APUSH time, kiddo

Caravel

A 15th century European ship capable of long distance travel. These ships allowed for exploration of new trade routes and into the New World.

Act Concerning Religion (The Maryland Toleration Act) (1649)

A 1649 act, in Maryland (part of the "Maryland Experiment") by which all Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) were guaranteed the free exercise of religion. It institutionalized religious toleration in Maryland.

The Zimmerman Telegram

A 1917 message to Mexico from German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmerman asking Mexico to join Germany in a coming war against the U.S., if the U.S. entered WWI on the side of the Allies, and promising in exchange that Germany would help Mexico recover the territory it lost in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. The message was intercepted by British spies and made public, further outraging Americans and contributing to the U.S. entrance into WWI on the side of the Allies.

The Scopes (Monkey) Trial of 1925

A 1925 trial in Tennessee that threw into sharp relief the division between traditional values and modern, secular culture. A teacher in a TN public school was arrested for violating a state law that prohibited the teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. His trial became a national sensation, and the proceedings were carried live on national radio. The case reflected the enduring tension between two American definitions of freedom: moral liberty, or the voluntary adherence to time-honored religious beliefs, vs. the right to independent thought and individual self-expression. While the teachers was found guilty, the trial weakened the movement for religious fundamentalism.

Operation Dixie

A 1946 campaign to bring unionization to the South, and, by doing so, to shatter the hold of anti-labor conservatives on Southern politics. Part of the wave of labor militancy that swept the country following WWII as wartime production ended and inflation soared. In the face of vigorous opposition from southern employers and public officials and the reluctance of many white workers to join interracial unions, it failed to unionize the South or dent the political control of conservative Democrats in the South.

INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), 1987

A 1987 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, that eliminated all short range (310-620 miles) and intermediate range (620-3,420 miles) nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers. The treaty made more progress on arms control than in the entire postwar period to that point. By 1991, over 2,000 missiles were eliminated, followed by 10 years of on-site verification inspections.

John Maynard Keynes

A British economist who wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) (widely known simply by the abbreviated title, The General Theory) and went on to become the founder of modern macroeconomics and one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. His ideas are associate with the economic school of thought known as Keynesian economics. [Challenging Adam Smith's notion that the economy is a product of nature best left alone to regulate itself through natural laws of supply and demand (the "invisible hand"), Keynes said the economy is like a "machine" that governments must be fine-tuned from time to time;] During the Great Depression, he challenged economists' traditional belief in the sanctity of balanced budgets. Large-scale government spending, he insisted, was necessary to sustain purchasing power and stimulate economic activity during downturns. Such spending should be enacted even at the cost of a budge deficit (a situation in which the government spends more money that it takes in). FDR was persuaded, and Keynesian economic assumptions were adopted by most American politicians until the Conservative Resurgence of the 1970s and 80s.

Bartolomé de Las Casas

A Dominican priest who wrote A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies where he criticized Spanish colonists' treatment of Indians and believed that Indians were human beings who deserved to be treated equally. His portrayal of Spain as a uniquely cruel colonizer lead to the Black Legend which changed how other Europeans in the New World treated Indians and diminished Spain's national glory.

The Trial of John Peter Zenger (1734)

A German American printer and journalist in New York City who printed opinions critical of the colonial governor. He was accused of libel in 1734 by the governor of New York, but the jury acquitted him, and he became an early symbol for freedom of the press in the British colonies.

Barry Goldwater

A Libertarian Senator from Arizona who ran as the Republican nominees for President in 1964 and lost badly to LBJ. He published an enormously popular book The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), which articulated his libertarian philosophy. He demanded more aggressive conduct in the Cold War and critiqued the New Deal welfare state as a "danger to freedom," which he believed stifled individual initiative and independence. He called for the substitution of private charity for public welfare programs and Social Security, and the abolition of the graduated income tax, and he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Despite his loss in 1964, he is often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s.

Emma Goldman

A Lithuanian-born immigrant radical thinker known for her writings and speeches on topics ranging from anarchism, to patriotism, feminism, to birth control, to homosexuality.

The Indian Reorganization Act, 1934

A New Deal era law that ended the policy, dating back to the Dawes Act of 1887, of dividing Indian lands into small plots for individual Indian families and selling off the rest to white settlers. Federal authorities once again recognized Indians' right to govern their own affairs, except where specifically limited by national laws.

"The Four Freedoms"

"Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear"--FDR's favorite statement, from 1941, of the Allied aims during Word War Two. In 1943, Norman Rockwell depicted them in a series of paintings of small-town life in America that became the most popular works of art produced during the era. As a means of generating support for the struggle, FDR's statement provided crucial language of national unity, but it also sometimes obscured divisions within American society.

Three forms of discrimination

"Personal discrimination" is when one individual discriminates against another individual (examples: a hate crime or an the use of an ethnic slur). "Institutional discrimination" is when an institution deliberately discriminates against a group of people (examples: Jim Crow segregation laws or laws that limited marriage between a man and a woman). "Systemic discrimination" is unintentional discrimination that is imbedded in the structure of society (example: the unequal funding of public schools, or racial disparities in sentencing in the criminal justice system.)

The Taft-Hartley Act, 1947

A Republican-sponsored bill passed over Truman's veto, this legislation sought to reverse some of the gains made by organized labor in the 1930s and 1940s. The measure authorized the president to suspend strikes by ordering an eighty-day "cooling-off period," and it banned sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts (labor actions directed not at an employer but at those who did business with him). It outlawed the "closed shop," which required a worker to be a union member when taking up a job, and authorized states to pass "right-to-work" laws, prohibiting other forms of compulsory union membership.

The Slaughterhouse Case

A Supreme Court decision in 1873 that rejected the claim by butchers that their right to equality before the law had been violated. In this case, the Justices rules that the 14th Amendment had not altered traditional federalism, thus whittling away at the guarantees of black rights adopted by Congress during Radical Reconstruction.

Engel v. Vitale, 1962

A Supreme Court ruling that said it was a violation of the First Amendment, and thus unconstitutional, for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage it to be recited in public schools.

Title IX, 1972

A ban on gender discrimination in higher education. It had a particularly dramatic impact in terms of opening up opportunities for young women in college athletic programs.

Coxey's Army, 1894

A band of several hundred unemployed men, led an by Ohio businessman (whose name is given to this group), that marched on Washington D.C. in 1894 to protest unemployment and to demand that the government create jobs on public works projects for the purpose of economic relief. The group was dispersed by soldiers deployed by the federal government, which was a typical response in the 1890s.

Proslavery

A belief held by Southerners that supported slavery morally, politically, socially, and economically

Friedrich A Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, 1944

A best-selling book by a previously obscure Austrian-born economist that argued that even the best-intentioned government efforts to direct the economy posed a threat to liberty. He offered a simple message-- "planning leads to dictatorship." Coming at a time when the miracles of war production had reinvigorated belief in the virtues of capitalism, and with the confrontation with Nazism highlighting the danger of merging economic and political power, this book offered a new intellectual justification for opponents of active government. He was not a doctrinaire advocate of laissez-faire, but by equating fascism, socialism, and the New Deal, and by identifying economic planning with a loss of freedom, he helped lay the foundation for the rise of modern conservatism and a revival of laissez-faire economic thought.

Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899

A book by a Norwegian-American economist and social historian that offered a devastating critique of the upper class culture focused on "conspicuous consumption"--that is, spending money not on needed or even desired goods, but simply to demonstrate the possession of wealth.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, 1962

A book often credited with sparking the modern environmental movement, it was written by a female marine biologist who--writing about hard science in clear and powerful prose that a general audience appreciated--brought home to millions of readers the effects of DDT, an insecticide widely used by homeowners and farmers against mosquitoes, moths, and other insects. In chilling detail, she related how DDT killed birds and animals and caused sickness among humans. Chemical and pesticide companies launched a campaign to discredit her--some critics called the book part of a communist plot. Time magazine even condemned her as "hysterical" and "emotional"--words typically used by men to discredit women.

Letters from an American Farmer

A book published in France in 1782 by Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, in which he popularized the idea of the United States as a melting pot.

Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives (1890)

A book that offered a shocking account of living conditions among the urban poor, complete with photographs of apartments in dark, airless, overcrowded tenement houses.

The birth control pill

A catalyst for the sexual revolution, this is a birth control method that, when taken everyday, inhibits female fertility. It became mass marketed in 1960 and made possible what "free lovers" had long demanded--the separation of sex from procreation. By the late 1960s, sexual freedom had become as much an element of the youth rebellion as long hair and drugs.

William Graham Sumner's What Social Classes Owe Each Other, 1883

A classic book promoting the philosophy of social darwinism. According to its author, "A drunk in the gutter is exactly where he ought to be."

The Populist Platform of 1892

A classic document of American reform, it spoke of a nation "brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin" by political corruption and economic inequality. The platform put forth a long list of proposals to restore democracy and economic opportunity, many of which would be adopted during the next half-century: the direct election of U.S. senators, government control of the currency, a graduated income tax, a system of low-cost public financing to enable farmers to market their crops, public ownership of railroads, and recognition of the right of workers to form unions.

The Pentagon Papers, 1971

A classified report produced by the Defense Department that traced the history of America's involvement in Vietnam back to World War Two and revealed how successive presidents had misled the American people about it. Daniel Ellsberg, one of the men who helped to write the Pentagon Papers, later turned against the war and leaked the papers to the New York Times, which published the account much to the disgust of President Nixon. In a landmark freedom-of-press decision, the Supreme Court rejected Nixon's request for an injunction to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Tobacco Colony

A colony in which growing tobacco was the main source of profit; tobacco farming in Virginia resulted in a growing demand for field labor and a distinct class hierarchy. Virginia became a dispersed community with little social unity, working mainly towards profit.

Stagflation

A combination of stagnant economic growth and high inflation present during the 1970s. Generally, inflation happens (prices go up) when the economy is growing. However, in the 1970s, things were different. The U.S. economy was in a process of deindustrialization as industrializing nations (like Japan and Germany) that had rebuilt new factories and recovered since World War Two were beginning to outcompete American manufacturing companies (many of which were much older). Add to that the oil embargo and the ensuing energy crisis that sparked high inflation throughout the Seventies, and you had a nasty economic problem that traditional Keynesian spending solutions could not sufficiently solve.

Free Labor ideology

A comprehensive worldview that glorified the North as the home of progress and freedom; the defining quality of Northern society--as opposed to the South--was the opportunity it offered each laborer to move up to the status of landowning farmer or independent craftsman, thus achieving economic independence essential to freedom. In terms of the question of slavery in the West, the free labor position and the free soil position were synonymous: slavery can remain in the South but it should not be allowed to expand into the West. This was a position held by most northerners who feared that the expansion of slavery would block their economic opportunities in the West.

The ⅗ Clause

A compromise provision of the Constitution that allowed three-fifths of the enslaved population to be counted in determining each state's representation in the House of Representatives and its electoral votes for president.

The Culture Wars

A concept that refers, in the United States, to the conflict between traditional or conservative values and progressive or liberal values. The expression entered U.S. political discourse during the 1990s to refer to the increasing polarization brought about by issues of abortion, gun laws, global warming, immigration, separation of church and state, privacy, recreational drug use, homosexuality, and censorship. But historians also use the term to describe the era of the 1920s when debates around fundamentalist religion, the teaching of evolution, immigration, eugenics, the KKK, the Harlem Renaissance, pluralism, prohibition, flappers, and gender roles powerfully divided Americans, often along urban and rural lines.

The Philippine War, 1899-1903

A conflict between the U.S., which was trying to establish control of the former Spanish colony, the Philippines, and the Filipino independence movement, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, between 1899-1903. Perhaps the least remembered of all U.S. wars today, at the time it was widely debated and cost the lives of more than 100,000 Filipinos and 4,200 Americans. Press reports of atrocities committed by American troops--the burning of villages, torture of prisoners of war, and rape and execution of civilians--tarnished the nation's self-image as liberators.

Spanish-American War, 1898

A conflict fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Cuba leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. Teddy Roosevelt made a name for himself with his "Rough Riders" in the battle of San Juan Hill. As a result of America's victory over Spain, America gained influence over Cuba, acquired Puerto Rico and Spain's Pacific possessions (Guam and the Philippines), and got involved in the bloody Philippine-American War. The war illustrates how the U.S. became an empire during the Age of Imperialism.

Salem Witch Trials (1692)

A crisis of trials and executions in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 that resulted from anxiety over witchcraft.

Deindustrialization

A decades long process, already underway in the Seventies and continuing through the end of the 20th century, in which the U.S. shifted from being primarily an industrial economy to being primarily a service economy. The causes are many and complicated; however, it had to do with U.S. industrial corporations facing declining profits and increased competition from overseas. To survive, many corporations eliminated well-paying manufacturing jobs through automation and shifting production to low-wage areas of the U.S. (the Sunbelt) or else overseas ("offshoring"). The term "rustbelt" was used to describe the area of the Midwest and Northeast where many cities (like Detroit and Chicago) were hit very hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs.

The Anti-Imperialist League

A diverse union of writers (including the famous author, Mark Twain), businessmen, and social reformers opposed to American imperialism, and particularly the annexation of the Philippines, because they either believed that imperialism ran counter to our key values as a nation (freedom, equality, democracy), or that American energies should be directed at home, or that it would be too expensive to maintain overseas outposts, or they were racists who did not wish to bring non-white populations into the United States.

The Bay of Pigs invasion

A failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group in 1961. Fidel Castro had led a revolution in 1959 that ousted the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was friendly towards U.S. economic interests. When Castro's government began nationalizing American landholdings and other investments, and taking other threatening measures, the CIA began training anti-Castro Cuban exiles for an invasion of Cuba, which Kennedy allowed to go ahead in 1961. Military advisors predicted a popular uprising that would topple the Castro government. Instead, nearly 100 of the 1,400 invaders were killed, and 1,100 were captured. This event solidified the hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba that would continue into the 21st century.

Sea Island Experiment

A famous "rehearsal for Reconstruction" in which groups of northerners attempted to successfully transition the island's black population to freedom after the Union navy occupied the islands off the coast of South Carolina in 1861.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

A federal agency created by the Nixon administration that oversaw programs to combat water and air pollution, cleaned up hazardous wastes, and required environmental impact statements from any project that received federal funding.

The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882

A federal law barring immigrants from China from entering the U.S.. The law was first a temporary ban, but it was extended and made permanent in 1902. Although non-whites had long been barred from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens, this was the first time race was used to exclude an entire group of people from entering the U.S.. This law was created at a time of widespread discrimination against and violence towards Chinese Americans, particularly on the West Coast, where about 105,000 Chinese Americans lived, and it also reflected the slow contraction of the boundaries of nationhood occurring during the Gilded Age.

Clean Air Act

A federal law dating to the 1950s that was expanded several times in the 1960s and 1970s, this major law regulates air pollution in the U.S. and, among other things, sets air quality standards for carbon monoxide and other chemicals released by cars and factories. This law led to a dramatic decline in air pollution over the latter third of the 20th century.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

A female black tailor's assistant and civil rights activist, who broke the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white rider on a bus in Alabama in 1955. In the short term, her arrest sparked a yearlong bus boycott by Montgomery's black community and lead to a Supreme Court ruling in 1956 that found segregation in public transportation unconstitutional. But the boycott also marked a turning point in postwar U.S. history by launching a movement for racial justice as a nonviolent crusade based in the black churches of the South.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

A final piece of reconstruction legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation like hotels and theaters.

The Harlem Renaissance

A flourishing of African American cultural, social, and artistic expression throughout the 1920s centered in the northernmost borough of New York City, which had gained an international reputation as the capital of black America following the Great Migration as tens of thousands of Africans Americans settled there during the WWI era. Including writers like Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay, this, this artistic flourishing was associated with the "New Negro" and efforts to challenge the cultural of white supremacy.

The Lost Generation

A group of American writers and poets, both men and women, who immigrated to Europe during the 1920s, in part due to their disillusionment with the conservatism of American politics and the materialism of American culture. It included novelists and poets like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot.

Libertarian conservatives

A group of thinkers who, during the 1950s, redefined freedom as individual autonomy, limited government, and unregulated capitalism. Although largely ignored by the mainstream, they developed ideas that would come to define conservative thought for the next half century. They were very different from, but aligned with, the "new conservatives" of the 1950s in opposition to communism and the federal government.

Immigration Restriction League

A group that called for the reduction of immigration by barring the illiterate from entering the United States.

Ngo Dinh Diem

A key U.S. ally, the staunchly anti-communist--and undemocratic--leader of South Vietnam, who alienated most of his subjects by his close ties to wealthy Catholic families--in a predominantly Buddhist nation--and to landlords in a society dominated by small farmers who had been promised land by Ho Chi Minh. His assassination in 1963 left the U.S., over the next decade, attempting to prop up a revolving door of South Vietnamese leaders who failed to win the support of the South Vietnamese population.

Federalism (aka "Division of Powers"

A key feature of the U.S. Constitution that distributes political power between the state and national governments

Urbanization

A large shift of the American population from rural to urban areas during the Second Industrial Revolution. Between 1870 and 1920, almost 11 million Americans moved from farm to city.

The Great Migration

A large-scale migration of African Americans from the South to the North during the WWI Era (half a million between 1910-1920). Harsh Jim Crow laws, the threat of lynching, and limited opportunities in the South acted as "push factors;" some historians consider these migrants to be "refugees" from the racial terrorism of the South. "Pull factors" in the North included the promise of more freedom, better education, and the higher wages offered by Northern factories contributing to wartime military production. During WWI, many factory jobs became available in in Northern cities due to previous employees entering the military, the drastic reduction of immigrants from Europe, and the increased demand for the production of war materials. Yes the migrants encountered vast disappointments; severely restricted employment opportunities, exclusion from unions, rigid housing segregation, and outbreaks of violence that made it clear that no region of the country was free from racial hostility.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

A last major piece of (reform) legislation of the New Deal, it established the practice of the federal regulation of wages and working conditions, another radical departure from pre-Depression policies. When it passed in 1938, it banned goods produced by child labor from interstate commerce, set forty cents as the minimum hourly wage, and required overtime pay for hours of work exceeding forty per week (effectively creating "the weekend"!).

Keating-Owen Act, 1916

A law enacted by President Wilson, this outlawed child labor in the manufacture of goods sold in interstate commerce (the Supreme Court would later declare it unconstitutional).

The Foraker Act, 1900

A law that declared Puerto Rico was an "insular territory," different from previous territories in the West which would enter the union on an equal basis as states. Puerto Rico's one million inhabitants were defined as citizens of Puerto Rico, not the U.S., and denied a future path to statehood. Congress would later extend U.S. citizenship, but not statehood, to Puerto Ricans in 1917. Puerto Rico remains "the world's oldest colony," poised on the brink of statehood or independence. It elects its own government but lacks a voice in the U.S. Congress.

One-House Legislature

A legislature in which power was concentrated in a single house (more democratic than "balanced governments"); after independence, Pennsylvania instituted this sort of "unicameral" legislature comprised of men over the age of twenty-one who were elected annually.

Ninety-Five Theses (1517)

A list of criticisms of the Catholic Church written in 1517 by German priest Martin Luther. His criticism lead to a rise in Protestant Churches which made religious tensions in Europe. The fact that Protestants were not welcome in many parts of Europe lead to their immigration into Dutch America.

Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism

A little-known senator from Wisconsin who gave a new name to the anti-communist crusade. With a genius for self-promotion, he made wild accusations and preposterous charges of communist infiltration in the government, and though he never identified a single person guilty of genuine disloyalty, he gained gained notoriety as the nation's chief commie-hunter. Eventually, as a result of nationally televised hearings, during which he acted like a bully who browbeat witnesses and made sweeping accusations with no basis in fact, his power collapsed, and he was ultimately censured by the Senate. The term, based on his name, entered the American political vocabulary as a shorthand for character assassination, guilt by association, and abuse of power in the name of anti-communism.

The Wagner Act

A major piece of reform legislation of the Second New Deal, this act was know at the time as "Labor's Magna Carta" because it brought democracy into the workplace by empowering the National Labor Relations Board to supervise elections in which employees voted on union representation (thus, effectively, ensuring workers' right to form unions). (Section 7a of the NIRA had previously established workers' right to form unions, but the Supreme Court had struck down the NIRA in 1935.) This act also outlawed "Unfair labor practices," including the firing and blacklisting of union organizers.

Free Trade

A market system in which the government does not regulate prices, with the idea that the economy can regulate itsel

The Yalta Conference, 1943

A meeting between Allied leaders--Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt--in 1943 in the southern Soviet Union in which the USSR essentially demanded that eastern Europe become a Soviet sphere of influence (a region whose governments can be counted on to do a great power's bidding). This conference saw the high-water mark of wartime American-Soviet cooperation, but it planted the seeds of conflict, since the participants soon disagreed over the fate of eastern Europe.

The Bretton Woods Conference, 1944

A meeting of representatives of forty-five nations in New Hampshire in 1944 that created the framework for the postwar capitalist economic system, based on a freer international flow of goods and investment and recognition of the U.S. as the world's financial leader. The conference replaced the British pound with the dollar as the main currency for international transactions and reestablished the link between the dollar and gold. It also created the World Bank, which would provide money to developing countries and help rebuild Europe, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which would work to prevent governments from devaluing their currencies.

The Kansas Exodus, 1879-80

A migration by some 40,000-60,000 blacks to Kansas to escape the oppressive environment of the New South.

The Sagebrush Rebellion

A movement in western states that denounced the control of large areas of western land by the federal government's Bureau of Land Management and insisted that the states themselves be given decision-making power over issues like grazing rights, mining development, and whether public lands should be closed to fishing and hunting. In some ways, this movement was a reaction to the perceived excesses of the Environmental Movement, and using the language of "freedom from government tyranny," it contributed to the Conservative Movement's call for deregulation and more limited government.

The Social Gospel Movement

A movement of liberal Protestant clergymen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who preached and advocated for the application of Christian principles to social problems generated by industrialization.

The Slave Power

A name given to the South's proslavery political leadership by the Republicans; this group supposedly posed a threat to Northerners' liberties and aspirations more so than "popery" and immigration.

The "Golden Age" of capitalism

A name given to the period in U.S. history following WWII, from 1946-1973, generally characterized by economic expansion, stable prices, low unemployment, and rising standards of living.

Alfred T. Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1890

A naval officer and his book that argued that no nation could prosper without a large fleet of ships engaged in international trade, protected by a powerful navy operating from overseas bases. The argument offered strategic considerations that were used to justify U.S. imperialistic expansion during the era.

Lynching

A notorious practice, particularly widespread in the South between 1890 and 1940, in which persons (usually black) accused of a crime were murdered by mobs before standing trial. Lynchings often took place before large crowds, with law enforcement authorities not intervening.

Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards, 1888

A novel that popularized socialist ideas in which the main character falls asleep in the late nineteenth century only to awaken in the year 2000, in a world where cooperation has replaced class strife, "excessive individualism," and cutthroat competition. Inequality had been banished and with it the idea of liberty as a condition to be achieved through individual striving free of governmental restraint. Freedom, Bellamy' novel suggested, was a social condition, resting on interdependence, not autonomy.

Three Mile Island, 1979

A nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania known for the infamous accident in 1979 in which it released a large amount of radioactive steam into the atmosphere. The accident reinforced the American public's fears of the environmental dangers associated with nuclear energy and put to a halt expansion of the nuclear energy industry in the U.S.

Mary Wollstonecraft, "A Vindication of the Rights of Women"

A pamphlet published by Mary Wollstonecraft in England in 1792, in which she asserted that the "rights of humanity" should not be "confined to the male line," calling for greater access to education and to paid employment for women.

Thomas Paine and Common Sense

A pamphlet written by this radical English immigrant attacked the English principles of hereditary rule and monarchical government, and called for American independence from Britain; the pamphlet was written clearly and directly, so all people (not just educated elite) could get involved in political affairs.

Camp David Accords, 1978

A peace agreement between Egypt and Israel facilitated by Jimmy Carter in which Israel returned land (the Sinai Peninsula) it had taken from Egypt in return for Egypt's promise of peace with Israel.

The Geneva Agreement of 1954

A peace conference in Switzerland that concluded France's defeat in the First Indochina war (1946-1954). The conference agreed to divide Vietnam temporarily into northern and southern districts, with elections scheduled two years away in 1956 to unify the country under either of government of the north (led by communist Ho Chi Minh) or the south (led by non-communist Ngo Dinh Diem). But Diem, backed by the U.S., soon refused to hold elections, which would almost certainly have resulted in a victory for Ho Chi Mihn.

The Popular Front

A period during the 1930s when the Communist Party gained unprecedented respectability in the U.S. by seeking to ally itself with socialists and New Dealers in movements for social change, urging reform of the capitalist system rather than revolution. During this period the Communist Party's vitality--its involvement in a mind-boggling array of activities, including demonstrations for the unemployed, struggles for industrial unionism, and a renewed movement for civil rights--made it the center of gravity for a broad democratic upsurge, and it helped to imbue New Deal liberalism with a militant spirit and a more pluralistic understanding of Americanism.

The Progressive Era

A periodization concept used by historians to refer to the era from 1900-1914, roughly spanning the Presidential administrations of Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and William McKinley (until the outbreak of World War One), during which the Progressive Movement sought to find political solutions to many of the problems created by the Second Industrial Revolution.

Second-wave feminism (1960s-1980s)

A periodization concept used by social historians to refer to a period of feminist activity and thought that first began in the early 1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western world and beyond. In the United States the movement lasted through the early 1980s. Whereas first-wave feminism in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the U.S. consisted of movements for woman suffrage, prohibition, maternalist reform, and efforts to overturn coverture laws, second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, official legal inequalities, and de facto and systemic inequalities. Second-wave feminism also drew attention to domestic violence and marital rape issues, establishment of rape crisis and battered women's shelters, and changes in custody and divorce law.

The Age of Limits

A periodization concept, often used by historians, for the period of time roughly corresponding to the 1970s. After the post-WWII economic boom, during which many Americans seemed to have "grand expectations" for their nation, by the 1970s, several indicators seemed to suggest that the U.S. may be reaching its limits: growing distrust in government (Vietnam, Watergate), economic stagnation ("stagflation"), the limits of America's power in the world (Vietnam, Iran Hostage Crisis), and environmental damage caused by industrial economies and mass consumption (Earthy Day and the environmental movement).

The Conservative Resurgence

A periodization concept, often used by historians, for the period of time roughly corresponding to the administrations of Presidents Nixon through Reagan, and perhaps beyond, during which the dominance of liberalism was replaced by the dominance of conservatism in American politics.

"The Age of Imperialism"

A periodization concept, used by historians, describing the last quarter of the nineteenth century in world history, when European empires carved up large portions of the world among themselves. Their justification was to bring "civilization," by which they meant Western values, labor practices, and Christianity. The process generally resulted in the economic exploitation of the colonized people and areas. During this period, U.S. foreign policy was influenced by, and in some ways came to resemble, that of other European empires.

Flushing Remonstrace (1657)

A petition created by a group of English settlers in 1657 arguing against the Dutch governor's orders to bar Quakers from Flushing, Long Island. Though it had little effect during the time, Flushing is now seen as a landmark of religious liberty.

Manifest Destiny

A phrase first used in 1845 to suggest that the annexation of Texas was divinely sanctioned. It was used thereafter to encourage American settlement of Indian lands in the Great Plains and the West and, more generally, as a justification for American empire.

Manifest Destiny

A phrase popularizing a widely-held belief in the 1840s that the U.S. has a divinely appointed mission, so obvious as to be beyond dispute, to occupy all of North America. The belief was based on assumptions of white supremacy and the superiority of U.S. cultural, political, and economic institutions. It was a mid-19th century version of American Exceptionalism.

The TVA (Tenesse Valley Authority)

A piece of New Deal legislation during the First Hundred Days that served as both relief and recovery by initiating government-planned economic transformation as much as economic relief. This law put thousands of people to work in the construction of a series of dams to prevent floods and deforestation along the Tennessee River and to provide cheap electric power for homes and factories in a seven-state region of the South where many families still lived in isolated log cabins. This law put the federal government, for the first time, in the business of selling electricity in competition with private companies.

The NIRA (National industrial recovery act)

A piece of New Deal recovery legislation during the First Hundred Days, this act established the National Recovery Administration, which would work with groups of business leaders to establish industry codes that set standards for output, prices, and working conditions. Thus, "cutthroat" competition (in which companies took loses to drive competitors out of business) would be ended. Section 7a of the act recognized workers' right to organize unions. Very controversial, in part because large companies dominated the code-writing process to protect their own interests against smaller competitors, the act produced neither economic recovery nor peace between employers and workers. It did, however, undercut the pervasive sense that the federal government was doing nothing to deal with the economic crisis. It ended in 1935 when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, in part, because its codes and other regulations attempted to regulate local business that did not engage in interstate commerce.

The AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act)

A piece of New Deal recovery legislation during the First Hundred Days, this law authorized the federal government to try to raise farm prices by setting production quotas for major crops and paying farmers to plant less. It succeeded in raising farm prices and incomes, but not all farmers benefited (particularly poor tenants and sharecroppers who worked on land owned by others). It ended in 1936 when the Supreme Court ruled it to be unconstitutional exercise of congressional power over local economic activities.

The SEC (the Securities and Exchange Commission)

A piece of New Deal reform legislation that regulated the stock and bond markets.

The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)

A piece of New Deal relief legislation during the First Hundred Days, this program set unemployed unmarried young men (the kinds of people who might traditionally be drawn by despair into radical or revolutionary political movements) to work on public works projects like forest preservation, flood control, and the improvement of national parks and wildlife preserves. By the time the program ended in 1942, over three million men had worked in the camps, where they received monthly checks of $30 ($25 of which had to be sent home to their parents, helping them to also stay afloat during the Depression).

Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan

A plan enacted by President Abraham Lincoln in Union-controlled Louisiana in 1863 that offered an amnesty and full restoration of rights, including property except for slaves, to nearly all white southerners who took an oath affirming loyalty to the Union and support for emancipation; when 10 percent of the voters of 1860 had taken the oath, they could elect a new state government, which would be required to abolish slavery

Headright System (1618)

A policy first announced by the Virginia Company in 1618, by which the company granted 50 acres of land to any colonist who paid for his own or another's passage to Virginia.

Social Darwinism

A popular Gilded Age concept that celebrated the "survival of the fittest" to justify class distinctions and to explain poverty. In their misapplication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to society, proponents believed that some people were more "fit" than others, and this inequality in individual fitness explained the maldistribution in wealth in modern capitalist societies. For government or private individuals to assist the poor would be to interfere in a natural process by which the unfit are weeded out so that society could progress.

The WPA (Works Progress Administration)

A popular Second New Deal relief program, this one hired about three million people during each year of its existence and put them to work constructing thousands of public buildings and bridges, more than 500,000 miles of roads, and 600 airports. It built stadiums, swimming pools, and sewage treatment plants. The most famous projects were in the arts, in which hundreds of artists worked to decorate public buildings with murals, and many other writers, actors, musicians, dancers, and photographers produced work for the public.

The Iranian Revolution, 1979

A popular revolution, inspired and led by Ayatollah Khomeini, an Islamic fundamentalist, that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah (king) of Iran in 1979. The revolution had deep anti-American currents dating back to the Fifties. As part of the early Cold War, the CIA had orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's only democratically elected president, Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, after he tried to nationalize Iran's oil. The U.S. then supported the Shah (King) of Iran, keeping him as a key ally of the United States in the Cold War. While the Shah was secular, modern, and in some ways progressive, he tolerated no political dissent and had his opponents tortured and killed (by SAVAK). Many Iranians viewed the Shah a U.S.-puppet controlling their country.

Coverture

A principle in English and American law that a married woman lost her legal identity, which became "covered" by that of her husband, who therefore controlled her person and the family's economic resources.

Virginia Company

A private business that founded the first permanent British colony in the Americas, Jamestown, in Virginia.

Frederick W. Taylor's "scientific management," or "Taylorism"

A program that sought to streamline production and boost profits by systematically controlling costs and work practices. Through this process, the "one best way" of producing goods could be determined, and workers must obey these detailed instructions from supervisors. Not surprisingly, many skilled workers saw this as a loss of freedom.

Malcolm X

A prominent African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist during the 1960s. During the heyday of the integration struggle, this fiery orator insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on their own efforts rather than working with whites. Having committed a string of crimes as a youth, he was converted in jail to the teachings of the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, who preached a message of white evil and black self-discipline. He dropped his last name ("Little"), which he called his "slave surname," in favor of "X," symbolizing blacks' separation from their African ancestry. On his release from prison he became a spokesman for the Nation of Islam and a sharp critic of the ideas of integration and nonviolence, and of Martin Luther King's practice of appealing to American values. After a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, he changed many of his views and began to speak of the possibility of interracial cooperation and radical change in the U.S. He was assassinated in 1965 by members of the Nation of Islam. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.

George Washington

A prominent Virginian and well-known military commander who was appointed as the Commander of the Second Continental Congress's army

Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association

A proponent of black nationalism and a recent immigrant to New York City from Jamaica, this leader was at the forefront of a popular movement for African independence and black self-reliance (also called Pan-Africanism) in the 1920s, which reflected the new spirit of militancy among blacks. Freedom for Garveyites meant national self-determination (not integration). Blacks, they insisted, should enjoy the same internationally recognized identity enjoyed by other peoples in the aftermath of WWI. He also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. Although most American black leaders condemned his methods and his support for racial segregation, he attracted a large following. By 1922, the Black Star Line had gone bankrupt, he served five years in prison for mail fraud, and he was deported to Jamaica in 1927. His movement then rapidly collapsed.

The ERA (Equal Rights Amendment)

A proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution, originally proposed by Alice Paul and the Womens' Party during the Progressive Era (and never ratified), the second-wave feminists revived the campaign to ratify the ERA during the Seventies. Nevertheless, the ERA aroused unexpected opposition from those who argued it would discredit the role of wife and homemaker, and it was not ratified. The ERA says: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

The Second Industrial Revolution

A rapid and profound economic revolution lastly roughly from the end of the Civil War into the early twentieth century. The period was characterized by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, and enormous economic productivity and output. It had numerous causes, including abundant natural resources, a growing supply of labor, an expanding market for manufactured goods, the availability of capital for investment, and a federal government that actively promoted economic and agricultural development ("pro-big business laissez faire").

The Reagan Revolution

A reference to how Reagan reshaped the nation's agenda and political language more effectively than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. An excellent speaker, his optimism and affability appealed to large numbers of Americans. He made conservatism seem progressive, rather than an attempt to turn back the tide of progress, and spoke of "freedom" more than any president before him. He co-opted the rhetoric of his opponents and gave it new meaning. For example, in Reagan's speeches, "special-interests" meant racial minorities and unions rather than businessmen seeking political favors, "color-blind" meant reducing civil rights enforcement rather than correcting systemic racial inequalities, and "economic freedom" meant less taxes and deregulation rather than combating poverty and strengthening economic security.

The Southern Veto

A reference to the power of the white South to mold the New Deal into an entitlement for white Americans (and to deny many of the New Deal's benefits to African Americans). A Democrat himself, FDR understood he needed the votes of Southern Democrats in order to pass his New Deal Legislation. And Southern Democrats were tremendously powerful in Congress where they held many key leadership positions and committee chairmanships. Therefore, FDR had to accommodate the Southern Democrats' desire to insert racially discriminatory language in many New Deal bills in order to get them enacted into law. For example, at their insistence, both the Social Security Act and the FLSA excluded agricultural and domestic workers (the largest category of black employment).

The "Social Contract"

A reference to the trend towards compromise that developed between organized labor and management in the U.S. in the postwar era. Organized labor unions, frequently represented by the AFL-CIO (which merged into a single organization in 1955), tended to sign long-term agreements that left decisions regarding capital investment, plant location, and output in management's hands, and they agreed to try to prevent unauthorized "wildcat" strikes. In exchange, employers stopped trying to eliminate existing unions and granted wage increases and fringe benefits such as private pension plans, health insurance, and automatic adjustments to pay to reflect the rises in the cost of living. While this resulted in unionized workers sharing fully in the prosperity of the 1950s, non-unionized workers (who were the majority) did not benefit nearly as much.

Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement

A reform movement espousing the idea that the right to control of one's body included the ability to enjoy an active sexual life without necessarily bearing children. The most prominent activist associated with this movement was one of eleven children, and she challenged laws that had banned contraceptive Information and devices by openly advertising birth control devices in her journal, The Call, and distributing them in her clinic in Brooklyn.

Neolin

A religious prophet who preached pan-Indian identity and led a group of Indians in the Ohio valley to revolt (Pontiac's Rebellion) in 1763; received a vision instructing his people to reject European technology and culture, cut commercial ties with whites and alcohol dependence, clothe themselves in their own traditional clothing, and cooperate among all tribes in order to remove the British from North America and regain their lost independence.

The Ghost Dance

A religious revitalization campaign reminiscent of the pan-Indian movements lead by earlier prophets; leaders foretold a day when whites would disappear, the buffalo would return, and Indians could once again practice their ancestral customs; this movement was attacked and destroyed militarily by the government.

The Southern Manifesto

A response to the Brown v. Board decision, this was a strongly worded document, signed by nearly every southern senator, which denounced the Brown decision as a "clear abuse of judicial power," and called for resistance to "forced integration" by "any lawful means."

Pueblo Revolt (1680)

A revolt in 1680 organized by Popé where Indian tribes of New Mexico united in order to successfully (but temporarily) drive Spanish colonists out of the region; the Indians revolted due to forced labor and Catholicism implemented by the Spanish colonists. Though Spain reconquered the area, they learned their lesson and became more tolerant of religious practices and required less forced labor.

Pontiac's Rebellion (1763)

A revolt in 1763, seen to be led by Neolin, against British rule in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region.

Elvis Presley

A rock-and-roll singer with an openly sexual performance style who became an immensely popular entertainment celebrity during the 1950s.

The Confederate States of America (CSA)

A self-proclaimed nation from 1861-1865 of eleven slave-holding and seceding states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia).

"Yuppie"

A semi-derogatory term, short for "young urban professional," that came into use in the 1980s to refer to young people who earned high incomes working in the financial industry and spent lavishly on designer clothing and other trappings of the good life. The term is a play on "hippie," only it describes a person with roughly the opposite values and lifestyle of the countercultural hippies of the late Sixties.`

The Hays Code

A set of self-regulatory moral guidelines that the film industry adopted in 1930 which prohibited movies from depicting nudity, long kisses, and adultery, and barred scripts that portrayed clergymen in a negative light or criminals sympathetically.

Indentured Servant

A settler who signed on for a temporary period of servitude (usually five to seven years) to a master in exchange for passage to the New World and "freedom dues," which often included some money and/or land (if one survived his/her term of service despite the high death rate). Nearly two thirds of all English settlers in North America arrived as these.

Stono Rebellion (1739)

A slave uprising in 1739 in South Carolina that led to a severe tightening of the slave code and temporary imposition of a prohibitive tax on imported slaves

"Bread and Roses"

A slogan of the labor movement that first emerged in the Lawrence, Massachusetts strike of 1912. The slogan was a metaphor declaring that workers sought not only higher wages but also the opportunity to enjoy the finer things in life.

"Black Power"

A slogan that came to national attention in the late 1960s as it became a rallying cry for those bitter over the federal government's failure to stop violence against civil rights workers, white attempts to determine the movement's strategy, and the civil rights movement's failure to have any impact on the economic problems of black ghettos. A highly imprecise idea, it suggested everything from the election of more black officials to the belief that black Americans were a colonized people whose freedom could be won only through a revolutionary struggle for self-determination. However employed, it reflected the radicalization of young civil rights activists and sparked an explosion of racial self-assertion.

The Beats (Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac)

A small group of poets and writers who rallied against the mainstream, materialistic, middle-class culture of the U.S. in the Fifties. Works like Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl (1955) and Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road (1957) rejected the consumerism and desperate materialism of the suburban middle class and celebrated impulsive action, immediate pleasure (often enhanced by drugs) and sexual experimentation. Despite the Cold War slogans, they insisted, personal and political repression, not freedom, were the hallmarks of American society.

Consumer freedom and mass-consumption

A social and economic ideal that encouraged the purchase of consumer goods as a way to realize freedom. It was during the Progressive Era that the promise of mass consumption became the foundation for this new understanding of freedom as access to the cornucopia of goods made available by modern capitalism. Large, downtown department stores, chain stores in urban neighborhood, and retail mail-order houses for farmers and small-town residents made available to consumers throughout the country the vast array of goods now pouring from the nation's factories. Leisure activities too took on the the characteristics of mass consumptions: amusement parks, dance halls, and theaters attracted large crowds.

Abolition

A social movement prior to the Civil War that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens.

The Cold War

A state of political tension and military rivalry between the US (and its NATO allies) and the Soviet Union (and its Eastern European satellite states) lasting from roughly 1947, the year of the Truman Doctrine until 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. It was partly a battle of ideas (communism vs. capitalism, or liberal democracy), and partly a battle for economic and political dominance. Its name comes from the fact that there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides involved in the conflict, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides.

The Pullman Strike, 1894

A strike by the American Railway Union's 150,000 members, who effectively shut down the nation's rail service when they refused to handle Pullman sleeping cars to protest the reduction of wages at the Pullman company. In response, President Cleveland obtained a federal court injunction ordering strikers back to work, and federal troops and U.S. marshals soon occupied railroad centers like Chicago and Sacramento, which ended the strike.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

A sweeping document approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 that identified a broad range of rights to be enjoyed by people everywhere, including freedom of speech, religious toleration, and protection against arbitrary government as well as social and economic entitlements like the right to an adequate standard of living and access to housing, education, and medical care. The document had no enforcement mechanism, but the core principle that a nation's treatment of its own citizens should be subject to outside evaluation became widely accepted with time. And since WWII, the enjoyment of human rights has increasingly taken its place in definitions of freedom across the globe. Still, debates over the document revealed tensions inherent in the idea of human rights; to what extent do human rights supersede national sovereignty? Who has authority to enforce human rights that a government is violating? And what should the list of human rights contain? In 1992, the U.S. Congress ratified the portion of the DHR pertaining to civil and political rights, but it has never approved the other portion detailing social and economic rights.

Republic

A system of government in which authority rests on the consent of the governed, with no king or hereditary aristocracy.

Convict-lease system

A system of state laws in the South, developed under the Redeemers, that 1) allowed for the arrest of virtually anyone without employment and increased penalties for petty crimes, and 2)rented out the state's convicted criminals (most of them black) to perform involuntary labor to private businesses for the profit of the state. The convict-lease system effectively exploited the loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment and allowed a form of black slavery to continue in the South long after Reconstruction.

"Waving the bloody shirt"

A tactic of Republicans after the Civil War whereby they identified their opponents (Democrats) with secession and treason.

The "New Negro"

A term associated both with the politics of pan-Africanism and the militancy of Marcus Garvey's movement of the 1920, and also associated in art with the Harlem Renaissance artists who rejected established stereotypes and sought for black values to put in their place.

"Vietnam Syndrome"

A term generally used by foreign policy "hawks" to refer to the widespread reluctance on the part of the American public after the Vietnam War to commit U.S. armed forces overseas. Americans in the peace movement criticized this term because it implies that the desire to avoid unnecessary wars is akin to an illness.

The "Silent Majority"

A term popularized by President Richard Nixon in 1969 which referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not join in the counterculture, and who did not participate in public discourse or other reform or protest movements of the Sixties. Nixon, along with many others, saw this group of Middle Americans as being overshadowed in the media by the more vocal minority.

"Family values"

A term referring to the set of values and issues popularized by the Religious Right (opposition to abortion, the ERA, and to gay rights) that were generally adopted by the Republican Party during the Eighties.

The Welfare State

A term that originated in Britain during World War II to refer to a system of income assistance, health coverage, and social services for all citizens. It first began to take shape in the U.S. in 1930s with the creation of the Social Security program, and was later expanded in the 1960s with the addition of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, and reformed again in 2010 by the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). The American version of the welfare state marked a radical departure from government policies prior to the 1930s, but compared with similar programs in Europe, it has always been far more decentralized, involved lower levels of public spending, and covered fewer citizens.

The New Left

A term that referred to a group of progressives in the 1960s who, mostly white and college-educated, rejected the intellectual and political categories that had shaped radicalism and liberalism for most of the twentieth century. Unlike the "Old Left," or the Communist Party, this younger group of progressives did not take the USSR as a model or see the working class as the main agent of social change. Instead of equality and social citizenship--the language of New Deal liberals--this group spoke of loneliness, isolation, and alienation, of powerlessness in the face of bureaucratic institutions and a hunger for authenticity that affluence could not provide. They were inspired by the black freedom movement and called for a democracy of civic participation.

Flappers

A term that refers to the mostly young and urban women during the 1920s who challenged the gender norms of society by wearing bobbed hair and short skirts, by drinking and smoking in public, and by using birth control unapologetically. These women frequented sexually charged Hollywood films, dance halls, and music clubs where white people now performed "wild" dances like the Charleston that had long been popular in black communities. However, this form of personal freedom was largely a function of lifestyle and consumer choices resulting from the advertising and mass entertainment of the Twenties, and it had little connection to political or economic radicalism of feminists during the Progressive Era.

Prohibition

A term that refers to the nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale (but not consumption!) of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933 in the U.S.. During the 19th century, alcoholism, family violence, and saloon-based political corruption prompted activists, led by Protestant reformers, to end the alcoholic beverage trade to cure the ills of society. Prohibition become a hotly debated issue. Supporters, who were called "drys," presented it as a victory of public morals and health. But opponents, who were called "wets," presented it as a violation of individual liberty that led to large profits for the owners of illegal "speakeasies" (an illegal liquor store or nightclub) and the "bootleggers" (smugglers of illegal alcoholic beverages) who supplied them. Prohibition produced widespread corruption as police and public officials accepted bribes to turn a blind eye to violations of the law. Prohibition raised major questions of local rights, individual freedom, and the wisdom of attempting to impose religious and moral values on the entire society through legislation.

"Modernists"

A term used in the 1920s to describe the growing members of Protestant faiths who sought to integrate science (including the theory of evolution) and religion and adapt Christianity of the new secular culture. They were often in tension with "fundamentalists."

"Fundamentalists"

A term used in the 1920s to describe those who believed that the literal truth of the Bible formed the basis of Christian belief. They often felt threatened by the decline of traditional values and the increased visibility of Catholicism and Judaism because of immigration, and they launched a campaign to rid Protestant denominations of modernism and to combat the new individual freedoms that seemed to contradict traditional morality.

The "Gilded Age"

A title of a Mark Twain novel from the 1870s, this derogatory term has been adopted by historians as a name for the last few decades of the 19th century. As opposed to a "golden age", "Gilded" means covered with a layer of gold. The name suggests that beneath the impressive economic growth and innovation of the Second Industrial Revolution, there is also corruption and oppressive treatment of those left behind in the scramble for wealth.

The Judeo-Christian tradition

A tradition invented in the 1950s that sought to overlook the long history of hostility among religious denominations and instead to emphasize that Catholics, Protestants, and Jews shared the same history and values and had all contributed to the evolution of American society. This notion became central to the cultural and political dialogue of the 1950s in part because it helped to differentiate the American way of life (with the free exercise of religion) from life under communism. It also reflected the decline in anti-semitism and anti-Catholicism in the U.S. in the wake of WWII.

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 1848

A treaty signed between Mexico and the U.S. in 1848 that ended the Mexican-American war, confirmed the annexation of Texas, and ceded California, present-day New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah to the U.S. in exchange for $15 million.

Treaty of Greenville

A treaty signed in 1795 as a direct result of the Battle of Fallen Timbers; in this treaty, twelve Indian tribes ceded most of Ohio and Indiana to the federal government, and the system of annuity was established. The "Annuity" system was a system of yearly grants of federal money to Indian tribes that institutionalized continuing government influence in tribal affairs and gave outsiders considerable control over Indian life.

"Virtual Representation"

A widely accepted theory which held that each member of Parliament represented the entire empire, not just his own district. During the era of the American Revolution, many colonists began to reject this theory and demand "actual representation," by which they meant electing colonists of their own choosing to go to Parliament to represent the colonists.

Ida B. Wells

African American journalist and the nation's leading anti-lynching activist. She reported on lynchings and documented the fact that the charges against victims of lynching were often untrue.

Contrabands

African Americans who had been enslaved but fled to, or were captured by, the Union Army, which accepted the useful fiction that they were "property" of military value subject to confiscation.

Runaways

Africans who escaped from their enslavement; they were often identified by their distinct African ethnic identities

Women in the Workforce in the Post-War Era

After 1945, women lost most of the industrial jobs they had performed during WWII, and most women who continued to work outside the home were concentrated in low-salary, nonunion jobs, such as clerical, sales, and service labor. Nevertheless, the number of women in the labor force rose throughout the Fifties.

The Iran Hostage Crisis, 1980-81

After Carter allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to seek medical treatment in the United States, Khomeini's followers invaded the American embassy in Tehran, Iran, and seized hostages, fifty-two of whom they kept for over a year. Despite many attempts, Carter was unable to secure the release of the hostages, which made him appear helpless and inept and led to a rapid fall in his popularity.

Augusto Pinochet

After Chili in 1970 elected socialist Salvador Allende as president, the CIA worked with his domestic opponents to destabilize the regime. In 1973, Allende was overthrown and killed in a military coup which installed a bloody dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet. Thousands of Allende backers, including a few Americans then in Chile, were tortured and murdered, and many others fled the country. The Nixon administration knew of the coup plans in advance but failed to warn Allende, and it continued to back Pinochet despite his brutal policies. U.S. support for Pinochet was one of many examples of how U.S. foreign policy was often driven primarily by U.S. economic and strategic interests ("realism") during the Nixon era.

Annexation of Texas

After gaining its independence from Mexico in 1836, this state asked to be annexed to the U.S. But it was too controversial because Northerners feared the addition of a slave state would increase the power of slavery and the South. Nine years later, after James Polk's election in 1844, Congress finally declared it a part of the U.S. in 1845; Confirmed by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.

National Banking System

After the Civil War broke out, both sides were found unprepared as they lacked a national banking system. In the North, Congress established a system of nationally chartered banks, which were required to purchase government bonds and were given the right to issue bank notes as currency. A heavy tax drove money issued by state banks out of existence. Thus, the United States, whose money supply before the war was a chaotic mixture of paper notes issued by state and local banks, now had essentially two kinds of national paper currency--greenback printed directly by the federal government, and notes issued by the new national banks.

Black soldiers and sailors

After the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union army became an agent of emancipation.

The Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945-52

After the defeat of Japan in World War II, the United States led the Allies in the occupation and rehabilitation of the Japanese state. Between 1945 and 1952, the U.S. occupying forces, led by General Douglas A. MacArthur, enacted widespread military, political, economic, and social reforms. Japan adopted a new, democratic constitution which gave women the right to vote and also stated that Japan would renounce forever the policy of war and armed aggression. The U.S. also oversaw the economic reconstruction of Japan, eliminating absentee landlordism so that most tenant farmers became owners of land and rebuilding Japan's industrial base as a bastion of anti-communist strength in Asia.

Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT)

Agreements which froze each country's arsenal of intercontinental missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. An example of the Détente that Nixon forged with the USSR.

Alexander Hamilton's Five-Point Financial Plan (1790-1791): 1) Pay off the old debt, 2) Create new national debt, 3) Create a B.U.S., 4) Whiskey Tax, 5) Protective Tariff

Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, aimed to establish the nation's financial stability, bring to the government's support the country's most powerful financial interests, and encourage economic development, which in the long run, he hoped, would transform the nation into a major commercial and military power. Hamilton's five-point plan plan provoked major divisions between what would soon become the two political parties of first party system (Federalists and Republicans). Federalists supported the plan; it promoted a stronger national government, economic industrialization, an active role for the government in the economy, and it mainly served the interests of upper class northerners. Republican mostly opposed it because they favored strong state governments, an agricultural economy, minimal government economic intervention, and interests of farmers and the South. Republican ended up allowing for the passage of Hamilton's Plan in exchange for relocating the nation's capital to Washington D.C. (which is in the South). 1) Paying off old national debt inherited from the War of Independence (in order to establish the new nation's credit worthiness). This primarily benefitted states that still had not paid off their debt left over from the war as well as the holders of the war bonds (mainly the upper class). 2) Create new national debt by selling new interest-bearing bonds. The revenue raised would pay off the old debt, and the new debt would give men of economic power a stake in promoting the new nation's stability (since they would be more likely to be repaid if the government is strong and secure) 3) Create a Bank of the United States (BUS) to serve as the nation's main financial agent. A private corporation, the BUS would hold public funds, issue bank notes that would serve as currency, and make loans to the government, all while returning a tidy profit for its stockholders. 4) Impose a Whiskey Tax in order to raise revenue. Whiskey producers tended to be farmers on the frontier because it was more profitable to turn their grain into whiskey and transport that to the cities for sale than it was to transport their grain. 5) Impose a protective tariff (on imported manufactured goods) and government subsidies for manufacturing companies. These steps would help to nurture young factories and manufacturing companies in the United States and put the nation on the path of industrialization. 6) Did Not Occur: Hamilton also proposed a national army to deal with uprisings like Shays' Rebellion. This proposal was not enacted.

Totalitarianism

Along with "freedom," this was the other great mobilizing concept of the Cold War. The term originated in Europe between world wars to describe fascist Italy and Nazi Germany--aggressive, ideologically driven states that sought to subdue all of civil society, including churches, unions, and other voluntary associations, to their control. By 1950 it became the shorthand term to describe anyone on the other side of the Cold War, and its widespread use reinforced the view that the greatest danger to freedom lay in an overly powerful government.

Seven Years War (1754-1763)

Also known as the French and Indian War, it was the last (1754-1763) of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of the Mississippi River. Britain won, becoming a major imperial superpower and taking over French land claims in North America. British debt resulting from war caused Britain to increase taxes on the colonies which would eventually lead to the American Revolution.

The Holocaust

Also referred to as the "Final Solution" by the Nazis, or as "Shoah" in Hebrew, this was the mass extermination of what the Nazis called "undesirable" peoples--Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals, and, above all, Jews. By 1945, 6 million Jewish men, women, and children had been murdered in Nazi death camps, the horrifying culmination of the Nazi belief that Germans constituted a "master race" destined to rule the world.

Annexation of Hawaii, 1898

Although independent, Hawaii already had close economic ties with the U.S. in the late 19th century, and its economy was dominated by American-owned sugar plantations that employed native islanders and Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino laborers. In 1893, a group of American planters organized a rebellion that overthrew the Hawaii government of Queen Liliuokalani, and in 1898, the U.S. annexed the Hawaiian island, reflecting its growing empire during the Age of Imperialism.

President Dwight Eisenhower ("Ike")

American Army general who served as the President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He emerged from WWII as the military leader with the greatest political appeal. His main goals in office were to contain the expansion of the Soviet Union and reduce federal deficits. His administration provided major aid to help the French fight off Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War. After the French left he gave strong financial support to the new state of South Vietnam. He supported local military coups against hostile governments in Iran and Guatemala. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, he condemned the Israeli, British and French invasion of Egypt, and forced them to withdraw. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, he authorized the establishment of NASA, which led to the space race. On the domestic front, he was a moderate conservative (a "Modern Republican") who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He was reluctant to support civil rights but sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders that integrated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. His largest program was the Interstate Highway System. His two terms saw widespread economic prosperity. In his farewell address to the nation, He expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers which created a "military-industrial complex." Since the late 20th century, consensus among Western scholars has consistently held him as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

Navajo Code-Talkers

American Indians who transmitted messages for the U.S. army in their native language during World War Two so that the Japanese military could not decipher them, if intercepted.

Consumerism and Consumer Culture

American culture in the Fifties was characterized by mass consumption of consumer goods: TVs, cars, appliances, and a thousand other household goods. The Fifties represented the culmination of a long-term trend in which consumerism replaced economic independence and democratic participation as central definitions of American freedom. More Americans were going into debt in order to pay for new consumer goods.

"Open door" policy with China

American territorial possessions in the Pacific (Guam, Philippines, Hawaii) during the Age of Imperialism had more to do with trade than with large-scale American settlement. In 1899, shortly after the Spanish American War, the U.S. demanded, in this policy, that European powers that had recently divided China into commercial spheres of influence grant equal access to American exports.

Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Speech, 1895 (the "Atlanta Compromise")

An 1895 speech in which Booker T. Washington repudiated the abolitionist tradition that stressed ceaseless agitation for full equality, urging blacks not to try to combat segregation. He advocated industrial education and economic self-help to gain practical skills and vocational training in order to acquire some power in the economy. He said, "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

Anthony Johnson

An African who arrived in the Virginia colony as an indentured servant in the mid-1600s, became free, and eventually owned land and slaves himself. Johnson illustrates how race was still a fluid social construct in the 17th century, and one's race had not yet come to determine whether one would be free or enslaved.

Ella Baker

An African-American civil rights activist, who often worked behind-the-scenes, alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the 20th century, and as a mentor to many emerging activists. She criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership; she promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the oppressed to understand their worlds and advocate for themselves.

Christopher Columbus

An Italian born navigator who found fame when he--sailing for Spain-- landed in the Americas in 1492 with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. He had sailed in search of a western water route to Asia, and he was convinced that he was successful and that what he had found was an extension of China.

Freedmen's Bureau

An agency established by Congress in March 1865 to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and blacks, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courts.

Iroquois League (Great League of Peace)

An alliance created in the 15th century between five Indian tribes in modern day Pennsylvania and New York. This alliance created relative peace within the region and was the first form of central authority between Indian tribes.

Miami Confederation

An alliance of Indian tribes in the Ohio Valley that waged open warfare, under the leadership of Little Turtle, on American forces in the 1790s.

Isolationism

An approach to foreign policy in which a country tries to stay out of affairs of other nations, this became widely popular among Americans during the 1930s in part because of the Great Depression, and in part because many believed the U.S. involvement in WWI had been a mistake. This position was championed in the late 1930s by the America First Committee, which had very-well known leaders and hundreds of thousands of members.

Pequot War (1637)

An armed conflict in 1637 that led to the destruction of one of New England's most powerful Indian groups.

The Walking Purchase (1737)

An arrangement in 1737 in which the Lenni Lenape Indians agreed to cede to Pennsylvanian colonists a tract of land bounded by the distance a man could walk in thirty-six hours; a team of swift runners who were hired to mark out the area far exceeded the amount that the Indians had anticipated.

Mountain Meadows Massacre, 1857

An attack by a group of Mormons on a wagon train of non-Morman settlers, killing over 100 adults and older children. The event came out of a period of tension between the federal government and the Mormans, who had been led by Brigham Young to the Great Salt Lake Valley of Utah in the 1840s, and whose practice of polygamy and close connection between church and state, put them at odds with the political and cultural practices of the United States.

Thurgood Marshall

An attorney for the NAACP who, for a quarter century, pressed legal challenges to the "separate but equal" doctrine (originally laid down by the Court in the Plessy decision of 1896), ultimately winning his greatest victory against educational segregation in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. He later went on to serve as the first African American justice on the Supreme Court (1967-1991).

John Smith

An early leader in Jamestown with a military background that lead him to run the colony harshly; started a forced labor regime and said "He that will not work shall not eat."

Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, 1962

An economist during the post-war period who identified the free market as necessary to the foundation of individual liberty. This was not an uncommon idea during the Cold War, but he pushed it to extreme conclusions. He called for turning over nearly all government functions to the private sector and for repeal of minimum wage laws, the graduated income tax, and the Social Security system.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804-1806

An expedition to explore the new territory acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. It sought to discover how the region could be exploited economically, establish trading relations with western Indians, and locate a water route to the Pacific Ocean.

Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) and the "Sharon Statement"

An ideologically conservative youth activism organization that flourished during the 1960s in order to advocate for public policies consistent with their manifesto, which was adopted by young conservatives at a meeting at the home of the conservative intellectual William F. Buckley in Sharon, Connecticut, in 1962. Their manifesto summarized the beliefs that had circulated among conservatives during the past decade--the free market underpinned "personal freedom," government must be strictly limited, and "international communism," the gravest threat to liberty, must be destroyed.

Ethnic Nationalism

An ideology that defines the U.S. nation as a community based on a shared ethnic heritage, language, and culture.

Civic Nationalism

An ideology that envisions the U.S. nation as a community open to all those devoted to its political institutions and social values.

"Lost Cause" ideology

An ideology that romanticized slavery, the Old South, and the Confederate experience.

The Religious Right

An important element of the Reagan Coalition and the Conservative Resurgence, the Religious Right refers to politically-active conservative Christians who were concerned about what they viewed in the Sixties and Seventies as the moral decay of American culture (secularism, pornography, gay rights, abortion) and the undermining of the traditional family (feminism, divorce) and who called for the reassertion of more traditional religious values.

Neoconservatives

An important element of the Reagan Coalition and the Conservative Resurgence, this was a group (sometimes called "Neocons") of intellectuals who charged that the 1960s had produced a decline in moral standards and respect for authority. Once supporters of liberalism, they had come to believe that even well-intentioned government social programs did more harm than good. They also rejected Nixon's Détente and Carter's focus on human rights and called instead for a more aggressive posture and realist foreign policy in the Cold War.

My Lai Massacre, 1968

An incident in which a company of American troops killed some 350 South Vietnamese civilians in 1968. The Army initially covered it up, but the story eventually got out in 1969, fueling increasing skepticism of both the Vietnam War as well as the honesty of the government's depiction of the war.

The Gentleman's Agreement of 1907

An informal agreement between President Teddy Roosevelt and the government of Japan whereby the United States of America would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigration, and Japan would not allow further emigration to the U.S.. The goal was to reduce tensions that had arisen between the two countries over the treatment of Asian Americans in West Coast cities like San Francisco. This agreement was an example of how non-whites confronted ever-present boundaries of exclusion during the era when "Americanization" and the "melting pot," no matter how coercive, allowed immigrants from Europe and their children to eventually adjust to the conditions of American life, embrace American ideals, and become productive citizens enjoying the full blessings of American freedom.

"Misery index"

An informal term referring to the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates. Typically under 10, by the end of the 1970s, the "misery index" was hovering near 20.

The United Nations

An international governing body that would succeed the League of Nations that was developed by the Allies near the end of WWII. There would be a General Assembly-- essentially a forum for discussion where each member enjoyed an equal voice-- and a Security Council responsible for maintaining world peace. Along with ten rotating members, the Security Council would have five permanent ones--Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

Ladies Association of Philadelphia

An organization that raised funds to assist American soldiers, showing how the Revolution propelled women into new forms of political activism.

Gabriel's Rebellion, 1800

An unsuccessful plot to launch a slave uprising in Virginia that was organized by an enslaved Richmond blacksmith and his brothers, in which the slaves involved hoped to gain their freedom.

Uprising of 1622

An uprising by the Powhatan Confederacy against the Virginia colony led by Powhatan's brother, Opechancanough, that wiped out a quarter of the settler population; the remaining settlers responded by massacring scores of Indians and devastating their villages.

Republican Motherhood

And idea that developed during the Revolution that women have a patriotic duty to raise children to be proper citizens of a republic. While it reinforced traditional gender roles, it also opened up educational opportunities for women and increased their value in society.

Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth"

Andrew Carnegie's philosophy that the wealthy had a moral obligation to promote the advancement of society by creating "ladders of opportunity" upon which the aspiring poor could climb. He denounced the "worship of money" and distributed much of his wealthy to various philanthropies, especially to the creation of public libraries.

Truman's Federal Employee Loyalty Program, 1947

Announced less than two weeks after the Truman Doctrine, the President established this system in which government employees were required to demonstrate their patriotism without being allowed to confront accusers or, in some cases, knowing the charges against them. The program failed to uncover any cases of espionage, but the federal government dismissed several hundred persons, and thousands resigned rather than submit to investigation.

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

Arguably, the most significant Supreme Court ruling regarding race in the 20th century. It found that segregation in public education violated the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment ("Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal"). It overturned the doctrine of "separate but equal" (established in 1898 Plessy case). It was a very limited ruling that addressed neither segregation in institutions outside of education, nor the de facto segregation of the North, nor did it order immediate implementation. Nevertheless, it did signal the emergence of the Supreme Court as an agent for social change and inspire a wave of optimism that discrimination would soon disappear.

Freedom Petitions

Arguments for liberty presented to New England's courts and legislatures in the early 1770s by enslaved African-Americans.

Maternalist Reform

Arising from the conviction that the state had an obligation to protect women and children, female reformers during the Progressive Era called for government action to improve the living standards of poor mothers and children by enacting policies such as mothers' pensions (state aid to mothers of young children who lacked male support.) and laws limiting the hours of labor of female workers.

The Truman Doctrine

Articulated by President Truman in 1947, this committed the U.S. to the policy of containing communism for the duration of the Cold War. Rhetorically, it divided the world into two sides--"free" and "unfree"--and committed the U.S. to supporting "freedom loving people" wherever communism threatened them. The immediate occasion for the policy was a speech to Congress in which Truman requested U.S. aid to two strategically important allies--Greece and Turkey--threatened by internal opposition (neither of which were democratic).

"Cash and Carry," 1940

As Hitler's army conquered more and more of Europe, and as the situation for Great Britain became dire, Congress finally agreed in 1940 to amend the Neutrality Acts by allowing the sale of arms to Britain but only if Britain paid in cash and transported the arms back to Britain in British ships. Still reflecting strong isolationist sentiments, this policy was a baby-step toward intervention in the war in Europe.

Emmett Till

As a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who, while on a trip to visit relatives in Mississippi in 1955, was lynched after offending a white woman in a grocery store (he allegedly said "by baby" to the young, white, female proprietor of the story). The brutality of his murder (beat, mutilated, shot in the head, and then sunk in a river), and fact that his body was found and transported back to Chicago for a public, open-casket funeral, and the fact that his killers were acquitted in court (and soon afterwards publicly confessed in a magazine article) drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Conservation Movement

As opposed to preservationism, the philosophy of keeping natural areas "wild" and off limits to development, this movement proposes "wise use" of natural resources at a sustainable rate, and it is applied by the National Forest System. Both these movements took off during the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, who relying on advice from Gifford Pinchot, the first Head of the U.S. Forests Service, ordered millions of acres of land to be set aside as wildlife preserves and encouraged Congress to create new national parks and forests.

House of Burgesses (1618)

As the first elected assembly in colonial America, it was established in 1618 by the Virginia Company and first convened in 1619; only landowners had voting rights and the company retained the right to nullify any measure adopted.

The Anti-German Crusade

As the largest population descending from America's wartime enemy, German-Americans bore the brunt of forced Americanization during WWI. States and patriotic organizations enacted made many efforts to restrict German music, German culture, and the use of the German language. Even popular words of German origin went out of favor ("hamburger"="liberty sandwich").

The Subjugation of the Plains Indians

As white settlers flooded onto the Great Plains in the Gilded Age, they came into conflict with the native populations. A series of dramatic battles and massacres occurred (including the Sand Creek Massacre in 1964, the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, and the Nez Perce War in 1877), often between Native peoples trying to continue their traditional ways of life and U.S. soldiers with orders to remove them onto reservation lands.

President Harry Truman

Assuming office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the waning months of World War II, he served as President of the U.S. from 1945-1953. He is known for launching the Marshall Plan, for leading the Cold War against Soviet and Chinese communism by establishing the policy of containment and NATO, and for intervening in the Korean War. In domestic affairs, he was a moderate Democrat whose liberal proposals were a continuation of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but the conservative-dominated Congress blocked most of them. He also used nuclear weapons to end World War II, desegregated the U.S. armed forces, supported a newly independent Israel, and was a founder of the United Nations.

James Polk and expansion

Assuming the presidency in 1845 with a clearly defined set of goals: to reduce the tariff, reestablish the independent Treasury system, settle the dispute over ownership of Oregon, and bring California into the Union. During his Presidency, he accomplished all of them. He oversaw the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and the entire Mexican cession during his presidency.

The Berlin Blockade and the Berlin Airlift, 1948-49

At the end of WWII, the four victorious powers (US, France, Britain, and USSR) assumed control of a section of Germany and the capital city of Berlin, located deep in the Soviet zone. When the Soviets cut off road and rail traffic to Berlin from the American, British and French zones of occupied Germany in 1948, the Western allies launched an 11-month airlift in which their planes carried fuel and food to their zones in Berlin. Stalin ultimately lifted the blocked, granting the West a major victory. Soon, two nations emerged, East and West Germany, each side allied with a side in the Cold War. Berlin itself remained divided.

Embargo Act, 1807

Attempt to exert economic pressure by prohibiting all exports from the United States, instead of waging war in reaction to continued British impressment of American sailors; smugglers easily circumvented the embargo, and it was repealed two years later.

Mary Rowlandson

Author whose famous book, "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God," tells the story of her captivity by Indians and her unwavering determination to return to Christian society as a way to discourage settlers from joining indigenous communities

Jackie Robinson

Baseball player who, by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, challenged the long-standing exclusion of black players in major league baseball. His dignity in the face of constant verbal abuse won him nationwide respect, and his baseball prowess earned him the Rookie of the Year award. His success opened the door to the integration of baseball and led to the demise of the Negro Leagues, to which black players had previously been confined.

The Watts Riot of 1965 and other Ghetto Uprisings

Battles between tens of thousands of residents of this black area of Los Angeles that involved attacking (predominantly white) police and firemen, looting white-owned businesses, and burning buildings. It required 15,000 police and National Guardsmen to restore order, by which time thirty-five people lay dead, 900 were injured, and $30 million worth of property had been destroyed. Similar urban rebellions spread to other major cities, including Newark and Detroit. The uprisings drew attention to the national scope of racial injustice and to the inequalities in jobs, education, and housing that the dismantling of legal segregation left intact.

Emancipation Proclamation

Because its legality derived from the president's authority as military commander-in-chief to combat the South's rebellion, when President Lincoln issued this order on January 1st, 1863, it exempted areas firmly under Union Control (where the war, in effect, had already ended), nor did it apply to the loyal border slave states that had never seceded nor to areas of the Confederacy occupied by union soldiers. However, it did declare that the vast majority of slaves "henceforth shall be free," which in effect transformed the Civil War from a war to save the Union into a war to end slavery.

State level Progressives

Because of the decentralized nature of American government, state and local governments enacted most of the Progressive Era's reforms measures. In cities, Progressives worked to reform the structure of government to reduce the power of political bosses, establish public control over "natural monopolies" like gas and water works, and improve public transportation. They raised property taxes in order to spend more money on schools, parks, and other facilities. Important progressive reformers working at the state and local levels included Hazen Pingree, Samuel "Golden Rule" Jones, Hiram Johnson, and Robert LaFollette.

King Phillip's War (1675)

Began in 1675 with an Indian uprising against white colonists in Southern New England. A multi-year conflict, the end result was broadened freedoms for white New Englanders and the dispossession of the region's Indians.

The Woman Suffrage Movement

Beginning in 1848, at the Seneca Falls Convention, and completing its mission in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment, this movement aimed to give women the right to vote. Mostly a movement of white elites in the 1890s, after 1900 it engaged a broad coalition and became a mass movement for the first time.

Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers (UFW) Union

Beginning in 1965, this son of Mexican-American migrant farm workers, along with Dolores Huerta, lead migrant farm workers in a series of nonviolent protests in California's Central Valley, including marches, fasts, and a nation boycott of California grapes, to pressure the owners to agree to labor contracts with their union. This union was as much a mass movement for the civil rights of Latinos as a campaign for economic betterment. The grape boycott mobilized Latino communities throughout the Southwest and drew national attention to the pitifully low wages and oppressive working conditions of migrant laborers. In 1970, the major growers agreed to contracts with the union.

Panic of 1837

Beginning of a major economic depression lasting about six years; touched off by a British financial crisis and made worse by falling cotton prices, credit and currency problems, and speculation in land, canals, and railroads.

The Anti-War Movement

Beginning with demonstrations in 1964 against the escalating role of the U.S. military in the Vietnam War, this movement grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years. Many in the movement within the U.S. were students, mothers, or anti-establishment hippies. Opposition grew with participation by the African-American civil rights, women's liberation, and Chicano movements, and sectors of organized labor. Additional involvement came from many other groups, including educators, clergy, academics, journalists, lawyers, physicians, and military veterans. Their actions consisted mainly of peaceful, nonviolent events; few events were deliberately provocative and violent. In some cases, police used violent tactics against peaceful demonstrators. By 1967, according to Gallup Polls, an increasing majority of Americans considered US military involvement in Vietnam to be a mistake.

The Desegregation of the Armed Forces

Begun by President Truman's executive order in 1948, the armed services became the first large institution in American life to promote racial integration actively and to attempt to root out long-standing racist practices. The Korean War would be the first American conflict fought by an integrated army since the War of Independence.

Mid-19th Century Immigration

Between 1840 and 1860, over 4 million people entered the United States; the majority were from Ireland and Germany and immigrated to the Northern states where job opportunities were abundant.

The "new immigration"

Between 1870 and 1920, almost 25 million immigrants arrived from overseas. Increasingly, immigrants arrived not from Ireland, England, Germany, or Scandinavia (the traditional sources of immigration), but instead from southern and eastern Europe, especially from Italy and the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, and many were Catholic or Jewish. They were widely described by native-born Americans as members of distinct "races" whose "lower level of civilization" posed a threat to the dominance of WASPS (white, anglo-saxon, protestants) in the U.S. Limited economic opportunity and political turmoil were often among the numerous "push factors" causing immigrants to leave their homeland, and expectations of greater economic opportunity (often jobs in new industrial factories or on farms in newly opened western lands) as well as social, cultural, and political freedoms were likewise common among the "pull factors" attracting migrants to the U.S..

Black Disenfranchisement

Between 1890 and 1906, every southern state enacted laws or constitutional provisions designed to eliminate the black vote: poll taxes, literacy tests, "understanding clauses," and "grandfather clauses."

A. Philip Randolph

Black labor leader, who, in 1941, angered by the almost complete exclusion of African Americans from jobs in the rapidly expanding war industries, called for a March on Washington. His demands included access to defense employment, an end to segregation, and a national anti-lynching law. The prospect of a March on Washington during the middle of WWII persuaded FDR to issue Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in defense jobs and established a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to monitor compliance.

Abraham Lincoln

Born in Kentucky, served as a Whig in the Illinois state legislature and later in Congress (1847-49); this politician re-entered politics after the Kansas-Nebraska Act; Despite later being known as the Great Emancipator, he held the Free Labor/Soil ideology and became a Republican; in 1858, he accepted his party's Illinois Senate nomination and carved a name for himself as he battled against Stephen Douglas, ultimately losing in '58; in 1860, he went on to win both the electoral and the popular vote to become the 14th U.S. president; he dedicated his presidency to keeping the Union intact and eventually winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery

W. E. B. Du Bois

Born in Massachusetts in 1863, this prominent black scholar and activist was the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, authored The Souls of Black Folk (1903)--which challenged the accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington and called for equal social and political rights--and founded the Niagara Movement and the NAACP. He believe that educated African Americans like himself--the "talented tenth" of the black community--must use their education and training to challenge racial inequality. Typical of other Progressives of the era, he believed investigation, exposure, education, and agitation would lead to solutions for social programs.

The Stamp Act of 1765 and the colonists' reaction to it

British Parliament required that revenue stamps be affixed to all colonial printed matter, documents, and playing cards. This was the first direct tax on the internal economic activity within the colonies, and it managed to offend a broad range of colonists. It provoked a large backlash among the colonists, and the act was repealed the following year.

Collective bargaining

By using strength in numbers, this is the process whereby group of employees organizes together as a union in order to negotiate with their employer. Unions generally aimed to secure higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions through these negotiations with their employer.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Civil Rights organization started in 1909 (growing out of the Niagara Movement) and founded by W. E. B. Du Bois. It was a bi-racial organization aimed at advancing justice for African Americans. In contrast to Booker T Washington's gradualism and economic focus, this organization primarily adopted a legal strategy of challenging Jim Crow laws in court with the goal of securing equal political and social rights for African Americans as soon as possible.

Boston Massacre

Clash between British soldiers on March 5th, 1770 where 5 Americans were killed (including Crispus Attucks - the first casualty of the war for Independence); Paul Revere's famous propagandistic engraving depicted the event as armed British soldiers firing into an unarmed and peaceful group of civilians which increased anger and a revolutionary zeal throughout the colonies.

The Federalist (aka The Federalist Papers)

Collection of eighty-five essays that appeared in the New York press in 1787-1788 in support of the Constitution; written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay and published under the pseudonym "Publius."

Loyalists

Colonists who remained loyal to Great Britain during the War of Independence.

Compromise of 1850

Complex compromise devised by Senator Henry Clay that: Admitted California as a free state Included a stronger fugitive slave law Applied popular sovereignty in the new territories of New Mexico and Utah Abolished the slave trade (not slavery) in D.C

Teller Amendment (1898)

Congress adopted and then added this amendment to the Declaration of War on Spain in 1898. It promised that the U.S. had no intention of annexing or dominating Cuba after winning the Spanish-American War. It was intended to underscore America's humanitarian motives for intervening on the side of Cuba (but it was later contradicted by the Platt Amendment).

Wade-Davis Bill

Congressional bill proposed by Republicans in response to Southern Secession; Congress's authority to admit states into the Union Required a majority of white male southerners (not 10%) to pledge support for the Union before Reconstruction could begin in any state The new state constitutions would have to abolish slavery (ratify the 13th amendment that said slavery is not allowed) and disfranchise (take away the power to vote) Confederate civil and military leaders Guaranteed blacks equality before the law, but did not guarantee black voting rights or land redistribution Lincoln pocket-vetoed this bill, so it never became a law.

Redeemers

Conservative white Democrats, many of them planters or businessmen, who reclaimed control of the South following the end of Reconstruction.

Helsinki Accords

Continuing Nixon's Détente, these were talks held in 1975 between the United States and Soviet Union in which both countries agreed to recognize the permanence of Europe's post-WWII boundaries and to respect the basic liberties of their citizens. Over time, they inspired movements for greater freedom within the communist countries of eastern Europe. These accords were the major accomplishment of the Gerald Ford's presidency.

Father Junipero Serra (1769)

Controversial figure in California's early history; founded the first mission in 1769; converted thousands of Indians to Christianity, taught them Spanish, and transformed their economies into settled agriculture; however, forced labor and disease took a heavy toll on the Indians in his missions.

Mexican American War, 1846-48

Controversial war with Mexico for control of California and New Mexico, 1846-1848. The first American War to be fought primarily on foreign soil and the first in which American troops occupied a foreign capital.

Civil Service Act, 1883

Created a merit-based system for federal employees, with appointment via competitive examinations rather than political influence. It replaced the "spoils system" that Andrew Jackson began in the 1830s. This is one of the positive developments in politics during the Gilded Age.

The Fair Employment Practices Commision (FEPC)

Created during WWII by FDR in response to A. Philip Randolph's threatened March on Washington, this commission was designed to monitor compliance with the ban on discrimination in defense jobs. Essentially an investigative agency, it lacked enforcement powers. But its very existence marked a significant shift in public policy. Its hearings exposed patterns of ingrained racial exclusion. The first federal agency since Reconstruction to campaign for equal opportunity for black Americans, this agency played an important role in obtaining jobs for black workers in industrial plants and shipyards.

The Office of War Information

Created in 1942 to mobilize public opinion in favor of the war effort, this agency used radio, film, the press, and other media to give the conflict an ideological meaning (freedom), while seeking to avoid the nationalist hysteria of World War I.

"Three sisters" (corn, beans, and squash)

Crops that formed the basis of agriculture in the Western Hemisphere about 9000 years ago. These crops provided the Indians of the Western Hemisphere with food and began their agricultural knowledge.

Missouri Compromise of 1820

Deal proposed by Kentucky senator Henry Clay in 1820 to resolve the slave/free imbalance in Congress that would result from Missouri's admission as a slave state; Maine's admission as a free state offset Missouri, and slavery was prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory north of the southern border of Missouri (36' 30'' line).

The Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debates

Debates between Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon (then Eisenhower's Vice President) about the merits of communism and capitalism and the meaning of freedom that occurred at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1958, during the brief "thaw" in the Cold War. During the debates, Nixon emphasized the version of American freedom centered on economic abundance and consumer choice within the context of a traditional family.

Thirteenth Amendment

Declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, this Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified during the period of Presidential Reconstruction by the states on December 6, 1865.

Virtue

Defined in the eighteenth century not simply as a personal moral quality but as the willingness to subordinate self-interest to the pursuit of the public good. To possess this quality required economic independence and the ability to act independently and not be manipulated by others.

President John F. Kennedy ("JFK")

Democratic President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. His time in office was marked by high tensions in the Cold War. He increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam and authorized a failed joint-CIA attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In October 1962, U.S. spy planes discovered that Soviet missile bases had been deployed in Cuba; the resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly resulted in the breakout of a global thermonuclear conflict. Domestically, he presided over the establishment of the Peace Corps and supported the Civil Rights Movement, but he was largely unsuccessful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald. After his death, many of his proposals were enacted, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

President Lyndon B. Johnson ("LBJ")

Democratic President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, known for his domineering personality and his aggressive coercion of powerful politicians to advance legislation. In domestic policy, he designed the "Great Society" legislation by expanding civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his "War on Poverty." His presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism after the New Deal era. In foreign policy, he escalated America's involvement in the Vietnam War. While he enjoyed widespread approval after his 1964 election victory over Barry Goldwater, his support declined as the public became upset with both the Vietnam War and the growing violence at home. In 1968, the Democratic Party factionalized as anti-war elements denounced him; he ended his bid for renomination after a disappointing finish in the New Hampshire primary. Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him.

Carpetbaggers

Derisive term used by Southern whites for northern emigrants who participated in the Republican governments of the Reconstruction South.

Scalawags

Derisive terms used by Southern whites for other southern white Republicans who supported Reconstruction governments.

The Platt Amendment, 1901

Despite having passed the Teller Amendment at the beginning of the Spanish American War (which said the U.S. had no intention of annexing or dominating the island), in 1901, President McKinley forced Cuba's new government to insert this amendment in the Cuban constitution, which authorize the U.S. to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever it saw fit and gave the U.S. permanent naval stations in Cuba, including what is now Guantanamo Bay. This amendment illustrates how the U.S. was becoming an empire during the Age of Imperialism.

The expansion of religious tolerance during the Era of the American Revolution (Jefferson's "wall of separation")

Diests such as Thomas Jefferson called for a "wall of separation" between church and state so that politics and the exercise of intellect could be free from religious control. Additionally, France's support for the colonists led to a decrease in anti-Catholicism. Most states disestablished their churches, and the establishment clause of the First Amendment enshrined religious freedom in the Constitution.

The Committee on Public Information (CPI)

Directed by George Creel, this was a government agency created in 1917 to influence public opinion in regards to World War One. Enlisting academics, journalists, artists, and advertising men, this agency dispatched "Four-Minute Men" to give pro-war speeches to audiences in schools, theaters, and other public venues, and it flooded the country with pro-war propaganda using every available medium from pamphlets, posters, newspaper ads, and motion pictures.

The Declaration of Independence

Document adopted on July 4, 1776, that made the break with Britain official; drafted by a committee of the Second Continental Congress, including principal writer Thomas Jefferson. The document listed colonial grievances after first stating fundamental, "self-evident" truths: "all men are created equal and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Albany Plan of Union (1754)

Drafted in 1754 by Ben Franklin at the beginning of the Seven Year's War; envisioned the creation of a Grand Council composed of delegates from each colony, with the power to levy taxes and deal with Indian relations and the common defence; The plan was rejected by colonial assemblies and never sent to London for approval.

Dred Scott Decision (1857) (Dred Scott v. Sandford)

Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri who, for a period of several years, accompanied his owner into Illinois (where slavery was illegal). When he returned to Missouri, he sued his owner for his freedom because he thought residence in a free state (Illinois) should make him free. In the infamous Dred Scott Decision of 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that 1) no black people could be citizens of the U.S., 2) Dred Scott's residence in Illinois had not made him free, and 3) perhaps most shockingly, Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. This third part seemed to imply that the Missouri Compromise Line had been unconstitutional and that the Republican Party's free-labor ideology would be obsolete.

Firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo

Dropping many tons of incendiary bombs designed to start small fires that grow and converge into giant firestorms, the U.S. and its allies carried out deadly air assaults on these two cities' civilian populations, killing about 100,000 people in each case. These events reflect the way that the fighting during WWII was targeted against civilian populations to a larger degree than any other war in history. Of the 50 million people that died in WWII, about 20 million were civilians.

The Good Neighbor Policy

During FDR's administration, this was the name given to U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America. A repudiation of the (Teddy) Roosevelt Corollary from earlier in the century, FDR's policy was premised on the principle of nonintervention and noninterference in Latin America. It had mixed results. The U.S. withdrew its troops from Haiti and Nicaragua, and accepted Cuba's repeal of the Platt Amendment, but it nevertheless dealt comfortably with undemocratic governments in Latin America that were friendly to U.S. business interests.

Reagan and the Cold War

During his first term, Reagan breathed new life into the rhetorical division of the world into a "free" West and an "unfree" East. After a decade of détente, Reagan resumed vigorous denunciation of the USSR, calling it the "evil empire" and sponsoring the largest military buildup in U.S. history. To try to end the "Vietnam syndrome," he sent troops to Grenada to overthrow a pro-Cuban government. Reagan also reversed Carter's emphasis on human rights in foreign policy by stepping up U.S. support for Third World anti-communist dictatorships like Chile and South Africa and pouring in funds to combat the insurgencies against the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, whose armies and associated death squads committed flagrant abuses against their own citizens.

The New Deal Coalition

During the 1930s, FDR assembled this broad group of constituencies to support the Democratic Party. It included groups like farmers, industrial workers, the reform-minded urban middle class, liberal intellectuals, northern African-Americans, and, somewhat incongruously, the white supremacist South, united by the belief that the federal government must provide Americans with protection against the dislocations caused by modern capitalism. This coalition held together, for the most part, and enabled the Democratic Party to dominate U.S. politics until the late 1960s.

Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa

During the Early National Period, these were two Shawnee brothers who called for the revival of traditional Indian culture, a revival of the pan-Indian alliance, and resistance to federal policies.

Car Culture

During the Fifties, cars transformed the lifestyles of most Americans (travel habits, commuting to jobs, fast food, etc) and altered the American landscape (suburbs, motels, shopping malls, drive-ins, etc.). By 1960, 80 percent of American families owned at least one car. Cars now seemed essential to freedom's benefits and they symbolized the identification of freedom with individual mobility and private choice.

"new immigrants"

During the Gilded age and the Progressive Era, this term referred to immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who were described by native-born Americans as belonging to distinct and inferior races.

The "working woman"

During the Progressive Era, more and more women were working for wages. For native-born white women, the kinds of jobs available expanded enormously. Despite continued wage discrimination and exclusion from many jobs, the working woman--immigrant and native, working class and professional--became a symbol of female emancipation

Reforms to the democratic process: primary election, initiative, referendum, recall

During the Progressive Era, several states, including California under Hiram Johnson, adopted the initiative and referendum (the former allowed voters to propose legislation, the latter to vote directly on it) and the recall, by which officials could be removed from office by popular vote. The primary election allowed Parties to select candidates for office in a more democratic fashion.

The New Feminism

During the Progressive Era, the word "feminism" first entered the political vocabulary. It referred to Women's emancipation, or equality, in the social, economic, cultural, and sexual spheres.

The uses of Anticommunism

During the Red Scare, many individuals and organizations used the fear of communism to advance a wide array of agendas that often had little, if anything, to do with stopping communism or protecting the U.S. from subversion: the FBI used it to expand its power; Republicans used it to attack the New Deal; businesses used it to attack government regulation and unions; white supremacists used it to against black civil rights activists; and upholders of traditional sexual morality and gender roles used it to attack feminism and homosexuality.

affirmative action

Efforts to promote greater employment and educational opportunities for minorities and women. Affirmative action programs made many educational and employment opportunities available for many people and contributed to the growth of the black middle class in the 1970s and 80s. But they also led to charges of "reverse discrimination," or claims that, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, minorities were granted special advantages over whites.

Massive Retaliation, or Mutually Assured Destruction ("MAD")

Eisenhower's foreign policy doctrine which declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself. Critics called the doctrine "brinksmanship" because it threatened to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. The reality that all-out war would result in the destruction of both nations involved did succeed in making both great powers cautious in their direct dealings with one another. But it also inspired widespread fear of impending nuclear war.

FDR's Court-Packing Scheme

Emboldened by his reelection in 1936, FDR proposed that the president be allowed to appoint a new Supreme Court justice for each one who remained on the Court past age seventy (an age that six of the nine had already surpassed). Publicly, FDR used the pretense that several members of the Court were too old to perform their functions, but his real aim was to change the balance of power on the Court that, he feared, might invalidate Social Security, the Wagner Act, and other measures of the Second New Deal. The plan aroused cries that the president was an aspiring dictator. Congress rejected it. But FDR accomplished his underlying purpose. The Supreme Court suddenly revealed a new willingness to support economic regulations by both the federal and state government. The Court's willingness to accept the New Deal marked a permanent change in judicial policy; having declared dozens of economic laws unconstitutional in the decades leading up to 1937, the justices have rarely done so since.

"New Conservatism" of the 1950s

Emerging during the Cold War, this intellectual movement warned that the West was suffering moral decay and called for a return to a civilization based on values grounded in the Christian tradition and in timeless notions of good and evil. Although they wanted government expelled from the economy, they trusted government to regulate personal behavior, to restore a Christian morality in American society. With libertarian conservatives representing one strand, this group represented the other major strand of modern American conservatism united together in opposition against communism and the federal government.

Slave Code of 1705

Enacted by the House of Burgesses in Virginia, the code categorized slaves as property that could be bought and sold, fought over in court, and inherited. Nearly a century after the founding of Jamestown in 1607, this code illustrates how slavery evolved gradually in the colonies.

Puritans (1630)

English religious group that sought to purify the Church of England; a sub sect of Protestants that believed the Anglican Church was still too Catholic and not "pure" enough. They founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop in 1630.

Deism

Enlightenment thought applied to religion; emphasized reason, morality, and natural law

The Peace Corps

Established by JFK as a new way to counter communist influence in the world, this innitive sent young Americans abroad to aid in the economic and educational progress of developing countries and to improve the image of the U.S. there.

The debate over the League of Nations

Established by the Treaty of Versailles, this international organization's principal mission was to maintain world peace through collective security, disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration, and each member nation had one one vote in the Assembly. This represented a fundamental philosophical shift in world diplomacy from the previous one hundred years. Wilson envisioned the League of Nations as a kind of global counterpart to the regulatory commissions Progressives had created at home to maintain social harmony and prevent the powerful from exploiting the weak (Thus, he said, WWI would be "the war to end all wars" and the war "to make the world safe for democracy"). However, many Americans feared U.S. membership in the League would commit the U.S. to an open-ended involvement in the affairs of other countries, and that the League threaten to deprive the U.S. of its freedom of action. Wilson refused to compromise with "reservationists" who wanted assurances that the obligation to assist League members would against attack did not supersede the power of Congress to declare war, and so the U.S. never joined the League of Nations.

Jamestown (1607)

Established in 1607, this was the center of the Virginia Colony and the first permanent British colony in North America.

The Reconstruction Acts of 1867

Established temporary military governments in ten Confederate states—excepting Tennessee—and required that the states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and permit freedmen to vote.

16th Amendment (Graduated Income Tax), 1913

Established the federal income tax. A "graduated" tax, or a "progressive" tax, is one in which taxpayers with higher incomes are taxed at higher rates than those with lower incomes.

"Empire of Liberty"

Established through the Northwest Ordinance, this phrase refers to the practice of admitting a territory's population as equal members of the American political system, rather than ruling over the West as a colonial power.

Dissenters

European Protestants who belonged to denominations other than the established church.

19th Amendment (woman suffrage), 1920

Extended the right to vote to women in federal or state elections.

Eleanor Roosevelt

FDRs wife (and distant cousin), she transformed the role of First Lady, turning a position with no formal responsibilities into a base for political action. She traveled widely, spoke out on public issues, wrote a regular newspaper column that sometimes disagreed openly with her husband's policies, and worked to enlarge the scope of the New Deal in areas like civil rights, labor legislation, and work relief.

The New England Economy

Far more diverse than the Southern plantation economy, this regions economy was composed of small farming, merchants, artisans, harvesting lumber, shipbuilding, fishing, and shipping.

Great Awakening

Fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s that was spread throughout the colonies by ministers like New England Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards and English revivalist George Whitefield. This movement encouraged distrust of established churches, defended religious freedom as a natural right governments should not restrict, expanded the circulation of printed material in the colonies, encouraged colonists to trust their own views rather than those of local elites, and generally promoted an independent frame of mind that contributed to the American Revolution later in the century.

Marbury v. Madison (1803)

First U.S. Supreme Court decision to declare a federal law—the Judiciary Act of 1801—unconstitutional. This case established the principle of Judicial Review, or the power of the Supreme Court to declare a law unconstitutional. The power of judicial review is not mentioned in the Constitution, yet it is one of the most important powers of the judicial branch of government.

John Winthrop

First governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Puritan, spoke in 1645 to the legislature about the distinction between "natural liberty" (liberty to do evil) and "moral liberty," and believed that true freedom was "subjection to authority."

Captivity Narratives

First-hand accounts written by settlers who had been captured and held by Indian tribes; New England leaders advocated for the publication of such narratives in order to discourage colonists from being attracted to Indian life.

The Clayton Anti-Trust Act, 1914

Following through on his vision of New Freedom, Wilson enacted this law that exempted labor unions from antitrust laws and barred courts from issuing injunctions curtailing their right to strike.

Destruction of the Buffalo

For the past several hundred years, Indians on the Great Plains had developed a whole cultural, spiritual, and economic way of life that was centered on the enormous buffalo herds that used to graze on the Great Plans. As railroad and wagon trains brought settlers onto the Plains, hunters seeking buffalo hides brought the vast herds to the brink of extinction. The wars of the late 19th century on the Great Plains were often fought by starving Indians.

Free Soil Party

Formed in 1848 to oppose slavery in the territory acquired in the Mexican War; nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848. By 1854 most of the party's members had joined the Republican Party. They were not opposed to the continuation of slavery in the South where it already existed; they simply wanted to prevent any expansion of slavery into the West.

The ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union)

Formed in 1917 by a small group of pacifists, Progressives, and lawyers who were upset by the the repression of dissenters during WWI, this organization aimed to protect "civil liberties," which are rights an individual may assert even against democratic majorities. For the next century, and beyond, this organization would grow and take part in most of the landmark cases that helped to bring about a "rights revolution." Its efforts helped to give meaning to the traditional civil liberties like freedom of speech and invented new ones, like the right to privacy.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Formed in 1949, in the wake of the USSR's first successful atomic bomb test, the U.S., Canada, and ten western European nations established this long-term military alliance pledging to come to the defense of each other in the event of any future Soviet attack. (The Soviets later formalized their own Eastern European alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.)

The War of 1812

Fought with Britain, between 1812-1814, over issues that included impressment of American sailors, interference with American shipping, and collusion with Northwest Territory Indians. The war was settled by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, removed the British and Indians as a threat to American western expansion, increased American nationalism, brought an end to the Federalist Party (because of the Hartford Convention) and made Andrew Jackson a famous war hero.

American Anti-Slavery Society

Founded in 1833 to organize efforts devoted to abolition.

The Knights of Labor

Founded in 1869, this first national union lasted, under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, only into the 1890s; it was later supplanted by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). But for a time, this union was the first to try to organize unskilled workers as well as skilled, women alongside of men, and blacks as well as whites, and they had ambitious and wide ranging goals from the eight-hour day, to public employment in hard times, to socialism, to the creation of a "cooperative commonwealth."

The American Federation of Labor (AFL)

Founded in 1881 and growing to become the most prominent federation of labor union in the 1890s, it adopted more limited goals (higher wages and better working conditions) than the Knights of Labor had, and composed itself mostly of skilled, white, native-born workers (less inclusive than the Knights of Labor). Its long-term president was Samuel Gompers.

The Society of American Indians and Carlos Montezuma

Founded in 1911, this was a reform organization (critical of of federal indian policy) that brought together Indian intellectuals to promote discussion of the plight of Native Americans in the hope that public exposure would be the first step toward remedying injustice. Members of S.A.I came from many different Indian tribes, but because many had been been educated in government boarding schools, they were able to create one of the first pan-Indian organizations independent of white control. This prominent founder of S.A.I., established the newsletter Wassaja, which called for greater Indian self-determination and independence from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Occupation of Alcatraz

Founded in 1968, this organization of Native Americans staged protests demanding greater tribal self-government and restoration of economic resources guaranteed in past treaties. In 1969, a group calling itself "Indians of All Nations" occupied (or from their point of view, re-occupied) this island in San Francisco Bay, claiming that it had been illegally seized from its original inhabitants. The protest, which lasted into 1971, launched the Red Power movement. In the years that followed, many Indian tribes would win greater control over education and economic development on the reservations. Indian activist would bring land claim suits, demanding and receiving monetary settlements for past dispossession.

The Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798

Four measures passed during the undeclared war with France that limited the freedoms of speech and press and restricted the liberty of non-citizens. The first extended the time it took to become a citizen (directed at immigrants from France who were becoming Republicans). The second authorized prosecution of virtually any public assembly or publication critical of the government (directed at leaders of the Republican press).

The Intolerable Acts (1774)

Four parliamentary measures in reaction to the Boston Tea Party closed the port of Boston to all trade until all tea was paid for, radically altered the Massachusetts Charter of 1691 by curtailed town meetings and authorizing the governor to appoint members to the council (positions previously elected), and empowered military commander to lodge soldiers in private homes.

The XYZ Affair, 1797

French foreign minister Tallyrand's three anonymous agents demanded payments to stop French plundering of American ships in 1797; refusal to pay the bribe was followed by two years of undeclared sea war with France (1798-1800).

Radical Republicans

Group within the Republican Party in the 1850s and 1860s that advocated strong resistance to the expansion of slavery, opposition to compromise with the South in the secession crisis of 1860-1861, emancipation and arming of black soldiers during the Civil War, and equal civil and political rights for blacks during Reconstruction.

Committees of Correspondence

Groups of colonists that exchanged ideas and information about resistance against British rule, communicating with other colonies to encourage opposition to the Sugar and Currency Acts.

Fourteenth Amendment

Guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words similar to those of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. More specifically, it established the first Constitutional definition of citizenship ("All persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States"), outlawed the black codes ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizen of the United States") and guaranteed equal treatment for all freedmen in the South ("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."

Billy Graham

He was the most popular American Christian evangelist of the mid-20th century, ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, who rose to celebrity status during the Fifties reaching tens of millions of Americans including a core constituency of middle-class, moderately conservative Protestants. He held large indoor and outdoor rallies; sermons were broadcast on radio and television. He linked Christianity with anti-communism and communism with the devil. But he also repudiated segregation and, in addition to his religious aims, helped shape the worldview of fundamentalists and evangelicals, leading them to appreciate the relationship between the Bible and contemporary secular viewpoints.

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

High levels of racial violence, mostly targeting blacks, marked the WWI Era in the U.S.; more than 250 people died in riots in the North in 1919, and 76 blacks were lynched in the South in 1920. But this worst race riot in U.S. history. More than 300 blacks were killed and over 10,000 left homeless after a white mob, including police and National Guardsmen, burned an all-black section of the city to the ground. The violence erupted after a group of black veterans tried to prevent the lynching of a youth who had accidentally tripped and fallen on a white female elevator operator, causing rumors of rape to sweep the city.

Half-Way Covenant (1662)

In 1662, a way to address the lack of younger generation involved in the Church in Massachusetts; rather than requiring people to testify about their conversion experience publicly, the church created a halfway membership for all grandchildren of immigrants during the Great Migration; this made it easier for the younger generation to engage in the Church, and it made the Church more relevant in an increasingly business-oriented culture.

Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes"

In 1779, wrote this author's essay insisted that women had as much right as men to exercise their talents and should be allowed equal educational opportunities to enable them to do so.

Shays' Rebellion

In 1786 and 1787, crowds of debt-ridden farmers closed the courts in western Massachusetts to prevent the seizure of their land for failure to pay taxes. The event convinced many (Federalists) that the nation needed a stronger national government, and it led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

"Bleeding Kansas"

In 1856, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act had gone into effect, there was large voter fraud and the outbreak of violence between pro- and antislavery settlers in the Kansas Territory. The violence in Kansas largely discredited the idea that popular sovereignty could settle the questions over the future of slavery in the West.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 1911

In 1911, a fire broke out at this company in New York City. Inside, some 500 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, toiled at sewing machines, earning as little as three dollars per week. Those who tried to escape the blaze discovered that the doors to the stairwell had been locked--the owner's way of discouraging theft and unauthorized bathroom breaks. The fire department rushed to the scene with water hoses, but their ladder could only reach the sixth floor. As the fire raged, girls leapt from the upper stories. By the time the blaze was put out, 46 bodies lay on the street and 100 more were found inside the building. This event led to accelerated efforts to organize the city's workers and the passing of state legislation for new factory inspection laws and fire safety codes. It became a became a classic example of why government needed to regulate industry.

The Great Steel Strike of 1919

In 1919, at the end of a war more than 4 million workers engaged in strikes--the greatest wave of labor unrest in American history. But this, the largest labor uprising of the era, was centered in Chicago, and united some 365,000 mostly immigrant workers in demands for union recognition, higher wages, and an eight-hour workday. In response to the strike, leaders of the steel industry launched a concerted counterattack. Playing into the Red Scare that swept the nation, employers appealed to anti-immigrant sentiment among native-born workers and conducted a propaganda campaign that associated the strikers with the IWW, communism, and disloyalty. Middle class opinion turned against the labor movement, the strike collapsed in early 1920.

The Lend-Lease Act, 1941

In 1941, with Britain virtually bankrupt and under the assault of Germany's air war and the threat of a German invasion, Roosevelt urged Congress to pass this law, which authorized military aid so long as those countries promised somehow to return it all after the war. Under the law's provisions, the U.S. funneled billions of dollars' worth of arms to Britain and China, as well as the USSR.

The Suez Crisis and the Eisenhower Doctrine

In 1956, Israel, France, and Britain--without prior consultation with the U.S.-- invaded Egypt after the country's nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal, jointly owned by Britain and France. A furious Eisenhower forced them to abandon the invasion. After the fiasco, the U.S. moved to replace Britain as the dominant Western power in the Middle East, and American companies increasingly dominated the region's oil fields. In 1957, Eisenhower extended the principle of containment to the region, issuing a new doctrine under his name, which pledged the U.S. to defend Middle Eastern governments threatened by communism or Arab nationalism.

The Integration of Little Rock Central High School, 1957

In 1957, after Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of Little Rock's Central High School, Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to the city. In the face of a howling mob, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division escorted nine black children into the school.

The Greensboro Sit-in and the Sit-in Movement, 1960

In 1960, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down at a local Woolworth's lunch counter (which was reserved for whites only), and began a sit in, quietly remaining in their seats and refusing to leave until they were served. This sit-in sparked a massive wave of similar sit-ins, not only at lunch counters, but at segregated parks, pools, restaurants, bowling alleys, libraries, and other facilities across the South. By the end of the year, about 70,000 people had participated. Often they were confronted by angry whites before being arrested, but having been trained in nonviolent resistance, they did not strike back.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and Resolution

In 1964, North Vietnamese vessels encountered an American ship on a spy mission in this body of water off its coast. When North Vietnamese patrol boats allegedly fired on the American vessel (many years later it was revealed that no attack actually took place), Johnson proclaimed that the U.S. was a victim of "aggression." In response, Congress passed this resolution by the same name, authorizing the president to take "all necessary measures to repel armed attack" in Vietnam. Not a formal declaration of war, it was essentially a blank check to wage war in Vietnam, and it passed without any discussion of American goals and strategy in Vietnam.

PATCO strike

In 1981, when 13,000 members of the PATCO, the union of air traffic controllers, began a strike in violation of federal law, Reagan fired them all. He used the military to oversee the nation's air traffic system until new controllers could be trained. With this event, Reagan inaugurated an era of hostility between the federal government and organized labor, inspiring many employers to launch anti-union offensives and to permanently replace employees who had gone on strike.

Tet Offensive

In January of 1968, on Vietnamese New Year, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops a well-organized uprising in cities throughout South Vietnam, completely surprising American military leaders. The U.S. drove back the offensive and inflicted heavy losses. But the intensity of the fighting, brought into America's homes on television, shattered public confidence in the Johnson administration, which had repeatedly proclaimed victory to be "just around the corner."

Olive Branch Petition

In July 1775, Congress addressed this message to King George III, reaffirming Americans' loyalty to the crown and hoping for a "permanent reconciliation." King George rejected it.

New York Draft Riots

In July, 1863, the introduction of the draft provoked four days of rioting in New York City. The mob, composed largely of Irish immigrants, assaulted symbols of the new order created by the war--draft offices, the mansions of wealthy Republicans, industrial establishments, and the city's black population, many of whom fled to New Jersey or took refuge in Central Park. Only the arrival of Union troops quelled the uprising, but not before more than 100 persons had died.

The Watergate Scandal, 1972-73

In June 1972, five former employees of Nixon's reelection committee took part in a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in an apartment complex in Washington, D.C. that this scandal is named after. Whether or not Nixon knew in advance of the break-in, he became involved immediately afterwards in the cover-up, including authorizing payments to the burglars to remain silent or commit perjury. The Congressional hearings into this scandal revealed a wider pattern in the Nixon Administration of wiretapping, break-ins, and attempts to sabotage the political opposition. Rather than be impeached, Nixon resigned from the Presidency, the only President ever to do so. This scandal remains a classic example of the abuse of political power.

Cousinocracy

In Virginia, the upper class was so tight-knit and intermarried that the colony was said to be governed by this.

Government by expert

In general, Progressive had faith in expertise; they believed that government could best exercise intelligent control over society through a democracy run by impartial experts who were in many respects unaccountable to the citizenry.

Causes of the Conservative Resurgence

In his introduction to Chapter 26 of Give Me Liberty!, Eric Foner outlines some of the causes of the Conservative Resurgence; "The second half of the 1960s and 1970s would witness pivotal developments that reshaped American politics--the breakup of the political coalition forged by Franklin D. Roosevelt; an economic crisis that traditional liberal remedies seemed unable to solve; a shift of population and economic resources to conservative strongholds in the Sunbelt of the South and West; the growth of an activist, conservative Christianity increasingly aligned with the Republican Party; and a series of setbacks for the United States overseas. Together, they led to growing popularity for conservative's ideas, including their understanding of freedom" (1021). Historians debate which of these developments--among others not mentioned here--were the most significant causes of the Conservative Resurgence.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

In one of the most significant rulings in American history, the U.S. Supreme Court supported the legality of Jim Crow laws that permitted or required "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites. In reaction to this decision, states across the South passed laws mandating racial segregation in every aspect of Southern life, from schools to hospitals, waiting rooms, toilets, and cemeteries. Despite the phrase "separate but equal," facilities for blacks were either nonexistent or markedly inferior. The doctrine of "separate but equal" would not be struck down by the Supreme Court until the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

The Selma Campaign, 1965

In order to spur the passage of a voting rights bill, Martin Luther King launched this campaign in Selma, Alabama in 1965 (where only 355 of the 15,000 black residents had been allowed to register to vote). Defying a ban by Governor George Wallace, King attempted to lead a march from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery. When the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which lead out of the city, state police assaulted them with cattle prods, whips, and tear gas. Once again, violence against nonviolent demonstrators flashed across TV screens throughout the world, placing pressure of LBJ and Congress to pass a voting right bill.

"segregation" vs. "white domination"

In reference to the Jim Crow era, the term "segregation" is really a euphemism for a system that might be better described as one of "white domination." Each component of the system--disenfranchisement, unequal economic status, inferior education, the convict-lease system, the "separate but equal" doctrine--reinforced the others, and the point was not so much to keep the races apart as it was to ensure that when they came into contact with one another, whites held the upper hand.

Forced Busing

In the 70s, hundreds of judges throughout the country ordered School Districts to adopt this method to achieve school integration. After many years of delaying the integration of public schools ordered by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ("with all deliberate speed"), by the 1970s, many cities began implementing these programs, and they method became very controversial in cities like Boston.

Mary "Mother" Jones and the IWW free speech fights

In the Progressive Era, state courts regularly issued injunctions prohibiting strikers from speaking, picketing, or distributing literature during labor disputes. Like the abolitionists before them, the labor movement, in the name of freedom, demanded the right to assemble, organized, and spread their views. So the IWW, and the fiery eighty-three year old organizer Mary "Mother" Jones, relied on song, street theater, impromptu meetings, and street corner gatherings, which often met mass arrest. Yet the struggles of workers for the right to strike and of labor radicals against restraints on open-air speaking made free speech a significant public issue in the early twentieth century and laid the foundation for the rise of civil liberties as a central component of freedom in the twentieth century.

Election and Bargain of 1877

In the aftermath of a close presidential election, an Electoral Commission declared Rutherford B. Hayes president contingent a variety of compromises and agreements upon his taking office. The Democrats agreed to acknowledge that Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes had won the election in exchange for the Republican promise to abandon efforts at southern reconstruction.

The CIA's overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, 1953

In the early 1950s, Guatemala's idealistic young President embarked on a sweeping land-reform policy that threatened the domination of Guatemala's economy by the American-owned United Fruit Company. While he was neither a communist nor a Soviet ally, the CIA branded him a communist (with the help of Edward Bernays) and organized a coup to have him overthrown and replaced by a new president who would be friendly to U.S. businesses. This is an example of how the policy of containment could be used as a propaganda tool to disguise actions that served U.S. economic and strategic interests.

Child Labor

In the early twentieth century, more than two million children under the age of fifteen worked for wages.

Herbert Hoover's response to the Great Depression

In the eyes of many American's, Hoover's response to the Great Depression seem inadequate and uncaring, leading people to call the shantytowns of homeless people springing up outside of many cities "Hoovervilles." To be fair, the federal government had never faced an economic crisis as severe as the Great Depression. At first, Hoover was committed to "associational action;" he put his faith in voluntary steps by business to maintain investment and employment and efforts by local charity organizations to assist needy neighbors. By 1932, Hoover had to admit that voluntary action had failed to stem the Depression, and he accepted greater federal government engagement, signing laws creating the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Federal Home Loan Bank System.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

In the first national labor walkout, railway workers protesting a pay cut paralyzed rail traffic in much of the country. Militia united trying to force workers back to work fired on strikers in Pittsburg, killing twenty, igniting an outbreak of violence and general strikes in several major cities. In the aftermath of the strike, the federal government constructed armories in major cities to ensure that troops would be on hand in the event of further labor difficulties. Henceforth, national power would be used to protect the rights of property against the labor movement.

Indian Reservation system

In the late 1800s, the federal government set aside areas of land in the West and forced Indian nations to relocate to them or face the U.S. military. These reservations tended to be on lands that were the least desirable to white settlers (usually unsuitable for farming or resource extraction). The reservations represent only a tiny fraction of Western land that Indian nations controlled a century prior.

Andrew Carnegie

In the quintessential "rags to riches" story, this Scottish Immigrant came to the U.S. as a boy and worked his way up to become one of the richest men in the world. He built a Steel Company in his name through "vertical integration"--that is, controlling every phase of the business from raw materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution. His steel factories at Homestead (the site of a major labor battle during the Gilded Age) were the most technologically advanced in the world. He opposed unionization for his employees but promoted philanthropy with his "Gospel of Wealth."

The Bonus Army

In the spring of 1932, 20,000 unemployed WWI veterans descended on Washington to demand early payment of a bonus due in 1945. However, they were driven away by federal soldiers led by the army's chief of staff, Douglas MacArthur, and their treatment seemed to confirm in the public mind Hoover's lack of sympathy for unemployed Americans.

The Election of 1896

In this Presidential election, Populists joined with the Democrats to support William Jennings Bryan, who embraced the Social Gospel and called for free coinage of silver (or the unrestricted minting of silver money), which farmers believed would increase the amount of money in circulation, raise crop prices, and make it easier for farmers to pay off debts. The Republicans nominated William McKinley and defended the Gold Standard. This election is often called the "first modern political campaign" because of the huge amount of money spent by the Republicans and the efficiency of their national organization. The results revealed a nation divided on regional lines: Bryan and the Democrats carried the South and the West. McKinley and the Republicans swept the more populous industrial states of the North. Industrial America, from financiers and managers to workers, now voted Republican; McKinley's victory shattered the political stalemate that had persisted since 1876 and created one of the most enduring political majorities in American History.

Muller v. Oregon, 1908

In this case, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law that had set maximum working hours for women. Upholding this law ran counter to the Court's prevailing doctrine of liberty of contract (as expressed in Lochner v. New York, 1905) because the beneficiaries of the state regulation in this case were women. The future Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis, filed a famous brief citing scientific and sociological studies to demonstrate that because they had less strength and endurance than men, long hours of labor were dangerous for women, while their unique ability to bear children gave the government a legitimate interest in their working conditions. Brandeis's brief and the Court's opinion solidified the view of women workers as weak, dependent, and incapable of enjoying the same economic rights as men. Afterwards, many states enacted maximum hours laws for female workers, and many women derived great benefit from these laws; however, other women saw them as an infringement on their freedom.

Buck v. Bell, 1927

In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of forced sterilization laws such as the 1907 Indiana law authorizing doctors to sterilize insane and "feeble-minded" inmates in mental institutions so that they would not pass on their "defective" genes to children. The decision was largely seen as an endorsement of eugenics—the attempt to improve the human race by eliminating "defectives" from the gene pool.

Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986

In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state laws that outlawed homosexual acts. Despite the strong support of the Religious Right for the Reagan administration, this was one of the few major victories for cultural conservatives during the 1980s. (In 2003, the Supreme Court reversed the Bowers decision and ruled that laws criminalizing homosexualy were unconsitutional).

Hamilton's Report on Manufacturers

In this report, delivered to Congress in December 1791, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton called for the imposition of a tariff (a tax on imported foreign goods) and government subsidies to encourage the development of factories that could manufacture products currently purchased from abroad.

The Prohibition Movement

Inherited from the 19th century, this movement to ban intoxicating alcoholic beverages gained new strength and militancy during Progressive Era and finally achieved national success during WWI with the ratification of the 18th Amendment. A number of impulses fueled the movement: Employers hoped it would create a more disciplined labor force; Urban reformers believed it would promote a more orderly city environment and undermine urban political machines that used saloons as places to organize; Women reformers hoped it would protect wives and children from husbands who engaged in domestic violence when drunk or who squandered their wages at saloons; and Native protestants saw it as a way of imposing "American" values on immigrants.

Black Panther Party for Self-Defense

Inspired by the idea of black self-determination, a group founded in Oakland, CA, in 1966 that became well-known for advocating armed self-defense in response to police brutality. Its "Ten Point Program" demanded, among other things, the release of black prisoners because of racism in the criminal justice system. The party's youthful members alarmed whites by wearing military garb, although they also ran health clinics, schools, and children's breakfast programs. But internal disputes and an FBI campaign against them (which left several leaders, including Fred Hampton, dead in shootouts) destroyed the organization.

Cotton Gin

Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, the machine separated cotton seed from cotton fiber, speeding cotton processing and making profitable the cultivation of the more hardy, but difficult to clean, short-staple cotton; led directly to the dramatic nineteenth-century expansion of slavery in the South.

Telegraph

Invented during the 1830s by Samuel F. B. Morse, the device made possible instantaneous communication throughout the nation; it was put into commercial operation in 1844.

John Deere's Steel Plow

Invented in 1837 and mass-produced by the 1850s, this new agricultural technology made possible the rapid subduing of the western prairies.

Dunmore's Proclamation (1775)

Issued in November 1775 by the earl of Dunmore, the British governor and military commander in Virginia, the proclamation offered freedom to any slave who escaped to his lines and bore arms for the king.

Arguments in favor of the U.S. war in Vietnam

It is essential to stop the spread of communism, represented by Ho Chi Minh. Communism is a threat to freedom, capitalism, and religion. The Domino Theory: If South Vietnam falls to communism, then it is likely that Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and the rest of Southeast Asia will also fall. This spread of communism will eventually pose a serious threat to the economic and strategic interests of the U.S. and potentially threaten the survival of our country. The North Vietnamese Communists are invading South Vietnam. The U.S. is simply defending the self-determination and freedom of a weak, non-communist country (South Vietnam) from aggressive communist expansion. If the US does not use force to stop the spread of communism in South Vietnam, the U.S. will appear weak and our promises to European allies that we will stop the spread of communism (our "containment policy") will seem unreliable.

The Attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941

Japanese planes bombed this U.S. naval base in Hawaii in a surprise attack on Dec 7th, 1941, the first attack on U.S. soil since the War of 1812. The event prompted the U.S. to declare war against Japan, and shortly afterwards Germany, uniting the two theaters of war (Asia and Europe) into one world-wide conflict.

D-Day

June 6th, 1944, the day nearly 200,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers under the command of Dwight D. Eisenhower landed on the beaches of Normandy, in Northwestern France. More than a million troops followed them ashore in the next few weeks in the most massive sea-to-land operation in history. This date marked the beginning of major involvement of American troops in Europe, as well as a turning point of the war in the European theater that began to put Hitler on the defensive.

The Great Depression

Lasting in the U.S. from 1929 to 1939, this was the deepest, longest, and most widespread economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. It began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, personal income, consumer spending, investment, and government tax revenue all dropped causing steep declines in industrial output, international trade, and employment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1932, when the Great Depression reached its lowest point, some 11 million Americans--about 25% of the U.S. labor force--were unemployed and nearly half the country's banks had failed.

The Freedom Rides, 1961

Launched by CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) in 1961, this was a major non-violent civil rights campaign in which integrated groups (of mostly college-age people) traveled by bus into the Deep South to test compliance with court orders banning segregation on interstate buses and trains and in terminal facilities. Violent mobs assaulted them. Near Anniston, Alabama, a firebomb was thrown into the vehicle and the passengers beaten as they escaped. In Birmingham, Klansmen attacked riders with bats and chains, while police refused to intervene. Many of the riders were arrested, but their actions pressured the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce the desegregation of buses and terminals.

The Progressive Party, 1912 (TR's "Bull-Moose Party")

Launched by Teddy Roosevelt to begin his independent campaign for the 1912 Presidential election

Freedom Summer, 1964

Launched by a coalition of civil rights groups, this was a campaign to register voters in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Blacks had been cut off from voting in Mississippi since the turn of the century due to barriers to voter registration and other laws. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. Hundreds of white college students from the North traveled to the state to take part. An outpouring of violence greeted the campaign, including 35 bombings and numerous beatings of civil rights workers.

Operation Wetback

Launched by the federal government in 1954, it employed the military to invade Mexican-American neighborhoods and round up and deport illegal aliens. Within a year, some one million Mexicans had been deported.

The Second New Deal

Launched in 1935 during the second half of FDR's first term--after the Supreme Court has begun striking down elements of the First New Deal which were passed during the First Hundred Days--this second wave of New Deal legislation focused on achieving economic security--or the guarantee that Americans would be protected against unemployment and poverty. It included the Social Security Act, the Rural Electrification Agency, and the Wagner Act. And it transformed the relationship between the federal government and American citizens; before the 1930s, national political debate often revolved around the question of whether the federal government should intervene in the economy. After the New Deal, debate rested on how it should intervene.

The Dawes Act, 1887

Law passed in 1887 meant to encourage adoption of white norms among Indians; broke up tribal holdings (reservations) into small farms for Indian families, with the remainder sold to white purchasers. The policy proved to be a disaster, leading to the loss of much tribal land and the erosion of Indian cultural traditions.

Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

Law sponsored by Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas to allow settlers in newly organized territories north of the Missouri border (KA and NB Territories) to decide the slavery issue for themselves; fury over the resulting repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 led to violence in Kansas and to the formation of the Republican Party.

The Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-18

Laws enacted during WWI that restricted the freedom of speech. The first prohibited not only spying and interfering with the draft but also "false statements" that might impede military success. The postmaster general barred from the mails numerous newspapers and magazines critical of the administration, which included virtually the entire socialist press as well as many foreign-language publications. The second act made it a crime to make spoken or printed statements that intended to cast "contempt, scorn, or disrepute" on the "form of government," or that advocated interference with the war effort. The government charged more than 2,000 persons with violating these laws, including Eugene Debs for delivering an anti-war speech. Debs, the famous American socialist and labor union leader, was sentenced to ten years, ran for president from prison in 1920 (receiving 900,000 votes), and had his sentence commuted in 1921.

Workers compensation laws

Laws enacted to benefit workers, male or female, who are injured on the job. These laws reflected the concept of "economic citizenship," that government assistance derived from citizenship itself, not from some special service to the nation (as in the case of mothers) or upstanding character (which had long differentiated the "deserving" from the "undeserving" poor).

Phyllis Schlafly

Leader of the movement to block the ERA and a popular conservative voice during the Conservative Resurgence. To her, and many of her followers, freedom for women still resided in the divinely appointed roles of wife and mother. She believed that the "free enterprise system" was the "real liberator" of women, and the ERA would take men "off the hook" by denying their responsibility to provide for their wives and children.

Frederick Douglass

Leading 19th century African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. (And in Mr. Nordlund's opinion, his autobiography--Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave--is amazing, and you should read it this year because it will make your look at education, a and your country with a whole new perspective.)

Ex Parte Milligan (1866)

Lincoln had restricted civil liberties during the Civil War by suspending the writ of habeas corpus in order to arrest and detain outspoken opponents of the war in the North. However, after the war, in 1866, in the case, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to bring accused persons before military tribunals where civil courts were operating. The Constitution, declared Justice David Davis, is not suspended in wartime--it remains "a law for rulers and people, equally in time of war and peace."

"pet banks"

Local banks that received deposits while the charter of the Bank of the United States was about to expire in 1836. The choice of these banks was influenced by political and personal connections.

The Hart-Celler Act (aka "The Immigration and Naturalization Act") of 1965

Major immigration reform law of the Great Society that abandoned the national-origins quota system of immigration which had excluded Asians and severely restricted southern and eastern Europeans. The law established new, racially neutral criteria for immigration, notably family reunification and possession of skills in demand in the U.S.. On the other hand, because of the hostility in the Southwest towards Mexican immigration, the law established the first limit, 120,000, on newcomers from the Western Hemisphere. This created for the first time the category of "illegal aliens" from the Americas. It also contained provisions to offer asylum to refugees from communist countries. The law sparked a dramatic shift in which immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia came to outnumber those from Europe.

The Draft

Mandatory military service for all men of a certain age. During the Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy allowed men who were drafted to hire substitutes; this lead to class resentments and charges of a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

"Coercive patriotism" during WWI

Many incidents of extreme, and sometimes violent, repression took place during WWI as government and private groups, like the American Protective League, came to equate patriotism with support for the government, the war, and the American economic system while antiwar sentiment, labor radicalism, and sympathy for the Russian Revolution became "un-American."

"Yellow Press"

Mass-circulation newspapers (so called by their critics after the color in which a popular comic strip was printed) that mixed sensational accounts of crime and political corruption with aggressive appeals to nationalistic, patriotic sentiments. They contributed the public's support of imperialistic expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Femme Sole

Meaning "a woman alone," this was special legal status available in the Virginia colony that was obtained only by widows and the few women who never married. This legal status (which was denied to married women) granted these single women an independent legal identity that enabled them to make contracts and conduct business.

The Hartford Convention, 1814

Meeting of New England Federalists in December, 1814, to protest the War of 1812. This gave voice to the party's long-standing grievances, especially the domination of the federal government by Virginian presidents and their own region's declining influence as new western states entered the union. But when this adjourned just before news of Jackson's electrifying victory in the Battle of New Orleans, the Federalists could not escape charges of looking unpatriotic. Within a year, their party no longer existed. This event marked the end of the Federalist Party.

Crop-lien System

Merchants extended credit to tenants based on their future crops, but high interest rates and the uncertainties of farming often led to inescapable debts.

Oil Embargo (aka OPEC Oil Embargo), 1973-74

Middle Eastern Arab states retaliated for Western support of Israel by quadrupling the price of oil and suspending the export of oil to the United States for several months. This lead to an "energy crisis" that motivated both conservation efforts as well as the search for more domestic sources of energy. When OPEC (The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) resumed selling oil the U.S., they increased prices, which was one key factor in the inflation (rising prices) in the U.S. economy throughout the Seventies.

Proxy Wars

Military conflicts in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, emanating from the larger Cold War, typically fought between communist and noncommunist forces with the aid of the US and the Soviet Union, and China. Examples: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, etc.

National Organization of Women (NOW)

Modeled after civil rights organizations, consisting overwhelmingly of middle class white women, and led by its President, Betty Friedan, this was the most powerful organization of the modern women's movement. It demanded equal opportunity in jobs, education, and political participation and attacked the "false image of women" spread by the mass media. Its members and supporters were generally more conservative than those who identified with the Women's Liberation movement.

Gradual Emancipation and Free Blacks

Most Northern states adopted these policies in which children of slaves born after a certain date would be freed when they reached adulthood. These laws assumed that former slaves would remain in the country, not be colonized abroad. Non-enslaved black people formed free communities with their own schools, churches, and leaders, and who, in some states, could even vote.

Nat Turner's Rebellion

Most important slave uprising in nineteenth-century America, led by a slave preacher who, with his followers, killed about sixty white persons in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831.

Know-Nothing Party

Nativist, anti-Catholic third party organized in 1854 in reaction to large-scale German and Irish immigration. They feared Catholics would be loyal to the Pope, rather than to the United States. The party's only presidential candidate was Millard Fillmore in 1856. Officially called "the American Party," it was secret organization, and when asked about the party by non-members, members were supposed to say, "I know nothing."

Roger Williams

New England's most prominent advocate of religious toleration, he was a Puritan minister who insisted that church and state should be separated and that individuals be allowed to follow their consciences and practice whatever form of religion they choose. Banished from Massachusetts in 1636, he and his followers moved south and established the colony of Rhode Island, which became a beacon of religious freedom.

The Scottsboro Boys

Nine young black men who had been arrested for the rape of two white women in Alabama in 1931, and whose legal case, with the support of the the Communist Party and the NAACP, went on to become an an international cause célèbre and an often cited example of the miscarriage of justice in the U.S. legal system. Despite the weakness of the evidence against the nine accused young men, and the fact that one of the two accusers recanted, Alabama authorities three times put them on trial and three times won convictions. Landmark Supreme Court decisions overturned the first two verdicts and established legal principles that greatly expanded the definitions of civil liberties--that defendants have a constitutional right to effective legal representation, and that states cannot systematically exclude blacks from juries. But the court allowed the third set of convictions to stand.

"Filibustering" expeditions

Nineteenth century, invasions of Central American countries launched privately by groups of Americans seeking to establish personal rule and spread slavery.

Vietnamization

Nixon's strategy for the Vietnam war; in the wake of growing public opposition to the Vietnam War, Nixon's plan involved reducing the number of American troops and increasing the number of South Vietnamese troops while also increasing the amount bombing. Cynics charged he was simply "changing the color of the corpses."

Détente

Nixon's strategy to the ease tensions with the major communist powers--China and the Soviet Union--that fundamentally altered Cold War policies. Nixon took a trip to Beijing, China in 1972 (the U.S. had not yet formally recognized the communist government in Beijing, which had been in power since 1949) which lead to increased trade with China and eventually full diplomatic relations. Nixon then took a trip to the USSR, where he and his counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev took part in the SALT negotiations and proclaimed a new era of peaceful coexistence, in which cooperation would replace the hostility of the Cold War.

Southern vs. Northern War Aims

Northern: Restore the shattered Union, which meant it had to invade and conquer an area larger than Western Europe. Union soldiers had to be motivated to fight, and possibly die, to defend relatively abstract concepts like union and freedom. Southern: Win independence, which meant it had to not surrender to the Northern Army. Confederate soldiers were motivated to defend their own families, homes, and property, in addition to more abstract concepts like liberty.

The Korean War, 1950-53

Occupied by Japan during WWII, Korea had been divided in 1945 into Soviet and American zones. These soon evolved into two governments: communist North Korea and anti-communist South Korea, undemocratic but aligned with the United States. When North Korea invaded the South in 1950, hoping to reunify the country under communist control, Truman--viewing it as a test his containment policy--persuaded the United Nation's Security Council to authorize force to repel the invasion. Bloody fighting eventually reached a stalemate around the 38th parallel, the original border between North and South Korea. Roughly 33,000 American and 1 million Koreans died in the war.

The GI Bill of Rights, 1944

Officially called the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act," Congress passed this law in 1944 in order to reward members of the armed forces for their service and to prevent the widespread unemployment and economic disruption that had followed WWI. By extending to the millions of returning veterans an array of benefits, including unemployment pay, scholarships for further their education, low-cost mortgage loans, pensions, and job training, the law was one of the most far reaching pieces of social legislation in U.S. History. By 1946, more than 1 million veterans were attending college under its provisions (making up half the total college enrollment) Almost four million would receive home mortgages, spurring the post-war suburban housing boom.

Edward Bernays

Often considered "the father of the public relations industry"--an industry that expanded dramatically during the 1920s--he had been a member of the Committee on Public Relations (CPI) during WWI and went on to apply the lessons that the CPI learned about "the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses" to the world of commercial advertising. His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom" and his work for the United Fruit Company connected with the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954.

The March on Washington, 1963

Often considered the high point of the nonviolent civil rights movement, 250,000 black and white Americans converged on the nation's capital for the largest public demonstration in the nation's history at the time. Calls for passage of a civil rights bill pending before Congress took center stage, and Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, 1963

Often credited with sparking the modern women's movement, this best-selling book of 1964 challenged the widely-shared belief that fulfillment for a woman came from being a housewife and a mother. Asked in 1957 to conduct a survey of her former Smith College classmates for their 15th anniversary reunion, she found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives, which prompted her to begin conducting interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising. The resulting book's opening chapter, "The Problem That Has No Name," painted a devastating picture of talented, educated women trapped in a world that viewed marriage and motherhood as their primary goals. For many women, she argued, the suburban home had become a "comfortable concentration camp."

The Tea Act and the Boston Tea Party

On December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, dumped hundreds of chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act of 1773, under which the British exported to the colonies millions of pounds of cheap tea (still taxed) thereby undercutting the price of tea for smugglers and merchants. The British were trying to import cheap tea to save the East India Company from collapsing because they had invested in it.

Federal Trade Commission, 1914

One of President Wilson's major acts against trusts, this agency was set up to investigate and prohibit unfair business activities such as price-fixing and monopolistic practices. Like the Federal Reserve System, it was welcomed by business leaders as a means of restoring order, but it reflected an expanding federal role in the economy during the Progressive Era.

Endangered Species Act, 1973

One of several major environmental regulations of the 1970s, this law aimed to prevent the extinction of imperiled animal species and, among other things, prohibited federal funds on any project that might extinguish an animal species.

Jane Addams and Hull House

One of the Progressive era's most prominent female reformers, she founded this "settlement house" in Chicago in 1899, which was devoted to improving the lives of the immigrant poor. They built kindergartens and playgrounds for children, established employment bureaus and health clinics, and showed female victims of domestic abuse how to gain legal protection. By 1910, inspired by this model, more than 400 settlement houses had been established in cities throughout the country.

Carlisle Indian School

One of the boarding schools established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs where Indian children were taken to be stripped of the "negative" influence of their parents and tribes, dressed in non-Indian clothes, given new names, and educated in white ways.

Explosion of The U.S.S. Maine, 1898

One of the causes of U.S. entrance into the Spanish-American War. This was a U.S. battleship that exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898, resulting in 266 deaths; the American public, assuming that the Spanish had mined the ship, clamored for war (popular slogan: "Remember the Maine, and to hell with Spain!"), and the Spanish-American War was declared two months later.

Writs of Assistance

One of the colonies' main complaints against Britain, these allowed unlimited search warrants without cause to look for evidence of colonial smuggling.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

One of the greatest legislative achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, this law prohibited racial discrimination in employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels, and theaters. It also banned discrimination on the grounds of sex--a provision added by opponents of civil rights in an effort to derail the entire bill and embraced by liberals and female members of Congress as a way to broaden its scope.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

One of the last legislative triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement, this law prohibited racial discrimination in voting. It outlawed literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities, allowed federal officials (as opposed to only local officials) to register voters, and prohibited every state and local government from imposing any voting law that resulted in discrimination against racial or language minorities. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, it proved very successful in secured voting rights for racial minorities throughout the country, and especially in the South.

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (pronounced "Snick")

One of the most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, it emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker in 1960 and grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support its work in the South. It played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years. Its major contribution was in its field work, organizing voter registration drives all over the South, especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

NSC-68

One of the most important policy statements of the early Cold-War, this 1950 manifesto by the National Security Council used strident language to call for a permanent military build-up to enable the U.S. to pursue a global crusade against communism. In the wake of Soviet-American confrontations over southern and eastern Europe and Berlin, the communist victory in China, and Soviet success in developing the atomic bomb, this document helped spur a dramatic increase in U.S. military spending.

Medicaid

One of the most significant pieces of LBJ's Great Society, this is a health insurance program for families and individuals of all ages whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care. Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States. It is a "means-tested" program (states examine applicants' finances to determine whether or not they are eligible) that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments and managed by the states, with each state having broad leeway to determine who is eligible for its implementation of the program.

Medicare

One of the most significant pieces of LBJ's Great Society, this is a single-payer, national health insurance program administered by the federal government. It provides health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system through the payroll tax.

Railroads

Opened vast new areas of the American interior to settlement while stimulating the mining of coal for fuel and the manufacture of iron for locomotives and rails. Work on the Baltimore and Ohio ("The B&O"), the nation's first commercial one, began in 1828. They were an important component of the Market Revolution

Underground Railroad

Operating in the decades before the Civil War, this was a clandestine system of routes and safe houses through which slaves were led to freedom in the North.

"captains of industry" or "robber barons"

Opposing viewpoints that industrial leaders were either beneficial for the economy or wielded power without any accountability in an unregulated market.

Sons of Liberty

Organizations formed by Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other radicals in response to the Stamp Act that encouraged many lower class individuals to get involved in public affairs

American Colonization Society

Organized in 1816 to encourage colonization of free blacks to Africa; the west African nation of Liberia was founded in 1822 to serve as a homeland for them.

Female Moral Reform Society

Organized in 1834 by middle-class women in New York City, the society sought to redeem prostitutes from lives of sin and to protect the morality of single women.

Republican Party

Organized in 1854 by the antislavery Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; nominated John C. Frémont for president in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln in 1860; also the name of the party formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the 1790s.

The Birmingham Campaign, 1963

Organized in 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and led by Martin Luther King Jr., and others, this was a major non-violent civil rights campaign that culminated in widely publicized confrontations between young black students and white civic authorities. When King had thousands of black schoolchildren march through town, the police chief, Eugene "Bull" Connor unleashed his forces against them. The images, broadcast on TV, of children being assaulted with nightsticks, high-pressure fire hoses, and attack dogs produced a wave of revulsion throughout the world and led to President Kennedy's endorsement of the movement's goals as well as the municipal government's overturning of the city's discrimination laws.

Ku Klux Klan

Organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction; a revived organization in the 1910s and 1920s stressed white, Anglo-Saxon, fundamentalist Protestant supremacy; they revived a third time to fight the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the South.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott

Organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention who advocated for female suffrage

Muckrakers

Originally a term of disparagement coined by Teddy Roosevelt, this term came to refer to writers who exposed corruption and abuses in politics, business, meatpacking, child labor, and more, primarily in the first decade of the twentieth century; their popular books and magazine articles spurred public interest in reform. They include the following people and books: Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890), Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of the Cities (1904), Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1906).

Liberalism

Originally, political philosophy that emphasized the protection of liberty by limiting the power of government to interfere with the natural rights of citizens; in the twentieth century, belief in an activist government promoting greater social and economic equality

Freedom of Speech

Originating in Britain during the sixteenth century, the phrase referred to the ability of members of Parliament to express their views without fear of reprisal, on the grounds that only in this way could they effectively represent the people; outside Parliament, free speech had no legal protection

18th Amendment (Prohibition), 1919

Outlawed the manufacture, sale, and transportation (but not consumption) of alcoholic beverages. It became the only Amendment ever to be repealed when the 21st Amendment was ratified in 1933.

Steamboats

Paddlewheelers that could travel both down-and up-river in deep or shallow waters; they became commercially viable early in the nineteenth century and soon developed into America's first inland freight and passenger service network.They were an important component of the Market Revolution

Annexation ("Reoccupation") of Oregon

Part of Polk's and the Democratic Party's campaign strategy to capture northern Democrats; Polk promised to annex Texas while reoccupying the British controlled Oregon. This way, the balance of power in the Senate between representatives from free states and slave states would not be upset. After his election, Polk oversaw a successful negotiation with Great Britain that brought in most of the Oregon Territory.

Asylums

Part of the 1830s and 1840s program of building institutions, these were intended to house the insane, rehabilitate them, and release them back into society as productive citizens.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act aroused strong opposition in the North because it allowed special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of a jury trial or even testimony by the accused individual. It prohibited local authorities from interfering with the capture of fugitives and required individual citizens to assist in the capture when called upon by federal authorities. It also revealed that the South was willing to accept the expansion of federal authority over states rights as long as it strengthened the institution of slavery.

Civil Rights Bill of 1866

Passed by Radical Republicans, over President Johnson's veto, in response to the black codes, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (along with the Fourteenth Amendment) guaranteed the rights of citizenship to former slaves.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Passed by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, this act called for the eventual establishment of three to five states North of the Ohio River and East of the Mississippi. It established conditions for self-government and statehood there, including a Bill of Rights. Lastly, this act prohibited slavery in that region, which would have far-reaching consequences when sectional conflict between North and South developed.

Navigation Acts (1650-1775)

Passed by the English Parliament to control and restrict colonial trade and bolster the mercantile system, 1650-1775; All colonial exports had to pass through Britain before being shipped to mainland Europe. Enforcement of the acts led to growing resentment by colonists.

McCarran Internal Security Act, 1950

Passed by the Republican controlled Congress over Truman's veto, this law required "subversive" groups to register with the government, allowed the denial of passports to their members, and authorized their deportation or detention on presidential order.

The Freedom of Information Act

Passed initially in 1966, this act was greatly strengthened in the wake of the Watergate scandal in order to increase government transparency by giving the the general public (typically scholars and journalists) access to the records of federal agencies upon request.

The Proclamation Line of 1763

Passed on the heels of the Seven Years War, the British Parliament created this law prohibiting colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains in order to prevent conflict with the Indians and the expense of having to defend them.

Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority

Perhaps the central figure in the Religious Right during the Conservative Resurgence, this Virginia minister and his organization called for a "war against sin" and encouraged the election of "pro-life, pro-America, "pro-family" candidates to public office.

The Great Migration (1629-1642)

Period between 1629 and 1642 in which a great number of Puritans (about 21,000) migrated from England to Massachusetts.

Mestizos

Persons of mixed origin due to the intermarriage of Indians and colonizers. They caused Spanish America to evolve into a hybrid culture. The marriage between Indians and colonizers indicated somewhat more equal status than in the British colonies.

Republicanism

Political theory in eighteenth-century England and America that celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens as central to freedom

Plain Folk of the Old South

Poorer Southern whites who did not own plantations. 75% of Southern white families owned no slaves at all and lived meager lives of self-sufficiency remote from the market revolution. Yet they didn't oppose slavery.

Self-discipline

Popular among mid-nineteenth century reformers, the belief that self-fulfillment came through the practice of self-control.

"Reaganomics"

Popular name for President Ronald Reagan's economic policies, which combined "supply-side economics" (large tax cuts, especially for businesses and the wealthy) with deregulation. During his Presidency, Reagan succeeded in lowering the tax rate of the highest tax bracket from 70% to 28%. Reagan assumed that cutting taxes would encourage businesses to reinvest more money (which they would have otherwise paid in taxes) into their companies (thus creating more jobs) and all Americans to work harder (because they could keep more of what they earned). It also assumed that tax cuts would increase business profits and grow the economy, thus enabling the government to still raise plenty of revenue despite the lower tax rates. Critics called supply side economics "trickle down" economics because it lead to increasing class disparity rather than economic growth that benefited everyone.

Rosie the Riveter

Popularized by a hit song by that name, as well as a Norman Rockwell magazine cover depicting a muscular and self-reliant female industrial laborer, and various other wartime media, this cultural icon represented the power of women who worked in factories and shipyards in the U.S during WWII. With 15 million men in the armed forces, women in 1944 made up more than one-third of the civilian labor force. Even though most women workers still labored in clerical and service jobs, new opportunities for women previously restricted to men suddenly opened up in industrial, professional, and government positions. On the West Coast, one-third of the workers in aircraft manufacturing and shipbuilding were women.

The Monroe Doctrine, 1823

President James Monroe's declaration to Congress on December 2, 1823, that said the American continents would be thenceforth closed to European colonization, and that the United States would not interfere in European affairs.

"Enemies List"

President Nixon's list of political opponents that included reporters, politicians, and celebrities unfriendly to his administration. The list became public knowledge during the Watergate hearings and underscored Nixon's paranoid style and inability to accept honest differences of opinion.

The Roosevelt Corollary

President Theodore Roosevelt announced in what was essentially an offshoot of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. TR's principle held that the U.S. had the right to exercise "an international police power" in the Western Hemisphere--a significant expansion of Monroe's pledge to defend the hemisphere against European intervention.

The Louisiana Purchase, 1803

President Thomas Jefferson's 1803 purchase from France of the important port of New Orleans and 828,000 square miles west of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains; it more than doubled the territory of the United States at a cost of only $15 million. Jefferson, like most Republicans, had been a "strict constructionist" in the 1790s while he opposed Hamilton's Financial Plan, but he had to adopt a "loose interpretation" of the Constitution in order make this deal.

Barbary Wars, 1801-1805

President Thomas Jefferson's refusal to pay tribute to protect American ships from the Barbary pirates off the Mediterranean coast of Africa sparked an undeclared naval war with North African nations that lasted from 1801 to 1805.

Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

President of the NAWSA, which had been created in 1890 to reunite the rival suffrage organizations formed after the Civil War), she reflected the era's narrowed definition of nationhood by suggesting that the native-born, middle-class women who dominated the suffrage movement deserved the vote as members of a superior race and that educational and other voting qualifications did not conflict with the movement's aims, so long as they applied equally to men and women.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)

President of the U.S. from 1932-1945, serving through the Great Depression and World War Two. Raised in privilege in a New York country estate, he came to be beloved as the symbolic representation of ordinary citizens. A Democrat, who was elected to a record four terms, he was the dominant leader of the Democratic Party, assembled the "New Deal Coalition," and redefined "liberalism" for much of the 20th century. Very few Americans realized that the president who projected an image of vigorous leadership during the 1930s and WWII was confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down from polio. Scholars consider him to be among the greatest presidents in U.S. history.

The Kerner Commission Report, 1968

Produced by a commission appointed by LBJ to study the causes of the urban rioting occurring around the nation in the mid 1960s, this report blamed the violence on "segregation and poverty" and offered a powerful indictment of "white racism." It depicted a country in danger of being torn apart by racial antagonism: "Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal."

Meat Inspection Act, 1906

Progressive Era law, signed by TR, created largely in reaction to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the law set strict standards of cleanliness in the meatpacking industry.

Hepburn Act, 1906

Progressive Era law, signed by TR, that Imposed stricter control over railroads and expanded the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, including giving the ICC the power to set maximum rates, which was a significant step in the development of federal intervention in the corporate economy.

Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906

Progressive Era law, signed by TR, the first law to regulate manufacturing of food and medicines; prohibited dangerous additives and inaccurate labeling.

17th Amendment (Direct Election of Senators), 1913

Progressive reform that required U.S. senators to be elected directly by voters; previously, senators were chosen by state legislatures.

Fifteenth Amendment

Prohibited states from denying citizens the right to vote because of race.

The Bank of the United States

Proposed by the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, this opened in 1791 and operated until 1811 to issue a uniform currency, make business loans, and collect tax monies. The second one was chartered in 1816 but President Andrew Jackson vetoed the recharter bill in 1832.

John Adams' Thoughts on Government (1776), and "Balanced Government"

Published by John Adams in 1776, in which he insisted that the new state constitutions should create "balanced governments" whose structure would reflect the division of society between the wealthy (represented in the upper house) and ordinary men (who would control the lower).

Notes on the State of Virginia

Published by Thomas Jefferson in 1785, the book compared the white and black races, claiming that blacks lacked the qualities that made freedom and loyalty to the nation possible—the capacity for self-control, reason, and devotion to the larger community.

Margaret Fuller's Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Published in 1845, this important feminist book sought to apply to women the transcendentalist idea that freedom meant a quest for personal development.

Pilgrims (1620)

Puritan Separatists who broke completely with the Church of England, first fled to the Netherlands, then sailed to the New World aboard the Mayflower, becoming the first Puritans to immigrate to the New World, founding Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod in 1620.

Anne Hutchinson

Puritan woman who in the 1630s attracted a large and influential following for challenging the views of the Puritan ministers who claimed they could distinguish "saints" form the damned on the basis of activities such as church attendance and moral behavior rather than an inner state of grace. She was put on trial for sedition and banished from the colony. Her story illustrates the limits of Puritan religious toleration and gender equality.

The Eighteenth Amendment

Ratified in 1919 (and taking effect in 1920) this amendment declared the production, transport, and sale of alcohol (though not the consumption or private possession) illegal. The separate Volstead Act set down methods for its enforcement and defined which "intoxicating liquors" were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition (e.g., for medical and religious purposes). World War One had made beer seem unpatriotic since many prominent breweries were owned by German-Americans. And the recent passage of the Sixteenth Amendment (1913), which authorized a national income tax, had made prohibition economically viable by providing the national government with a significant new source of revenue that could replace taxes on alcohol. The 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933, repealed the 18th Amendment.

The Nineteenth Amendment

Ratified in 1920, this Amendment stated,"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 sex." It was the culminating victory of the seventy-two year long woman suffrage movement, which began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887

Reacting to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Wabash Railroad v. Illinois (1886), Congress established this commission in order to curb abuses in the railroad industry by regulating rates.

Second Great Awakening

Reacting to the growth of secularism and rationalism in religion (Deism) during the Revolutionary generation, this was a religious revival movement of the early decades of the nineteenth century that stressed the right of private judgment in spiritual matters and the possibility of universal salvation through faith and good works. Relying on opportunities offered by the market revolution, (preachers embarking on tours by canal, steamboat, and railroad, and flooding the country with mass-produced, inexpensive religious tracts) this movement eventually spread to all regions of the country and democratized American Christianity. It began the predominance of the Baptist and Methodist churches.

Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats

Reacting to the strong civil rights planks in the 1948 Democratic Party platform, this South Carolina Governor lead other Southern Democratic Party delegates to break away and form the "State's Rights Democratic Party," a short-lived break-away segregationist political party determined to protect states' rights to legislate racial segregation from what its members regarded as an oppressive federal government. Supporters assumed control of the state Democratic parties in part or in full in several Southern states. The Party opposed racial integration and wanted to retain Jim Crow laws and white supremacy in the face of possible federal intervention.

Deregulation

Reagan and many conservatives believed that many government regulations that had been created in efforts to protect the environment, consumers, and/or workers, were damaging to the economy and a threat to freedom. So Reagan appointed conservative heads to various regulatory agencies who cut back the regulations of the agencies they oversaw. The overall effects of deregulation during the Reagan Era remains controversial. The deregulation of some industries--like the Airline industry--were very helpful and productive. However, the deregulation of other industries--like the savings and loan industry--were very destructive and unproductive.

The "Lavender Scare"

Refers to a witch hunt and the mass firings of gay people in the 1950s from the United States government. It paralleled the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare. Homosexuals were deemed particularly susceptible to blackmail by Soviet agents as well as supposedly lacking in the manly qualities need to maintain the country's resolve in the fight against communism. Ironically, the government's anti-gay campaign came at the very time that gay men enjoyed a powerful presence in the realms of culture and commercial life being promoted as expressions of American freedom--modern art and ballet, fashion, and advertising.

Transcontinental Railroad

Refers to the first railroad line across the continent from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, established in 1869 with the linkage of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory, Utah

The National Origins Act of 1924

Reflecting a fundamental change in immigration policy, this law permanently limited European immigration to 150,000 per year, distributed according to as series of national quotas that severely restricted the numbers from Southern and Eastern Europe. The law aimed to ensure that descendants of the old immigrants (from Northern and Western Europe) forever outnumbered the children of the new (from Southern and Eastern Europe). It also barred all immigrants who were ineligible for naturalized citizenship (that is, the entire population of Asia, which had been declared ineligible for citizenship ever since the 1790 Naturalization Act). However, the law placed no limits on immigration from the Western hemisphere.

Wilmot Proviso

Reflecting free-labor ideology, this was a PA Congressman's proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican-American War. Every northern Congressman supported it, but Southern Congressmen, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, defeated the measure repeatedly.

The Neutrality Acts

Reflecting the isolationist sentiment of the 1930s, these were a series of acts passed by Congress between 1935-39 prohibiting Americans from traveling on belligerents' ships and banning the sale of arms to countries at war. These policies, Congress hoped, would prevent the U.S. from becoming involved in another European war by avoiding the economic entanglements and conflicts over freedom of the seas that had drawn the U.S. into World War One.

Zoot Suit Riots, 1943

Reflecting the limits of WWII-era tolerance, these were a series of violent attacks by U.S. sailors (and some policemen), who were stationed in Los Angeles, against Mexican-American youths in the city. Zoot Suits--a flamboyant style of suit popular at the time among Mexican-American youth, were characterized by their baggy trousers under a long coat with wide lapels and padded shoulders. Many servicemen considered the wearing of zoot suits to be unpatriotic because they required a lot of fabric (which was being rationed at the time for the war effort) and represented the youths' public flouting of rationing regulations. The attacks were also fueled by the stereotype at the time of Mexican-American youth as juvenile delinquents and hoodlums. Over the course of several days, thousands of servicemen participated in the attacks, marching down streets, assaulting Mexican-American youth and often stripping them if they were wearing zoot-suits.

Utopian Communities

Reform communities where small groups of men and women attempted to establish a more perfect order within the larger society. Shakers: Equality for men and women, no private property, no traditional family life Oneida: no private property of traditional family life, dictatorial Brook Farm: Transcendentalists New Harmony: Socialism to avoid the conflict of industrialization

Freedom of the Press

Regarded as dangerous by governments on both sides of the Atlantic, this particular freedom in colonial America was most frequently discouraged by elected assemblies, while newspapers often defended it as a central component to liberty.

Quakers ("Society of Friends")

Religious group in England and America--settling mainly in Pennsylvania--whose members believed all persons possessed the "inner light," or the spirit of God; they were early proponents of the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women.

The First and Second Continental Congresses

Representatives of the colonies met first in Philadelphia in 1774 to formulate actions against British policies; the second round of gatherings (1775-1789) conducted the war and adopted the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.

President Richard Nixon, 1969-74

Republican President serving from 1969 until he resigned in 1974. Running a 1968 campaign in which he promised to restore "law and order" and claimed he had a "secret plan" for winning the war in Vietnam, Nixon came to office and claimed to speak for the "silent majority" of Americans who were not protesting. Yet it was difficult to characterize his domestic policies in office, and while Nixon fundamentally altered Cold War policies, he is perhaps most remembered for his cover-up of, and ultimate resignation over, the Watergate Scandal.

American Enlightenment

Revolution in thought in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason and science over the authority of traditional religion. This was an extension of the Europe's philosophical movement originating in France, that sought to apply the scientific method of careful investigation based on research and experiment to political and social life; insisted that every human institution, authority, and tradition be judged before the bar of reason

Middle Passage

Route used to transport millions of African slaves across the Atlantic during the Colonial Era; such voyages had a high death rate and were particularly gruesome and difficult for the Africans who were usually shackled and packed like cargo below deck.

Gag Rule

Rule adopted by House of Representatives in 1836 prohibiting consideration of abolitionist petitions. The opposition to this rule, led by former president John Quincy Adams, succeeded in having it repealed in 1844.

John Muir, the Sierra Club, and Hetch Hetchy

Scottish-American preservationist (keep wilderness wild) who founded the first organization devoted to environmental preservation in 1892 to help preserve forests in their "natural" state by making them off limits to logging by timber companies. His love of nature stemmed from deep religious feelings; he believed people could experience God's presence directly through nature. A proposal to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley (a beautiful valley just north of Yosemite Valley in California) to provide water for the city of San Francisco lead to the first great environmental political battle in U.S. history between Sierra Club preservationists (opposed to building the dam) and "wise-use" conservationists resource managers who supported the dam. Muir and the Sierra Club lost the debate, and the dam was built.

The Insular Cases, 1901-1904

Series of cases between 1901 and 1904 in which the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional protection of individual rights did not fully apply to residents of "insular" territories acquired by the United States in the Spanish-American War, such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Lincoln-Douglas debates

Series of senatorial campaign debates in 1858 focusing on the issue of slavery in the territories; held in Illinois between Republican Abraham Lincoln, who made a national reputation for himself, and incumbent Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, who managed to hold onto his seat.

Minimum wage, maximum hours, and worker's compensation laws

Several of the main legislative goals of the labor movement during the Progressive Era. While nearly half the states enacted worker's compensation laws during the era, the dominant ideology of "liberty of contract" meant that very few state-level minimum wage and maximum hour laws were enacted, and those that were only applied to female workers (a result of the maternalist reform movement).

Eisenhower's Farewell Address

Shortly before leaving office, Eisenhower's delivered this famous speech on TV, in which he warned against the drumbeat of calls for a new military buildup. He urged Americans to think about the dangerous power of what he called the "military-industrial complex"--the conjunction of "an immense military establishment" with a "permanent arms industry"--with an influence felt in "every office" in the land. "We must never let the weight of this combination," he advised his countrymen, "endanger our liberties or democratic processes." While few Americans shared Ike's concern at the time, a few years later (during the Vietnam War), and at many points later in the century, his words would seem prophetic.

Mayflower Compact (1620)

Signed in 1620 aboard the Mayflower before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the document committed the group to majority rule government and to follow "just and equal laws"

Indian Removal Act of 1830

Signed into law by President Andrew Jackson, this law provided funds for uprooting the so-called Five Civilized Tribes--the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole--with a population of around 60,000 living in NC, GA, AL, and MS. The law marked a repudiation of the Jeffersonian idea that "civilized" Indians could be assimilated into the American population.

Treaty of Paris, 1783

Signed on September 3, 1783, the treaty ending the Revolutionary War and recognizing American independence from Britain also established the border between Canada and the United States, fixed the western border at the Mississippi River, and ceded Florida to Spain.

Artisans

Skilled workers who were socially distinct from common laborers; their skill gave them far more economic freedom and they profited from the expanding consumer market in the colonies.

Abolitionism

Social movement of the pre-Civil War era (predominantly in the North) that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens.

Abolitionism

Social movement of the pre-Civil War era that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens

American socialism

Socialism in the U.S. reached its greatest influence during the Progressive Era. The American Socialist Party, founded in 1901, called for free college education, legislation to improve conditions of laborers, and, as an ultimate goal, democratic control over the economy through public ownership of railroads and factories. By 1912, the Socialist Party claimed over 150,00 dues-paying members, published hundreds of newspapers--including Appeal to Reason, the largest weekly newspaper in the country--, enjoyed substantial support in the AFL, and had elected scores of officials to local governments.

Matrilineal Societies

Societies where the children of a marriage become part of the mother's family. The difference between European and Indian gender roles caused the Europeans to view the Indians as "backwards" and in need of fixing. They viewed Indian women as mistreated and men as weak when in reality the Indian women had many more rights than European women.

Teen Culture in the 1950s

Some teenagers wore leather jackets, danced to rock-and-roll music, and developed their own culture and music, while older generations saw them as somewhat rebellious and alienated from the world of adult respectability. With teenagers a growing part of the population, thanks to the baby boom, the emergence of a popular culture geared to the emerging youth market suggested that significant generational tensions lay beneath the bland surface of the 1950s.

"Fire-eaters"

Southern nationalists hoping to split up the Democratic party and form an independent Southern Confederacy.

Conquistadores

Spanish explorers who travelled to the New World motivated by wealth, national glory, and the desire to spread Christianity. They reshaped the New World by conquering, converting, and killing natives.

Religious Missions (California Missions)

Spanish outposts in California that served as religious, governmental, and labor/centers. Outposts aimed to transform the culture of the local Indian populations and eventually assimilate them into European civilization; the combination of new diseases and the resettlement of thousands of Indians in villages around the missions often devastated Indian society.

The Modern Environmental Movement (aka environmentalism)

Sparked in part by Carson's Silent Spring, this movement moved beyond the preservation and conservation efforts of the Industrial Age as many new groups sprang into existence to alert the country to the dangers of water contamination, air pollution, lead in paint, and the extinction of animal species. Despite vigorous opposition from business groups that considered its proposals a violation of property rights, environmentalism attracted the broadest bipartisan support of any of the new social movements. Under Republican president Richard Nixon, Congress during the late 1960s and early 1970s passed a series of measures to protect the environment, including the Clean Air and Water Acts and the Endangered Species Act. On April 22nd, 1970, the first Earth Day, some 20 million people, most of them under the age of thirty, participated in rallies, concerts, and teach-ins.

Munn v. Illinois, 1877

Supreme Court case in which the court upheld the constitutionality of an Illinois law that established a state board empowered to eliminate railroad rate discrimination and set maximum charges. In this case, the Supreme Court seemed willing to accept laws regulating enterprises that represented a significant "public interest." This ruling was later overturned by Wabash v. Illinois, 1886

Korematsu v. United States, 1944

Supreme Court decision that upheld the legality of the Japanese internment policy. Despite the fact that Congress, in 1988, formally apologized for internment and provided compensation for each survivor, the Supreme Court has never overturned this decision.

Miranda v. Arizona, 1966

Supreme Court ruling said that an individual in police custody must be informed of the rights to remain silent and to confer with a lawyer before answering questions and must be told that any statements might be used in court.

TR and the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike

Teddy Roosevelt believed that the president should be an "honest broker" in labor disputes, rather than automatically siding with the employers as his predecessors had usually done. When a strike paralyzed the West Virginia and Pennsylvania coalfields in 1902, he summoned union and management leaders to the White House. By threatening a federal takeover of the mines, he persuaded the owners to allow the dispute to be settled by a commission he himself would appoint. TR's insistence on negotiations between unions and management signaled a transition away from PBBLF and a shift towards the growing influence and power of organized labor.

The breakup of J.P. Morgan's Northern Securities, 1904

Teddy Roosevelt shocked the corporate world by announcing his intention to prosecute under the Sherman Antitrust Act the Northern Securities Company. Created by financier JP Morgan, this "holding company" owned the stock and directed the affairs of three major western railroads. It monopolized transportation between the Great Lakes and the Pacific. In 1904, the Supreme Court ordered Northern Securities dissolved, a major victory for the antitrust movement. This event symbolized the shift away from the pro-big business laissez faire policies of the Gilded Age.

The TV World

Televisions became increasingly prominent in American life during the 1950s as nearly nine in ten American families owned a TV set by the end of the 1950s. TV ads, aimed primarily at middle-class suburban viewers, conveyed images of the good life based on endless consumption.

Freedmen

Term that referred to free citizens who were formerly slaves before the Civil War.

Enclosure Movement

The 16th and 17th century process in which English landlords evicted small farmers and fenced in "commons" (communal farm and grazing land previously open to all). This process created many landless men who became interested in migrating to America.

Haitian Revolution, 1791

The 1791 rebellion in Saint Domingue led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, an educated slave on a sugar plantation, who aimed to defeat British forces seeking to seize the island and then reestablish French authority. The slave uprising led to the establishment an independent nation in 1804.

Battle of Fallen Timbers

The 1794 defeat of the Miami Confederacy by 3,000 American soldiers led by Anthony Wayne.

Treaty of Versailles

The 1919 peace conference outside of Paris, France, where leaders of the Allied powers and Germany negotiated an end to World War One. Among the provisions of treaty, the League of Nations was established, and self-determination was applied to eastern Europe (but not elsewhere). But the treaty was much harsher than Wilson wanted, and it virtually guaranteed future conflict in Europe by limiting the size of the German military, declaring Germany morally responsible for the war, and saddling Germany with astronomical reparations payments that crippled the German economy.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using the tactics of nonviolence and civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs and inspired by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. At the youthful age of 26, he helped to lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, and he went on to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and then helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. King's death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

The First Modern War

The American Civil War; the first time armies confronted each other with weapons created by the industrial revolution. In a modern war like the Civil War, the effectiveness of political leadership, the ability to mobilize economic resources, and a society's willingness to keep up the fight despite setbacks are as crucial to the outcome as success or failure on individual battlefields. The casualties dwarfed anything in the American experience War was transformed from army vs. army to society vs. society. First time that the railroad transported troops and supplies and the first to see railroad junctions become major military objectives. First demonstration of the superiority of ironclad ships, revolutionizing naval warfare. Telegraph was used for military communication and the introduction of observation balloons to view enemy lines. The musket was replaced with the more accurate rifle, which changed the nature of combat. Propaganda was used to motivate both sides of the war.

The Triangular Trades

The Atlantic trade system that operated for over several centuries carrying cash crops and raw materials from the Americas to Western Europe where they were exchanged for manufactured goods that were shipped to West Africa where they were traded for human beings that would be sold into slavery and shipped to the Americas.

Salutary Neglect

The British government's policy of leaving the colonies to largely govern themselves during the first half of the eighteenth century.

Impressment

The British practice of kidnapping sailors, including American citizens of British origin, to serve in their navy.

Trail of Tears, 1838-39

The Cherokee Indian's own term for their forced removal by Federal soldiers, from 1838-1839, from the Southeast to Indian lands (later Oklahoma); of 18,000 forced to march, over 4,000 died on the way.

John Collier and the Indian New Deal

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs during the 1930s who oversaw the most radical shift in federal Indian policy in U.S. history. He ended the policy of forced assimilation and allowed Indians unprecedented cultural autonomy. He replaced the boarding schools meant to eradicate the tribal heritage of Indian children with schools on reservations, dramatically increased spending on Indian health, and secured passage of the Indian Reorganization Act.

The Fugitive Slave Clause

The Constitution didn't mention the word "slave" or "slavery," but along with the 3/5ths Clause, and the protection of the Atlantic slave trade until 1808, this clause was one of the protections of slavery in the Constitution. It said that enslaved people who run away are not free but shall be returned to their owners.

English Liberty

The English idea that the English king was subject to the rule of law and that all free persons should enjoy security of person and property. The idea consisted of a set of privileges rather than entitlements.

Southern and Northern resource advantages/disadvantages

The North: Population= 22 million in 1860 In manufacturing, railroad mileage and financial resources outstripped the South Mostly had farm boys, shopkeepers, artisans and urban workers South: Population: 9 million w/ 3.5 million slaves Less manufacturing than the North However, southern armies could lose most of the battles and still win the war if their opponent tired of the struggle Non-slaveholding small farmers with slave-owners dominating the officer corps

Kent State and Jackson State Shootings, 1970

The Ohio National Guard shot into crowds of unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War (and the most recent U.S. invasion of Cambodia) at Kent State University in Ohio, in 1970. Four students were killed. Eleven days later, two students were shot and killed by police at Jackson State University. The killings of unarmed student protesters at home sparked even greater levels of student outrage and protest over the Vietnam War.

The "Revolution of 1800"

The Presidential election that resulted in the first peaceful transition of power from one political party to another in U.S. history. After his defeat, John Adams (a Federalist) recognized the legitimacy of the election and allowed Thomas Jefferson (a Republican) to take over the Presidency of the United States. The peaceful transition of power following elections has become one of the greatest hallmarks of American democracy.

Moral Liberty

The Puritan idea of "liberty to that only which is good"; could entail restraints on speech, religion, and personal behavior. A spiritual state where people had the opportunity and responsibility to obey God's will and subject themselves to his authority.

The Southern Strategy

The Republican Party's strategy during the Conservative Resurgence to gain political support in the South by appealing to the racism against African Americans harbored by many southern white voters. Generally avoiding the direct appeals to racism that candidates like George Wallace or Strom Thurmond used during the 1960s, the Southern Strategy used more subtle, yet racially-coded, tactics such as appointing judges hostile to civil rights, speaking out against forced-busing and affirmative action, and calling for freedom of association, local control, and resistance to the power of the federal government.

The abortion controversy

The Roe v. Wade Decision (1973), which recognized women's Constitutional right to have an abortion, sparked a bitter (and long-term) battle between the "Pro-Choice"/"Right to Choose" camp (those who insisted that a woman's right to control her own body includes the right to a safe, legal, abortion) and the "Pro-Life"/"Right to Life" camp (those who insist that life begins and conception and abortion is nothing less than murder of an unborn life.) The Pro-Life movement gained increasing support from the Religious Right.

1968 as a Year of Turmoil

The Sixties reached their climax in 1968, a year when momentous events succeeded each other so rapidly that the foundations of society seemed to be dissolving. (Jan) Tet Offensive (military victory, PR disaster) LBJ (D) faces anti-war Democratic challengers (Eugene McCarthy and RFK) (March) LBJ announces on TV that he will not seek re-election George Wallace (Independent) runs on segregation (April) MLK assassination, riots ensue (June) RFK assassination (Aug) riots at the Democratic Convention (Humphrey nominated on pro-war platform) Nixon (R), speaking for "the silent majority" runs on "law and order" and a "secret plan" for Vietnam, defeats Humphrey (begins "Conservative Resurgence")

"The Tariff of Abominations"

The Southern term for the Tariff of 1828. It taxed imported goods at a very high rate and aroused strong opposition in the South because, unlike the Northern economy which was diversified and increasingly based on manufacturing, the Southern economy was based predominantly on agricultural cash crops like cotton, and it depended on exporting its crops abroad and selling them overseas. But when the U.S. imposed tariffs on imported manufactured good from other countries, those other countries retaliated by imposing tariffs on agricultural products they imported from the U.S.. These "retaliatory tariffs" hurt the southern economy. Moreover, Southerners would have to pay higher prices for the North's manufactured goods.

Repartimiento System (1550)

The Spanish system that replaced the encomienda system in 1550 where Indians were required to do a certain amount of labor each year but were recognized as free and deserving wages. This system increased Indians' status and removed slavery. Though they still served the Spanish colonizers, their status was growing closer to equal.

The Civil Rights Cases of 1883

The Supreme Court invalidated the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had outlawed racial discrimination by hotels, theaters, railroads, and other public facilities. The Fourteenth Amendment, the Court insisted, prohibited unequal treatment by state authorities, not by private businesses.

United States. v. E.C. Knight Co., 1895

The Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which prohibited combinations in restraint of trade (like trusts and monopolies), could NOT be used to break up a sugar refining monopoly (E.C. Knight Co.) since the Constitution empowered Congress to regulate commerce, but not manufanufacturing. This was a pro-big business ruling.

Wabash v. Illinois, 1886

The Supreme Court struck down an Illinois regulation by ruling that only the federal government, not the states, could regulate railroads engaged in interstate commerce. This was a pro-big business ruling, and it inspired Congress to pass the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.

Lochner v. New York, 1905

The Supreme Court, in this case, voided a state law establishing ten hours per day, or sixty per week, as the maximum hour of work for bakers. The New York Law, wrote one justice, "interfered with the right of contract between employer and employee." This notorious ruling gave the name "Lochnerism" to the entire body of liberty of contract decisions.

The Freedom Movement (aka The Civil Rights Movement), 1954-1968

The Twentieth Century's greatest citizens' movement--the black struggle and equality. The name "Civil Rights Movement" implies that the struggle was largely for rights conferred to citizens by their government (like the right to vote or to sit at a lunch counter), while the name "Freedom Movement" implies it was a struggle for more than that; it was for not only civil rights, be also dignity, economic opportunity, self-assertion, or as many in the movement put it, "Freedom." While the narrative of the "Civil Rights" movement usually begins in 1954 (with Brown v. Board) and ends in 1968 (with the assassination of MLK), the black struggle for "freedom" began long before that and continues today.

The National Park Service

The United States led the entire world in environmental preservation by setting aside great areas of land for wilderness preservation, personal growth, and recreation, rather than for resource extraction or agriculture. In 1916, this service was created to manage all the National Parks. In contrast to this system, the National Forest system applies the philosophy of conservation ("wise use") by allowing regulated resource extraction from National Forests.

Arguments in opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam

The Vietnamese are in the midst of a long struggle for national independence from France, Japan, and now, the U.S.. Ho Chi Minh is first and foremost a nationalist independence leader (whose 1945 Declaration of Independence was modeled after the US Declaration of Independence). The United States is invading South Vietnam. While the pro-war position states that the U.S. is protecting non-communist South Vietnam from an invasion by North Vietnam, the anti-war position sees the war as a civil war between South Vietnamese rural peasants called the Viet Cong and the undemocratic, unpopular government in Saigon backed by the United States (formerly under the leadership of Ngo Din Diem.) The US is preventing the South Vietnamese (who are simply receiving help from North Vietnam—not being invaded by them) from obtaining their right of self-determination. The U.S. is supporting a brutal, repressive, undemocratic, and unpopular regime in South Vietnam. Stop Death and Destruction: Many U.S. soldiers are dying (about 58,000 U.S. deaths by the end of the war). Twice as many bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were dropped by the U.S. in all of World War Two. Millions of Vietnamese were made refugees, 2-3 million died, hundreds of thousands suffered disease from U.S. chemical weapons like Agent Orange after the war. The U.S. military strategy fails to distinguish between Vietnamese civilians and soldiers. The most infamous example is the My Lai massacre. Torture and kidnapping of suspected communists by the US was common in the Phoenix Program. The U.S. is fighting primarily for our own selfish political, strategic, and economic interests.

Metacom

The Wampanoag leader known to colonists as King Philip; considered by colonists to have been the leader of the bloody 1675 Indian uprising in southern New England.

The Second Red Scare

The anti-communist crusade that created a pervasive atmosphere of fear in American politics, culture, and society that lasted from the late 1940s through the 1950s, even longer and more pervasive than the first one following World War One.

The Dust Bowl

The area centered around Oklahoma, and including parts of Texas, Kansas, and Colorado, during the 1930s where, for several years, major dust storms occurred. The dust storms, which displaced more than a million farmers (many who migrated West in search of jobs were derogatorily called "Okies"), were caused by severe drought and mechanized agriculture (with deep plowing) that had pulverized the topsoil and killed the native grasses that prevented erosion.

Sunbelt

The area of the U.S. generally stretching from the Southeast all the way to the Southwest. The population of this area continued to increase in the Seventies in part due to deindustrialization and corporations relocating their manufacturing plants outside of the union-strong areas of the Midwest and Northeast to areas in the Southeast and Southwest with weaker unions and lower-wages. The accelerating flow of jobs, investment, and population to this area increased the political influence of this conservative region in the later quarter of the 20th century (Presidents LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and G.W. Bush were all from various parts of this region).

Deference

The assumption among ordinary people that wealth, education, and social prominence carried a right to public office.

"no taxation without representation"

The belief that Britain had no right to tax colonists, since Americans were unrepresented in the House of Commons.

Popular sovereignty

The belief that settlers in western territories should have the right to decide the slavery issue for themselves (rather than having Congress decide it for them); program most closely associated with Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

American Exceptionalism

The belief that the United States has a special role and serves as a refuge from tyranny, a symbol of freedom, and a model for the rest of the world

Eugene Debs

The best known socialist in the U.S., no one was more important in spreading the socialist message or linking it to ideals of equality, self-government, and freedom. A champion of the downtrodden, he was one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States; director of the Pullman strike; he was imprisoned along with his associates for ignoring a federal court injunction to stop striking.

The Teapot Dome Scandal

The biggest scandal of President Warren G. Harding's Presidency, which was one of the most corrupt presidential administrations in U.S. history. Between 1921 and 1922, the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, accepted nearly $500,000 from private businessmen to whom he leased government oil reserves in Wyoming. Fall became the first cabinet member in history to be convicted of a felony.

Election of 1860

The candidates were Lincoln (Republican), Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), Bell (Constitutional Union [wanted to preserve the Constitution as it was, with slavery]), Douglas (Northern Democrat). Despite not even appearing on the ballot in most southern states, Lincoln won both the electoral and the popular vote; a clear example of the sweeping sectionalism dividing the nation. Breckinridge carried most of the slave states and Lincoln took the large majority of the North; Douglas was the only candidate to have significant support across the nation. Lincoln's victory triggered the secessionist movement.

"The War on Poverty"

The centerpiece of LBJ's Great Society, this was a government crusade to eradicate poverty in the United States. While food stamps offered direct aid (and were the most popular and successful component), most of the efforts concentrated on equipping the poor with skills and rebuilding their spirit and motivation. The Office of Economic Opportunity oversaw a series of initiatives designed to lift the poor into to social and economic mainstream: Head Start (an early childhood education program), job training, legal services, scholarships for poor college students, and VISTA (a domestic version of the Peace Corps for the inner cities).

The Social Security Act

The centerpiece of the Second New Deal, this program embodied FDR's conviction that the national government had a responsibility to ensure the material well-being of ordinary Americans. It created a system of unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and aid to the disabled, the elderly poor, and families with dependent children. Reflecting a hybrid of national and local funding, control, and eligibility standards, its old age pensions were administered nationally but paid for by taxes on employers and employees. Such taxes also paid for payments to the unemployed, but this program was highly decentralized, with the states retaining considerable control over the level of benefits. By committing the government to supervising not simply temporary relief but a permanent system of social insurance, this program launched the American version of the welfare state.

Cahokia

The central city of Indian culture in the Mississippi River Valley (1200 AD); the largest city in the present day United States until 1800. The city was a significant civilization for Indian culture.

"Industrial Freedom" and "Industrial democracy"

The central demands of workers in the Progressive Era, these terms referred to empowering workers to participate in the economic decisions of their company via strong unions. They were considered to be the solution to the "labor problem" by many in the Progressive Era. Throughout the Gilded Age, workers had experienced a loss of freedom in the workplace and an undermining of their personal autonomy because of developments like Taylorism, the growth of white-collar work, and the declining odds of one day managing one's own business.

Ho Chi Minh

The central leader of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation and independence. He was a nationalist first, and a communist second.

Métis

The children of marriages between French traders and Indian women who often became guides or translators. Compared to the British, the French viewed the Indians as relatively equal to them which lead to their intermixing in marriages. They encouraged Indians to join their society, contrasting their treatment as slaves by Spanish colonists.

The Fourteen Points

The clearest statement of U.S. objectives during WWI, and President Wilson's vision for the post-WWI international order. Among them key principles were self-determination for all nations, freedom of the seas, free trade, open diplomacy (an end to secret treaties), the readjustment of colonial claims with colonized people give "equal weight" in deciding their futures, and the creation of a "general association of nations" to preserve the peace (soon to become the "League of Nations"). Although purely an American program, not endorsed by the other Allies, the Fourteen Points established the agenda for the Paris Peace Conference that followed the war.

Redeemers

The coalition of merchants, planters, and business entrepreneurs who dominated the South's politics after 1877 who moved to undo as much as possible of Reconstruction (claiming to have redeemed the South from the alleged horrors and misgovernment of "black rule").

"Clear and Present Danger"

The concept from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' opinion in Schenck v. United States (1919) that became the basic test in First Amendment cases for the next half-century. The Schenck case upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage Act and the conviction of Charles Schenck, as socialist who had distributed anti-draft leaflets through the mails during WWI. Holm's concept dealt a devastating blow to the concept of civil liberties.

"hard money" vs. "soft money"

The debate over whether gold and silver was a more reliable currency than paper.

Mercantilism

The dominant economic theory of the Colonial Era in which the purpose of the colonies are to serve the economic interests of the mother country; trade was tightly controlled

Reverend Charles Grandison Finney

The evangelical preacher most associated with the Second Great Awakening who held months-long revival meetings in New York in the 1820s and 1830s.

The Slave Family

The family unit in slave communities, though marriages were not legally recognized; slaves being resold was a constant threat to familial unity.

Daughters of Liberty

The female counterparts of the Sons of Liberty; led the homespun movement

Mikhail Gorbachev

The final leader of the Soviet Union, he came to power in 1985 bent on reforming the Soviet Union's repressive political systems and reinvigorating its economy by inaugurating policies known as glasnost (political openness) and perestroika (economic reform). He developed a strong relationship with Reagan, who negotiated the INF treaty with him.

The Panic of 1819

The financial collapse brought on by sharply falling cotton prices, declining demand for American exports, and reckless western land speculation.

Roanoke Colony (1585)

The first English settlement in North America, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585 off the coast of North Carolina; the first settlement was abandoned in 1586; the second settlement, established in 1586, was found mysteriously abandoned in 1590.

The Articles of Confederation

The first constitution, ratified in 1781, whose primary goal was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states, created a very weak central government composed only of a one-house legislature that did not have the power to tax, regulate trade, or raise troops (the "three-Ts"). After Shays' Rebellion and calls for a stronger central government, this frame of government was replaced by the Constitution of the United States in 1789.

McCarran-Walter Act, 1952

The first major piece of immigration legislation since 1924, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress over Truman's veto, it kept the the national origins quotas (from 1924) in place and authorized the deportation of immigrants identified as communists, even if they had become citizens.

Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and the Square Deal, 1901-1909

The first of the three Progressive Era Presidents, and the term that refers to his legislative agenda while President.

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791 to guarantee individual rights against infringement by the federal government.

Ellis Island and Angel Island

The first was the reception center in New York Harbor through which most European immigrants to America were processed from 1892 to 1954. The second was in San Francisco Bay and served as the main entry point for immigrants from Asia.

The First Hundred Days

The first, roughly, three months of FDR's first term in office, during which time fifteen major pieces of legislation were enacted (most of which attempted some form of economic recovery from the Great Depression), making it one of the most productive periods in the history of the U.S. Congress.

The Counterculture (aka "the Hippies")

The flamboyant youth revolt whose rejection of both traditional forms of authority as well as respectable norms in clothing, language, sexual behavior, and drug use became the basis of a mass movement. Surely self-indulgence and self-destruction were built-in, but there was far more to this movement than the new consumer styles or the famed trio of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. To young dissenters, personal liberation represented a spirit of creative experimentation, a search for a way of life in which friendship and pleasure eclipsed the single-minded pursuit of wealth. It meant a release from bureaucratized education and work, repressive rules of personal behavior, and above all, a militarized state that, in the name of freedom, rained destruction on a faraway people. It encouraged new forms of radical action, emphasized the ideal of community, contributed to the growing environmental consciousness, and lead to a flowering of artistic, religious, and spiritual creativity and experimentation.

Navajo's Long Walk

The forced migration of 8,000 Navajo people in the Southwest to a reservation set aside by the government.

The Election of 1912

The four-way contest between Taft, Roosevelt, Wilson, and Debs became a national debate on the relationship between political and economic freedom in the age of big business. Taft stressed that economic individualism could remain the foundation of the social order so long as government and private entrepreneurs cooperated in addressing social ills. Debs emphasized abolishing the capitalist system and also demanded including public ownership of the railroads and banking system, government aid to the unemployed, and laws establishing shorter working hours and a minimum wage. However, it was the battle between Wilson's New Freedom and Roosevelt's New Nationalism over the role of federal government in securing economic freedom that most galvanized public attention. In the end, Wilson was elected.

Liberty of Contract

The freedom for workers to negotiate the substance of their contract with their employers. In reality, given how much more powerful large employers were than their relatively interchangeable workers, this liberty was far more advantageous to employers than to workers. Nevertheless, for several decades, the Supreme Court used this theory to reconcile freedom and authority in the workplace.

Containment

The fundamental foreign policy of the United States throughout the duration of the Cold War in which the U.S. committed itself to trying to prevent any further expansion of communism and the power of the Soviet Union. The policy began to take shape in 1946 with George Kennan's "Long Telegram," and Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, but it was first embraced as the foundation of U.S. foreign policy in the Truman Doctrine, in 1947.

The Reagan Coalition

The general groups of Americans who tended to vote Republican in 1980 lent support to the Conservative Resurgence. Foner writes, Reagan's "victory brought to power a diverse coalition of old and new conservatives: Sunbelt suburbanites and urban working-class ethnics; anti-government crusaders and advocates of a more aggressive foreign policy; libertarians who believed in freeing the individual from restraint and the Christian Right, which sought to restore what they considered traditional moral values to American Life."

Suburbanization

The huge demographic shift whereby millions of American moved from cities to suburbs in the period following World War Two. By 1960, suburban residents of single-family homes outnumbered urban dwellers and those living in rural areas. (Today they outnumber both combined).

The Black Legend

The idea that Spanish colonizers in the New World were uniquely cruel compared to other European colonizers. It was spread by Las Casas's depiction of Spanish America, and was used to justify English imperial expansion. It led to intense criticism of the Spanish and lessened their national glory. It also further deteriorating their relationship with the Indians.

Christian Liberty

The idea that freedom was a moral state reached when one abandoned a life of sin and embraced the teachings of God. Europeans viewed freedom in these terms. Since the Indians did not conform to this idea, the Europeans viewed them as savage heathens who needed to be forced into a new religion and way of life. "liberating yourself from sin" using christianity

Animism

The idea that sacred spirits can be found in inanimate objects such as water, plants, and wind. This was a very common belief of many Native American tribes. When the Europeans saw that their religions differed in many ways, they believed that the natives were worshipping the devil or were heathens who needed to be saved with Christianity.

"Perfectionism"

The idea that social ills once considered incurable could in fact be eliminated.

"Self Made Man"

The idea that those who achieved success in America did so not as a result of hereditary privilege or government favoritism as in Europe, but through their own intelligence and hard work.

"The White Man's Burden"

The idea, popularized by an 1899 poem by Rudyard Kipling, suggested that white imperialism contributed to the progress of civilization. In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the "burden" of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. The poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. This racialized notion became a euphemism for imperialism.

Henry Ford and "Fordism"

The ideology of the founder of Ford Motor Company, which pioneered a business plan based on mass production and mass consumption. More specifically, Ford's system produced standardized, simple "Model T" automobiles (with nothing handmade or expensive to produce) targeted not to the elite consumer, but rather to the common man. He mass-produced them on the moving assembly line so as to greatly expand output by reducing the time it took to produce each car. He aggressively opposed unions among his employees. And yet he paid much higher wages than other employers, enabling him to attract a steady stream of skilled workers, and enabling his workers to purchase what they made.

World War Two

The largest and deadliest global conflict in human history, lasting from 1939-1945, pitting the Allied Powers (which included Britain, USSR, and the USA) against the Axis Powers (including Germany, Italy, and Japan), it involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. It was characterized by "total war;" the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians and the strategic bombing of industrial and population centers, it resulted in an estimated 50-85 million fatalities.

The Farmer's Alliance

The largest citizens' movement of the nineteenth century, founded in Texas in the late 1870s, farmers in forty-three states united to try to remedy their sense of increasing economic insecurity, which they blamed on high freight rates charged by railroads, excessive interest rates for loans from merchants and bankers, and the fiscal policies of the federal government.

Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

The largest female organization of the late 19th century, then led Frances Willard, it expanded its platform from simply prohibiting alcoholic beverages (blamed for leading men to squander their wages on drink and to treat their wives abusively) to a comprehensive program of economic and political reform, including the right to vote.

Interstate Highway Act

The largest public works project in U.S. history, this act authorized the building of the 41,000 mile interstate highway system. Both Cold War arguments (especially the need to provide rapid exit routes from cities in the event of nuclear war) and economic ones (good for automobile, oil, and construction industries) justified the project.

John D. Rockefeller

The leading figure in the U.S. oil industry and one of the richest people in the world, he used "horizontal integration" (buying up all his competitors) and later "vertical integration" (controlling the drilling, refining, storage, and distribution of oil) to build his company, Standard Oil, which controlled ninety percent of the nation's oil industry. Like Carnegie, he fought unionization but gave much of his fortune away, establishing foundations to promote education and medical research.

Billy Sunday

The leading--and perhaps the most flamboyant--fundamentalist of the 1920s. A talented professional baseball player who became a revivalist preacher, he drew huge crowds with a highly theatrical preaching style and a message denouncing sins ranging from Darwinism to alcohol. He was said to have preached to 100 million people during his lifetime, more than any other individual at that point in history.

Iran-Contra Scandal

The major scandal of the second Reagan administration involving sales of arms to Iran in partial exchange for release of hostages in Lebanon and use of the arms money to aid the Contras in Nicaragua, which had been expressly forbidden by Congress. Congress held televised hearings that revealed a pattern of official duplicity and violation of the law. While eleven members of Reagan's administration were disgraced, Reagan denied knowledge of the illegal proceedings, but the Iran-Contra Affair undermined the public's confidence that he controlled his own administration.

Gold Rush

The mania for gold incited by its discovery in January of 1848; drastically increased the number of settlers who migrated to California.

"Infant industries"

The manufacturing enterprises that sprang up during the War of 1812 when trade with Britain was suspended; after the war, a younger generation of Republicans argued for these industries to receive national protection.

The Second Middle Passage

The massive internal trade in slaves that developed within the United States in order to replace the slave trade from Africa, which had been prohibited by Congress in 1808. More than two million enslaved African-Americans were sold within the U.S. between 1820-1860, a majority to local buyers, but hundreds of thousands were "sold south" and transported into the Lower South where cotton production was expanding.

"American standard of living"

The maturation of the consumer economy gave rise to this popular, new concept that reflected, in part, the emergence of a mass-consumption society during the Progressive Era and was used to criticize the growing economic inequality in the nation.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962

The most dangerous crisis of the Kennedy administration, and in many ways of the entire Cold War, came in October, 1962, when American spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was installing missiles in Cuba capable of reaching the U.S. with nuclear weapons. Rejecting advice from military leaders that he authorize an attack on Cuba, which would almost certainly have triggered a Soviet response in Berlin and perhaps a nuclear war, Kennedy imposed a blockade, or "quarantine," of the island and demanded the missiles' removal. After tense behind-the-scenes negotiations, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles; Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would not invade Cuba and secretly agreed to remove American Jupiter missiles from Turkey, from which they could reach the Soviet Union.

World War One (aka the "Great War)

The most devastating war up to that point in human history (killing an estimated ten million soldiers and millions more civilians), lasting from 1914-1919, fought between "the Allies" (Britain, France, Russia, Japan, and eventually the U.S) and the "Central Powers" (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). Sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, its longer term causes included the industrial revolution and the scramble by European nations for colonial possessions overseas and a shifting set of alliances seeking military domination within Europe. The war dealt a severe blow to the optimism and self-confidence of Western civilization, and it sparked many important social, economic, and political changes within the U.S.

Crédit Mobilier Scandal, 1867

The most notorious example of corruption in federal politics during the Gilded Age in which lawmakers supported bills aiding companies in which they had invested money or from which they received stock or salaries. This scandal is named after a construction company that charged the (government-assisted) Union-Pacific Railroad exorbitant rates to build the eastern half of the first transcontinental railroad line, then they paid the lawmakers to look the other way.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

The most sensational of a series of highly publicized "spy trials" during the early years of the Cold War involved this working class Jewish couple from New York City. They were convicted of conspiracy to pass secrets concern the atomic bomb to Soviet agents during WWII. The case against the husband rested on secret documents that could not be revealed, and there was almost no evidence against the wife. But in the atmosphere of hysteria, their conviction was certain. Despite international outcry, the death sentence for both was carried out in 1953. Controversy still surrounds the degree of the couple's guilt, but almost no one today defends their execution. The trial powerfully reinforced the idea that an army of Soviet spies was at work in the United States.

The Fair Deal

The name for Democratic President Truman's domestic agenda, which focused on the social safety net and raising the standard of living of ordinary Americans. Truman called on Congress to increase the minimum wage, enact a program of national health insurance, and expand public housing, Social Security, and aid to education. The Republican controlled congress ensured that only a few of the major initiatives became law.

Mound builders

The name of Indians in the Ohio River Valley given by 18th century settlers due to the fact that they built large, earthen mounds. These large structures represent the technology of the Indians and the structures of their civilizations.

The Alliance for Progress

The name of Kennedy's major foreign policy initiative in Latin America. A kind of Marshall Plan for the Western Hemisphere, although involving a far smaller sum of money, it aimed, Kennedy said, to promote both "political" and "material freedom." Begun with much fanfare about alleviating poverty and counteracting the appeal of communism, this program failed in large part because military regimes and local elites in the region used the aid to enrich themselves while the poor saw little benefit.

Levittown

The name of the first suburban community, on Long Island in NY, built by William and Alfred Levitt. Quickly and easily assembled from prefabricated parts, they were priced well for most Americans. The physical embodiment of hopes for a better life and increasing standards of living, this community was used as a model by developers all across the country, as a suburban housing boom doubled the number of houses in the U.S. in the 1950s.

The Great Society

The name that refers to LBJ's domestic initiatives as president, which together represented the most sweeping agenda of governmental action to promote the general welfare since the New Deal. It provided health services for the poor and elderly in the new Medicaid and Medicare programs and poured federal funds into education and urban development. New cabinet offices--the Department of Transportation and of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)--and new agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Endowment for the Humanities and for the Arts (NEH and NEA), and a national public broadcasting network (PBS) were created. These measures greatly expanded the powers of the federal government, and they completed and extended the social agenda (with the exception of national health insurance) that had been stalled in Congress since 1938.

The Homestead Strike, 1892

The nineteenth century's most widely publicized confrontation between capital and labor. A major strike of workers started at Andrew Carnegie's Steel plant in Pennsylvania after Carnegie decided to operate the plant on a non-union basis. After the workers initially beat back hired policemen from the Pinkerton Detective Agency in a battle that left a number dead, the PA governor sent in the national guard to reopen the plant on Carnegie's terms. The strikers nevertheless won national sympathy, but the strike was ultimately a failure for the workers, and it demonstrated the enormous power of large corporations during the Gilded Age.

Open Immigration

The nineteenth-century policy of immigration in which almost all white persons were eligible to claim American citizenship, unless they were unwilling to renounce hereditary titles of nobility.

Anglican Church

The official Protestant church of England during the Colonial Era.

Slaveholders' paternalism

The outlook, often held by Southern slave owners, that the master needed to restrict the freedom of the slave, just like the father does to his children, in order to care for them and to look out for what is in their slaves' best interests.

The Baby Boom

The period from 1946 until 1964 witnessed a large spike in the U.S. birth rate. At a time of low immigration, the U.S. population rose by nearly 30 million (almost 20 percent) during the 1950s alone. There were multiple causes, including veterans coming home from war, the return of economic prosperity and stability (after the Great Depression and WWII), men and women reaffirming the virtues of family life and deciding to marry younger, and the decline in the divorce rate. This development helped fuel mass consumption and the construction of suburban homes.

The Double-V

The phrase that came to symbolize black attitudes during World War Two, it essentially meant that victory over Germany and Japan must be accompanied by victory over segregation at home.

Huey Long

The populist and dictatorial Louisiana governor, and afterwards Senator, referred to as "the Kingfish," who became of the most colorful characters in American politics. A critic of FDR's New Deal programs from the left, in 1934, he launched the "Share Our Wealth" movement, with the slogan "Every Man a King." He called for the confiscation of most of the wealth of the richest Americans in order to finance an immediate grant of $5,000 and a guaranteed job and annual income for all citizens. He was on the verge of announcing a run for president when the son of a defeated political rival assassinated him in 1935.

Executive Order 9066

The presidential order for Japanese-American internment, calling for the relocation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to internment camps in the interior of the country for the duration of World War Two. About 110,000 Japanese Americans were interned, nearly two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, revealing how easily war can undermine basic freedoms.

Reconquista (1492)

The reconquering of Spain from the Moors (African Muslims) completed by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in 1492. The King and Queen funded Columbus because he wanted to spread Christianity similarly to how they forced people living in Spain to convert to Catholicism.

Sectionalism

The regional divide becoming apparent in American politics leading up to and even after the Civil War; the North and South were clearly divided by multiple political, economic, and cultural factors, yet each distinct region had little political variance. By 1860, the two major parties--the Republicans and the Democrats--were strongly associated with the North and the South, respectively.

Wilson's New Freedom, TR's New Nationalism

The respective slogans of the Democratic Party's and Progressive Party's candidates for POTUS in 1912. They represented competing strands of Progressivism; both believed government action necessary to preserve individual freedom, but they differed over the dangers of increasing the government's power and the inevitability of economic concentration. Wilson envisioned the federal government staying relatively small but strengthening antitrust laws, protecting the right of workers to unionize, and actively encouraging small businesses--creating, in other words, the conditions of the renewal of economic competition in industrial capitalism without increasing government regulation of the economy. On the other hand, Roosevelt envisioned a big powerful federal government to match the huge size of the new industrial corporations in order to curb their abuses through heavy taxation on personal and corporate fortunes and federal regulation of industries, including railroads, mining, and oil.

The Second Klan

The resurgence of the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) during the 1920s among white, native-born, Protestants. Unlike the KKK of the Reconstruction, the organization was popular and visible in the North and the West, as well as its traditional home in the South. Moreover, it attacked a broader array of targets than just African Americans: immigrants (especially Jews and Catholics) and all the forces (feminism, unions, immorality, sometimes even giant corporations) that endangered "individual liberty."

Texas Revolt (1836)

The revolt in 1836 of Americans legally settled in Texas (a Mexican territory) when Mexico feared losing power and annulled land contracts and barred future emigration and slavery; Stephen Austin led the rebels to demand greater autonomy, resulting in Texan independence in 1836. The war included the infamous battle of "The Alamo" (187 killed)/ "Remember the Alamo." Today, Texas is called "The Lone Star State" because of the nine year period of its independence from both Mexico and the U.S.

William Howard Taft and "trust-busting"

The second Progressive Era President, he pursued antitrust policy even more aggressively than TR. He persuaded the Supreme Court in 1911 to declare John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and to order its breakup into separate marketing, producing, and refining companies.

The Age of Revolution

The second half of the 18th century was marked by popular protest and political upheaval that centered on ideas of liberty. Beginning in British North America, such political struggles spread to Europe and the Caribbean, and culminated in the Latin American wars for independence.

Congressional Reconstruction

The second phase of Reconstruction, which lasted roughly from the impeachment of Andrew Johnson until the Redeemers overthrew reconstruction efforts in the South. This phase of reconstruction was lead by the Radical Republicans in Congress and was much more interested in protecting the rights and equality of the freedmen than Presidential Reconstruction.

Harper's Ferry, Virginia

The site of abolitionist John Brown's failed raid on the federal arsenal, in 1859, that heightened sectional tensions; Brown intended to liberate and arm the slaves with weapons from the arsenal and then start a liberation movement that he hoped would sweep south throughout the region. The plan failed. Brown was captured and hung. Brown was celebrated as a martyr by many Northerners, which alarmed many Southerners.

The encomienda system

The system used by the Spanish during colonization in order to exploit, often brutally, American Indians for their labor. The Spanish monarchy would grant tracts of land in the New World to Spanish settlers--including the right to use the native inhabitants of that land for labor and for mining precious metals, a portion of which they sent back to the Spanish monarchy.

Atlantic Slave Trades

The systematic importation of African slaves from their native continent across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, largely fuelled by rising demand for sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco

Tenochtitlán

The technologically advanced, highly populated capital of the Aztec empire conquered by Spanish colonists. The city was a center of Aztec culture that was destroyed by the Spanish (disease and warfare).

French Indochina

The term from France's colony in Asia, dating to the late nineteenth century, that consisted of modern day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. After the expulsion of the Japanese (who had briefly taken over the French colony during WWII) in 1945, Ho Chi Minh's Vietnamese nationalist forces fought (and ultimately defeated) the French in their struggle for the independence of the region in what is called the "First Indochina War" (1945-1954).

The Republican Era

The term used by political historians to refer to the politics of the 1920s and specifically the Presidencies of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover; all three were Republicans. Reflecting the interests of business lobbyists, Republicans lowered taxes on personal incomes and business profits, maintained high tariffs, supported employers' continuing campaign against unions, and appointed many pro-business members to government agencies that, Progressives complained, they effectively repealed the regulatory system.

Internal Improvements

The term used from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century that refers to the creation of a transportation infrastructure: roads, turnpikes, canals, harbors and navigation improvements.

"The Spoils System"

The term—meaning the filing of federal government jobs with persons loyal to the party of the president—originated in Andrew Jackson's first term.

Christian Republicanism

The theory that religious virtue and morals were necessary for a republic to prosper.

Modern Republicanism

The title Eisenhower gave to his domestic agenda. The first Republican President in twenty years, Ike aimed to sever his party's identification in the minds of many Americans with Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression and indifference to economic conditions of ordinary citizens. He not only left the core New Deal programs in place, but he expanded them, particularly Social Security. He used government spending to promote productivity and boost employment (Interstate highway Act, National Defense Education Act). Rather than dismantling the New Deal, Ike consolidated and legitimized it.

The Manhattan Project

The top secret program in which American scientists developed an atomic bomb during World War Two. Research and production took place at more than thirty sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and employed more than 130,000 people.

Colombian Exchange

The transatlantic flow of people and goods (including plants, animals, diseases) beginning with Columbus's voyages in 1492 which reshaped the lives of Indians and Europeans in terms of diet, lifestyle, colonization, political and social structures, etc.

Second American Revolution

The transformation of American government and society brought about by the Civil War. Major elements of the revolution include: the abolition of slavery, the consolidation of Lincoln's vision of the nation united by the ideals of political democracy and human liberty, the increasing power and activity of the federal government (punishing dissent, the Homestead Act, the Transcontinental Railroad, increased tariff, income tax, a system of nationally chartered banks.)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The two Japanese cities over which the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on August 6th and August 9th, 1945, ending World War Two. Together killing well over 200,000 Japanese civilians, the dropping of the atomic bombs have remained controversial.

Federalists and Antifederalists

The two main groups composing the debate over the ratification of the Constitution from 1787 and 1789. The first favored ratification of the Constitution because it would create a stronger national government. The second opposed ratification arguing that the Constitution presented limitations on individual and states' rights; their demands led to the addition of a Bill of Rights to the document.

Federalists and Republicans

The two major political parties that had appeared in Congress by the mid-1790s (the first Party System). The first were supporters of the Washington administration, favored Hamilton's economic program and close ties with Britain. The second, led by Jefferson and Madison, were more sympathetic to France and had more faith in democratic self-government.

Effects of the Seven Years War (aka the "French and Indian War")

The war left Britain in tremendous debt, which led to the end of "salutary neglect" and the imposition of new taxes on the colonists

The Bank War of 1832

The war on the Bank of the United States waged by President Andrew Jackson, who believed it unacceptable for Congress to create a source of concentrated power and economic privilege unaccountable to the people; Jackson vetoed the recharter bill proposed by the bank in 1832.

Middle Ground

The western frontier of British North America; Ohio Valley; villages sprang up where members of numerous Indian tribes lived side by side (having been displaced by wars further to the East), along with European traders and the occasional missionary; where imperial rivalries fought and a middle ground developed between European empire and Indian sovereignty.

Women's Liberation

The younger and more radical branch of the feminist movement during the period of Second-Wave Feminism that greatly expanded and permanently change Americans' definition of freedom. Many women in this movement had worked earlier in other campaigns in the New Left, or for civil rights, or against the Vietnam War, where they were disillusioned to find that even their progressive male allies held deeply ingrained assumptions of male supremacy. By the late 60s, in part by forming thousands of "consciousness-raising" groups around the country in which women discussed the source of their discontentment, this movement inspired a major expansion of the idea of freedom by insisting that it should be applied to the most intimate realms of life. Introducing the terms "sexism," and "sexual politics," and the phrase "the personal is political" into public debate, this movement insisted that sexual relations, conditions of marriage, and standards of beauty were as much "political" questions as the war, civil rights, and the class tensions that had traditionally inspired the left to action.

Monopolies

These developed often during the Second Industrial Revolution, often through cutthroat competition, when one company came to dominate an entire industry, which resulted in limited competition and higher prices for consumers.

Sacco and Vanzetti

These two Italian immigrants were arrested and accused to participating in a robbery in 1920 in MA. It was the height of the Red Scare, and the two men were anarchists who saw violence as an appropriate weapon of class warfare. Despite the limited and dubious evidence presented against them, in the atmosphere of anti-radical and anti-immigrant fervor, their conviction was a certainty. Their case attracted international attention during a lengthy appeals process, and ultimately a special commission upheld their guilty verdict and their death sentences. While they both died in the electric chair, their case remained controversial and reflected the fierce cultural battles of the 1920s.

Black Codes

These were laws passed by southern states during Presidential Reconstruction in order to restrict the rights of former slaves. To nullify the codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Trusts

These were legal devices whereby the affairs of several rival companies were managed by a single director in order to limit competition between them. They developed during the Second Industrial Revolution as companies tried to bring order to the chaotic marketplace.

Woodrow Wilson

Third Progressive Era President of the United States; academic and progressive Democrat who was elected President of the United States in 1912 and again in 1916; his first term was concerned with domestic progressive reforms, but his second term was caught up in World War I and his efforts on behalf of the Versailles Treaty.

Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis"

This (University of Wisconsin) historian's 1893 essay argued that the western frontier process had forged the distinctive qualities of American character (individualism) and government (political democracy). Turner portrayed the West as an empty space ("free land") before the coming of white settlers, for this reason and others, his argument has been widely rejected by modern historians.

Homestead Act, 1862

This Civil War era law authorized Congress to grant 160 acres of public land to a western settler, who had to live on the land for five years to establish title. It reflected the Republican Party's Free-Labor ideology ("free soil for free labor'). By the 1930s, more than 400,000 families had acquired farms under its provisions. In addition, the Land Grant College Act assisted the states in establishing "agricultural and mechanic colleges" across the nation.

HUAC (The House Un-American Activities Committee)

This Congressional committee was created to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. During the Second Red Scare, it commanded broad popular support and consistently attracted major headlines. Through its power to subpoena witnesses and hold people in contempt of Congress, it often pressured witnesses to surrender names and other information that could lead to the apprehension of Communists and Communist sympathizers. Pioneering some of the "red-baiting" examination techniques later made infamous by Joseph McCarthy, Committee members often branded witnesses as "red" if they refused to comply or hesitated in answering committee questions.

The Glass-Steagall Act

This New Deal law reformed the banking industry by barring commercial banks from becoming involved in the buying and selling of stocks. Until its repeal in the 1990s, the law prevented many of the irresponsible practices that had contributed to the stock market crash.

FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)

This New Deal law reformed the banking industry by establishing a government system that insured the accounts of individual depositors in banks.

President Carter's foreign policy of Human Rights

This President believed that combating poverty in the Third World, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, and promoting human rights should generally take priority in U.S. foreign policy over traditional Cold War thinking. Carter cut off U.S. military aid to Argentina's brutal military dictatorship (Augusto Pinochet), provided for the transfer of the Panama Canal back to local control by the year 2000, resisted calls to intervene when the popular left-wing Sandinista movement overthrew the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza (Reagan would later fund the "contras" there), and brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. Despite these accomplishments, Carter nevertheless continued U.S. support for some allies with records of serious human right violations such a as Guatemala, Philippines, South Korea, and (most consequentially for Carter) Iran.

Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776)

This Scottish economist, whose important book on economics was published the same year as the Declaration of Independence; he would become known as "the Father of capitalism." In his book, he argued that the "invisible hand" of the free market directed economic life more effectively and fairly than government intervention, and he offered an intellectual justification for those who believed that the economy should largely be left to regulate itself.

Roe v. Wade, 1973

This Supreme Court ruling declared access to abortion a fundamental freedom protected by the Constitution. The Court ruled 7-2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state's interests in regulating abortions: protecting women's health and protecting the potentiality of human life. In effect, abortion became far more accessible during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy, but this ruling allowed states to imposed significant restrictions on access to abortion during the third trimester.

The Bakke Decision (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke) (1978)

This Supreme Court ruling struck down a UC-Davis affirmative action program that had set aside a specific number of seats ("quotas") for minority students applying to its medical program. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of a quota system was unconstitutional; however, it also found that race could be used as one factor among many in admissions decisions, so non-quota based affirmative action programs continued at most colleges and universities.

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

This Supreme Court ruling struck down all state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. This aptly named case arose from the interracial marriage of Richard and Mildred Loving. Barred by Virginia law from marrying, they did so in Washington, D.C. and later returned to their home state. Two weeks after their arrival, the local sheriff entered their home in the middle of the night, roused the couple from bed, and arrested them. The Lovings were sentenced for five years in prison, although the judge gave them the option of leaving Virginia instead. They departed for Washington, but five years later, wishing to return, the sued in federal court, claiming that their rights had been violated.

The Bracero Program, 1942-1964

This World War Two era guest worker program brought more than 4.5 million Mexicans into the U.S. under government labor contracts in order to work, primarily as agricultural workers where there was a labor shortage. The workers were supposed to receive decent housing and wages. But since they could not become citizens and could be deported at any time, they found it almost impossible to form unions or secure better working conditions. Agreed to by the Mexican and American governments, it was Initially designed as a temporary response to the wartime labor shortage, but the program lasted until 1964. It reflected a complete reversal from the "voluntary" repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression.

Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed (1965)

This book, which exposed how auto manufacturers produced highly dangerous vehicles, became known as one of the most important journalistic pieces of the 20th century and launched the modern Consumer Protection Movement. Its author, an attorney and writer, went on to become a major American political activist (and eventually two-time Green Party candidate for U.S. President in 1996 and 2000), who leveraged his growing popularity to establish a number of consumer advocacy and watchdog groups calling for new consumer protection laws and regulations. His activism has been directly credited with the passage of several landmark pieces of American consumer protection legislation.

New York's "Boss" Tweed Ring

This corrupt urban political machine reached into every New York City neighborhood and won support from the city's immigrant poor by fashioning a kind of private welfare system that provided food, fuel, and jobs in hard times while also plundering the city of tens of millions of dollars.

Land Ordinances of 1784 and 1785

This divided the Old Northwest Territory (the area north of the Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania) into districts that would be initially governed by Congress and eventually admitted to the Union as member states. A year later, another law regulated land sales in the region; land would be surveyed by the government and then sold in sections of a square mile (640 acres) at $1 per acre.

The Stonewall Riot, 1969

This event marked the beginning of the "gay liberation" movement. Police raided a bar in New York City's Greenwich Village that was a gathering place for homosexuals, but rather than bowing to police harassment, as in the past, the mostly gay patrons fought back. Five days of rioting followed, and a militant movement was born. Gay men and lesbians stepped out of the "closet" to insist that sexual orientation is a matter of identity, rights, and power. Prejudice against homosexuals persisted. But within a few years, "gay pride" marches were being held in numerous cities.

The People's Party, or Populists

This group spoke for all "producing classes" and embarked on a remarkable effort of community organization and education. Founded in the early 1890s, and growing out of the Farmer's Alliance of the 1870s and 80s, they established over 1,000 local newspapers, promoted traveling speakers like Tom Watson and Mary Elizabeth Lease, and held great gatherings across the Western Plains.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

This important 1852 antislavery novel popularized the abolitionist position.

Michael Harrington's The Other America (1962)

This influential book was a study of poverty in the United States and helped to inspire LBJ's "War on Poverty." It revealed that despite the post-war economic boom, 40 to 50 million Americans lived in poverty. They were mostly white, and often in isolated rural areas and urban slums "invisible" to the middle class.

Checks and Balances (aka "Separation of Powers")

This is a feature of the U.S. Constitution in which power is divided between executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the national government so that no one can dominate the other two and endanger citizens' liberties.

"Marketplace of ideas"

This is a rationale for freedom of expression based on an analogy to the economic concept of a free market. It holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse, and that ideas and ideologies will be distinguished according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population. The concept began to emerge in the courts in Abrams v. United States (1919) [very shortly after Schenck (1919)]. While the majority upheld the conviction of Jacob Abrams and five other men for distributing pamphlets critical of American intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution, Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis both dissented from the court majority, marking the emergence of a court minority committed to a broader defense of free speech. In the ensuing years, Holmes would write, "The only meaning of free speech" was that advocates of every set of beliefs, even "proletarian dictatorship," should have the right to convert the public to their views in the great "marketplace of ideas."

"Island hopping campaign"

This is an informal reference to the U.S. war in the Pacific Ocean during World War Two. The war in the Pacific began with a series of victories of territorial expansion for Japan, and disasters for the U.S., as the Japanese empire conquered most of Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and many other Pacific islands. But beginning in 1942, the tide of battle began to turn as U.S. forces launched this bloody campaign that, one by one, drove the Japanese from the Pacific islands they had fortified, pushing them back ever closer to Japan.

Pro-big business laissez faire

This is the term historians use to describe the role of the national government in the economy during Gilded Age. The government was actively involved in the economy in ways that promoted big business (subsidizing railroads, canals, roads; subsidizing mail; maintaining protective tariffs; subsidizing research and development; forcing Native Americans onto reservations, putting down labor strikes, surveying Western lands and giving it to settlers; pursuing an imperialistic foreign policy for natural resources and markets, establishing protective tariffs, attracting immigrant labor, etc.). But the government was very limited, or "hands-off," in its efforts to protect the interests of workers, consumers, or the environment.

Inflation

This is when prices go up and the purchasing power of money goes down. During the American Revolution, the shortage of goods and Congress' efforts to finance the war resulted in an enormous increase in prices, inciting debates over whether national authorities should intervene.

Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party

This suffragette and her organization was composed of a new generation of college-educated American activists who pressed for the right to vote with militant tactics that many older suffrage advocates found scandalous. She and her party used WWI to point out U.S. hypocrisy: "How could the country fight for democracy abroad while denying it to women at home?" They chained themselves to the White House fence, resulting in a seven-month prison sentence. They began a hunger strike in prison and were force fed raw eggs through a tube. The combination of women's patriotic service in the war effort as well as widespread outrage over the mistreatment of Paul and her fellow prisoners pushed the Wilson administration towards full-fledged support for woman suffrage. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.

The Progressive Movement

This term came into common use around 1910 as a way of describe a broad, loosely defined political movement of individuals and groups who hoped to bring about significant change in American social and political life. This movement included forward-looking businessmen who realized that workers must be accorded a voice in economic decision making, labor activists bent on empowering industrial workers, female reform organizations who hoped to protect women and children from exploitation, social scientists who believed that academic research would help to solve social problems, and members of an anxious middle class who feared that their status was threatened by the rise of big-business.

"Free enterprise"

This term refers to a consumer capitalist system resting on private ownership of property. More than political democracy or freedom of speech, which many allies of the U.S. outside of western Europe lacked, this term became the shorthand way of describing the criteria that united all the nations of the "Free World" during the Cold War. Throughout the Fifties, Americans increasingly associated and defined freedom with the free enterprise system.

Civic Religion

This term refers to the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals (like saying the pledge, or singing the anthem), texts (like the Declaration of Independence), public symbols (such as the national flag), and public ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields, or national cemeteries).

Massive Resistance

This term refers to the overwhelming response of white Southerners to the Supreme Court's call for desegregation. State after state passed laws to block desegregation. Some made it illegal for the NAACP to operate, others closed public schools rather than integrate them. Some offered "freedom of choice" plans to allow white students to opt out of integrated schools, while others offered funds to enable white students to attend all-white private institutions (many of which were set up in the South as a way to get around integration). Additionally, some Southern states began flying the Confederate battle flag over their capital building, using it as a symbol of opposition to integration.

"Labor's Great Upheaval"

This term refers to the upsurge in activity, unprecedented militancy, and increased membership of organized labor during the 1930s. The era witnessed the creation of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) which aimed to organize unions that welcomed all the workers in a particular industry (as opposed to just a skilled set of workers in a particular craft), the United Auto Workers' sit-down strikes (a strikingly effective tactic), thousands of other strikes, and the doubling of the number of Americans who were members of unions (9 million by 1940). Unlike in the past, the federal government seemed to be on labor's side; first the NIRA and then the Wagner Act granted workers the right to form unions.

"Americanization" during WWI

This term refers to widespread efforts during WWI to create a more homogeneous national culture. The "melting pot" became a popular concept by which newcomers were supposed to merge their identity into existing American nationality. Public and private groups of all kinds--including educators, employers, labor leaders, social reformers, and public officials--took up the task of Americanizing new immigrants. A minority of Progressives questioned and critiqued these efforts. Randolph Bourne, for example, pointed out that "there is no distinctive American culture," and instead envisioned a democratic, cosmopolitan society in which immigrants and natives alike submerged their group identities in a new "trans-national" culture.

"Liberalism"

This term was given new meaning by FDR and the New Deal. Traditionally understood as limited government and free market economics, in the 1930s it took on its modern meaning of active efforts by the national government to modernize and regulate the market economy and to uplift less fortunate members of society.

The New Deal

This term, originating in an FDR speech, came to refer to the entire collection of federal programs that FDR initiated in response to the Great Depression. Consisting of a wide variety of very diverse programs and initiatives, many of them known by the acronyms (WPA, CCC, TVA, AAA) (aka "alphabet soup"), they generally involved a more active role for the government in the economy. Historians have often summed up the New Deal as an effort to provide "relief, recovery, and reform" (the "Three Rs").

The national railroad system

This transportation system made the Second Industrial Revolution possible. It was spurred by private investment and massive grants of land and money by federal, state, and local governments, and the miles of track in the U.S. exploded between the Civil War and 1920, opening up vast new areas for commercial farming and creating a national market for manufactured goods. This transportation system reorganized time itself; in 1883, the major companies divided the nation into four time zones still in use today.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and William "Big Bill" Haywood

This was a radical union organized in Chicago in 1905 and nicknamed "the Wobblies." Part trade union, part advocate of a workers' revolution that would seize the means of production and abolish the state, the Wobblies rejected the AFL's exclusionary policies and made "solidarity" its guiding principle, extending "a fraternal hand to every wage-worker, no matter what his religion, fatherland, or trade." Its organizers also participated in many of the "free speech fights" of the era, and its opposition to World War I led to its destruction by the federal government under the Espionage Act.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the "Port Huron Statement"

This was a student activist movement that was one of the main representations of the New Left in the 1960s. Meeting a Port Huron, Michigan, sixty of its early members adopted a statement that summarized the beliefs of the New Left. What made the document the guiding spirit of a new radicalism was its vision of social change: "We seek the establishment," it proclaimed, of "a democracy of individual participation [in which] the individual shares in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life." Freedom, for the New Left, meant "participatory democracy." Although rarely defined with precision, this became a standard by which students judged existing social arrangements--workplaces, schools, government--and found them wanting.

Berkeley Free Speech Movement

This was a student protest movement which took place during the 1964-65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students like Mario Savio--the movement's most powerful speaker--and others. In protests unprecedented in size, UC-Berkeley students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom. The movement developed a critique of the entire structure of the university and of an education geared towards preparing graduates for corporate jobs. The movement was affiliated with the New Left of the 1960s.

(California's) Prop 13

This was a successful California ballot proposition that banned further increases in property taxes. The vote demonstrated that taxation could be powerful political issue; Conservatives could argue more successfully against taxes than against the government programs and services that the taxes funded. Its passage was an economic victory for businesses and homeowners, but it reduced funds available for schools, libraries, and other public services. It was one example in the larger story of increasing anti-tax sentiment in the U.S. during the Conservative Resurgence.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), 1964

This was a temporary political party created by the civil rights movement during Freedom Summer In order to challenge the legitimacy of the regular Mississippi Democratic Party, which allowed participation only by whites, when African Americans made up 40% of the state population. In one of the most dramatic confrontations of the civil rights era, the delegates of this party attempted to take the seats of the state's all-white official party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

The Marshall Plan

This was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers (GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), modernize industry, make Europe prosperous once more, and prevent the spread of communism. It was based on the idea that the threat to U.S. security was not so much Soviet military power but rather the economic and political instability which could be breeding grounds for communism. It proved to be one of the most successful foreign aid programs in history.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 1890

This was the first law to restrict monopolistic trusts and business combinations; extended by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

Presidential Reconstruction

This was the first phase of Reconstruction overseen first by Lincoln and then by Johnson, resting on the premise that the South had not actually succeeded, but rather they had launched an insurrection and thus the President had the authority to execute the law in this situation. This first phase of Reconstruction was mainly aimed at quelling the insurrection quickly with little disruption.

"Letter from Birmingham Jail"

This widely published and, ultimately, famous text was written by Martin Luther King Jr. from his jail cell in Alabama where he was being held for demonstrating during a campaign of 1963. The letter related a litany of abuses faced by black southerners, defended the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism, and said people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take non-violent direct action to correct them. Responding to charges that he was an "outsider," King wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Strict Constructionists

Those who apply a limited and literal interpretation of the Constitution. In the 1790s, these were mostly Southerners who opposed Hamilton's program, insisting that the federal government could only exercise powers specifically listed in the Constitution. (The Constitution says nothing about a Bank of the United States.)

Enforcement Acts

Three acts passed between 1870-1871 outlawing terrorist societies and allowing the president to use the army against them.

"The Women's Era" (1890-1920)

Three decades starting from the 1890s, during which women, although still denied the vote, enjoyed larger opportunities than in the past for economic independence (with nearly every state abolishing its coverture laws) and greater roles in public life through a network of women's clubs, temperance associations, and social reform organizations.

Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner

Three young activists--two white students from the North and one local black youth-- who were murdered for participating in Freedom Summer. Kidnapped by a group headed by a deputy sheriff and murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Between 1961 and 1965, an estimated twenty-five black civil rights workers paid with their lives. But the deaths of these two white students focused unprecedented attention on Mississippi and on the apparent inability of the federal government to protect citizens seeking to enjoy their constitutional rights.

Selective Service Act of 1917

To raise a national army for U.S. entry into World War, this act authorized the government to raise a national army through the compulsory enlistment of people. It required all men ages 21-30 (which included 24 million men at that time) to register with the draft board. The army soon swelled from 120,000 to 5 million men.

Jay's Treaty, 1794

Treaty with Britain negotiated in 1794 by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Britain agreed to vacate forts in the Northwest Territories, and festering disagreements (border with Canada, prewar debts, shipping claims) would be settled by commission in exchange for favored treatment on British imported goods. Conspicuously absent from the treaty were any British concession on impressment of U.S. sailors or the rights of American shipping (with the British had interfered with). In effect, the treaty cancelled the American-French alliance and recognized British economic and naval supremacy. Critics of the treaty (Republicans) charged that the Washington Administration had aligned the U.S. with monarchical Britain in its conflict with republican France; the the treaty sharpened political divisions in the U.S..

The War Industries Board, and the War Labor Board

Two World War One era agencies that, albeit temporarily, contributed to the creation of a national state with unprecedented powers and sharply increased presence in Americans' everyday lives. The first (the WIB) promoted efficiency through presiding over all elements of war production from the distribution of raw materials to the prices of manufactured goods. The second (the WLB) pressed for the establishment of a minimum wage, eight-hour workday, and the right to form unions. These agencies saw themselves as partners of business as much as regulators. They guaranteed government suppliers a high rate of profit and encouraged cooperation among former business rivals by suspending antitrust laws. Many progressives hoped to see the wartime apparatus of economic planning continue after 1918. The Wilson administration, however, quickly dismantled the agencies that had established controls over industrial production and the labor market, although during the 1930s they would serve as models for some of the policies of FDR's New Deal.

Internal vs. External Taxes

Two kinds of Colonial Era taxes. The first kind, like the Stamp Act, taxed economic activity within the colonies, and many colonists believed Parliament had no right to enact this sort of tax. The second kind of tax, which consisted of revenue raised through the regulation of trade between the the British colonies and other parts of the Atlantic world, such as the Navigation Acts, were viewed by many colonists as legitimate.

de jure and de facto (segregation)

Two latin terms that are very useful in describing segregation, among other things. The first roughly translates to "by law" and the other roughly translates to "in fact," or "in reality."

Sharecropping

Type of farm tenancy that developed after the Civil War in which landless workers‚ often former slaves, farmed land in exchange for farm supplies and a share of the crop. It offered severely limited economic opportunity.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Chief Justice John Marshall, holding that Maryland could not tax the Second Bank of the United States, supported the authority of the federal government versus the states.

Dartmouth v. Woodward (1819)

U.S. Supreme Court upheld the original charter of the college against New Hampshire's attempt to alter the board of trustees; set the precedent of support of contracts against state interference.

Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890

U.S. soldiers opened fire on Ghost Dancers at this locations in South Dakota, killing between 150 and 200 Indians, mostly women and children. This horrific event marked the end of four centuries of armed conflict between the continent's native population and European settlers and their descendents. Estimated to be well over several million on the eve of contact, the Indian population within the United States had fallen to 250,000 by the 1900 census.

Dower Rights

Under English law, this gave married women the rights to claim one-third of her husband's property in the event that he died before she did.

Voting Requirements in Massachusetts

Unlike in Virginia, where there were property qualifications for voting, voting in Massachusetts required being a church member.

The Uniqueness of American Slavery

Unlike slavery in earlier periods of world history, American slavery was particularly brutal. It was largely based on plantations, where the imbalance between overseers and the enslaved made it necessary to police the system forcefully. Plantation slavery was more demanding, involved a higher death rate, and by the 18th century, it would come to be associated with race.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia governor William Berkeley's administration because of governmental corruption and because Berkeley had failed to protect settlers from Indian raids and did not allow them to occupy Indian lands. This revolt caused the Virginia elite to move away from indentured servants and towards a different labor supply that would never gain freedom and demand land on the frontier: enslaved African labor.

Minstrel Shows

Vaudeville entertainment popular in the decades surrounding the Civil War in which mostly white actors would wear "blackface" and perform comic routines that presented simplistic and demeaning depictions of African-Americans that indirectly justified and endorsed slavery to the audience.

John C. Calhoun

Vice President under Andrew Jackson; leading Southern politician; began his political career as a nationalist and an advocate of protective tariffs, later he becomes an advocate of free trade, states' rights, pro-slavery, limited government, and nullification; in 1844, Calhoun wrote a letter that linked the annexation of Texas to strengthening slavery in the US.

Whiskey Rebellion, 1794

Violent protest by western Pennsylvania farmers against the federal excise tax on whiskey, 1794. The Rebellion was put down by a forceful response from the Washington Administration. Washington's response demonstrated the power of the new national government and was a stark contrast to the impotent response of the national government to Shay's Rebellion in 1887 under the Articles of Confederation.

Patriotic Assimilation

WWII created a vast melting pot for European immigrants and their children as millions moved out of urban ethnic neighborhoods and isolated rural enclaves and into the army and industrial plants where they came into contact with people of very different backgrounds. Government and private agencies eagerly promoted pluralism and equality, at least of of European Americans, as the definition of Americanism and a counterpoint to Nazism (and mindful of the intolerance spawned by the forced assimilation and xenophobia of the World War One Era). By the war's end, racism and nativism had been striped of intellectual respectability, at least outside of the South.

The (First) Red Scare and the Palmer Raids

Wartime repression of dissent continued after WWI and reached its peak in 1919-1920. This was a short-lived but intense period of political intolerance inspired by the post war strike wave and the social tensions and fears generated by the Russian Revolution. Convinced that episodes like the steel strike of 1919 were part of a worldwide communist conspiracy, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer dispatched federal agents to raid the offices of radical and labor organizations throughout the country. More than 5,000 people were arrested, most of them without warrants, and held for months without charge. The government deported hundreds of immigrant radicals, including Emma Goldman, and began keeping files on thousands of Americans suspected of holding radical political ideas. The abuse of civil liberties in the early 1920s was so severe that that Palmer came under heavy criticism from Congress and much of the press. The reaction planted the seeds for a new appreciation of the importance of civil liberties that would begin to flourish in the 1920s. But in their immediate impact, the events of 1919-1920 dealt a devastating setback to radical and labor organizations of all kinds and kindled and intense identification of patriotic Americanism with support for the political and economic status quo.

Squatters

Western migrants who set up farms on unoccupied land without a clear legal title.

Mystic River Massacre

When a fur trader was killed by Pequots, a group of Connecticut and Massachusetts colonizers joined by Narragansett allies raided the main Pequot village and killed over 500 indians (men, women, and children); after the end of the war months later, the majority of the Pequots were dead or sold into slavery

The Hollywood Ten, 1947

When summoned to a series of HUAC hearings about communist influence in Hollywood in 1947, these ten "unfriendly witnesses" refused to answer HUAC's questions about their political beliefs or to "name names" (identify individual communists) on the grounds that the hearings violated the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and political association. They all served jail terms of six months to a year and were blacklisted (denied employment) along with more than 200 others who were accused of communist sympathies or refused to name names.

Sputnik and the National Defense Education Act of 1957

When the Soviets launched this, the first artificial earth satellite in 1957, Eisenhower responded with a law that, for the first time, offered direct federal funding to higher education.

The "City Set Upon a Hill"

When they emigrated to New England, they hoped to escape what they believed to be the religious and worldly corruptions of English society. John used this phrase, which is a biblical reference, to refer to a biblical commonwealth whose influence would flow back across the Atlantic to rescue England from godlessness and social decay. This example is an early articulation of the concept of "American Exceptionalism"

The CIA-backed overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, 1954

When this Iranian Prime Minister nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose refinery in Iran was Britain's largest remaining overseas asset, the CIA helped to organize his overthrow and replace him with the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ("the Shah"), who served U.S. strategic and economic interest until his overthrow during the (very anti-U.S.) Iranian Revolution of 1979. This is an example of how the policy of containment could easily slide over into opposition to any government, whether communist or not, that seemed to threaten U.S. economic and strategic interests.

Critiques of the Cold War

While few Americans were sympathetic to the Soviet Union (known for its brutal dictatorship that jailed and murdered millions of its citizens), some American critics pointed out that the U.S.'s Cold War rhetoric of a global battle between "freedom and slavery" was not only far too simplistic, but it also made it difficult to view international crisis on a case-by-case basis or to determine which ones genuinely involved either freedom or U.S. interests. In practice, political, economic, and strategic interests shaped American foreign policy as powerfully as the idea of freedom. But American policymakers used the language of a crusade for freedom to justify actions around the world that sometimes had little to do with freedom by any definition.

The expansion of the right to vote ("suffrage") during the Era of the American Revolution ("the consent of the governed")

While some states' constitutions retained property qualifications for voting and officeholding, the most democratic new constitutions moved toward the idea of voting as an entitlement rather than a privilege, though they generally stopped short of universal suffrage, even for free men. By the 1780s, a large majority of adult white males could meet voting requirements. In the popular understanding of the era, "freedom" and an individual's right to vote had become increasingly synonymous.

Segregated Suburbs

While suburbs offered a new site for the enjoyment of American freedom, they retained at least one familiar characteristic--rigid racial boundaries. Banks and private developers barred non-whites from the suburbs, and the government refused to subsidize their mortgages except in segregated enclaves. As late as the 1990s, nearly 90 percent of suburban whites lived in communities with non-white populations of less than 1 percent.

The western cowboy mythology

While these were real people, they have become a symbol of the independence and rugged individualism in the old American West. However, it's also true that the development of the West depended in large part of the assistance of the federal government for the construction of railroads, the destruction of Indian Nations, the financing of irrigation systems and dams. And while large numbers of family farms dominated the West in the Gilded Age, corporate Bonanza farms also emerged that covered thousands of acres and employed large numbers of agricultural wage workers.

President Jimmy Carter, 1977-1981

While this President was a Democrat, he reflected the conservative resurgence in that he was a "born again" Christian, from the South, who ran as an "outsider" (as opposed to one of those "corrupt Washington politicians"), and who initiated some directions in policy (tax cuts and deregulation) that Reagan would continue. His presidency is generally considered to be, on the whole, a failure, because of the continuing poor economy, the inability to free the American hostages in Iran, and the fact that he only served one term. However, his accomplishments include elevating human rights to a higher level of importance in U.S. foreign policy than it had previously been.

The Amistad, 1839

While transporting slaves from one port in Cuba to another, this ship was seized by the slaves in 1839. The slaves sailed the ship northward to the United States, where their status became the subject of a celebrated court case; eventually most were able to return to Africa.

Southern Unionists

White southerners living in the Confederacy who opposed secession and organized a peace movement against the Civil War.

Thomas Edison, "The Wizard of Menlo Park"

Widely considered the greatest inventor of the Second Industrial Revolution, this person and his team of researchers at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey developed inventions that transformed private life, public entertainment, and economic activity, including the phonograph, light bulb, motion picture, and a system for generating electric power.

Abigail Adams

Wife of John Adams who educated herself and often contributed her opinions on political affairs; she urged Congress to "remember the ladies" and she believed that a husband should not have absolute power over his wife.

The "Holy Experiment" of Pennsylvania

William Penn, a proprietor, established the colony of Pennsylvania in the late 17th century and envisioned it as a place where those facing religious persecution in Europe (particularly the Quakers) could enjoy spiritual freedom.

"Arsenal of democracy"

With this phrase in 1940, FDR announced the role that the U.S. would play in producing military supplies for the Allied war effort in WWII. The war effort transformed the U.S. government and economy. Several new federal agencies were created to regulate the allocation of labor, control the shipping industry, establish manufacturing quotas, and fix wages, prices, and rents. The government forced civilian industries to retool for war production. Michigan's auto factories now turned out trucks, tanks, and jeeps for the army. FDR offered corporations incentives to spur production--low interest loans, tax concessions, and contracts with guaranteed profits. By 1944, American factories produced a ship every day and a plane every five minutes. Government-sponsored scientific research perfected inventions like radar, jet engines, and early computers that would help win the war. The federal government expenditures during World War Two amounted to twice the combined total of the previous 150 years. The unemployment rate fell from 14% in 1940 to 2% by 1942, in large part to due to the creation of new jobs opening up related to the war effort.

Women and Civil War Work

Women took advantage of the wartime labor shortage to move into jobs in factories and into certain largely male professions, particularly nursing.

Mill Girls

Women who worked at textile mills during the Industrial Revolution who enjoyed new freedoms and independence not seen before.

Federal Reserve System, 1913

Woodrow Wilson created this powerful public agency (more consistent with TR's New Nationalism than Wilson's New Freedom) consisted of twelve regional banks. They were overseen by a central board appointed by the president and empowered to handle the issuance of currency, aid banks in danger of failing, and influence interest rates so as to promote economic growth. It was welcomed by business leaders as a means of restoring order, but it reflected an expanding federal role in the economy during the Progressive Era.

The Haymarket Square Riot/Affair, 1886

Workers were rallying in a public square in Chicago (this event is named after that public square) to protest the police killings of three workers the day before who were shot while trying to prevent strikebreakers from entering the McCormick factory plant. During the rally, an unknowing person threw a bomb into a crowd killing a policeman. Panicked police opened fire, killing several, and afterwards raided offices of labor and radical groups and arrested their leaders. This event gave employers an opportunity to paint the labor movement as a dangerous and un-American force.

Free Labor

Working for wages or owning a farm or shop; this form of labor was the basis of the northern economy, as opposed to the economic dependence on slave labor in the South.

Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, 1798-99

Written by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, and passed by the legislatures of two Southern states, these resolutions advanced the state-compact theory of the Constitution. They called called on the federal courts to protect free speech. Jefferson's draft asserted that a state could nullify federal law, but this was deleted.

Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, 1767

Written by Maryland lawyer John Dickinson, the essays argued for reconciliation with Britain, with the colonists enjoying all the traditional rights of Englishmen.

Bill Establishing Religious Freedom

Written by Thomas Jefferson, the Virginian's bill was adopted by the House of Burgesses in 1786. It eliminated religious requirements for voting and officeholding in Virginia, and it ended the Virginia government's financial support for churches ("established churches"), and barred the state from "forcing" individuals to adopt one or another religious outlook.

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Written by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the United States in the early 1830s, this profoundly insightful and classic work examined the political transformation brought about by the rise of democracy in the United States.

A Discourse Concerning Western Planting (1584)

Written in 1584, Protestant minister and scholar Richard Hakluyt listed various reasons why Queen Elizabeth I should support the establishment of colonies.

The Lusitania

A British passenger ship (which was also carrying a large cache of arms) that German submarines sunk in 1915 off the coast of Ireland, killing over one thousand British passengers, including 124 Americans. When WWI had broken out the prior year, Wilson had proclaimed U.S. neutrality (and thus the right for Americans to travel freely in the Atlantic and to trade with other countries). But Britain had declared a naval blockade of Germany, and Germany launched submarine warfare against ships entering and leaving British ports (of which the Lusitania was one). The sinking of the Lusitania outraged American public opinion and strengthened the hand of those who believed that the U.S. must prepare for possible entry into the war.

Dorothea Dix

A Massachusetts schoolteacher who was the leading advocate of more humane treatment of the insane.

Slave Religion

A distinctive version of Christianity developed by slaves in the face of hardship. A blend of African traditions and Christian belief, slave religion was practiced in secret nighttime meetings on plantations and in "praise meetings."

"The Declaration of Sentiments"

A document advocating for female equality signed and read by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention modeled off of the Declaration of Independence but reading "all men and women are created equal."

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

A female assembly held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 which first discussed female suffrage. This is considered to be the beginning of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the U.S.

"Slavery of Sex"

A feminist concept that compared marriage to slavery, critiquing male authority and wives' subordination.

Cyrus McCormick's Reaper

A horse-drawn machine that greatly increased the amount of wheat a farmer could harvest; it was invented in 1831.

"The Information Revolution"

A large expansion in printing and the dissemination of information to the public that was brought about by the market revolution and political democracy.

"Moral suasion"

A method of reformers attempting to convert people to their cause by highlighting the moral implications of the opposing viewpoint.

"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?"

A motto adopted by abolitionists to highlight the reality that blacks in bondage were no different than the whites in power over them.

Dorr War

A movement in 1841 in Rhode Island led by democratic reformers who sought to enfranchise all adult white men and ratify a new state constitution; President John Tyler dispatched federal troops to the state and the movement collapsed.

Common School Movement

A movement in the nineteenth century, associated with Horace Mann, to create tax-supported state schools open to all children.

"King Cotton"

A phrase referring to the social, economic, and cultural importance of cotton in the South. The Southern economy in the early and mid nineteenth century was predominantly agricultural, lacking industrialization, containing very few large cities, few immigrants, and reliant on the export of cotton.

The Second Bank of the United States

A private, profit-making corporation that served as the government's financial agent; it was chartered in 1816, but President Andrew Jackson vetoed the recharter bill in 1832.

The American System

A program of internal improvements, protective tariffs, and a National Bank promoted by Speaker of the House Henry Clay in his presidential campaign of 1824; his proposals formed the core of Whig ideology in the 1830s and 1840s.

Temperance Movement

A reform movement advocating the moderation in consumption of liquor.

Harriet Tubman

A slave who escaped to Philadelphia in 1849 and spent the next ten years making trips back and forth to Maryland to lead her relatives and other slaves to freedom.

Transcendentalists

A small group of mid-nineteenth-century New England writers and thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson (author of Self-Reliance), Henry David Thoreau (author of Walden, and "Civil Disobedience"), and Margaret Fuller, whose philosophy stressed personal and intellectual self-reliance.

"Lords of the Loom and Lords of the Lash"

A system in which New England's early factory owners relied on the cotton supplied by southern slaveowners. In effect, the northern economy was very much complicit in southern slavery. In addition to the North's growing textile industry that turned cotton into cloth, northern ships carried cotton to New York and Europe, northern bankers financed cotton plantations, and northern companies insured slavery property.

Factory System

A system in which large groups of workers were gathered under central supervision using power-driven machinery, which replaced hand tools.

"The American System of Manufactures"

A system that relied on the mass production of interchangeable parts that could be rapidly assembled into standardized finished products.

"The Peculiar Institution"

A term referring to slavery's continued existence in the South after Northern abolition.

Individualism

A term that entered the language in the 1820 to describe the increasing emphasis on the pursuit of personal advancement and private fulfillment free of outside interference.

"Silent Sabotage"

A widespread hostility to slavery wherein slaves did poor work, broke tools, abused animals, and in other ways disrupted the plantation routine.

Woman Suffrage

A woman's right to vote, an issue raised for the first time at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

Liberty Party

Abolitionist political party that nominated James G. Birney for president in 1840 and 1844; merged with the Free Soil Party in 1848.

Sojourner Truth

African American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Turnpikes

Also known as toll roads, they were the first advance in overland transportation and were constructed by localities, states, and private companies. They were an important component of the Market Revolution

Worcester v. Georgia (1832)

An 1832 Supreme Court ruling that held that Indian nations are a distinct people with the right to maintain a separate political identity ("domestic dependent nations"). Ruled that Indians must be dealt with by the federal government, not the states, Georgia's actions violated the Cherokee's treaties with Washington.Refusing the enforce the decision, President Jackson supposedly declared, "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."

The Force Act, 1833

An 1833 law that expanded presidential power by authorizing President Andrew Jackson to use the army and navy to collect customs duties.

The Nullification Crisis

Conflict in the 19th century over a state's rights to invalidate federal law within its borders. This crisis reached its peak in 1932-33 when South Carolina declared the "tariff of abominations" null and void. In response, President Jackson persuaded Congress to enact a Force Act authorizing him to use the army and navy to collect customs duties. The Crisis deescalated in 1833 when Henry Clay helped pass a new law reducing the tariff. South Carolina then rescinded their nullification, but not without nullifying the Force Act (Take that, Andrew Jackson!). The concept of invalidation of a federal law within the borders of a state was first expounded in Thomas Jefferson's draft of Kentucky resolution against Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1798, cited again by South Carolina in its Ordinance of Nullification (1832) of the Tariff of Abominations, and again by southern states to explain their secession from the Union (1861), and cited again by southern states to oppose the Brown vs Board of Education decision (1954).

Missouri Compromise of 1820

Deal proposed by Kentucky senator Henry Clay in 1820 to resolve the slave/free imbalance in Congress (the Senate specifically) that would result from Missouri's admission as a slave state; Maine's admission as a free state offset Missouri, and slavery was prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory north of the southern border of Missouri (the 36 30 line).

DIMES

Domestic Political: refers to the effect politically within the country. Will the American people approve of and support this decision? Will the decision enhance or detract from the popularity of the government or a particular politician or party? Will the decision strengthen or weaken our political system? International Political: refers to the effect on other countries. Will other nations see our country more positively or negatively as a result of the decision? Are there countries that would be compelled to take some action or adopt some behavior as a result of the decision? Would the decision create new friends or new enemies? Moral: refers to the rightness or wrongness of the decision in terms of character and principles. We can evaluate policies based on the moral vision of the people of the time and based on the moral vision of other people including ourselves. Does the decision enhance or harm our values such as a belief in democracy, equality, religious freedom, truth, honesty, compassion, responsibility and fairness? Economic: refers to the effect the decision will have on our prosperity. Will this produce more or less wealth or resources? Will some classes of people benefit more than others? What will the effect be on our way of life? Strategic: refers to gaining overall or long-term advantage militarily, economically, or politically. Will the decision strengthen or weaken our position in the world? Will the decision increase our overall security or our ability to acquire resources and conduct trade?

Fugitive Slaves

Escaped slaves fleeing from recapture by their owners.

Democratic Party and Whig Party (the Second Party System)

Established in 1828 and led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the former was a major opponent of the latter until the Civil War; unlike the latter, the former party believed government should adopt a hands-off approach toward the economy. The later party was founded in 1834 to unite factions opposed to President Andrew Jackson, and favored federal responsibility for internal improvements; the party ceased to exist by the late 1850s when its members divided over the slavery issue.

Slave Coffles

Forced marches of (around one million) enslaved, and chained, African Americans from older slave states in the upper South to the deep South where cotton production was expanding throughout.

Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons

Founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith, the religion was a product of the intense revivalism of the "burned-over district" of New York; Smith's successor Brigham Young led 15,000 followers to Utah in 1847 to escape persecution.

The "cult of domesticity"

In the early nineteenth century, women found many opportunities of the market revolution closed to them as the household declined as the center of economic production and the availability of mass-produced goods undermined their traditional roles. Many women embraced this new definition of femininity which glorified not a woman's contribution to the family's economic well-being but rather her ability to create a private environment shielded from the competitive tensions of the market economy. Woman's "place" was in the home, a site increasingly emptied of economically productive functions as work moved from the household to workshops and factories. Her role was to sustain non-market values like love, friendship, and mutual obligation, providing men with shelter from the competitive marketplace.

The Roosevelt Corollary

President Theodore Roosevelt announced this in what was essentially an offshoot of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. TR's principle held that the U.S. had the right to exercise "an international police power" in the Western Hemisphere--a significant expansion of Monroe's pledge to defend the hemisphere against European intervention.

The Panama Canal

Roosevelt engineered the separation of the northernmost province from the rest of Columbia in order to facilitate the construction of a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in order to facilitate the movement of naval and commercial vessels between the two oceans. In 1903, when Colombia refused to cede land for the project, Roosevelt helped to set in motion an uprising by conspirators. Upon establishing Panama's independence, Panama signed a treaty giving the U.S. both the right to construct and operate a canal and sovereignty over the Canal Zone, a ten-mile-wide strip of land through which the route would run. A remarkable feat of engineering, the canal was the largest construction project in history to that date. When completed in 1914, the canal reduced the sea voyage between the East and West Coasts of the U.S. by 8,000 miles. Because of the aggressive manner in which TR initiated the canal, it remained a source of tension with Latin America until President Carter negotiated treaties in 1977 that would return control of the canal zone to Panama.

Frederick Douglass

The most famous black abolitionists of the nineteenth century whose powerful autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, served as an indictment of slavery.

William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator

The most famous white abolitionist and his radical weekly journal, begun in 1831, published in Boston, that called for abolition and rejected colonization. They greatly spread the idea of immediate abolition to the North.

Erie Canal

The most important and profitable of the canals of the 1820s and 1830s. It stretched from Buffalo to Albany, New York, connecting the Great Lakes to the East Coast making New York City the nation's largest port.

Cotton Kingdom

This term for the South and it's economy arose during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, when the Northern textile mills increased the demand for cotton, supplied by Southern plantations using slave labor.

Public education

This was viewed by mid-nineteenth century reformers as a crucial avenue to restore equality and to equip the less fortunate for advancement up the social scale.

Nativism

Anti-immigrant feeling. It was especially prominent in the 1830s through the 1850s against the Irish immigrants, who were mostly Catholic; the largest group was New York's Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, which expanded into the American (Know-Nothing) Party in 1854.

Realism in Foreign Policy

An approach to formulating foreign policy based on the premise that nations, like individuals, act in their own self-interest. With respect to international relations, this means that all nations act on the basis of their own economic, strategic, international political, and domestic political self-interest. Therefore, it is the responsibility of U.S. foreign policy to achieve these goals for the U.S. while at the same time recognizing that other major world power will try to do the same. Major world powers are those nations with the most developed economies and the most powerful militaries. Since these nations are industrialized, they necessarily need international markets not only to supply the natural resources essential for their industrial production but also to purchase the manufactured goods they export. For the sake of their economies, major world powers will therefore have certain geographical areas of the world that they regard as essential to their economic health. Furthermore, all major world powers will want to be able to protect themselves from foreign aggression, and they will exercise dominance of nearby geographical areas they regard as vital to their national security. For these economic and strategic reasons, all major world powers will have spheres of influence. With respect to relations among themselves, major world powers will inevitably have closer relations with those nations with whom they share economic and strategic interests. These relationships will become either de jure or de facto alliances based on mutually shared interests, and offsetting alliances will create a balance of power. The goal of all major world powers should be to maintain the balance of power and avoid wars between opposed alliances since such a war would necessarily involve global conflict, creating the potential for catastrophic international chaos and carnage.

Idealism in Foreign Policy

An approach to formulating foreign policy based on the premise that the United States must give major consideration to promoting human rights, self-determination, and democracy throughout the world. In this sense, U.S. foreign policy must be sensitive to morality and not driven by strict economic, strategic, international political, or domestic political self-interest. The reason why U.S. foreign policy must give primary consideration to morality is because, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, all people are endowed with certain irrevocable rights—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The purpose of governments is to promote these ends. Democratic governments, which by definition are based on the consent of the governed, are the kind most likely to achieve this purpose. In practical terms, this means that the U.S. should apply economic sanctions and, if necessary, military force to create changes in those governments that grossly violate the human rights of their people. In doing so, the United States should ideally work in conjunction with an international organization, such as the League of Nations or the United Nations, that is based on a commitment to enforcing human rights and international peace based on the observance of international law. However, if that organization is unwilling or unable to execute its responsibilities, the U.S. must do so on its own.

The Market Revolution

An economic transformation in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century sparked by a series of innovations in transportation and communication. It lead to increased economic production and greater interconnection of the U.S. economy, particularly between the North and the Old Northwest.

The Pro-Slavery Argument

An ideology of the justification for slavery that covered a broad range of sources, including the Bible and economic theory.

David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1929)

An indictment of slavery and racial prejudice that used both secular and religious language to advocate for abolition