of American History
Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
organization formed in 1890 from two factions of the suffrage
movement, it sought a constitutional amendment to grant
women the right to vote throughout the nation, eventually
leading to the Nineteenth Amendment.
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
established in 1909 to fight for African-American civil
rights through legal action.
Origins Act of 1924
that restricted immigration to 2 percent for any given nationality,
based on the total amounts from the 1890 census. Use of
the 1890 census effectively restricted immigrants from eastern
and southern Europe.
Recovery Administration (NRA)
federal government's plan to revive industry during the
Great Depression through rational planning.
System of Interstate and Defense Highways Act
legislation creating national highway system of 41,000 miles,
costing $26 billion and taking 13 years to construct. It
solidified the central role of the automobile in American
revolutionary leaders favored a stronger national government
than the one provided for in the Articles of Confederation.
They believed that only a powerful national government,
rather than self-serving states, could deal effectively
with the many vexing problems besetting the new nation.
George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison
were prominent nationalists.
backlash against immigration by white native-born Protestants.
Nativism could be based on racial prejudice (professors
and scientists sometimes classified Eastern Europeans as
innately inferior), religion (Protestants distrusted Catholics
and Jews), politics (immigrants were often associated with
radical political philosophies), and economics (labor leaders
style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
where the individual was seen as a helpless victim in a
world in which biological, social, and psychological forces
determined his or her fate.
effect mercantilist goals, King and Parliament legislated
a series of Navigation Acts (1651, 1660,1663, 1673, 1696)
that established England as the central hub of trade in
its emerging empire. Various rules of trade, as embodied
in the Navigation Acts, made it clear that England's colonies
in the Americas existed first and foremost to serve the
parent nation's economic interests, regardless of what was
best for the colonists.
policy of impartiality during World Wars I and II.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's program designed to bring about
economic recovery and reform during the Great Depression.
the Great Awakening spread during the 1730s and 1740s, various
religious groups fractured into two camps, sometimes known
as the New Lights and Old Lights. The New Lights placed
emphasis on a "new birth" conversion experience--gaining
God's saving grace. They also demanded ministers who had
clearly experienced conversions themselves. See Old
Eisenhower's adjustment to the doctrine of containment.
He advocated saving money by emphasizing nuclear over conventional
weapons, on the premise that the next major world conflict
would be nuclear.
ideology following Reconstruction that the South could be
restored to its previous glory through a diversified economy,
it was used to rally Southerners and convince outside investors
to underwrite regional industrialization by extolling the
resources, labor supply, and racial harmony of the South.
in 1920, the Constitutional guarantee of women's right to
Nixon argued for "Vietnamization," the notion
that the South Vietnamese would carry more of the war's
combat burden. This plan never reached full realization
because of the South Vietnamese inability to carry on the
war effort without American troops.
1809 statute which replaced the Embargo of 1807. It forbade
trade with Britain, France, and their possessions, but reopened
trade with other countries.
dissenters from England who wanted to purify, rather than
separate from, what they viewed as the corrupted, state-supported
Anglican church, or Church of England. By and large, the
Puritans were nonseparatists,and some of them banded together
to form a utopian community of believers in America. The
Massachusetts Bay Colony was to be a model society that
would show how godly societies and churches were to be properly
organized. See separatists.
the Age of Exploration, adventurers from England, France,
and the Netherlands kept seeking an all-water route across
North America. The goal was to gain access to Oriental material
goods and riches while avoiding contact with the developing
Spanish empire farther to the south in Central and South
National Security Council document arguing communism was
a monolithic world movement directed from the Kremlin and
advocating a massive military buildup to counteract the
encroachment of communism.
doctrine, devised by John C. Calhoun, that a state has the
power to nullify a federal legislation within its borders.
supply disruptions and soaring oil prices that the United
States experienced in 1973 and 1979. In 1973, Middle Eastern
nations imposed an embargo on oil shipments to punish the
West for supporting Israel in that year's Arab-Israeli war.
A second oil shock occurred when the Iranian Revolution
disrupted oil shipments to the western nations.
the Great Awakening spread during the 1730s and 1740s, various
religious groups fractured into two camps, sometimes known
as the Old Lights and the New Lights. The Old Lights were
not very enthusiastic about the Awakening, particularly
in terms of what they viewed as popular excesses in seeking
after God's grace. Old Light ministers emphasized formal
schooling in theology as a source of their religious authority,
and they emphasized good order in their churches. See New
owner of baseball's Dodgers who oversaw their 1958 move
from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Unhappy with the deterioration
of Brooklyn's neighborhoods and lured by the economic promise
of California, the Dodgers' move west illustrated the profound
westward - demographic shift in modern America.
set forth in 1899 by Secretary of State John Hay preventing
further partitioning of China by European powers, and protecting
the principle of free trade.
American military intervention in Panama in December 1989,
which was launched after Panama's leader, Manuel Noriega,
who was indicted on drug-related charges, invalidated civilian
elections and declared a state of war with the United States.
financial depression that lasted until the early 1840s.
seamstress and active NAACP member arrested for refusing
to give up her seat to a white patron in Montgomery, Alabama,
prompting a huge bus boycott led by Martin Luther King,
social and political systems are denoted by power and authority
residing in males, such as in the father of the family.
Such authority then passes from father to son through the
generations, and males, in general, control decision making.
organization founded in 1867 to aid farmers through its
local granges, it was responsible for state laws regulating
railroads, established cooperatives to help with marketing
problems, and provided a social outlet for rural areas.
main base of the U.S. Pacific fleet, which Japan attacked
on December 7, 1941, forcing the United States to enter
World War II.
law passed in 1883 to eliminate political corruption in
the federal government, it outlawed political contributions
by appointed officeholders and established the Civil Service
Commission to administer competitive examinations for covered
coming to America to settle permanently, often due to ethnic
and religious persecution at home.
servitude represented temporary service for a specified
period, usually from four to seven years, to a legally designated
owner. Perpetual servitude meant being owned by some other
person for life--and ultimately, even through the generations.
In the early days of Virginia, both English subjects and
African Americans were indentured servants, but over time
blacks would be subjected to perpetual servitude as chattels,
defined as the movable property of their all-powerful masters
and without legal rights of any kind.
China's chairman Mao Tse-tung sent a table tennis team to
the world championships in Nagoya, Japan, and then invited
an American team to compete in Japan in 1971. This small
gesture paved the way for President Nixon's visit to China
in February 1972.
stereotype created by popular pre-Civil War writers, that
depicted the South as a region of aristocratic planters,
beautiful Southern belles, poor white trash, and faithful
amendment to the Army Appropriation Bill, limiting Cuban
independence by giving the United States two naval bases
on Cuba and the right to intervene in Cuban affairs if the
American government felt Cuban independence was threatened.
Supreme Court decision in 1896 that ruled "separate
but equal" facilities for African Americans were constitutional
under the Fourteenth Amendment, it had the effect of legalizing
segregation and led to the passage of much discriminatory
legislation known as Jim Crow laws.
the 1760s and 1770s many colonial leaders believed that
if they did not keep resisting unwanted British policies,
they would fall into a state of political slavery in which
they had no liberties. As such, they would be akin to chattel
slaves in their midst. Comprehending how potentially tyrannical
chattel slavery was spurred on many colonists to defend
American liberties, even to the point of open rebellion.
president of the United States during the Mexican War, Polk
increased American territory by a third.
principle, incorporated into the Compromise of 1850 and
the Kansas-Nebraska Act, that the people living in the western
territories should decide whether or not to permit slavery.
political party established in 1892 primarily by remnants
of the Farrners' Alliance and Greenback party, it sought
to inflate the currency with silver dollars and to establish
an income tax but some of its platform was adopted by the
Democrats in 1896 and it died out after the defeat of joint
candidate William Jennings Bryan.
distinctly American philosophy proposed by William James,
it contends that any concept should be tested and its validity
determined by its outcome and that the truth of an idea
is found in the conduct it dictates or inspires.
large influx of gold and silver into Europe from Spanish
America during the sixteenth century, along with increased
demand for limited supplies of goods, set off a three-fold
rise in prices (the "great inflation") that caused
profound economic turmoil, social disruption, and political
instability among European peoples and nations.
(Bull Moose) Party
political party established in 1912 by supporters of Theodore
Roosevelt after William H. Taft won the Republican presidential
nomination. The party proposed a broad program of reform
but Bull Moose candidate Roosevelt and Republican nominee
lost to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.
ban of the production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic
beverages. The Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
adopted in 1919, established prohibition. The amendment
was repealed in 1933, with adoption of the Twenty-first
religious reform movement formally begun in 1517 when the
German friar Martin Luther openly attacked abuses of Roman
Catholic doctrine. Luther contended that the people could
read scripture for themselves in seeking God's grace and
that the Bible, not church doctrine, was the ultimate authority
in human relationships. Luther's complaints helped foster
a variety of dissenting religious groups, some of which
would settle in America to get away from various forms of
oppression in Europe.
cornerstone of good citizenship in republican states, public
virtue involved the subordination of individual self-interest
to serving the greater good of the whole community. Revolutionary
leaders believed that public virtue was essential for a
republic to survive and thrive. If absent, governments would
be torn apart by competing private interests and succumb
to anarchy, at which point tyrants would emerge to offer
political stability but with the loss of dearly won political
faction of the Republican party during Reconstruction, they
favored forcing the South to make fundamental changes before
readmission to the Union. Eventually they won control because
of Southerners' refusal to accept more lenient plans for
the time of the American Revolution, they argued in favor
of establishing more democratic forms of government. Radical
revolutionaries had a strong trust in the people, viewed
them as inherently virtuous (see public virtue), and believed
that citizens could govern themselves. Samuel Adams, Thomas
Jefferson, and Thomas Paine might be described as radical
revolutionaries. See cautious
a passion for arms, the rage militaire characterized the
attitudes of American colonists as the war with Great Britain
began in 1775. When the ravages and deprivations of warfare
became more self-evident, however, this early enthusiasm
gave out. In 1776 Thomas Paine criticized the "summer
soldiers and sunshine patriots" among the colonists
who seemed so eager to fight at the beginning of the War
for Independence but who so quickly dropped out as the dangers
of engaging in warfare increased.
main tenet of the Enlightenment era, meaning a firm trust
in the ability of the human mind to solve earthly problems,
thereby lessening the role of--and reliance on God as an
active force in the ordering of human affairs.
Ronald Reagan's 1985 pledge of American aid to insurgent
movements attempting to overthrow Soviet-back regimes in
the Third World.
redemptioner labor system was similar to that of indentured
servitude in providing a way for persons without financial
means to get to America. Normally, the family had to locate
someone to pay for its passage in return for a set number
of years of labor. If no buyer could be found, then ships
captains could sell the family's labor, most likely on less
desirable terms for the family, to recoup the costs of passage.
Thousands of Germans migrated to America as redemptioners
in the eighteenth century.
Initiative and Referendum
who rejected the determinism of the Social Darwinists, they
accepted evolutionary theory but held that people could
shape their environment rather than only be shaped by it
and accepted human intervention in society.
religious viewpoint that rejected the Calvinist doctrines
of original sin and predestination and stressed the basic
goodness of human nature.
national catch phrase following the mysterious 1898 explosion
of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor, inflamed
public opinion, leading to the Spanish-American War.
(Indian Removal Policy)
policy of resettling eastern Indian tribes on lands west
of the Mississippi River.
in the 1400s, the European Renaissance represented an intellectual
and cultural flowering in the arts, literature, philosophy,
and the sciences. One of the most important tenets of the
Renaissance was the belief in human progress, or the betterment
definition of motherhood, emanating from the American Revolution,
assigned mothers the task of raising dutiful children, especially
sons, who would be prepared to serve the nation in disinterested
fashion (see public virtue). Mothers thus acquired the special
charge of assuring that future generations could uphold
the tenets of republicanism. This expanded role for mothers
meant that women, not men, would be responsible for the
domestic sphere of life.
the time of the American Revolution, republicanism referred
to the concept that sovereignty, or ultimate political authority,
is vested in the people--the citizens of the nation. As
such, republican governments not only derive their authority
from the consent of the governed but also predicate themselves
on the principles of rule by law and legislation by elected
political party founded by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson
to combat Alexander Hamilton's fiscal policies.
style new to the 1950s, combining black rhythm and blues
with white country music. Listened to mostly by young Americans
and embodied by Elvis Presley, the music softly challenged
notions of sexual propriety and racial division.
Hortalez & Cie.
to its formal involvement in the War for Independence, the
French government supplied the American rebels with critically
needed war goods through a bogus private trading firm known
as Roderigue Hortalez & Cie. French officials did so
because they hoped to see the power of Great Britain reduced
but without becoming directly engaged in the war itself.
Once the Franco-American alliance came into being in 1778,
the French could abandon such ruses in favor of open support
of their rebel allies.
Julius and Ethel
radicals accused of passing atomic secrets to the Soviets
during World War II. Although the death penalty was not
mandatory for their crime, their 1953 execution reflected
the national anti-communist hysteria.