumberland) Road

A paved highway and major route to the west extending more than a thousand miles from Maryland to Illinois, begun in 1811 and finished in the 1850's and was paid for using federal and state money

Farming Frontier

A period of time in which hundreds of thousands of citizens moved west and began to farm the frontier, very much due to the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered 160 acres of free public land to any family that settled there for a period of 5 years.

Atlantic Charter

A pivotal policy statement first issued in August 1941 that early in World War II defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. It was drafted by the heads of Britain and the United States, and later agreed to by all the Allies. The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; free access to raw materials; 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.

Stimson Doctrine

A policy of the United States federal government, enunciated in a note of January 7, 1932, to Japan and China, of non-recognition of international territorial changes that were executed by force. The doctrine was an application of the principle of ex injuria jus non oritur. While some analysts have applied the doctrine in opposition to governments established by revolution, this usage is not widespread, and its invocation usually involves treaty violations.

Moral Diplomacy

A policy put in place during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The president hoped to influence and control other countries through economic pressure, only supporting Latin American governments that were democratic or otherwise supported United States interests. By refusing to support non-democratic countries, he hoped to hurt them economically and thus force them into submission.

Truman Doctrine

A policy set forth by U.S. President Harry S Truman on March 12, 1947 stating that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet sphere.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

A political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black population who were the drivers of the boycott were also the bulk of the system's paying customers. The ensuing struggle lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956 when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

Free Soil Party

A political party formed in 1847-1848 dedicated to opposing slavery in newly acquired territories such as Oregon and the ceded Mexican territory.

Powhattan

A powerful chief in the land that they had colonized. He led around 14000 Indians.

Proclamation of 1763

A proclamation from the British government which forbade British colonists from settling west of the Appalacian Mountains, and which required any settlers already living west of the mountains to move back east.

Young Plan

A program for settlement of German reparations debts after World War I written in 1929 and formally adopted in 1930. After the Dawes Plan was put into operation (1924), it became apparent that Germany could not meet the huge annual payments, especially over an indefinite period of time. The Young Plan reduced further payments to $8 billion in 1929 over a period of 59 years (1988). In addition, the Young Plan divided the annual payment, US $473 million, into two components, one unconditional part equal to one third of the sum and a postponable part for the remaining two-thirds.

Henry Ford

A prominent American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six continents.

A. Philip Randolph

A prominent twentieth-century African-American civil rights leader and the founder of both the March on Washington Movement and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a landmark for labor and particularly for African-American labor organizing. He was one of several Black atheists involved in the civil rights movement.

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 1916, Germany had instituted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, allowing armed merchant ships - but not passenger ships - to be torpedoed without warning. Despite this avowed restriction, a French cross-channel passenger ferry, the Sussex, was torpedoed without warning on March 24, 1916; the ship was severely damaged and about 50 lives were lost.

Equal Rights Amendment

A proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time. In 1972, it passed both houses of Congress, but failed to gain ratification before its June 30, 1982 deadline.

CCC

A public work relief program in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men, ages 18-25, between 1933-42. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. It was designed to provide employment for young men in relief families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment reached 300,000 and in nine years 2.5 million young men participated. The U.S. Army was in charge of the operation, but there was no military training or uniforms.

Black Nationalism/Black Power

A racial definition (or redefinition) of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society.

Thaddeus Stevens

A radical Republican who believed in harsh punishments for the South. Leader of the radical Republicans in Congress.

Radio (KDKA)

A radio station licensed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Created by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation on November 2, 1920, it has claimed to be the world's first commercially licensed radio station, a distinction that has also been challenged by other stations.

Pan American Union

A regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. Its members are the thirty-five independent states of the American Continent, although Honduras was suspended.

Separatists

A religious group parted from the larger people.

Platt Amendment of 1901

A rider appended to the Army Appropriations Act presented to the U.S. Senate by Connecticut Republican Senator Orville H. Platt (1827-1905) replacing the earlier Teller Amendment. The amendment stipulated the conditions for the withdrawal of United States troops remaining in Cuba after the Spanish-American War, and defined the terms of Cuban-U.S. relations until the 1934 Treaty of Relations. The Amendment ensured U.S. involvement in Cuban affairs, both foreign and domestic, and gave legal standing to U.S. claims to certain economic and military territories on the island including Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

Gag Rule

A rule that limits or forbids the raising, consideration or discussion of a particular topic by members of a legislative or decision-making body. The term originated in the mid-1830s when the U.S. House of Representatives barred discussion or referral to committee of antislavery petitions. Such rules are often criticized because they abridge freedom of speech, which is normally given extremely high value when exercised by members of legislative or decision-making bodies

Bleeding Kansas

A sequence of violent events involving abolitionists and pro-Slavery elements that took place in Kansas-Nebraska Territory. The dispute further strained the relations of the North and South, making civil war imminent.

Federalist Papers

A series of 85 essays written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay (using the name "publius") published in NY newspapers and used to convice readers to adopt the new constitution.

Antifederalist Papers

A series of essays opposing the Constitution.

Army-McCarthy hearings

A series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954. The hearings were held for the purpose of investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Army accused chief committee counsel Roy Cohn of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to G. David Schine, a former McCarthy aide and a friend of Cohn's. McCarthy counter-charged that this accusation was made in bad faith and in retaliation for his recent aggressive investigations of suspected Communists and security risks in the Army.

Coercive (Intolerable Acts)

A series of laws set up by Parliament to punish Massachusetts for its protests against the British

Second Great Awakening

A series of religious revivals starting in 1801, based on Methodism and Baptism. Stressed a religious philosophy of salvation through good deeds and tolerance for all Protestant sects. The revivals attracted women, Blacks, and Native Americans.

Stonewall

A series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

Great Society

A set of domestic programs proposed or enacted in the United States on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched during this period. The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but differed sharply in types of programs enacted.

Florence Kelley

A social and political reformer from Philadelphia. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights is widely regarded today.

Counterculture

A sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as deviating away from the norm of society, or what is perceived to be normal.

Fourteen Points

A speech delivered by United States President Woodrow Wilson to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918. The address was intended to assure the country that the Great War was being fought for a moral cause and for postwar peace in Europe. People in Europe generally welcomed Wilson's intervention, but his Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.

Keating-Owen Child Labor Act

A statute enacted by the U.S. Congress which sought to address the perceived evils of child labor by prohibiting the sale in interstate commerce of goods manufactured by children in the United States, thus giving an expanded importance to the constitutional clause giving Congress the task of regulating interstate commerce.

Birmingham & Project C

A strategic movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the unequal treatment of black Americans endured in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign ran during the spring of 1963, culminating in widely publicized confrontations between black youth and white civic authorities, that eventually pressured the municipal government to change the city's discrimination laws. Organizers, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. used nonviolent direct action tactics to defy laws they considered unfair. When business leaders resisted the boycott, SCLC organizer Wyatt Tee Walker and Birmingham native Fred Shuttlesworth began what they termed Project C, a series of sit-ins and marches intended to provoke mass arrests.

Anthracite coal strike

A strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania. 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.

Students for a Democratic Society

A student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.

Pearl Harbor

A surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.

Federalism

A system in which power is divided between the national and state governments.

Bossism

A system of political control centering about a single powerful figure (the boss) and a complex organization of lesser figures (the machine) bound together by reciprocity in promoting financial and social self-interest.

Checks and Balances

A system that allows each branch of government to limit the powers of the other branches in order to prevent abuse of power

Quitrent

A tax imposed on the land by the wealthy.

Stamp Act

A tax that the British Pariliament placed on all things paper sold in the American Colonies

Point Four Program

A technical assistance program for "developing countries" announced by United States President Harry S. Truman in his inaugural address on January 20, 1949. It took its name from the fact that it was the fourth foreign policy objective mentioned in the speech.

Flappers

A term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. They were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.

Pluralism

A theory of government that holds that open, multiple, and competing groups can check the asserted power by any one group.

Brook Farm

A transcendentalist Utopian experiment, put into practice by transcendentalist former Unitarian minister George Ripley at a farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, at that time nine miles from Boston. The community, in operation from 1841 to 1847, was inspired by the socialist concepts of Charles Fourier. Fourierism was the belief that there could be a utopian society where people could share together to have a better lifestyle.

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

A treaty prohibiting all test detonations of nuclear weapons except underground. It was developed both to slow the arms race (nuclear testing was, back then, necessary for continued nuclear weapon advancements), and to stop the excessive release of nuclear fallout into the planet's atmosphere.

Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty

A treaty signed on November 18, 1903, by the United States and Panama, that established the Panama Canal Zone and the subsequent construction of the Panama Canal. It was named after its two primary negotiators, Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, the French diplomatic representative of Panama, and United States Secretary of State John Hay.

Unrestricted submarine warfare

A type of naval warfare in which submarines sink military ships without warning, as opposed to attacks per prize rules. While such tactics increase the combat effectiveness of the submarine and improve its chances of survival, they are considered by many to be a clear breach of the rules of war, especially when employed against neutral country vessels in a war zone.

New Harmony

A utopian settlement in INdiana lasting from 1825-1827. It was started by Robert Owens but failed because everybody did not share their fair load of work and a lack of authority.

Liberty Loans

A war bond that was sold in the United States to support the allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financial securities to many citizens for the first time. The Act of Congress which authorized the Liberty Bonds is still used today as the authority under which all U.S. Treasury bonds are issued.

Suez Crisis

A war fought by Britain, France, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. The attack followed the President of Egypt Gamel Abdel Nasser's decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal, after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the building of the Aswan Dam, which was partly in response to Egypt recognizing the People's Republic of China during the height of tensions between China and Taiwan. The aims of the attack were primarily to regain Western control of the canal and precipitate the fall of Nasser from power, whose policies were viewed as potentially threatening the strategic interests of the three nations.

Automobiles

A wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor.

Immigration Act of 1965

Abolished the National Origins Formula that had been in place in the United States since the Immigration Act of 1924. It was proposed by United States Representative Emanuel Celler of New York, co-sponsored by United States Senator Philip Hart of Michigan and Michael Herbert, and heavily supported by United States Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Horizontal integration

Absorption into a single firm of several firms involved in the same level of production and sharing resources at that level

Temperance

Abstinence from alcohol

"Talented tenth"

According to W. E. B. DuBois, they were the ten percent of the black population that had the talent to bring respect and equality to all blacks

Declaratory Act

Act passed in 1766 just after the repeal of the Stamp Act. Stated that Parliament could legislate for the colonies in all cases.

Basic Land Ordinance

Adopted by the United States Congress on May 20, 1785. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not have the power to raise revenue by direct taxation of the inhabitants of the United States; therefore, the immediate goal was to raise money through the sale of land in the largely unmapped territory west of the original states

Booker T. Washington

African American progressive who supported segregation and demanded that African American better themselves individually to achieve equality.

Indentured Servants

Africans that were captured by the Portuguese to work in the tobacco fields.

16th Amendment

Allows the Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on Census results. This amendment exempted income taxes from the constitutional requirements regarding direct taxes, after income taxes on rents, dividends, and interest were ruled to be direct taxes in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895). It was ratified on February 3, 1913.

U.S. v. E.C. Knight

Also known as the "'Sugar Trust Case,'" was a United States Supreme Court case that limited the government's power to control monopolies. The case, which was the first heard by the Supreme Court concerning the Sherman Antitrust Act, was argued on October 24, 1894 and the decision was issued on January 21, 1895.

Maryland Act of Toleration

Also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was a law mandating religious tolerance. Sentenced to death anyone who denied the divinity of Jesus.

John Adams

America's first Vice-President and second President. Sponsor of the American Revolution in Massachusetts, and wrote the Massachusetts guarantee that freedom of press "ought not to be restrained."

Thomas Paine & Common Sense

American Revolutionary leader and pamphleteer (born in England) who supported the American colonist's fight for independence and supported the French Revolution (1737-1809)

Loyalists

American colonists who remained loyal to Britain and opposed the war for independence

Rosenberg Case

American communists who were executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. This was the first execution of civilians for espionage in United States history.

Thomas Edison

American inventor best known for inventing the electric light bulb, acoustic recording on wax cylinders, and motion pictures.

Robert Fulton

American inventor who designed the first commercially successful steamboat and the first steam warship (1765-1815)

Frederick Winslow Taylor

American mechanical engineer, who wanted to improve industrial efficiency. He is known as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants

Walt Whitman

American poet and transcendentalist who was famous for his beliefs on nature, as demonstrated in his book, Leaves of Grass. He was therefore an important part for the buildup of American literature and breaking the traditional rhyme method in writing poetry.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

American poet that was influenced somewhat by the transcendentalism occurring at the time. He was important in building the status of American literature.

Shakers

American religious sect devoted to the teachings of Ann Lee Stanley, prohibited marriage and sexual relationships.

John Hancock

American revolutionary patriot who was president of the Continental Congress

Zebulon Pike

American soldier and explorer whom Pikes Peak in Colorada is named. His Pike expedition often compared to the Lewis and Clark expedition, mapped much of the southern portion of the Louisianna Purchase.

Jonathan Edwards

American theologian whose sermons and writings stimulated a period of renewed interest in religion in America (1703-1758)

Henry David Thoreau

American transcendentalist who was against a government that supported slavery. He wrote down his beliefs in Walden. He started the movement of civil-disobedience when he refused to pay the toll-tax to support him Mexican War.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American transcendentalist who was against slavery and stressed self-reliance, optimism, self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom. He was a prime example of a transcendentalist and helped further the movement.

Herman Melville

American writer whose experiences at sea provided the factual basis of Moby-Dick (1851), considered among the greatest American novels

Kerner Commission

An 11-member commission established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations for the future.

Bland Allison Act

An 1878 act of Congress requiring the U.S. Treasury to buy a certain amount of silver and put it into circulation as silver dollars. Though the bill was vetoed by President Rutherford B. Hayes, the Congress overrode Hayes' veto on February 28, 1878 to enact the law.

Sedition Act of 1918

An Act of the United States Congress signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on May 16, 1918. It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times "when the United States is in war". It was repealed on December 13, 1920.

Black Panthers

An African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international impact through its deep involvement in the Black Power movement and in U.S. politics of the 1960s and 70s. The intense anti-racism of that time is today considered one of the most significant social, political and cultural currents in U.S. history. The group's "provocative rhetoric, militant posture, and cultural and political flourishes permanently altered the contours of American Identity."

The Hollywood Ten

An American 16mm short documentary film. In the film, each member of the Hollywood Ten made a short speech denouncing McCarthyism and the Hollywood Blacklisting.

Josiah Strong

An American Protestant clergyman, organizer, editor and author. He was one of the founders of the Social Gospel movement that sought to apply Protestant religious principles to solve the social ills brought on by industrialization, urbanization and immigration. He served as General Secretary (1886-1898) of the Evangelical Alliance for the United States, a coalition of Protestant missionary groups. After being forced out he set up his own group, the League for Social Service (1898-1916), and edited its magazine The Gospel of the Kingdom.

Robert M. LaFollette

An American Republican (and later a Progressive) politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was also a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin (1906 to 1925). He ran for President of the United States as the nominee of his own Progressive Party in 1924, carrying Wisconsin and 17% of the national popular vote.

George Kennan

An American adviser, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.

Charles Lindbergh

An American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist. Then a 25-year old U.S. Air Mail pilot, emerged from virtual obscurity to almost instantaneous world fame as the result of his Orteig Prize-winning solo non-stop flight on May 20-21, 1927, from Roosevelt Field located in Garden City on New York's Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France, a distance of nearly 3,600 statute miles, in the single-seat, single-engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis. A U.S. Army reserve officer, was also awarded the nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his historic exploit.

Andrew Mellon

An American banker, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector and Secretary of the Treasury from March 4, 1921 until February 12, 1932.

James Meredith & "Ole Miss"

An American civil rights movement figure. He was the first African American student at the University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement. Motivated by the broadcast of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, Meredith decided to apply his democratic rights and then made the ultimate decision to apply to the University of Mississippi. Meredith's goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration as to the issue.

Douglas MacArthur

An American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Philippines Campaign. Arthur MacArthur, Jr., and Douglas MacArthur were the first father and son to each be awarded the medal. He was one of only five men ever to rise to the rank of general of the army in the U.S. Army, and the only man ever to become a field marshal in the Philippine Army.

Lincoln Steffen

An American journalist, lecturer, and political philosopher, and one of the most famous practitioners of the journalistic style called muckraking.

Alger Hiss case

An American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and UN official. Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.

John C. Fremont

An American military officer, explorer, the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States, and the first presidential candidate of a major party to run on a platform in opposition to slavery.

Horace Greeley

An American newspaper editor and founder of the Republican party. His New York Tribune was America's most influential newspaper 1840-1870. Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties, as well as antislavery and a host of reforms.

Franklin Pierce

An American politician and the 14th President of the United States. Pierce's popularity in the North declined sharply after he came out in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri Compromise and reopening the question of the expansion of slavery in the West.

Joseph McCarthy

An American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, McCarthy's tactics and his inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.

Margaret Sanger

An American sex educator, birth control activist and the founder of the American Birth Control League.

Nat Turner

An American slave who led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 56 deaths among their victims, the largest number of white fatalities to occur in one uprising in the antebellum southern United States. He gathered supporters in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner's killing of whites during the uprising makes his legacy controversial. For his actions, Turner was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed.

Jefferson Davis

An American statesman and politician who served as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history from 1861 to 1865

Al Smith

An American statesman who was elected Governor of New York four times, and was the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928. He was the foremost urban leader of the efficiency-oriented Progressive Movement, and was noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as governor in the 1920s. Smith was the first Catholic to run for President, and attracted many thousands of ethnic voters. However he was especially unpopular among Southern Baptists and German Lutherans, who feared the Catholic Church and the Pope would dictate his policies.

Henry Cabot Lodge

An American statesman, a Republican politician, and a noted historian from Massachusetts. While the title was not official, he is considered to be one of the first Senate Majority leaders and was the first Senate Republican Leader, while serving concurrently as Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. He is best known for his positions on foreign policy, especially his battle with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 over the Treaty of Versailles, which the United States Senate never ratified.

Alice Paul

An American suffragette and activist. Along with Lucy Burns and others, she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Bronson Alcott

An American teacher, writer and philosopher who left a legacy of forward-thinking social ideas. His status as a well-publicized figure from the 1830s to the 1880s stemmed from his founding of two short-lived projects, an unconventional school and an utopian community known as "Fruitlands".

Sigmund Freud

An Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical method of psychoanalysis for investigating the mind and treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst.

John Brown

An abolitionist who attempted to lead a slave revolt by capturing Armories in southern territory and giving weapons to slaves, was hung in Harpers Ferry after capturing an Armory

Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire

An accidental fire at the Traingle Shirtwaist Company that killed 141 workers. It prodded the concerns of many progressive reformers since the workers, locked in the factory and unable to escape, were killed by brutal working conditions. These concerns raised new questions of human and immigrant rights and of existing labor laws.

Dawes Act

An act that removed Indian land from tribal possesion, redivided it, and distributed it among individual Indian families. Designed to break tribal mentalities and promote individualism.

Naturalization Act of 1802

An act that was enacted by the Jeffersonians which reduced the unreasonable requirement of 14 years of residence for citizenship to the previous 5 year requirement.

Smoot-Hawley Tariff

An act, sponsored by United States 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.

Commodore Dewey

An admiral of the United States Navy. He is best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. He was also the only person in the history of the United States to have attained the rank of Admiral of the Navy, the most senior rank in the United States Navy.

Food Administration

An agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety, tobacco products, dietary supplements, medications, vaccines, biopharmaceuticals, blood transfusions, medical devices, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices, veterinary products, and cosmetics

Munich Conference

An agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. Today, it is widely regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Nazi Germany. The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of territorial demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by Nazi Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy without the presence of Czechoslovakia.

Yellow dog contract

An agreement some companies forced workers to take that forbade them from joining a union. This was a method used to limit the power of unions, thus hampering their development.

Proclamation of Neutrality

An agreement stating that the nation will not get involved in the war and conflicts of other nations. These nations were not in an alliance of any sort.

Rush Bagot Agreement

An agreement that limited navel power on the Great Lakes for both the United States and British Canada.

Teller Amendment

An amendment to a joint resolution of the United States Congress, enacted on April 19, 1898, in reply to President William McKinley's War Message. It placed a condition of the United States military in Cuba. According to the clause, the U.S. could not annex Cuba but only leave "control of the island to its people."

Emma Goldman

An anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Liberator

An anti-slavery newspaper written by William Lloyd Garrison. It drew attention to abolition, both positive and negative, causing a war of words between supporters of slavery and those opposed.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

An anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel, "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.

Bonus Army

An assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who protested in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant. The veterans were encouraged in their demand for immediate cash-payment redemption of their service certificates by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time.

Dawes Plan

An attempt following World War I for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt from Germany. When after five years the plan proved to be unsuccessful, the Young Plan was adopted in 1929 to replace it. The Ruhr area was to be evacuated by Allied occupation troops. The Reichsbank would be reorganized under Allied supervision. The sources for the reparation money would include transportation, excise, and custom taxes. Relied on money given to Germany by the US. The plan was accepted by Germany and the Triple Entente and went into effect in September 1924.

Model T

An automobile that was produced by Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company from 1908 through 1927. The Model T set 1908 as the historic year that the automobile became popular. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car that opened travel to the common middle-class American; some of this was because of Ford's innovations, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting.

Abby Kelley

An effective public speaker in the American Anti-Slavery Society, her election to an all-male committee caused the final break between William Garrison and his abolitionist critics in 1840 that split the organization.

Direct Primary

An election in which party members select people to run in the general election.

SC Exposition and Protest

An essay that had the idea that states had the right to nullify laws because the federal government gets power from the state- it avoids majority rule

Chicano Movement

An extension of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement which began in the 1940s with the stated goal of achieving Mexican American empowerment.

Roosevelt Corollary

An extension of the Monroe Doctrine by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Roosevelt's extension of the Monroe Doctrine asserted a right of the United States to intervene to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts. The alternative, according to the U.S. assumptions, was intervention by European powers, especially Great Britain and France, which had lent money to countries that were unable to repay.

Cult of Domesticity/True Womanhood

An ideal that defines what it means to be a woman according to one's capacity for piety, purity, and domesticity. It is a gender convention most strongly associated with white, middle-class women. Historians date its origins at least as far back as the 19th century but it continues to be relevant to current notions of femininity.

Northern Securities Co.

An important United States railroad trust formed in 1902 by E. H. Harriman, James J. Hill, J.P. Morgan, J. D. Rockefeller, and their associates. The company controlled the Northern Pacific Railway, Great Northern Railway, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and other associated lines. The company was sued in 1902 under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by President Theodore Roosevelt, one of the first anti-trust cases filed against corporate interests instead of labor.

RFC

An independent agency of the United States government chartered during the administration of Herbert Hoover in 1932. It was modeled after the War Finance Corporation of World War I. The agency gave $2 billion in aid to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations, and other businesses. The loans were nearly all repaid. It was continued by the New Deal and played a major role in handling the Great Depression in the United States and setting up the relief programs that were taken over by the New Deal in 1933.

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 what regulators perceive to be harmfully anti-competitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. Woodrow Wilson's act against trusts.

Committee on Public Information

An independent agency of the government of the United States created to influence U.S. public opinion regarding American participation in World War I. Over just 28 months, from April 13, 1917, to August 21, 1919, it used every medium available to create enthusiasm for the war effort and enlist public support against foreign attempts to undercut America's war aims.

Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907

An informal agreement between the United States and the Empire of Japan whereby the U.S. would not impose restriction on Japanese immigration or students, and Japan would not allow further emigration to the U.S. The goal was to reduce tensions between the two powerful Pacific nations. The agreement was never ratified by Congress, which in 1924 ended it. The immediate cause of the Agreement was anti-Japanese nativism in California. In 1906, the San Francisco, California Board of Education had passed a regulation whereby children of Japanese descent would be required to attend racially segregated separate schools.

XYZ Affair

An insult to the American delegation when they were supposed to be meeting French foreign minister, Talleyrand, but instead they were sent 3 officials Adams called "X,Y, and Z" that demanded $250,000 as a bribe to see Talleyrand.

Dumbarton Oaks Conference

An international conference at which the United Nations was formulated and negotiated among international leaders. The conference was held at Dumbarton Oaks from August 21, 1944 through October 7, 1944. The discussions at the conference regarding the make-up of the United Nations included which states would be invited to become members, the formation of the United Nations Security Council, and the right of veto that would be given to permanent members of the Security Council.

George Creel

An investigative journalist, a politician, and, most famously, the head of the United States Committee on Public Information, a propaganda organization created by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. He said of himself that "an open mind is not part of my inheritance. I took in prejudices with mother's milk and was weaned on partisanship."

GI Bill

An omnibus bill that provided college or vocational education for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s) as well as one year of unemployment compensation. It also provided many different types of loans for returning veterans to buy homes and start businesses. Since the original act, the term has come to include other veteran benefit programs created to assist veterans of subsequent wars as well as peacetime service.

Aroostook County War

An undeclared confrontation in 1838-39 between the United States and Great Britain over the international boundary between British North America (Canada) and Maine. The dispute resulted in a mutually accepted border between the state of Maine and the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec.

Teapot Dome Scandal

An unprecedented bribery scandal and investigation during the White House administration of United States President Warren G. Harding. Cabinet accepts bribes for oil deposits to different companies.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

An unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the United States. The Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the invading combatants within three days.

Sacco-Vanzetti trial

Anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. After a controversial trial and a series of appeals, the two Italian immigrants were executed on August 23, 1927.

Grimke sisters

Angelina and Sarah Grimke wrote and lectured vigorously on reform causes such as prison reform, the temperance movement, and the abolitionist movement.

Secret ballot

Anonymous voting method that helps to make elections fair and honest

Hamilton Plan

Another economic document filed away for want of support.

Haymarket Square

At this location, in May of 1886, a series of events took place that resulted in four dead laborers and a bomb is thrown at the police and one dies then they start firing and six more die. After this, the Knights of Labor were no longer because they were considered to be involved with anarchy. Four are convicted and three are executed.

Palmer raids

Attempts by the United States Department of Justice to arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Though more than 500 foreign citizens were deported, including a number of prominent leftist leaders, Palmer's efforts were largely frustrated by officials at the U.S. Department of Labor who had responsibility for deportations and who objected to Palmer's methods and disrespect for the legal process.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Author of the 1881 book A Century of Dishonor. The book exposed the U.S. governments many broken promises to the Native Americans. For example the government wanted Native Americans to assimilate, i.e. give up their beliefs and ways of life, that way to become part of the white culture.

Hearst vs. Pulitzer

Basis of yellow journalism.

George III

Became King of England in 1760, and reigned during the American Revolution.

Indian Attack of 1622

Because more native land was being taken away Powhattan's younger brother led attacks against the settlers. The government collapsed 2 years later.

Power of the Purse

Because they were wealthy they had power...

USSR acquires atomic bomb

Began during World War II, in the wake of the USSR's discovery of American efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The scientific research was directed by noted Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov, and benefited from highly successful espionage efforts on the part of the Soviet military intelligence. Ultimately the USSR tested its first nuclear weapon in August 1949.

Prison reform

Began with the Pennsylvania system in 1790, based on the concept that solitary confinement would induce meditation and moral reform. However, this led to many mental breakdowns. The Auburn system, adopted in 1816, allowed the congregation of prisoners during the day.

San Francisco Conference

Between Japan and part of the Allied Powers, was officially signed by 48 nations on September 8, 1951, at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, California. It came into force on April 28, 1952. This treaty served to officially end World War II, to formally end Japan's position as an imperial power, and to allocate compensation to Allied civilians and former prisoners of war who had suffered Japanese war crimes. This treaty made extensive use of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to enunciate the Allies' goals.

Payne-Aldrich Tariff

Bill lowering certain tariffs on goods entering the United States. It was the first change in tariff laws since the Dingley Act of 1897. President William Howard Taft called Congress into a special session in 1909 shortly after his inauguration to discuss the issue. Thus, the House of Representatives immediately passed a tariff bill sponsored by Payne, calling for reduced tariffs. However, the United States Senate speedily substituted a bill written by Aldrich, calling for fewer reductions and more increases in tariffs.

Hiram Revels

Black Mississippi senator elected to the seat that had been occupied by Jefferson Davis when the South seceded.

Tuskegee Institute

Booker T. Washington built this school to educate black students on learning how to support themselves and prosper

James, Duke of York (James II)

Britain's political and religious leaders opposed him as too pro-French, too pro-Catholic, and too much of an absolute monarch.

General John Burgoyne

British general in the American Revolution who captured Fort Ticonderoga but lost the battle of Saratoga in 1777 (1722-1792)

Lord Cornwallis

British general whose campaigns in the south led to his defeat at Yorktown

Burning of Washington DC

British had ended their war with France and turned attention to the US. 4000 troops descended on Washington with little resistance and burned the Capital and White House to the ground because America burned their capital down in York.

12th Amendment

Brought about by the Jefferson/Burr tie, stated that presidential and vice-presidential nominees would run on the same party ticket. Before that time, all of the candidates ran against each other, with the winner becoming president and second-place becoming vice-president.

Burr Hamilton Duel

Burr shot Hamilton, the duel between two prominent American politicians, the former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and sitting Vice President Aaron Burr, on July 11, 1804.

J. P. Morgan

Business man who refinanced railroads during the depression of 1893 and built an inter system alliance by buying stock in competeing railroads. Banker who buys out Carnegie Steel and renames it to U.S. Steel. Was a philanthropist in a way; he gave all the money needed for WWI and was payed back. Was one of the "Robber barons"

Alexis de Tocqueville

Came from France to America in 1831, observed democracy in government and society. His book discusses the advantages and disadvantages of democracy and consequences of the majority's unlimited power. First to raise topics of American practicality over theory, the industrial aristocracy, and the conflict between the masses and individuals.

Election of 1848

Candidates: 1) Zachary Taylor- a Whig who won the election 2) Martin Van Buren (Free Soil Party- made slavery an issue) 3) Lewis Cass- the father of popular sovereignty (Democrat). Zachary Taylor became president, died in office, making his vice president Millard Fillmore president

Election of 1844

Candidates: Henry Clay (Whigs- in an upset over Van Buren) and James Polk (Democrat). Polk favored expansion, demanded that Texas and Oregon be added to the US and Clay had already spoken out against annexation. Polk won the election by the difference of one state (NY, because some of its votes went to the Liberty Party candidate, losing Clay the state)

Black Hawk War

Chief Black Hawk of Sauk tribe, led rebellion against US; started in Illinois and spread to Wisconsin Territory; 200 Sauk and Fox people murdered; tribes removed to areas west of Mississippi

John Marshall

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court appointed by John Adams. He created the precedent of judicial review; ruled on many early decisions that gave the federal government more power, especially the supreme court.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)

Church founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 with headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, religious group that emphasized moderation, saving, hard work, and risk-taking; moved from IL to UT.

Freedom Rides

Civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960). The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.

Harvard College

College founded by the Puritans in 1636

Restoration Colonies

Colonies formed during the restoration period of the Stuart Monarchy in England, in which Charles decided he needed to take firmer control of the expanding colonies

Pike's Peak

Colorado Territory where gold was discovered in 1858.

V-E Day

Commemorates May 8, 1945 the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not until May 9, 1945. On 30 April Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin, and so the surrender of Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Dönitz.

New Freedom

Comprises the campaign speeches and promises of Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential campaign. They called for less government but in practice as president he added new controls such as the Federal Reserve System and the Clayton Antitrust Act. More generally the "New Freedom" is associated with Wilson's first term as president (1913-1917).

Great (CT) Compromise

Compromise made by Constitutional Convention in which states would have equal representation in one house of the legislature and representation based on population in the other house

Women's Movement

Concerned with gender inequality in laws and culture. It built on what had been achieved in the first wave, and began adapting the ideas to America. Simone de Beauvoir is associated with this wave because of her idea of women as "the other". This idea was touched on in the writing of Woolf, and was adapted to apply not only to the gender roles of women in the household or at work, but also their sexuality. Beauvoir set the tone for later feminist theory.

Tokyo firebombing

Conducted by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. The U.S. mounted a small-scale raid on Tokyo in April 1942, with large morale effects. Strategic bombing and urban area bombing began in 1944 after the long-range B-29 Super Fortress bomber entered service, first employed from China and thereafter the Mariana Islands. B-29 raids from those islands commenced on November 17, 1944 and lasted until August 15, 1945, the day Japan capitulated. The air raid of 9-10 March 1945 was one of the most destructive bombing raids in history.

King Philip's War

Conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists

Seminole War

Conflict that began in Florida in 1817 between the Seminole Indians and the US Army when the Seminoles resisted removal.

Whigs

Conservatives and popular with pro-Bank people and plantation owners. They mainly came from the National Republican Party, which was once largely Federalists. They took their name from the British political party that had opposed King George during the American Revolution. Their policies included support of industry, protective tariffs, and Clay's American System. They were generally upper class in origin. Included Clay and Webster

Lecompton Constitution

Constitution supporting slavery and protected rights of slaveholders. It was rejected by Kansas, making Kansas an eventual free state.

The Alabama claims

Damage claims by the United States against Great Britain based on the violation of neutrality by Great Britain by selling ships to the Confederacy.

Treaty of Ghent

December 24, 1814 - Ended the War of 1812 and restored the status quo. For the most part, territory captured in the war was returned to the original owner. It also set up a commission to determine the disputed Canada/U.S. border.

18th Amendment

Defined "intoxicating liquors" excluding those used for religious purposes and sales throughout the U.S., established Prohibition in the United States. Its ratification was certified on January 16, 1919. It was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933, the only instance of an amendment's repeal.

First Continental Congress

Delagates from all colonies except Georgia met to discuss problems with Britain and to promote independence.

"Black Reconstruction"

Derisive label applied to political efforts by African Americans after the Civil War, exaggerating black political influence that was in actuality limited mainly to voting. Blacks could vote and had rights, but black codes kept them virtually enslaved. They did get more political power; helped protect former slaves, and education for many.

Muscle Shoals veto

Designed to dam the Tennessee River and sell government-produced electricity in competition with citizens in private companies. Vetoed by President Herbert Hoover in 1931, Congress had drafted the bill to harness energy from the Tennessee River, but Hoover refused to lower steep tariffs or support any "socialistic" relief proposals.

Wilmot Proviso

Dispute over whether any Mexican territory that America won during the Mexican War should be free or a slave territory. A representative named David Wilmot introduced an amendment stating that any territory acquired from Mexico would be free. This amendment passed the House twice, but failed to ever pass in Senate. It became a symbol of how intense dispute over slavery was in the U.S.

Freeport Doctrine

Doctrine developed by Stephen Douglas that said the exclusion of slavery in a territory could be determined by the refusal of the voters to enact any laws that would protect slave property. It was unpopular with Southerners, and thus cost him the election.

New Manifest Destiny (reasons)

Done to acquire more land for farming and agrarian economics. The new imperialism was based on the need to increase American industry. One way that imperialism was an answer was that it helped America obtain more natural resources for more production. Foreign trade was becoming increasingly important to the United States' economy, so the search for new markets was an important economic factor of imperialism.

John Dickinson

Drafted a declaration of colonial rights and grievances, and also wrote the series of "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" in 1767 to protest the Townshend Acts. Although an outspoken critic of British policies towards the colonies, Dickinson opposed the Revolution, and, as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776, refused to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Lusitania

During World War I as Germany waged submarine warfare against Britain, the ship was identified and torpedoed by a German U-boat U-20 on 7 May 1915 and sank in eighteen minutes. It went down eleven miles (19 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, contributed to the American entry into World War I and became an iconic symbol in recruiting campaigns of why the war was being fought

Lincoln's Ten percent plan

During the Civil War in December 1863, Abraham Lincoln offered a model for reinstatement of Southern states. It decreed that a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of the 1860 vote count from that state had taken an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and pledged to abide by emancipation. The next step in the process would be for the states to formally elect a state government. Also, a state legislature could write a new constitution, but it also had to abolish slavery forever.

Whiskey Ring

During the Grant administration, a group of officials were importing whiskey and using their offices to avoid paying the taxes on it, cheating the treasury out of millions of dollars.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945 and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only active deployments of nuclear weapons in war to date. For six months, the United States had made use of intense strategic fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities. Together with the United Kingdom and the Republic of China, the United States called for a surrender of Japan in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945. The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum. By executive order of President Harry S. Truman, the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of "Fat Man" over Nagasaki on August 9.

State constitutions

During the war, most states had their own const. to spell out the rights of citizens and set limits on the gvns. power.

East India Co.

Dutch tea company that helped overseas expansion, traded with Africa and India

Panic of 1819

Economic panic caused by extensive speculation and a decline of European demand for American goods along with mismanagement within the Second Bank of the United States. Often cited as the end of the Era of Good Feelings.

Square Deal

Economic policy by Roosevelt that favored fair relationships between companies and workers

"Dynamic Conservatism"

Eisenhower preached a doctrine of dynamic conservatism. He continued all the major New Deal programs still in operation, especially Social Security. He expanded its programs and rolled them into a new cabinet-level agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, while extending benefits to an additional ten million workers. His cabinet, consisting of several corporate executives and one labor leader, was dubbed by one journalist, "Eight millionaires and a plumber."

Maine explosion

Eleven days after the Cuban autonomous government took power, a small riot erupted in Havana. The riot was thought to be ignited by Spanish officers who were offended by the persistent newspaper criticism of General Valeriano Weyler's policies. McKinley sent the USS Maine to Havana to ensure the safety of American citizens and interests. Preparations for the possible conflict started in October 1897, when President McKinley made arrangements for Maine to be deployed to Key West, Florida, as a part of a larger, global deployment of U.S. naval power to be able to attack simultaneously on several fronts if the war was not avoided. As Maine left Florida, a large part of the North Atlantic Squadron was moved to Key West and the Gulf of Mexico. BUT the boiler room had an explosion and it was blamed on the Spanish.

Fugitive Slave Law

Enacted by Congress in 1793 and 1850, these laws provided for the return of escaped slaves to their owners. The North was lax about enforcing the 1793 law, which irritated the South greatly. The 1850 law was tougher and was aimed at eliminating the underground railroad.

Northwest Ordinance

Enacted in 1787, it is considered one of the most significant achievements of the Articles of Confederation. It established a system for setting up governments in the western territories so they could eventually join the Union on an equal footing with the original 13 states

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

Enacted in the United States to add further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime by seeking to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incipiency.

Headright

Encouraged wealthy individuals to pay for people to move to America. In return they had to work for them until the contract was up.

Peace of Paris (1763)

Ended the Seven Year's War, France had to abandon all claim to North America; Great Britain received Canada and the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley, Spain got back the Philippine Islands and Cuba, but had to cede East and West Florida to England

Quakers

English dissenters who broke from Church of England, preach a doctrine of pacificism, inner divinity, and social equity, under William Penn they founded Pennsylvania

John Locke

English empiricist philosopher who believed that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience (1632-1704)

Herbert Spencer

English philosopher and sociologist who applied the theory of natural selection to human societies (1820-1903)

George Whitfield

English preacher who led the Great Awakening by traveling through the colonies

William Penn

Englishman and Quaker who founded the colony of Pennsylvania (1644-1718)

National Labor Union

Established 1866, and headed by William Sylvis and Richard Trevellick, 600,000 people joined to concentrate on producer cooperation to achieve goals and limit work days to 8 hours.

Jamestown

Established city in one of the first colonies named after King James I.

17th Amendment

Established direct election of United States Senators by popular vote. It was adopted on April 8, 1913.

Bureau of Corporations

Established during Theodore Roosevelt's first administration, the Bureau of Corporations was granted the power to investigate unfair business practices.

Standard Oil

Established in 1870, it was a integrated multinational oil corporation led by Rockefeller

U. S. Steel

Established in 1901 by J.P. Morgan and Carnegie, it was a combination of steel operations into a single corporation

Fuel Administration

Even prior to a declaration of war by the United States, shortages of coal were experienced in the winter of 1916-17. To address concerns about a steady supply of fuel to support military and industrial operations and for use by consumers, in 1917 the Federal Fuel Administration was established and US President Woodrow Wilson appointed Harry A. Garfield to lead the agency. Garfield in turn selected local administrators for each state. Fuel committees were organized down to the county level.

"City on a Hill"

Everyone would be watching their move and God will know so they must act according to God's will.

John Smith

Explored the Chesapeake Bay and did not find minerals and natural resources so he wanted to produce and manufacture goods when he took over the colony in 1608.

Frederick Douglas

Famous black abolitionist that escaped from slavery who would later right a narrative of his own life that described his life. He promoted the abolitionist cause and drew the line where evil must be denounced.

Henry Barnard

Father of American High School. Similar to Horace Mann but only considered with High School.

Neal Dow

Father of Prohibition; he made a law in Maine that would disallow lethal alcohol to be sold.

Fort Sumter

Federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; the confederate attack on the fort marked the start of the Civil War

Samuel Chase

Federalist Supreme Court justice impeached by the House in 1804 but acquitted by the Senate

American Federation of Labor

Federation of craft labor unions lead by Samuel Gompers that arose out of dissatisfaction with the Knights of Labor

Trusts

Firms or corporations that combine for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices (establishing a monopoly). There are anti-trust laws to prevent these monopolies.

Natty Bumpo

First Literary Hero

Comstock Lode

First discovered in 1858 by Henry Comstock, some of the most plentiful and valuable silver was found here, causing many Californians to migrate here, and settle Nevada.

Mayflower Compact

First governing document of Plymouth Colony that the settlers agreed to abide by the laws of the king.

Lord Baltimore (George & Cecilius Calvert)

First proprietor of the Maryland colony. Believed in the separation of church and state

Webster Ashburton Treaty

Following the Aroostook War, in 1842 between the US and the Brits, settled boundary disputes in the North West, fixed most borders between US and Canada, talked about slavery and excredition

Midway Island hopping

Following the resounding victory at Midway, the United States began a major land offensive. The Allies came up with a strategy known as Island hopping, or the bypassing of islands that served little or no strategic importance. Because air power was crucial to any operation, only islands that could support airstrips were targeted by the Allies. The fighting for each island in the Pacific Theater would be savage, as the Americans faced a determined and battle-hardened enemy who had known little defeat on the ground.

Compromise of 1850

Forestalled the Civil War by instating the Fugitive Slave Act, banning slave trade in DC, admitting California as a free state, splitting up the Texas territory, and instating popular sovereignty in the Mexican Cession

Treaty of Portsmouth

Formally ended the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905.

Elijah Lovejoy

Former Presbyterian minister; established a reform paper: St. Louis Observer; moved to Alton, IL. (Alton Observer); against slavery and injustices inflicted against blacks; is a martyr for the anti-slavery movement for he was killed by a mob in 1835.

Election of 1892

Former President Grover Cleveland ran for re-election against the incumbent President Benjamin Harrison also running for re-election. Cleveland defeated Harrison, thus becoming the only person in US history to be elected to a second, non-consecutive presidential term. The campaign centered mainly on the issue of a sound currency. The new Populist Party, formed by groups from the Grange, the Farmers' Alliances, and the Knights of Labor, polled more than a million votes.

7 (French and Indian) Years War

Fought both in continental Europe and also in overseas colonies between 1756 and 1763; resulted in Prussian seizures of land from Austria, English seizures of colonies in India and North America.

Battle of Horseshoe Bend

Fought during the War of 1812 in central Alabama. On March 27, 1814, United States forces and Indian allies under General Andrew Jackson defeated the Red Sticks, a part of the Creek Indian tribe inspired by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.

Tammany Hall

Founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society, it was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. It controlled Democratic Party nominations and patronage in Manhattan from the mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854 through the election of John P. O'Brien in 1932

Samuel Adams

Founder of the Sons of Liberty and one of the most vocal patriots for independence; signed the Declaration of Independence

Peace of Paris (1783)

France and Britain signed this treaty where Great Britain granted America their independence. British wouldn't seek to collect war debts either.

Star Spangled Banner

Francis Scott Key observed the battle of Fort Mchenry and wrote his thoughts down in a poem.

Zachary Taylor

General that was a military leader in Mexican-American War and 12th president of the United States. Sent by president Polk to lead the American Army against Mexico at Rio Grande, but was defeated.

Four Freedoms Speech

Goals articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy: Freedom of speech and expression Freedom of worship Freedom from want Freedom from fear

Thomas Hutchinson

Governor of Boston who ordered cargo of tea to be unloaded in Boston despite colonial objection

William Henry Harrison

Governor of the Indiana territory, that fought against Tecumseh and the Prophet in the Battle of Tippecanoe

Vicksburg

Grant besieged the city from May 18 to July 4, 1863, until it surrendered, yielding command of the Mississippi River to the Union.

House of Burgesses

Great Planters, which are based off of certain families, established power in their society and in the land.

Pilgrims

Group of English Protestant dissenters who established Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620 to seek religious freedom after having lived briefly in the Netherlands

Committee of Correspondence

Group of colonists who wrote letters and pamphlets reporting on British actions

Farmers' Alliances

Groups of farmers who sent lecturers from town to town to educate people about agricultural and rural issues.

Congregations

Groups of people coming together for church.

Webster Hayne Debate

Hayne first responded to Daniel Webster's argument of states' rights versus national power, with the idea of nullification. Webster then spent 2 full afternoons delivering his response which he concluded by saying that "Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable"

General "Butcher" Weyler

He attained the rank of lieutenant he entered the staff college, graduating as the head of his class. Two years afterwards he became captain, and was sent to Cuba at his own request. He began herding farm people into what were called reconcentrados, concentration camps. He penned up about 500,000 Cubans in these camps. Around 200,000 Cubans died from starvation and disease in these camps.

Samuel Slater

He memorized the way that the British made machines and he brought the idea to America. He made our first cotton spinning machine.

John Quincy Adams

He served as Secretary of State under Monroe. In 1819, he drew up the Adams-Onis Treaty in which Spain gave the United States Florida in exchange for the United States dropping its claims to Texas. Sixth president of the United States. He was in favor of funding national research and he appointed Henry Clay as his Secretary of State. During his presidency the National Republicans were formed in support of him.

Henry Frick

He was Carnegie's supplier of coke to fuel his steel mills as well as his right hand man. He was very anti-union. He was in charge of the mills when the Homestead Strike occurred. His decision to use strike breakers ignited the riot, and helped stain the image of unions.

Albert Gallatin

He was Jefferson's secretary. He and Jefferson believed that to pay the interest on debt, there would have to be taxes. Taxes would suck money from industrious farmers and put it in the hands of wealthy creditors.

William Crawford

He was Secretary of Treasury under the James Monroe Presidency; he was expected to win as a canidate for Presidency in 1824 when he represented the South in this election. Originally from Georgia.

Charles Grandison Finney

He was a Presbyterian and Congregationalist figure in the Second Great Awakening. His influence during this period was enough that he has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism. He was known for his innovations in preaching and religious meetings such as having women pray in public meetings of mixed gender, development of the "anxious seat", a place where those considering becoming Christians could come to receive prayer, and public censure of individuals by name in sermons and prayers.

Winfield Scott

He was a United States Army general, diplomat, and presidential candidate. Known as "Old Fuss and Feathers" and the "Grand Old Man of the Army", he served on active duty as a general longer than any other man in American history and most historians rate him the ablest American commander of his time. Over the course of his 50 year career, he commanded forces in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Black Hawk War, the Second Seminole War, and, briefly, the American Civil War, conceiving the Union strategy known as the Anaconda Plan that would be used to defeat the Confederacy.

John Dewey

He was a philosopher who believed in "learning by doing" which formed the foundation of progressive education. He believed that the teachers' goal should be "education for life and that the workbench is just as important as the blackboard."

William Grayson

He was a soldier, lawyer, and statesman from Virginia. He was one of the first two U.S. Senators from Virginia, and belonged to the Anti-Federalist faction.

Charles W. Sheldon

He was an American minister in the Congregational churches and leader of the Social Gospel movement. His novel, In His Steps, introduced the principle of "What Would Jesus Do?" which articulated an approach to Christian theology that became popular at the turn of the 20th Century.

William Graham Sumner

He was an advocate of Social Darwinism claiming that the rich were a result of natural selection and benefits society. He, like many others promoted the belief of Social Darwinism which justified the rich being rich, and poor being poor.

John B. Gough

He was apart of the temperance movement. When he was young, he went through many things that caused him to become a drunkard. He was eventually asked to sign the pledge by a Quaker and he became one of the greatest temperance speakers of all time.

Andrew Johnson

He was from Tennessee, and as VP when Lincoln was killed, he became president. He opposed radical Republicans who passed Reconstruction Acts over his veto. The first U.S. president to be put up for impeachment, but he survived the Senate removal by only one vote. He was a very weak president.

Aaron Burr

He was one of the leading Democratic-Republicans of New york, and served as a U.S. Senator from New York from 1791-1797. He was the principal opponent of Alexander Hamilton's Federalist policies. In the election of 1800, Burr tied with Jefferson in the Electoral College. The House of Representatives awarded the Presidency to Jefferson and made Burr Vice- President.

James B. Weaver

He was the Populist candidate for president in the election of 1892 and received only 8.2% of the vote.

Matthew Lyon

He was the first person to be put to trial for violating the acts on charges of criticizing Federalist president John Adams and disagreeing with Adams' decision to go to war against France. Lyon was sentenced to four months in jail and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and court costs. While in jail, Lyon won election to the Sixth Congress. In the election of 1800 Matthew Lyon cast the deciding vote for Jefferson after the election went to the House of Representatives because of an electoral tie.

Sir Walter Raleigh

He was the first to attempt to sponsor a colony in 1585 but failed.

Henry George

He wrote Progress and Poverty in 1879, which made him famous as an opponent of the evils of modern capitalism.

Henry Demarest Lloyd

He wrote the book "Wealth Against Commonwealth" in 1894. It was part of the progressive movement and the book's purpose was to show the wrong in the monopoly of the Standard Oil Company.

Salem Witchcraft

Hearing in 1692 involving many women who were believed to worship the devil.

Casablanca Conference

Held at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, Morocco, then a French protectorate, from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the European strategy of the Allies during World War II. Present were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and many French representatives to file reports for the French. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had also been invited but declined to attend in light of the ongoing conflict at Stalingrad. General Charles de Gaulle had initially refused to come but changed his mind when Churchill threatened to recognize Henri Giraud as head of the Free French Forces in his place. Giraud was also present at Casablanca, and there was notable tension between the two men during the talks.

Laissez-faire

Idea that government should play as small a role as possible in economic affairs

Thomas R. Dew

In 1832 he published a review of the celebrated slavery debate of 1831-32 in the Virginia General Assembly, under the title An Essay in Favor of Slavery, which went far towards putting a stop to a movement, then assuming considerable proportions, to proclaim the end of slavery in Virginia.

Samuel Gridley Howe

In 1832, he became the first director of the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind (now Perkins School for the Blind), the first such institution in the United States. Howe directed the school for the rest of his life

Buchanan Pakenham Treaty

In 1846, they negotiated the dispute of the Oregon boundaries, stemming from the Treaty of 1818 in which both U.S. and British settlers were granted free navigation of the territory.

Trent Affair

In 1861 the Confederacy sent emissaries James Mason to Britain and John Slidell to France to lobby for recognition. A Union ship captured both men and took them to Boston as prisoners. The British were angry and Lincoln ordered their release

Morrill Act

In 1862, the federal government had donated public land to the states for the establishment of college; as a result 69 land grant institutions were established.

New York City Draft Riot

In 1863, Irish killed Blacks because they feared for their jobs; tried to prove they were better than Blacks and burned Draft buildings.

Tenure of Office Act

In 1867, it was enacted by radical congress that forbade the President from removing civil officers without senatorial consent. It was to prevent Johnson from removing a radical republican from his cabinet.

Terence Powderly

In 1879, president of the Knight of Labor. He worked to strenghten the union by opening membership to immigrants, blacks, women and unskilled workers. He wanted to make the world a better place for both workers and employers. He did not believe in strikes. He relied on rallies and meetings.

Sherman Silver Purchase Act

In 1890, an act was passed so that the treasury would buy 4.5 million ounces of silver monthly and pay those who mined it in notes that were redeemable in either gold or silver. This law doubled the amount of silver that could be purchased under the Bland-Allison Law of 1878.

Homestead Strike

In 1892, it was a strike at Andrew Carnegie's steel plant in which Pinkerton detectives fight with steel workers. Henry Frick is the president of the company and called for new employees that would break the strike. He hires Pinkerton Detectives to break up the labor union.

Wilson Gorman Tariff

In 1894, government slightly reduced the United States tariff rates from the numbers set in the 1890 McKinley tariff and imposed a 2% income tax.

Meat Inspection Act

In 1906, it required the United States Department of Agriculture to inspect all cattle, sheep, goats, and horses when slaughtered and processed into products for human consumption

Philadelphia Transit Strike

In 1944, it was a sickout strike by white transit workers in Philadelphia that lasted from August 1 to August 6, 1944. The strike was triggered by the decision of the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC), made under prolonged pressure from the federal government in view of significant labor shortages, to allow black employees of the PTC to hold non-menial jobs, such as motormen and conductors, that were previously reserved for white workers only. On August 1, 1944 the eight black employees being trained as streetcar motormen were to make their first trial run; that fact was used by the white PTC workers to start a massive sickout strike.

John Hay

In August 1898, Hay was named by President McKinley as Secretary of State and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris of 1898, which ended the Spanish-American War. Hay continued serving as Secretary of State after Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley, serving until his own death in 1905. He established the open door policy in China.

Pullman strike

In Chicago, Pullman cut wages but refused to lower rents in the "company town", Eugene Debs had American Railway Union refuse to use Pullman cars, Debs thrown in jail after being sued, strike achieved nothing

Sand Creek Massacre

In Colorado territory in 1864, U.S army colonel John M. Chivington led a surprise attack on a peaceful Cheyenne settlement along Sand Creek River. The Cheyenne under Chief Black kettle tried to surrender. First he waved the America Flag and the White flag of surrender. Chivington ignored the gestures. The U.S army killed about 200 Cheyenne during the conflict

Presidential Reconstruction

In December 1863 Lincoln introduced the first Reconstruction scheme, the Ten Percent Plan, thus beginning the period known as Presidential Reconstruction. The plan decreed that when one-tenth of a state's prewar voters had taken an oath of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, its citizens could elect a new state government and apply for readmission to the Union. In addition, Lincoln promised to pardon all but a few high-ranking Confederates if they would take this oath and accept abolition. The plan also required that states amend their constitutions to abolish slavery. Conspicuous in this plan was the stipulation that only whites could vote or hold office.

Boston Massacre

In March 1770, a crowd of colonists protested against British customs agents and the presence of British troops in Boston. Violence flared and a few colonists were killed.

Fair Deal

In September 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman addressed Congress and presented a 21 point program of domestic legislation outlining a series of proposed actions in the fields of economic development and social welfare. The proposals to Congress became more and more abundant and by 1948 a legislative program that was more comprehensive.

Bolshevik Revolution

In early October, Lenin convinced the Bolshevik Party to form an immediate insurrection against the Provisional Government. The Bolshevik leaders felt it was of the utmost importance to act quickly while they had the momentum to do so. The armed workers known as Red Guards and the other revolutionary groups moved on the night of Nov. 6-7 under the orders of the Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee. These forces seized post and telegraph offices, electric works, railroad stations, and the state bank.

Lodge Reservations

In response to the Treaty of Versailles, Senator Lodge penned fourteen reservations to the proposed post-war agreements. Heavily influenced by Wilson's Fourteen Points, the Treaty called for the creation of a League of Nations in which the promise of mutual security would prevent another major world war. Differing from his Democratic contemporary, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Cabot Lodge held that the United States should take a cautionary approach towards international arbitration after the Great War.

Corrupt Bargain

In the election of 1824, none of the candidates were able to secure a majority of the electoral vote, thereby putting the outcome in the hands of the House of Representatives, which elected John Quincy Adams over rival Andrew Jackson. Henry Clay was the Speaker of the House at the time, and he convinced Congress to elect Adams. Adams then made Clay his Secretary of State.

Charles River Bridge v Warren Bridge

In this 1837 Supreme Court Case, Chief Justice Roger Taney that a state had a right to place the public's convenience over that of a private or particular company, over the presumed right of monopoly granted in a corporate charter. Thus a company that had a prior long-term contract for a toll bridge over the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge—and hence a monopoly on bridge traffic—could not prevent a second company from receiving another state contract to construct a competitive toll-free bridge. It advanced the interests of those who favored economic development.

Election of 1864

In this election, five political parties supported candidates for the presidency. They included the War Democrats, Peace Democrats, Copperheads, Radical Republicans, and the National Union Party. Each political party offered a different point of view on how the war should be run and what should be done to the Confederate states after the war. The National Union Party joined with Lincoln won the election on the recent northern victories against the South.

Election of 1856

In this presidential election, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican candidate John C. Fremont. He won the general election by denouncing the abolitionists, promising not to allow any interference with the Compromise of 1850, and supporting the principle of noninterference by Congress with slavery in the territories.

Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800)

In this treaty, Spain ceded the Louisiana Territory to France, which was fast rising under Napoleon.

Election of 1852

In this, the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce, and the Whigs nominated Winfield Scott. Pierce won the presidency because he supported the Compromise of 1850.

Election of 1912

Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party with the support of the conservative wing of the party. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called his own convention and created the Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party").

Washington Conference

International conference called by the United States to limit the naval arms race and to work out security agreements in the Pacific area. Held in Washington, D.C., the conference resulted in the drafting and signing of several major and minor treaty agreements. Also known as the Five Power Treaty.

Non-Intercourse Act

It allowed Americans to carry or trade with all nations except for Britian and France

Macon's Bill No. 2

It became law in the United States on May 1, 1810, was intended to motivate Britain and France to stop seizing American vessels during the Napoleonic Wars. This bill was a revision of the original bill by Representative Nathaniel Macon, known as Macon's Bill Number 1. The law lifted all embargoes with Britain or France. If either one of the two countries stopped attacks upon American shipping, the United States would cease trade with the other, unless that country agreed to recognize the rights of the neutral American ships as well.

Military Reconstruction Act

It divided the South into five military districts that were commanded by Union generals. It was passed in 1867. It took the power away from the President to be Commander in Chief and set up a system of Martial Law.

Compromise of 1877

It ended Reconstruction. Republicans promise 1) Remove military from South, 2) Appoint Democrat to cabinet (David Key postmaster general), 3) Federal money for railroad construction and levees on Mississippi river

Workingmen's Compensation Act

It established an all-purpose protection program for Federal civilian employees and their dependents in the event of injury or death. This act granted assistance to federal civil service employees during periods of disability. This act became the precedent for "Disability Insurance" across the country.

Roanoke

It is an island where many explorers tried to colonize. Located in North Carolina

Cuba

It remained territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War ended in 1898, and gained formal independence from the U.S. in 1902. Between 1953 and 1959 a Revolution occurred, removing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and installing a government led by Fidel Castro.

Compromise Tariff of 1833

It was a new tariff proposed by Henry Clay and John Calhoun that gradually lowered the tariff to the level off the Tariff of 1816 This compromise avoided civil war and prolonged the union for another 30 years.

People's Party

It was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891. It was most important in 1892-96, then rapidly faded away. Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South and hard-pressed wheat farmers in the Plains states (especially Kansas and Nebraska), it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites generally. They were extremely anti-elitist.

Peggy Eaton Affair

It was an 1830-1831 U.S. scandal involving members of President Andrew Jackson's Cabinet and their wives. Although it started over a private matter, it affected the political careers of several men. With the encouragement of President Andrew Jackson, who liked them both, Peggy Timberlake and John Eaton, Secretary of War, married shortly after her husband's death -- although according to the social mores of the day, it would have been more proper for them to wait a longer time.

Second Bank of the United States

It was chartered in 1816; much like its predecessor of 1791 but with more capital; it could not forbid state banks from issuing notes, but its size and power enabled it to compel the state banks to issue only sound notes or risk being forced out of business.

Progressive (Bull Moose) Party

It was formed after a split in the Republican Party between President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt. The party also became known as the Bull Moose Party when former President Roosevelt boasted "I'm fit as a bull moose," after being shot in an assassination attempt prior to his 1912 campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Potsdam Conference

It was from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The three nations were represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and, later, Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman. They gathered to decide how to administer punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on May 8 (V-E Day). The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war order, peace treaties issues, and countering the effects of war.

Specie Circular

It was issued by President Jackson on July 11, 1836 and was meant to stop land speculation caused by states printing paper money without proper specie (gold or silver) backing it. It required that the purchase of public lands be paid for in specie. It stopped the land speculation and the sale of public lands went down sharply. The panic of 1837 followed.

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty

It was signed on November 18, 1901 by The United States and the United Kingdom. The Treaty nullified the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 and gave the United States the right to create and control a canal across the Central American isthmus to connect the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. In the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, both nations had renounced building such a canal under the sole control of one nation.

American Colonization Society

It was the primary vehicle for proposals to return free African Americans to what was considered greater freedom in Africa. It helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821-22, as a place for freedmen.

Bank War

Jackson believed the Bank of US had too much power and was too rich. Vetoed the 2nd Bank charter and withdrew government money from the US Banks and put it into "pet banks"

Battle of New Orleans

Jackson led a battle that occurred when British troops attacked U.S. soldiers in New Orleans on January 8, 1815; the War of 1812 had officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in December, 1814, but word had not yet reached the U.S.

Kitchen cabinet

Jackson's group of unofficial advisors consisting of newspaper editors and Democratic leaders that met to discuss current issues. Jackson used the Kitchen Cabinet more than his official Cabinet.

Election of 1800

Jefferson and Burr each received 73 votes in the Electoral College, so the House of Representatives had to decide the outcome. The House chose Jefferson as President and Burr as Vice President.

Revolution of 1800

Jefferson's election changed the direction of the government from Federalist to Democratic- Republican, so it was called a "revolution."

Election of 1796

John Adams became President because he had the most electoral votes. Thomas Jefferson became Vice President because he had the second most electoral votes. A problem from this situation was they belonged to different political parties, so political tensions were strong in the Executive Branch.

Pottawatomie Creek

John Brown rode with 4 sons & 2 others to Pottawatomie Creek; dragged 5 proslavery settlers from beds and murdered them

Harper's Ferry Raid

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to join him when he attacked the armory, but illness prevented Tubman from joining him and Douglass believed his plan would fail and did not join him for that reason.

Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Johnson was impeached for the charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors on February 24, 1868 of which one of the articles of impeachment was violating the Tenure of Office Act. He had removed Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, from office and replaced him with Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas.

General Court

Judicial branch of colonial society.

Pure Food and Drug Act

June 30, 1906 is a United States federal law that provided federal inspection of meat products and forbade the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated food products and poisonous patent medicines.

Long Telegram

Kennan described dealing with Soviet Communism as "undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face". In the first two sections, he posited concepts that became the foundation of American Cold War policy: The USSR perceived itself at perpetual war with capitalism; The USSR viewed systems of socialism and social democracy as incompatible; The USSR would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as allies; Soviet aggression was fundamentally not aligned with the views of the Russian people or with economic reality, but in historic Russian xenophobia and paranoia; The Soviet government's structure prohibited objective or accurate pictures of internal and external reality.

Susan B. Anthony

Key leader of woman suffrage movement, social reformer who campaigned for womens rights, the temperance, and was an abolitionist, helped form the National Woman Suffrage Assosiation

18th Century Wars

King Philips war (1675-76), War of the League (ends 1697), War of Spanish Succession (1702, 1713) 7 years war (1756-1763)/ French and Indian war (1755-1760). most of the wars were between France and everyone else

Civil Rights Act of 1968

Known as the Fair Housing Act and was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited discrimination in housing, there were no federal enforcement provisions. The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and as of 1974, gender; as of 1988, the act protects the disabled and families with children. It also provided protection for civil rights workers.

Knights of Labor

Labor union founded in 1869, that grew out of the collapse of the National Labor Union and was replaced by AF of L after a number of botched strikes

Redeemers

Largely former slave owners who were the bitterest opponents of the Republican program in the South. Staged a major counterrevolution to "redeem" the south by taking back southern state governments. Their foundation rested on the idea of racism and white supremacy. Redeemer governments waged and agressive assault on African Americans.

1st & 2nd Sioux Wars

Lasted from 1876-1877. These were spectacular clashes between the Sioux Indians and white men. They were spurred by gold-greedy miners rushing into Sioux land. The white men were breaking their treaty with the Indians. The Sioux Indians were led by Sitting Bull and they were pushed by Custer's forces. Custer led these forces until he was killed at the battle at Little Bighorn. Many of the Indians were finally forced into Canada, where they were forced by starvation to surrender.

Navigation Acts

Laws that governed trade between England and its colonies. Colonists were required to ship certain products exclusively to England. These acts made colonists very angry because they were forbidden from trading with other countries.

Red Cloud

Leader of the Oglala who resisted the development of a trail through Wyoming and Montana by the United States government (1822-1909)

Selectmen

Leaders of the town meetings and had a very important role.

John Winthrop

Led a group of Puritans to North America and was elected governor by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

American Woman Suffrage Association

Led by Lucy Stone and husband Henry Blackwell. Differed from NWSA on philosophy and strategy. Stressed cooperation of men and women. Ran state-by-state campaigns to remove the word "male" from state constitutions.

Democratic Republicans

Led by Thomas Jefferson, believed people should have political power, favored strong state governments, emphasized agriculture, strict interpretation of the Constitution, pro-French, opposed National Bank.

Appomattox

Lee surrenders here, but Grant offers the Confederacy good surrender terms to try to reunify the country.

Letter from a PA Farmer

Letters that wanted to rile up Americans so they could unify against Britain.

Election of 1860

Lincoln, the Republican candidate, won because the Democratic party was split over slavery. As a result, the South no longer felt like it has a voice in politics and a number of states seceded from the Union.

Town Meeting

Local legislature that approved budgets and laws.

School Laws

MA law (1647) stated that a town with 50 families must have a school, and a town with 100 families must also have a grammar school

Division of labor

Manufacturing technique that breaks down a craft into many simple and repetitive tasks that can be performed by unskilled workers. Pioneered in the pottery works of Josiah Wedgwood and in other eighteenth-century factories, increasing productivity, (603)

Daniel Dulany

Maryland, a bright attorney and son of an indentured servant became an early opponent of the Stamp act, but soon supported the governor against patriot Charles Carroll of Carrollton.

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

May 19, 1921, restricted immigration into the United States. Although intended as temporary legislation, the Act "proved in the long run the most important turning-point in American immigration policy" because it added 2 new features to American immigration law: numerical limits on immigration from Europe and the use of a quota system for establishing those limits.

U.S. Navy, Marine Corps

Means of protection

Hartford Convention

Meeting of Federalists near the end of the War of 1812 in which the party listed its complaints against the ruling Republican Party. These actions were largley viewed as traitorous to the country and lost the Federalist much influence

California Gold Rush

Migration of thousands of people to California (in 1849) after gold was discovered in the Sutter Mill.

National Woman Suffrage Association

Militant suffragist organization founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for women's rights.

Social Gospel

Movement led by Washington Gladden - taught religion and human dignity would help the middle class over come problems of industrialization

Continental System (Berlin & Milan Decrees)

Napoleon's efforts to block foreign trade with England by forbidding Importation of British goods Into Europe.

"He kept us out of war!"

Narrowly re-elected in 1916, Wilson's second term centered on World War I. He based his re-election campaign around the slogan "he kept us out of war", but U.S. neutrality was challenged in early 1917 when the German government proposed to Mexico a military alliance in a war against the U.S., and began unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking, without warning, every American merchant ship its submarines could find. In April 1917 Wilson asked Congress to declare war.

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909 to work for racial equality.

NIRA

National Industrial Recovery Act was an American statute which authorized the President of the United States to regulate industry and permit cartels and monopolies in an attempt to stimulate economic recovery, and established a national public works program. The legislation was enacted in June 1933 during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislative program.

Nez Perce

Native American Tribe that will flee capture from U.S. Troops, who almost make it to Canada.

Alfred Thayer Mahan

Navy flag officer, geostrategist, and historian, who has been called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." His concept of "sea power" was based on the idea that the most powerful navy will control the globe

Scabs

Negative term for a worker called in by an employer to replace striking laborers.

Settlement Houses

Neighborhood centers in poor areas that offered education, recreation, and social activities.

McNary Haugen Bill

Never became a law, was a highly controversial plan in the 1920s to subsidize American agriculture by raising the domestic prices of farm products. The plan was for the government to buy the wheat, and either store it or export it at a loss. It was vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge, and never approved. According to the bill, a federal agency would be created to support and protect domestic farm prices by attempting to maintain price levels that existed before the First World War. By purchasing surpluses and selling them overseas, the federal government would take losses that would be paid for through fees against farm producers.

Essex Junto

New England's merchants opposed the War of 1812 because it cut off trade with Great Britain. Critics of the war were mainly Federalists who represented New England. They were a group of extreme Federalists led by Aaron Burr who advocated New England's secession from the U.S.

Thomas Nast

Newspaper cartoonist who produced satirical cartoons, he invented "Uncle Sam" and came up with the elephant and the donkey for the political parties. He nearly brought down Boss Tweed.

Evaluations of the New Deal

No evaluation of the New Deal is complete without an analysis of Roosevelt himself. As a leader, his skills were unparalleled. As sweeping as his objectives were, they still fundamentally preserved the free-market economy. Observers noted that his plan went far enough to silence the "lunatic fringe," but not far enough to jeopardize capitalism or democracy. The New Deal itself created millions of jobs and sponsored public works projects that reached most every county in the nation. Federal protection of bank deposits ended the dangerous trend of bank runs. Abuse of the stock market was more clearly defined and monitored to prevent collapses in the future. The Social Security system was modified and expanded to remain one of the most popular government programs for the remainder of the century. For the first time in peacetime history the federal government assumed responsibility for managing the economy. However comprehensive the New Deal seemed, it failed to achieve its main goal: ending the Depression. In 1939, the unemployment rate was still 19 percent, and not until 1943 did it reach its pre-Depression levels. The massive spending brought by the American entry to the Second World War ultimately cured the nation's economic woes.

Venezuela boundary dispute

Notable for the tension caused between Great Britain and the United States during much of the 19th century, Discovery of gold in the region intensified the dispute. Great Britain refused to arbitrate concerning the settled area; Venezuela, however, maintained that the British were delaying in order to push settlements farther into the disputed area. Venezuela sought aid from the United States and in 1887 broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain. President Grover Cleveland's secretary of state, Thomas Francis Bayard, began negotiations, but the matter lapsed.

Foraker Act

Officially the Organic Act of 1900, is a United States federal law that established civilian (limited popular) government on the island of Puerto Rico, which had been newly acquired by the United States as a result of the Spanish-American War. President William McKinley signed the act on April 12, 1900

Tippecanoe

Ohio village invaded by William Henry Harrison. Found British gunpowder in village. The Warhawks now have an excuse to declare war. War of 1812 is declared.

Assassination of the Archduke

On 28 June 1914 he was shot by one of a group of six Bosnian Serb assassins coordinated by Danilo Ilić. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's south-Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Greater Serbia or a Yugoslavia. The assassins' motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia.

1919 Labor strikes

On April 1, 1919, thousands of miners in Pennsylvania went on strike to demand that local officials allow union meetings. Terrified town mayors soon issued the required permits. The mass meetings whipped up pro-union sentiment. Steelworkers felt betrayed by the broken promises of employers and the government to keep prices low, raise wages and improve working conditions. The AFL held a national steelworkers' conference in Pittsburgh on May 25, 1919, to build momentum for an organizing drive but refused to let the workers strike. Disillusioned employees began to abandon the labor movement. The National Committee debated the strike issue through June and July. Worried committee members, seeing their chance for solid membership gains slipping away, agreed to a strike referendum in the mills in August. The response was 98% in favor of a general steelworker strike to begin on September 22, 1919.

Lincoln's assassination

On April 15, 1865, Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., as the American Civil War was drawing to a close, just six days after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant and Union forces. The assassination was planned and carried out by John Wilkes Booth as part of a larger conspiracy in an effort to rally the remaining Confederate troops to continue fighting.

Freedmen's Bureau

On March 4, 1865, the U.S. government created a temporary federal agency- the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands- to assist 4 million freed slaves in making the transition from slavery to freedom. The agency distributed trainloads of food and clothing provided by the federal government to freed slaves and Southern white refugees. They built hospitals for the freed slaves and gave direct medical aid to more than 1 million of them. The greatest successes of the Freedmen's Bureau were in the field of education.

ABC mediation

On May 15, 1915, the ABC Powers met again to sign a more formal treaty, designed to develop cooperation, nonaggression and the arbitration of disputes. It was formulated to resist United States' influence in the region and to establish a mechanisms for consultation among the three signatory countries, such as setting up a permanent mediation commission. The official name was the Consultation, Non-Aggression and Arbitration Pact.

Neutrality Act of 1939

On November 4 the Neutrality Act of 1939 was passed, allowing for arms trade with belligerent nations on a cash and carry basis, thus in effect ending the arms embargo. Furthermore, the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1937 were repealed, American citizens and ships were barred from entering war zones designated by the President, and the National Munitions Control Board (which had been created by the 1935 Neutrality Act) was charged with issuing licenses for all arms imports and exports. Arms trade without a license carries a penalty of up to two years in prison.

Christiana Massacre

One measure of this determination was the willingness to invoke the ultimate sanction against rescuers: prosecution for treason, punishable by execution.

Vera Cruz

One of the 31 states that constitute the United Mexican States. It is bordered by Tamaulipas to the north, the Gulf to the east, Tabasco to the southeast, Oaxaca and Chiapas to the south and Puebla, Hidalgo, and San Luis Potosi to the west. The population of 7 million is the third largest in Mexico. The state is noted for its mixed ethnic and large indigenous populations.

Berlin Blockade & Airlift

One of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied control. Their aim was to force the western powers to allow the Soviet zone to start supplying Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving the Soviets practical control over the entire city. In response, the Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin. The United Kingdom's Royal Air Force and the recently independent United States Air Force flew over 200,000 flights in one year, providing up to 4700 tonnes of daily necessities such as fuel and food to the Berliners.

Nueces River vs. Rio Grande

One of the first settlers to scout the area was Cpt. Blas María de la Garza Falcón in 1766. From before the end of the Texas Revolution, Mexico recognized that the Nueces River was historically the border of Texas from the rest of the country. However, the Republic of Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its border with Mexico, citing the Treaty of Velasco signed by Mexican President Santa Anna who agreed to the Rio Grande border after losing the Battle of San Jacinto. This dispute continued after the annexation of Texas, and was one of the causes of the Mexican-American War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the dispute, with Mexico recognizing under pressure the Rio Grande as its northern border.

Venustiano Carranza

One of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution. He ultimately became President of Mexico following the overthrow of the dictatorial Huerta regime in the summer of 1914 and during his administration the current constitution of Mexico was drafted. He was assassinated near the end of his term of office at the behest of a cabal of army generals resentful at his insistence that his successor be a civilian.

Pancho Villa

One of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals. As commander of the Division of the North, he was the veritable caudillo of the Northern Mexican state of Chihuahua which, given its size, mineral wealth, and proximity to the United States of America, provided him with extensive resources. Villa was also provisional Governor of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914.

Abraham Lincoln

One of the most skillful politicians in Republican party. Tried to gain national exposure by debates with Stephen A. Douglas. The Lincoln-Douglas debates attracted much attention. Lincoln's attacks on slavery made him nationally known. He felt slavery was morally wrong, but was not an abolitionist. He felt there was not an alternative to slavery and blacks were not prepared to live on equal terms as whites. Won presidency in November election.

Treaty of Versailles

One of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I were dealt with in separate treaties. Although the armistice signed on 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on October 21, 1919, and was printed in The League of Nations Treaty Series.

Central Powers vs. Allies

One of the two sides that participated in World War I and was also known as the Triple Alliance. It was made up of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. The other being the Triple Entente made up of the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire. These other countries were also drawn into a war, with some country in the Central Powers, and were allied with a member of the Entente: Belgium, Serbia, Italy, Japan, Greece, Romania.

Panamanian rebellion

Opinion in Panama was divided, and revolts in the southwest had hardly been suppressed when Liberals from Nicaragua invaded the Pacific coastal region and nearly succeeded in taking Panama City in mid-1900. The fortunes of war varied, and although a local armistice gave supporters of the Colombian government temporary security in the Panama-Colón region, the rebels were in control throughout the isthmus. Meanwhile, by early 1902 the rebels had been defeated in most of Colombia proper. At that point, the Colombian government asked the United States to intercede and bring about an armistice in Panama, which was arranged aboard the USS Wisconsin in the Bay of Panama in 1902.

Antifederalists

Opponents of a strong central government who campaigned against the ratification of the Constitution in favor of a confederation of independant states

New Jersey (Patterson) Plan

Opposite of the Virginia Plan, it proposed a single-chamber congress in which each state had one vote. This created a conflict with representation between bigger states, who wanted control befitting their population, and smaller states, who didn't want to be bullied by larger states.

Field Order #15

Order by General Sherman in 1865 to set aside abandoned land along the southern Atlantic Coast for 40-acre grants to freedmen. (Rescinded by President Johnson later that year.)

The Grange

Originally a social organization between farmers, it developed into a political movement for government ownership of railroads

Green backs

Paper money in the North that was first issued during the Civil War.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Passed by Congress on April 9, 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The act declared that all persons born in the United States were now citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition.

Indian Removal Act

Passed in 1830, authorized Andrew Jackson to negotiate land-exchange treaties with tribes living east of the Mississippi. The treaties enacted under this act's provisions paved the way for the reluctant—and often forcible—emigration of tens of thousands of American Indians to the West.

Homestead Act

Passed in 1862, it gave 160 acres of public land to any settler who would farm the land for five years. The settler would only have to pay a registration fee of $25.

Indentured servitude

People that were paid for to sail over and then had a contract with that person.

Barbary Pirates

Plundering pirates off the Mediterranean coast of Africa; President Thomas Jefferson's refusal to pay them tribute to protect American ships sparked an undeclared naval war with North African nations.

Free Silver

Political issue involving the unlimited coinage of silver, supported by farmers and William Jennings Bryan.

American (Know Nothing) Party

Political organization that was created after the election of 1852 by the Know-Nothings, was organized to oppose the great wave of immigrants who entered the United States after 1846.

Republican Party

Political party that believed in the non-expansion of slavery and comprised of Whigs, Northern Democrats, and Free-Soilers, in defiance to the Slave Powers

Mexican American War

Polk wanted do also aquire California and the New Mexico region. After the Mexicans refused, Polk resorted to an agressive method by sending troops to the disputed area. US declared war on Mexico when hostilities arose. Americans captured Mexico City. Santa Anna fled, and the war ended.

Fifty-four Forty or Fight

Polk's slogan referring to the demand of Western expansionists who wanted Britain to yield all of the Oregon territory to the United States

Horatio Alger

Popular novelist during the Gilded Age who wrote "rags to riches" books praising the values of hard work

Jacob Coxey

Populist who led Coxey's Army in a march on Washington DC in 1894 to seek government jobs for the unemployed.

Plains Indians

Posed a serious threat to western settlers because, unlike the Eastern Indians from early colonial days, the Plains Indians possessed rifles and horses.

Starving Times

Powhattan was upset with more colonists moving to the land so his people fought with them in attempt to starve the whites.

Vertical integration

Practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution

Nicholas Biddle

President of the Second Bank of the United States; he struggled to keep the bank functioning when President Jackson tried to destroy it.

Lord North

Prime Minister of England from 1770 to 1782. Although he repealed the Townshend Acts, he generally went along with King George III's repressive policies towards the colonies even though he personally considered them wrong. He hoped for an early peace during the Revolutionary War and resigned after Cornwallis' surrender in 1781.

Benjamin Franklin

Printer, author, inventor, diplomat, statesman, and Founding Father. One of the few Americans who was highly respected in Europe, primarily due to his discoveries in the field of electricity.

19th Amendment

Prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on gender. It was ratified on August 18, 1920.

Boston Tea Party

Protest against increased tea prices in which colonists dumped british tea into Boston harbor

Puritans

Protestant group of extremists

Medicare & Medicaid

Provides health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria. And a health program for people and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments, and is managed by the states.

Reciprocal Trade Agreement

RTAA gave the president power to negotiate bilateral, reciprocal trade agreements with other countries. This law enabled Roosevelt to liberalize American trade policy around the globe. It is widely credited with ushering in the era of liberal trade policy that persists to this day. Signed in 1934.

Charles Sumner

Radical Republican against the slave power who insults Andrew Butler and subsequently gets caned by Preston Brooks

Radical (Congressional) Reconstruction

Reconstruction strategy that was based on severely punishing South for causing war

Affirmative Action

Refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender , or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and education to public contracting and health programs.

Trustbusting

Regulation of railroads was strengthened by the Elkins Act (1903) and especially the Hepburn Act of 1906, which had the effect of favoring merchants over the railroads. Under his leadership, the Attorney General brought forty-four suits against businesses that were claimed to be monopolies, most notably J.P. Morgan's Northern Securities Company, a huge railroad combination, and J. D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Both were successful, with Standard Oil broken into over 30 smaller companies that eventually competed with one another.

Joseph Smith

Religious leader who founded the Mormon Church in 1830 (1805-1844)

Great Awakening

Religious revival in the American colonies of the eighteenth century during which a number of new Protestant churches were established.

Repeal of Whiskey tax

Repeal in 1803, having been largely unenforceable outside of Western Pennsylvania, and even there never having been collected with much success.

Sherman Silver Purchase Act

Required the government to purchase an additional 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion each month for use as currency.

Sherman Antitrust Act

Requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies.

Virginia (London) Co.

Responsible for governing the southern colony.

Marbury v Madison (1803)

Right to hold actions of each branch of the government unconstitutional, by the Supreme Court. Established judicial review.

Dorothea Dix

Rights activist on behalf of mentally ill patients - created first wave of US mental asylums

First Hundred Days

Roosevelt entered office with enormous political capital. Americans of all political persuasions were demanding immediate action, and Roosevelt responded with a remarkable series of new programs in the "first hundred days" of the administration, in which he met with Congress for 100 days. During those 100 days of lawmaking, Congress granted every request Roosevelt asked, and passed a few programs (such as the FDIC to insure bank accounts) that he opposed meaning he closed all the banks for the 100 days and did not open unless they were trusted by Roosevelt. Ever since, presidents have been judged against FDR for what they accomplished in their first 100 days.

Samuel J. Tilden

Samuel Jones Tilden (February 9, 1814 - August 4, 1886) was the Democratic candidate for the US presidency in the disputed election of 1876, the most controversial American election of the 19th century.

Burr Conspiracy

Scheme by Vice-President Aaron Burr to lead the succession of the Louisiana Territory from the US and create his own empire. He was captured in 1807 and charged with treason. Because there was no evidence or two witnesses he was acquitted. Marshall upholds the strict rules for trying someone for treason.

Adam Smith

Scottish economist who advocated private enterprise and free trade (1723-1790)

Sons of Liberty

Secret societies formed to protest new taxes passed by Parliament. Led the Boston Tea Party and threatened tax collectors.

William Seward

Secretary of State who was responsible for purchasing Alaskan Territory from Russia. By purchasing Alaska, he expanded the territory of the country at a reasonable price.

Stephen Douglas

Senator from Illinois, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Freeport Doctrine, argues in favor of popular sovereignty.

Lewis and Clark

Sent on an expedition by Jefferson to gather information on the United States' new land and map a route to the Pacific. They kept very careful maps and records of this new land acquired from the Louisiana Purchase.

Martin Van Buren

Served as secretary of state during Andrew Jackson's first term, vice president during Jackson's second term, and won the presidency in 1836

De Lome Letter

Set off an 1898 diplomatic incident, was written by Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish Minister with the Portfolio of Cuba. In a personal letter, which was stolen despite being under diplomatic protection, he referred to the US President : "...McKinley is weak and catering to the rabble and, besides, a low politician who desires to leave a door open to himself and to stand well with the jingos of his party." On February 9, 1898, the letter was published in the New York Journal, headlining it "the end of the world started this day."

Convention of 1818

Set the border between the U.S. and Canada at the 49th parallel (or latitude). Also affirmed U.S. rights to fisheries along Newfoundland and Labrador.

Tobacco

Settlers appealed to the new kind of tobacco and it launched the economy. With this market booming, settlers invested in more laborers.

Insular cases

Several U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning the status of territories acquired by the U.S. in the Spanish-American War (1898). The name "insular" derives from the fact that these territories are islands and were administered by the War Department's Bureau of Insular Affairs. The cases were in essence the court's response to a major issue of the 1900 presidential election and the American Anti-Imperialist League, summarized by the phrase "Does the Constitution follow the flag?" Essentially, the Supreme Court said that full constitutional rights did not automatically extend to all areas under American control.

Embargo Act

Signed by Thomas Jefferson in 1807. It was to stop the exportation of all American goods.

National Security Act

Signed by United States President Harry S. Truman on July 26, 1947, and realigned and reorganized the U.S. Armed Forces, foreign policy, and Intelligence Community apparatus in the aftermath of 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. His power was extremely limited and it was difficult for him to exercise the authority to make his office effective. This was later changed in the amendment to the act in 1949, creating what was to be the Department of Defense.

Quebec Act

Signed in 1774, intended to reorganize the way these British territories were governed

Kellogg-Briand Pact

Signed on August 27, 1928 by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan, and a number of other countries. The pact renounced aggressive war, prohibiting the use of war as "an instrument of national policy" except in matters of self-defense. It made no provisions for sanctions. The pact was the result of a determined American effort to avoid involvement in the European alliance system. It was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on September 4, 1929.

Three-fifths Compromise

Slaves would be considered 3/5 of a person.

Neutrality Acts (1935, 36, 37)

Sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts. The 1935 act, signed on August 31, 1935, imposed a general embargo on trading in arms and war materials with all parties in a war. It also declared that American citizens traveling on warring ships traveled at their own risk. The act was set to expire after six months. 1936, passed in February of that year, renewed the provisions of the 1935 act for another 14 months. It also forbade all loans or credits to belligerents. 1937, passed in May, included the provisions of the earlier acts, this time without expiration date, and extended them to cover civil wars as well. Further, U.S. ships were prohibited from transporting any passengers or articles to belligerents, and U.S. citizens were forbidden from traveling on ships of belligerent nations.

Black Codes

Southern laws designed to restrict the rights of the newly freed black slaves

War Hawks

Southerners and Westerners who were eager for war with Britain. They had a strong sense of nationalism, and they wanted to takeover British land in North America and expand.

Navigation of the Mississippi

Spain closes off the Mississippi river to traders in 1784. This leads to a prevention in the movement of goods in a simple north-south fashion.

Ghost Dance

Spiritual revival in 1890 by Indians that would lead to the massacre at Wounded Knee

Pet banks

State banks where Andrew Jackson placed deposits removed from the federal National Bank.

Border States

States bordering the North: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. They were slave states, but did not secede.

Olive Branch Petition

Still pledge loyalty to King George III but are still asking Britain to respect the rights and liberties of the colonies, repeal oppressive legislation, and British troops out of the colonies; George III didn't want anything to do with them and declared all colonies in a state of rebellion.

Joint Stock Company

Stocks are issued by the company in return for financial contribution.

Railroad Strike of 1877

Strike on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad quickly spread across 11 states and shut down 2/3rds of the country's rail trackage; railroad workers were joined by an estimated 500000 workers from other industries in an escalating strike that was quickly becoming national in scale; Hayes used federal troops to end the labor violence

Gadsden Purchase

Strip of land in present-day Arizona and New Mexico that was acquired by the U.S. in 1853 for $10 million.

Federalists

Supporters of the stronger central govt. who advocated the ratification of the new constitution.

Dred Scott v Sanford

Supreme Court case that decided US Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories and slaves, as private property, could not be taken away without due process - basically slaves would remain slaves in non-slave states and slaves could not sue because they were not citizens

Hammer v Dagenhart (1918)

Supreme Court decision involving the power of Congress to enact child labor laws.

Sharecropping

System in which landowners leased a few acres of land to farmworkers in return for a portion of their crops.

Yellow Press

Tabloid journalists and newspapers that reported sensationalist stories with a strong emotional component.

Tariff of Abomination

Tariff with very high rates on goods imported from other countries. Northerners wanted tariff to promote own industry-Southerners had no protection.

Tea Act

Tax on tea; made the East India Company the only tea company allowed to colonists; reason for Tea Party (1773)

Income tax

Tax paid to the state, federal, and local governments based on income earned over the past year.

Critical Period

Term used by historians to describe the United States under the Articles of Confederation.

Scalawags

Term used to describe Southern white Republicans who had opposed secession.

Annexation of Texas

Texas decides to secede from Mexico and attempts to declare its independence which eventually leads to our adoption of the land as a state although it was feared that it would cause conflict with mexico leading to war. Southern states in support of this as Texas brought slaves with it meaning it would increase agricultural profits

Jim Crow Laws

The "separate but equal" segregation laws state and local governments enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States and enforced between 1876 and 1965

NATO

The (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

James K. Polk

The 11th U.S. President, he led the country during the Mexican War and sought to expand the United States

James Buchanan

The 15th President of the United States (1857-1861). He tried to maintain a balance between proslavery and antislavery factions, but his moderate views angered radicals in both North and South, and he was unable to forestall the secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860.

Midnight Judges

The 16 judges that were added by the Judiciary Act of 1801 that were called this because Adams signed their appointments late on the last day of his administration.

U-2

The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on May 1, 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and during the leadership of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet Union airspace. The United States government at first denied the plane's purpose and mission, but then was forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft when the Soviet government produced its remains and surviving pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

William McKinley

The 25th President of the United States, and the last veteran of the American Civil War to be elected to that office. He was the last President of the 19th century and the first of 20th. By the 1880s, He was a national Republican leader; his signature issue was high tariffs on imports as a formula for prosperity, as typified by his McKinley Tariff of 1890.

Warren G. Harding

The 29th President of the United States, from 1921 until his death in 1923. A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential self-made newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate (1899-1903), as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio (1903-1905) and as a U.S. Senator (1915-1921). He was also the first incumbent United States Senator and the first newspaper publisher to be elected President.

Calvin Coolidge

The 30th President of the United States (1923-1929). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His actions during the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight. 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.

Federal Reserve Act

The Act of Congress that created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States of America, and granted it the legal authority to issue legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.

AFL-CIO Merger

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers. It was formed in 1955 when the AFL and the CIO merged after a long estrangement. From 1955 until 2005, its member unions represented nearly all unionized workers in the United States.

Department of Commerce & Labor

The Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth.

Caroline Affair

The Caroline was an American steamer carrying supplies across to Canadian insurrgents, British launch an assault, seen as an unlawful invasion of American soil, part of Third War with England

Trail of Tears

The Cherokee Indians were forced to leave their lands. They traveled from North Carolina and Georgia through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas-more than 800 miles (1,287 km)-to the Indian Territory. More than 4, 00 Cherokees died of cold, disease, and lack of food during the 116-day journey.

Cohens v Virginia

The Cohens were a Virginia family accused of selling lottery tickets illegally. The Virginia Supreme Court found the Cohens guilty, so they appealed to the Supreme Court in 1821. Virginia won in having the Cohens convicted. Virginia lost in that Judge Marshal made it so that the federal Supreme Court had the right to review any decision involving powers of the federal government. This was a major blow on states' rights.

Creole Affair

The Creole Affair was an uprising by a group of slaves who were in the process of being transported in the ship, the Creole. They killed the captain, took control of ship and sailed for Bahamas, where they became free under British. Incidents such as this contributed to the intensification of sectional conflict in the United States.

Yalta Conference

The February 4-11, 1945 wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively—for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. Mainly, it was intended to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe.

FDIC

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. It provides deposit insurance, which guarantees the safety of deposits in member banks, currently up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. As of November 18, 2010, the FDIC insures deposits at 7,723 institutions. The FDIC also examines and supervises certain financial institutions for safety and soundness, performs certain consumer-protection functions, and manages banks in receiverships (failed banks).

Suffolk Resolves

The First Continental Congress endorsed Massachusetts's declaration that the colonies need not obey the 1773 Coercive Acts, since they infringed upon basic liberties.

French Alliance

The French entered the war in 1778, and assisted in the victory of the Americans seeking independence from Britain

HUAC

The House Committee on Un-American Activities was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security". When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

SC Ordinance of Secession

The Ordinance of Secession was the document drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861 by the states officially seceding from the United States of America. Each state ratified its own ordinance of secession, typically by means of a specially elected convention or general referendum.

Oneida

The Perfectionist Utopian movement began in New York. People lived in a commune and shared everything, even marriages. Today, the town is known for manufacturing silverware.

"To Secure These Rights"

The President's Committee on Civil Rights was established by U.S. President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9808 on December 5, 1946. The committee was instructed to investigate the status of civil rights in the United States and propose measures to strengthen and protect the civil rights of American citizens. After the committee submitted a report of its findings to President Truman, it disbanded December 1947. In December 1947, the committee produced a 178 page report entitled To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights. In the report, it proposed to improve the existing civil rights laws; to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission, Joint Congressional Committee on Civil Rights, and a Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice; to develop federal protection from lynching; to create a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC); to abolish poll taxes; and urged other measures.

"Billion Dollar" congress

The Republican congress of 1890 passed a record number of significant laws that helped shape later policies and asserted authority of federal government, and gave pensions to Civil War veterans, increased government silver purchases, and passed McKinley Tariff Act of 1890

Townshend Duties

The Revenue Act of 1767 taxed glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea entering the colonies. The colonists objected to the fact that the act was clearly designed to raise revenue exclusively for England rather than to regulate trade in a manner favorable to the entire British empire.

Louisiana Purchase

The U.S., under Jefferson, bought the Louisiana territory from France, under the rule of Napoleon, in 1803. The U.S. paid $15 million for the Louisiana Purchase, and Napoleon gave up his empire in North America. The U.S. gained control of Mississippi trade route and doubled its size.

19th Amendment

The United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920. The U.S. Constitution allows states to determine the qualifications for voting, and until the 1910s most states disenfranchised women entirely. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote.

Recall

The act of removing an official by petition

Independent Treasury System

The act removed the federal government from involvement with the nation's banking system by establishing federal depositories for public funds instead of keeping the money in national, state, or private banks. This was the system the government adopted until the federal reserve act of 1910.

Frontier Thesis

The argument by Frederick Jackson Turner that the frontier experience helped make American socity more democratic; emphasized cheap, unsettled land and the absence of a landed aristocracy.

Pragmatism

The attribute of accepting the facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth

Naval battles at Tripoli

The battle is part of the First Barbary War between forces of the United States and the forces of Tripoli in 1804.

Social Darwinism

The belief that only the fittest survive in human political and economic struggle.

Manifest Destiny

The belief that the United States was destined to stretch across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

Middle Passage

The boat ride over to North America, where the conditions were absolutely awful. Many people died on this ride over.

Electoral College

The body of electors who formally elect the United States president and vice-president

Charles Wilson Peale

The colonial painter (1741-1827) best known for his portraits of George Washington who also ran a museum for stuffed birds and practiced dentistry.

New Netherland & New York

The colony was conceived as a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade. New Netherland was slowly settled during its first decades, partially as a result of policy, mismanagement by the Dutch West India Company (WIC), and conflicts with Native Americans.

Rise of the Common Man

The common man always held a special place in America, but with Jackson, he rose to the top of the American political power system.

"Iron Curtain"

The concept symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989. On either side of the Iron Curtain, states developed their own international economic and military alliances.

Popular Sovereignty

The concept that political power rests with the people who can create, alter, and abolish government. People express themselves through voting and free participation in government

Fourteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment adopted after the Civil War that states, "no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Thirteenth Amendment

The constitutional amendment ratified after the Civil War that forbade slavery and involuntary servitude.

Jefferson Day dinner

The dinner where Jackson announced by his toast that he believed that the federal government should have more power than the states. Further increased the hatred between Calhoun and Jackson. After this event, Calhoun ran for the Senate from South Carolina (and was elected) and resigned from the vice-presidency.

Mining Frontier

The discovery of gold in CA in 1848 caused the first flood of newcomers to the West. A series of gold strikes and silver strikes in what became the states of Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and South Dakota kept a steady flow of hopeful young prospectors pushing into the Western mountains.

Separation of Powers

The division of power among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government

Volstead Act

The enabling legislation for the Eighteenth Amendment which established prohibition in the United States.

Gifford Pinchot

The first Chief of the United States Forest Service (1905-1910) and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania (1923-1927, 1931-1935). He was a Republican and Progressive. He is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal.

Lexington and Concord

The first battle of the American Revolution (April 19, 1775)

Ku Klux Klan

The first branch was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, an outstanding general during the American Civil War. Between 1868 and 1870 they played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. At first the main objective of white supremacy organizations was to stop black people from voting. Made many attacks on blacks.

Initiative

The first of a series of actions.

Good Neighbor Policy

The foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt toward the countries of Latin America. Its main principle was that of non-intervention and non-interference in the domestic affairs of Latin America. It also reinforced the idea that the United States would be a "good neighbor" and engage in reciprocal exchanges with Latin American countries. Overall, the Roosevelt administration expected that this new policy would create new economic opportunities in the form of reciprocal trade agreements and reassert the influence of America in Latin America.

Holocaust

The genocide of approximately 6 million European Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany throughout Nazi-occupied territory. Approximately two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust perished.

Missouri Compromise

The issue was that Missouri wanted to join the Union as a slave state, therefore unbalancing the Union so there would be more slave states then free states. The compromise set it up so that Maine joined as a free state and Missouri joined as a slave state. Congress also made a line across the southern border of Missouri saying except for the state of Missouri, all states north of that line must be free states or states without slavery.

D-Day

The landing operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II. The landings commenced on Tuesday, 6 June 1944. The assault was conducted in two phases: an airborne assault landing of 24,000 British, American, Canadian and Free French airborne troops shortly after midnight, and an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armoured divisions on the coast of France commencing at 6:30 AM. There were also decoy operations mounted under the codenames Operation Glimmer and Operation Taxable to distract the German forces from the real landing areas.

Marshall Plan

The large-scale economic program, 1947-1951,of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger economic foundation for the countries of Europe. The initiative was named after Secretary of State George Marshall and was largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan. Marshall spoke of urgent need to help the European recovery in his address at Harvard University in June 1947.

Battle of Wounded Knee

The last major armed conflict between the Lakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Yorktown

The last major battle of the war in which Charles Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington.

Ida B. Wells

The lynching of blacks outraged this American journalist. In her newspaper, she urged African Americans to protest the lynchings. She called for a boycott of segregated street cars and white owned stores, and she advocated weapons in the household. She spoke out despite threats to her life.

Mass production

The manufacture of many identical products by the division of labor into many small repetitive tasks. This method was introduced into the manufacture of pottery by Josiah Wedgwood and into the spinning of cotton thread by Richard Arkwright. (602)

Tehran Conference

The meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present. It almost immediately followed the Cairo Conference (November 22-26, 1943) and preceded both the Yalta Conference (February 4-11, 1945) and the Potsdam Conference (July 17 - August 2, 1945). The central aim of the Tehran conference was to plan the final strategy for the war against Nazi Germany and its allies, and the chief discussion was centered on the opening of a second front in Western Europe.

Constitutional Convention

The meeting of state delegates in 1787 in Philadelphia called to revise the Articles of Confederation where they designed a new plan of government, the US Constitution.

Alamo

The mission in San Antonio where in 1836 Mexican forces under Santa Anna besieged and massacred American rebels who were fighting to make Texas independent of Mexico

Stock Market Crash

The most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout. The crash signaled the beginning of the 12-year Great Depression that affected all the Western industrialized countries and that did not end in the United States until the onset of American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941.

Gettysburg

The most violent battle of the American Civil War and is frequently cited as the war's turning point, fought from July 1 - July 3, 1863.

Rough Riders

The name bestowed on the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, one of three such regiments raised in 1898 for the Spanish-American War and the only one of the three to see action. The United States army was weakened and left with little manpower after the Civil War roughly 30 years prior. As a result, President William McKinley called upon 1,250 volunteers to assist in the war efforts.

Referendum

The name given to the political process in which the general public votes on an issue of public concern.

Italian Campaign

The name of Allied operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to the end of the war in Europe. Joint Allied Forces Headquarters AFHQ was operationally responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre, and it planned and commanded the invasion of Sicily and the campaign on the Italian mainland until the surrender of German forces in Italy in May 1945.

Lend-Lease Act

The name of the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of the European war in September 1939, but nine months before the U.S. entrance into the war in December 1941. It was called An Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States.

Voice of America

The official external radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government. Its oversight entity is the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio, TV and the Internet around the world in forty-four languages, promoting a positive view of the United States. Its day-to-day operations are supported by the International Broadcasting Bureau

Greenback Party

The party opposed the shift from paper money back to a specie-based monetary system because it believed that privately owned banks and corporations would then reacquire the power to define the value of products and labor. Conversely, they believed that government control of the monetary system would allow it to keep more currency in circulation, as it had in the war

Era of Good Feeling

The period from 1817 to 1823 in which the disappearance of the Federalists enabled the Republicans to govern in a spirit of seemingly nonpartisan harmony.

Judicial Review

The power of the Supreme Court to declare laws and actions of local, state, or national governments unconstitutional.

Prohibition

The practice of banning the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the banning of alcohol was enforced.

Spoils System

The practice of victorious politicians rewarding their supporters with government jobs

Internment of Japanese-Americans

The relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

Fifteenth Amendment

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Andrew Jackson

The seventh President of the United States (1829-1837), who as a general in the War of 1812 defeated the British at New Orleans (1815). As president he opposed the Bank of America, objected to the right of individual states to nullify disagreeable federal laws, and increased the presidential powers.

Seneca Falls

The site of the women's rights convention that met in July in 1848. They met in the Wesleyan Chapel, and 300 men and women attended. At the convention, they vote in the Seneca Falls Declaration, which was signed by 32 men.

Confederate States of America

The southern states that seceded from the United States in 1861

Brigham Young

The successor to the Mormons after the death of Joseph Smith. He was responsible for the survival of the sect and its establishment in Utah, thereby populating the would-be state.

Dollar Diplomacy

The term used to describe the effort of the United States — particularly under President William Howard Taft — to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries.

War on Poverty

The unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty.

Fall of China

The war represented an ideological split between the Nationalist KMT, and the Communist CPC. In mainland China today, the last three years of the war (1947-1949) is more commonly known as the War of Liberation. China's fell into Communism.

Fall of Czechoslovakia

Their fall into Communism by Soviet influence.

New Nationalism

Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive political philosophy during the 1912 election. He made the case for what he called the New Nationalism in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910. The central issue he argued was government protection of human welfare and 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.

Alien and Sedition Acts

These consist of four laws passed by the Federalist Congress and signed by President Adams in 1798: the Naturalization Act, which increased the waiting period for an immigrant to become a citizen from 5 to 14 years; the Alien Act, which empowered the president to arrest and deport dangerous aliens; the Alien Enemy Act, which allowed for the arrest and deportation of citizens of countries at was with the US; and the Sedition Act, which made it illegal to publish defamatory statements about the federal government or its officials. The first 3 were enacted in response to the XYZ Affair, and were aimed at French and Irish immigrants, who were considered subversives. The Sedition Act was an attempt to stifle Democratic-Republican opposition, although only 25 people were ever arrested, and only 10 convicted, under the law. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which initiated the concept of "nullification" of federal laws were written in response to the Acts.

Cowboys

They drove the cattle along the Western trails to railroad centers

Second Continental Congress

They organized the continental Army, called on the colonies to send troops, selected George Washington to lead the army, and appointed the comittee to draft the Declaration of Independence

Oklahoma Land Rush

They were former Indian lands but were opened up for settlement in 1889, resulting in a race to lay claim for a homestead (Boomers and Sooners)

Kansas Nebraska Act

This Act set up Kansas and Nebraska as states. Each state would use popular sovereignty to decide what to do about slavery. People who were proslavery and antislavery moved to Kansas, but some antislavery settlers were against the Act. This began guerrilla warfare.

Gibbons v Ogden

This case involved New York trying to grant a monopoly on waterborne trade between New York and New Jersey. Judge Marshal, of the Supreme Court, sternly reminded the state of New York that the Constitution gives Congress alone the control of interstate commerce. Marshal's decision, in 1824, was a major blow on states' rights.

Shays' Rebellion

This conflict in Massachusetts caused many to criticize the Articles of Confederation and admit the weak central government was not working; uprising led by Daniel Shays in an effort to prevent courts from foreclosing on the farms of those who could not pay the taxes.

Philippines debate

This debate took place on the floor of the Senate and in countless editorial pages across the country. An aggressive policy toward Cuba could be justified, since it was only 90 miles away and seemed important to the United States' position in the Western Hemisphere. Many had second thoughts, however, over controlling the Philippines; the Filipinos seemed a world away, and, after all, were not "like us." In addition, Americans became aware that Filipinos expected that after the Americans helped throw out the Spanish they would then help them achieve independence.

Articles of Confederation

This document, the nations first constitution, was adopted by the second continental congress in 1781 during the revolution. The document was limited because states held most of the power, and congress lacked the power to tax, regulate trade, or control coinage

Tariff of 1816

This protective tariff helped American industry by raising the prices of British manufactured goods, which were often cheaper and of higher quality than those produced in the U.S.

Muckrakers

This term applies to newspaper reporters and other writers who pointed out the social problems of the era of big business. The term was first given to them by Theodore Roosevelt.

Gospel of Wealth

This was a book written by Carnegie that described the responsibility of the rich to be philanthropists. This softened the harshness of Social Darwinism as well as promoted the idea of philanthropy.

Depression of 1893

This was a panic marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures. Compounding market overbuilding and the railroad bubble, was a run on the gold supply (relative to silver), because of the long-established American policy of Bimetalism, which used both silver and gold metals at a fixed 16:1 rate for pegging the value of the US Dollar. Until the Great Depression, it was considered the worst depression the United States had ever experienced.

Tallmadge Amendment

This was an attempt to have no more slaves to be brought to Missouri and provided the gradual emancipation of the children of slaves. In the mind of the South, this was a threat to the sectional balance between North and South.

Selma to Montgomery March

Three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL).

"Crime of '73"

Through the coinage act of 1873, the US ended the minting of silver dollars and placed the country on the gold standard. this was attacked by those who supported an inflationary monetary policy, particularly farmers and believed in the unlimited coinage of silver

North Africa Campaign

Took place in North Africa from 10 June 1940-16 May 1943. It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts and in Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia. The campaign was fought between the Allies and Axis powers. The Allied war effort was dominated by the British Commonwealth and exiles from German-occupied Europe. The U.S. entered the war in 1941 and began direct military assistance in North Africa, on 11 May 1942.

Bataan Death March

Took place in the Philippines in 1942 and was later accounted as a Japanese war crime. The 60 mi march occurred after the three-month Battle of Bataan, part of the Battle of the Philippines (1941-42), during World War II. The "march", or forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon prisoners and civilians alike by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan.

Toussaint L'Ouverture

Toussaint led enslaved blacks in a long struggle for independence over French colonizers, abolished slavery, and secured "native" control over the colony, Haiti. In 1797 while nominally governor of the colony, he expelled the French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, as well as the British armies.

Characteristics of a New England Town

Towns that are corporate entities, granted a charter by the state legislature, and have all the powers that a city in other states would typically have.

Adams-Onis (Transcontinental) Treaty

Treaty signed in 1819 between the U.S. and Spain in which Spain ceded Florida to the U.S. and agreed to a southern border of the U.S. west extending all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Treaty that ended the Mexican War, granting the U.S. control of Texas, New Mexico, and California in exchange for $15 million

John Foster Dulles

U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world. He advocated support of the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina and it is widely believed that he refused to shake the hand of Zhou Enlai at the Geneva Conference in 1954.

Harriet Tubman

United States abolitionist born a slave on a plantation in Maryland and became a famous conductor on the Underground Railroad leading other slaves to freedom in the North (1820-1913)

Oliver Hazard Perry

United States commodore who led the fleet that defeated the British on Lake Erie during the War of 1812

John Jay

United States diplomat and jurist who negotiated peace treaties with Britain and served as the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1745-1829)

Horace Mann

United States educator who introduced reforms that significantly altered the system of public education (1796-1859)

William Tecumseh Sherman

United States general who was commander of all Union troops in the West he captured Atlanta and led a destructive march to the sea that cut the Confederacy in two (1820-1891)

Frederick Jackson Turner

United States historian who stressed the role of the western frontier in American history (1861-1951)

Andrew Carnegie

United States industrialist and philanthropist who endowed education and public libraries and research trusts (1835-1919)

Alexander Graham Bell

United States inventor (born in Scotland) of the telephone (1847-1922)

Eli Whitney

United States inventor of the mechanical cotton gin (1765-1825)

Samuel Gompers

United States labor leader (born in England) who was president of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1924 (1850-1924)

Eugene Victor Debs

United States labor organizer who ran for President as a socialist (1855-1926)

William Jennings Bryan

United States lawyer and politician who advocated free silver and prosecuted John Scopes (1925) for teaching evolution in a Tennessee high school (1860-1925)

James Fenimore Cooper

United States novelist noted for his stories of Native Americans and the frontier life (1789-1851)

Gilbert Stuart

United States painter best known for his portraits of George Washington (1755-1828)

Sam Houston

United States politician and military leader who fought to gain independence for Texas from Mexico and to make it a part of the United States (1793-1863)

Henry Clay

United States politician responsible for the Missouri Compromise between free and slave states (1777-1852)

William James

United States pragmatic philosopher and psychologist (1842-1910)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

United States writer of a novel about slavery that advanced the abolitionists' cause (1811-1896)

Washington Irving

United States writer remembered for his stories (1783-1859)

Bacon's Rebellion

Uprising in 1676 in the Virginia colony led by Nathaniel Bacon. Unite against the ruling class.

New Frontier

Used by 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.

Characteristics of Puritan Settlers

Very religious, socially tight knit, and politically innovative culture

Virginia (Randolph) Plan

Virginia delegate James Madison's plan of government, in which states got a number of representatives in Congress based on their population

George Washington

Virginian, patriot, general, and president. Lived at Mount Vernon. Led the Revolutionary Army in the fight for independence. First President of the United States.

War of 1812

War between the U.S. and Great Britain which lasted until 1814, ending with the Treaty of Ghent and a renewed sense of American nationalism

Washington's Farewell Address

Warned Americans not to get involved in European affairs, not to make permanent alliances, not to form political parties and to avoid sectionalism.

Preston Brooks

Was a Congressman from South Carolina, notorious for brutally assaulting senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the United States Senate.

John D. Rockefeller

Was an American industrialist and philanthropist. Revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of modern philanthropy.

John Humphrey Noyes

Was an American utopian socialist. He founded the Oneida Community in 1848

Panic of 1837

When Jackson was president, many state banks received government money that had been withdrawn from the Bank of the U.S. These banks issued paper money and financed wild speculation, especially in federal lands. Jackson issued the Specie Circular to force the payment for federal lands with gold or silver. Many state banks collapsed as a result. A panic ensued (1837). Bank of the U.S. failed, cotton prices fell, businesses went bankrupt, and there was widespread unemployment and distress.

South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification

When faced with the protective Tariff of 1828, John Calhoun presented a theory in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828) that federal tariffs could be declared null and void by individual states and that they could refuse to enforce them, SC passed an ordinance forbidding collection of tariff duties in the state

Lockout

When management closes the doors to the place of work and keeps the workers from entering until an agreement is reached.

Proprietary colony

When one or more private land owners retain rights that are normally the privilege of the state, and in all cases eventually became so

Pooling

When several companies agree to divide up the business in an area

Boss Tweed

William Tweed, head of Tammany Hall, NYC's powerful democratic political machine in 1868. Between 1868 and 1869 he led the Tweed Reign, a group of corrupt politicians in defrauding the city. Example: Responsible for the construction of the NY court house; actual construction cost $3 million. Project cost tax payers $13 million.

Pollock case

With a ruling of 5-4, was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the unapportioned income taxes on interest, dividends and rents imposed by the Income Tax Act of 1894 were, in effect, direct taxes, and were unconstitutional because they violated the provision that direct taxes be apportioned. The decision was nullified in 1913 by Amendment XVI to the US Constitution.

Edward Bellamy

Wrote Looking Backward; said that captialism supported the few and exploited the many. A character wakes up in 2000 after napping and says socialism will be on top in the end

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Wrote The Scarlet Letter; originally a transcendentalist but later became a leading anti-transcendentalist.

Hepburn Act

a 1906 United States federal law that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum railroad rates. This led to the discontinuation of free passes to loyal shippers. In addition, the ICC could view the railroads' financial records, a task simplified by standardized bookkeeping systems.

Wagner Act/ NLRB

a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands. The Act does not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers.

Panama Canal

a 77 kilometres (48 mi) ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914. The canal had an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans, replacing the long and treacherous route via either the Strait of Magellan or Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America.

John Maynard Keynes

a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments. He greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and advocated the use of fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various offshoots.

Vietnam War

a Cold War era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. The Viet Cong, a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region.

National Origins Act of 1924

a United States federal law that limited the 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.

Landrum-Griffin Act

a United States labor law that regulates labor unions' internal affairs and their officials' relationships with employers.

Containment

a United States policy using military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to stall the spread of communism, enhance America's security and influence abroad, and prevent a "domino effect". A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to expand communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam.

Battle of the Little Bighorn

a battle in Montana near the Little Bighorn River between United States cavalry under Custer and several groups of Native Americans (1876)

Father Charles Coughlin

a controversial Catholic priest at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower Church. He was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as more than thirty million tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s.

Schechter v US

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. Notably, this was a unanimous decision that declared unconstitutional the National Industrial Recovery Act, a main component of President Roosevelt's New Deal.

54th Massachusetts Regiment

a famous African unit in the Union army; led an attack on Ft. Wagner near Charleston, SC

SEC

a federal agency which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States. In addition to the 1934 Act that created it, the SEC enforces the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other statutes. The SEC was created by section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Fair Labor Standards Act

a federal statute of the United States. The FLSA established a national minimum wage, guaranteed 'time-and-a-half' for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors in "oppressive child labor," a term that is defined in the statute. It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage.

TVA

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 in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression.

Sit down strikes

a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at a factory or other centralized location, take possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations, effectively preventing their employers from replacing them with strikebreakers or, in some cases, moving production to other locations.

CIO

a job title commonly given to the most senior executive in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. The title of Chief Information Officer in Higher Education may be the highest ranking technology executive although depending on the institution, alternative titles are used to represent this position. Generally, the CIO typically reports to the chief executive officer, chief operations officer or chief financial officer. In military organizations, they report to the commanding officer.

Glass-Steagall Act

a law that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and introduced banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation.

Cotton gin

a machine for cleaning the seeds from cotton fibers, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793

Gold standard

a monetary standard under which the basic unit of currency is defined by a stated quantity of gold

Gold Standard

a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold.

Enlightenment

a movement in the 18th century that advocated the use of reason in the reappraisal of accepted ideas and social institutions

Dust bowl

a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion. Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.

New Deal

a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President of the United States, which lasted from 1933 to 1937. The programs were responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": relief, recovery, and reform. That is, relief for the unemployed and poor; recovery of the economy to normal levels; and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression. It produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority (as well as the party which held the White House for seven out of nine Presidential terms from 1933 to 1969), with its base in liberal ideas, big city machines, and newly empowered labor unions, ethnic minorities, and the white South.

"Fireside Chats"

a series of thirty evening radio speeches given by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944.

Social Security Act

a social insurance program that is funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). Tax deposits are formally entrusted to the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, or the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund.

Tariff of 1832

a tariff imposed by Jackson which was unpopular in the South; South Carolina nullified it, but Jackson pushed through the Force Act, which enabled him to make South Carolina comply through force; Henry Clay reworked the tariff so that South Carolina would accept it, but after accepting it, South Carolina also nullified the Force Act

Brain trust

a term for a group of close advisors to a political candidate or incumbent, prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of advisors to Franklin Roosevelt during his presidential administration. More recently the use of the term has expanded to encompass any group of advisers to a decision maker, whether or not in politics.

Company town

a town or city in which most or all real estate, buildings (both residential and commercial), utilities, hospitals, small businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations, and other necessities or luxuries of life within its borders are owned by a single company.

Nine Power Treaty

a treaty affirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China as per the Open Door Policy, signed by all of the attendees to the Washington Naval Conference on 6 February 1922.

Literacy test, poll tax, grandfather clause

all methods that were used to keep African Americans from voting

Robber Baron

an American capitalist who acquired a fortune in the late nineteenth century by ruthless means.

Monroe Doctrine

an American foreign policy opposing interference in the western hemisphere from outside powers

Ulysses S. Grant

an American general and the eighteenth President of the United States (1869-1877). He achieved international fame as the leading Union general in the American Civil War.

Clarence Darrow

an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks (1924) and defending John T. Scopes in the Scopes Trial (1925), in which he opposed William Jennings Bryan.

Scopes Trial

an American legal case in 1925 in which a high school biology teacher John Scopes was accused of violating the state's Butler Act that made it unlawful to teach evolution. Scopes was found guilty, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality and he was never brought back to trial. The trial drew intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to the small town of Dayton, to cover the big-name lawyers representing each side. William Jennings Bryan, three time presidential candidate for the Democrats, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes.

Langston Hughes

an American novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "Harlem was in vogue".

Dr. Francis Townsend

an American physician who was best known for his revolving old-age pension proposal during the Great Depression. Known as the "Townsend Plan," this proposal influenced the establishment of the Roosevelt administration's Social Security system.

Emergency Banking Relief Act

an act of the United States Congress spearheaded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. It was passed on March 9, 1933. The act allowed a plan that would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen those banks strong enough to survive.

Quartering Act

an act passed by the British that allowed British troops to live in the homes of the colonists

Erie Canal

an artificial waterway connecting the Hudson river at Albany with Lake Erie at Buffalo

American System

an economic regime pioneered by Henry Clay which created a high tariff to support internal improvements such as road-building. This approach was intended to allow the United States to grow and prosper by themselves This would eventually help America industrialize and become an economic power.

Andrew Oliver

commissioned to administer the unpopular Stamp Act in Massachusetts. On August 14, he was hanged in effigy from Boston's Liberty Tree in a protest organized by the Loyal Nine, a precursor to the Sons of Liberty. That night his house in Boston was ransacked by an angry crowd. On August 17, he was compelled to publicly resign his commission. On December 17, the Sons of Liberty again forced him to publicly swear that he would never act as stamp distributor

General William Howe

during the summer of 1776, he led hundreds of British ships and 32,000 British soldiers to New York, and offered Congress the choice between surrender with royal pardon and a battle against the odds, and despite having far fewer troops, the Americans rejected the offer.

John Tyler

elected Vice President and became the 10th President of the United States when Harrison died 1841-1845, President responsible for annexation of Mexico after receiving mandate from Polk, opposed many parts of the Whig program for economic recovery

Cherokee Nation v Georgia

elegation of Cherokee led by Chief John Ross selected William Wirt, attorney general in the Monroe and Adams administrations, on the urging of Senators Daniel Webster and Theodore Frelinghuysen to defend Cherokee rights before the U.S. Supreme Court

CWA

established by the New Deal during the Great Depression to create manual labor jobs for millions of unemployed. The jobs were merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter. Harry L. Hopkins was put in charge of the organization. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the CWA on November 8, 1933.

Conscription

forced military service; draft

Quarantine speech

given by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on October 5, 1937, in Chicago, calling for an international "quarantine of the aggressor nations" as an alternative to the political climate of American neutrality and non-intervention that was prevalent at the time. The speech intensified America's isolationist mood, causing protest by non-interventionists and foes to intervention. No countries were directly mentioned in the speech, but it was interpreted as referring to Japan, Italy, and Germany. Roosevelt suggested the use of economic pressure, a forceful response, but less direct than outright aggression.

Stamp Act Congress

group of colonists who protested the Stamp Act, saying that Parliament couldn't tax without colonist' consent

Sugar Act

halved the duty on foreign made molasses, placed duties on certain imports, and strenghtened the enforcement of the law allowing prosecutors to try smuggling cases in a vice-admiralty court

Second AAA

has the same general objectives, rests not on the taxing power but specifically on the powers of Congress to: 1) regulate interstate commerce, and 2) promote the general welfare. As a further safeguard against the Court, the drafters of the AAA of 1938 inserted a provision separating the Act into sections dealing with each crop, so that the whole Act could not be thrown out by one adverse decision.

Cult of Domesticity

idealized view of women & home; women, self-less caregiver for children, refuge for husbands

Interchangeable parts

identical components that can be used in place of one another in manufactoring

Court Packing Plan

legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Roosevelt's purpose was to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that had been previously ruled unconstitutional. The central and most controversial provision of the bill would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every sitting member over the age of 70½.

Battle of the Bulge

major German offensive, launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes Mountains region of Wallonia in Belgium, and France and Luxembourg on the Western Front. The "bulge" being the initial incursion the Germans put into the Allies' line of advance, as seen in maps presented in contemporary newspapers. Germany's goal for these operations was to split the British and American Allied line in half, capturing Antwerp, Belgium, and then proceed to encircle and destroy four Allied armies, forcing the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis Powers' favor. Once accomplished, Hitler could return his attention and the bulk of his forces to the Soviet armies in the east.

Modernism

modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism.

Lowell mill girls

mostly from the New England States; their fathers did not want to have to pay for them to live with them until they got married, and sent them to work at the Lowell Mill, where the girls lived, worked, and ate; they got little time for meals and sleep, and worked long hours in the factory all year

Hawaii

newest of the 50 U.S. states (August 21, 1959), and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It occupies most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of Australia. The US tried to overthrow the monarchy in 1890s.

Huey Long

nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928-1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. A Democrat, he was noted for his radical populist policies. Though a backer of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election, Long split with Roosevelt in June 1933 and allegedly planned to mount his own presidential bid for 1936.

Harry Hopkins

one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II he was Roosevelt's chief diplomatic advisor and troubleshooter and was a key policy maker in the $50 billion Lend Lease program that sent aid to the allies.

PWA

part of the New Deal, or 100 hundred days plan agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes during President Roosevelt's time in office. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It concentrated on the construction of large-scale public works such as dams and bridges, with the goal of providing employment, stabilizing purchasing power, and contributing to a revival of American industry. It was planned to help fix the Great Depression. This Administration was focused on saving natural resources. The dams that were built from the funding of this were created to save money and that created cheaper electricity for those who needed it (unemployed).

Albany Plan of Union

plan proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 that aimed to unite the 13 colonies for trade, military, and other purposes; the plan was turned down by the colonies and the Crown

Cattle Frontier

raised cows cheaply in Texas and sold them at higher prices in other areas; great profit but at the mercy of unstable markets; harsh climate and overgrazing pushed many to bankruptcy; ranch wars between farmers and open-grazing ranchers

Underwood Simmons 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.

Eisenhower Doctrine

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 country could request American economic assistance and/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."

German U-boat warfare

refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II. Although in theory U-boats could have been useful fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, in practice they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role (commerce raiding), enforcing a naval blockade against enemy shipping. The primary targets of the U-boat campaigns in both wars were the merchant convoys bringing supplies from the British Empire and the United States to the islands of Great Britain.

Roosevelt Coalition

refers to three constituencies whose votes enabled the Democratic Party to dominate national politics from the N ew D eal until the 1970s: the S olid S outh , organized labor, and blacks. The New Deal specifically tailored programs for southern economic development, securing labor's right to organize, and promoting equal employment opportunities for blacks. Southern whites and labor had long been Democratic supporters, but blacks only became a Democratic voting bloc in the 1930s. The coalition began crumbling in the 1960s with the Solid South's defection, and was defunct by 1994 because southern whites and blacks could not coexist politically.

AAA

restricted agricultural production in the New Deal era by paying farmers subsidies not to plant part of their land and to kill off excess livestock. Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus so as to effectively raise the value of crops, thereby a portion of their fields lie fallow. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies which processed farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies. It is considered the first modern U.S. farm bill.

Fundamentalism

strict adherence to specific set of theological doctrines typically in reaction against the theology of Modernism.

Herbert Hoover

the 31st President of the United States (1929-1933). Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author. 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 previous elected office experience.

Franklin Roosevelt

the 32nd President of the United States (1933-1945) and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war. The only American president elected to more than two terms, he forged a durable coalition that realigned American politics for decades. FDR defeated incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover in November 1932, at the depths of the Great Depression. FDR's combination of optimism and activism contributed to reviving the national spirit. Working closely with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin in leading the Allies against Germany and Japan in World War II, he died just as victory was in sight.

Eleanor Roosevelt

the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international author, speaker, politician, and activist for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

John Lewis

the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, serving since 1987. He was a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), playing a key role in the struggle to end segregation. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district encompasses almost all of Atlanta.

Sputnik

the commonly known name of a group of various robotic spacecraft missions launched by the Soviet Union. The first of these, Sputnik 1, launched the first human-made object to orbit the Earth. That launch took place on October 4, 1957 as part of the International Geophysical Year and demonstrated the viability of using artificial satellites to explore the upper atmosphere.

Declaration of Independence

the document recording the proclamation of the second Continental Congress (4 July 1776) asserting the independence of the colonies from Great Britain

Jane Addams

the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In a long, complex, career, she was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace.

Hudson River School

the first coherent school of American art

WPA

the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. It fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency, which especially benefited rural and Western populations. Expenditures from 1936 to 1939 totaled nearly $7 billion.

Queen Liliuokalani

the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. She inherited the throne from her brother Kalākaua on 29 January 1891. Shortly after ascending the throne, petitions from her people began to be received from the two major political parties of the time, mainly Hui Kala'aina and the National Reform Party.

March to the Sea

the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign conducted in late 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army during the American Civil War. 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 22.

Railroad Administration

the name of the nationalized railroad system of the United States between 1917 and 1920. It was possibly the largest American experiment with nationalization, and was undertaken against a background of war emergency.

Federal Emergency Relief Admin.

the new name given by the Roosevelt Administration to the Emergency Relief Administration (ERA) which President Herbert Hoover had created in 1932. FERA was established as a result of the Federal Emergency Relief Act and was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Massive Retaliation & Brinkmanship

the practice of pushing dangerous events to the verge of disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. It occurs in international politics, foreign policy, labour relations, and (in contemporary settings) military strategy involving the threatened use of nuclear weapons.

Nullification

the states' rights doctrine saying a state can refuse to recognize or to enforce a federal law passed by the United States Congress

Election of 1932

took place as the effects of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression were being felt intensely across the country. President Herbert Hoover's popularity was falling as voters felt he was unable to reverse the economic collapse, or deal with prohibition. Franklin D. Roosevelt used what he called Hoover's failure to deal with these problems as a platform for his own election, promising reform in his policy called the New Deal. Roosevelt won by a landslide, and this "critical election" marked the collapse of the Fourth Party System or Progressive Era. The voters soon were realigned into the Fifth Party System, dominated by Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition.

Organized crime

transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are politically motivated.

William Henry Harrison

was an American military leader, politician, the ninth President of the United States, and the first President to die in office. His death created a brief constitutional crisis, but ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment. Led US forces in the Battle of Tippecanoe.

Board of Customs Commissioners

was to enforce trade regulations and establish vice-admiralty courts to deal w/ colonists who violated the law.

Lynchings

when small vigilante mobs or elaborately organized community events where an individual (typically black) was publicly hung due to a crime (true or perceived). Resulted from white supremacy or fear of black sexuality.

Thomas Whately

wrote a pamphlet insisting that the Sugar Act did not involve taxation without consent

Thomas Jefferson

wrote the Declaration of Independence