APUSH FINAL

Transcontinental Railroad

Transcontinental Railroad

The railway line completed on May 10, 1869, that connected the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines, enabling goods to move by railway from the eastern United States all the way to California

Gold Standard

The practice of backing a country’s currency with its reserves of gold. In 1873 the United States, following Great Britain and other European nations, began converting to the gold standard.

Homestead Act

The 1862 act that gave 160 acres of free western land to any applicant who occupied and improved the property. This policy led to the rapid development of the American West after the Civil War; facing arid conditions in the West, however, many homesteaders found themselves unable to live on their land.

Comstock Lode

Immense silver ore deposit discovered in 1859 in Nevada that touched off a mining rush, bringing a diverse population into the region and leading to the establishment of boomtowns.

Exodusters

African Americans who walked or rode out of the Deep South following the Civil War, many settling on farms in Kansas in hopes of finding peace and prosperity.

Sand Creek Massacre

The November 29, 1864, massacre of more than a hundred peaceful Cheyennes, largely women and children, by John M. Chivington’s Colorado militia.

Dawes Severalty Act

The 1887 law that gave Native Americans severalty (individual ownership of land) by dividing reservations into homesteads. The law was a disaster for native peoples, resulting over several decades in the loss of 66 percent of lands held by Indians at the time of the law’s passage.

Ghost Dance Movement

Religion of the late 1880s and early 1890s that combined elements of Christianity and traditional Native American religion. It fostered Plains Indians’ hope that they could, through sacred dances, resurrect the great bison herds and call up a storm to drive whites back across the Atlantic.

Wounded Knee

The 1890 massacre of Sioux Indians by American cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. Sent to suppress the Ghost Dance, soldiers caught up with fleeing Lakotas and killed as many as 300.

Homestead Strike

The 1892 lockout of workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel mill after Andrew Carnegie refused to renew the union contract. Union supporters attacked the guards hired to close them out and protect strikebreakers who had been employed by the mill, but the National Guard soon suppressed this resistance and Homestead, like other steel plants, became a non-union mill.

Vertical Integration

A business model in which a corporation controlled all aspects of production from raw materials to packaged products. “Robber barons” or industrial innovators such as Gustavus Swift and Andrew Carnegie pioneered this business form at the end of the Civil War.

Horizontal Integration

A business concept invented in the late nineteenth century to pressure competitors and force rivals to merge their companies into a conglomerate. John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil pioneered this business model.

Trust

A small group of associates that hold stock from a group of combined firms, managing them as a single entity. Trusts quickly evolved into other centralized business forms, but progressive critics continued to refer to giant firms like United States Steel and Standard Oil as “trusts.”

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

A nationwide strike of thousands of railroad workers and labor allies, who protested the growing power of railroad corporations and the steep wage cuts imposed by railroad managers amid a severe economic depression that had begun in 1873

Greenback-Labor Party

A national political movement calling on the government to increase the money supply in order to assist borrowers and foster economic growth; “Greenbackers” also called for greater regulation of corporations and laws enforcing an eight-hour workday.

Knights of Labor

The first mass labor organization created among America’s working class. Founded in 1869 and peaking in strength in the mid-1880s, it attempted to bridge boundaries of ethnicity, gender, ideology, race, and occupation to build a “universal brotherhood” of all workers.

Haymarket Square

The May 4, 1886, conflict in Chicago in which both workers and policemen were killed or wounded during a labor demonstration called by local anarchists. The incident created a backlash against all labor organizations, including the Knights of Labor.

Farmer’s Alliance

A rural movement founded in Texas during the depression of the 1870s that spread across the plains states and the South. Advocated cooperative stores and exchanges that would circumvent middlemen, and it called for greater government aid to farmers and stricter regulation of railroads.

Interstate Commerce Act

An 1887 act that created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), a federal regulatory agency designed to oversee the railroad industry and prevent collusion and unfair rates.

American Federation of Labor

Organization created by Samuel Gompers in 1886 that coordinated the activities of craft unions and called for direct negotiation with employers in order to achieve benefits for skilled workers.

Plessy vs. Ferguson

An 1896 Supreme Court case that ruled that racially segregated railroad cars and other public facilities, if they claimed to be “separate but equal,” were permissible according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Atlanta Compromise

An 1895 address by Booker T. Washington that urged whites and African Americans to work together for the progress of all. Delivered at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, the speech was widely interpreted as approving racial segregation

Tenement

A high-density, cheap, five- or six-story housing unit designed for working-class urban populations. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they became a symbol of urban immigrant poverty

Yellow Journalism

A derogatory term for newspapers that specialize in sensationalistic reporting

Muckrakers

A critical term, first applied by Theodore Roosevelt, for investigative journalists who published exposés of political scandals and industrial abuses.

Political Machine

A highly organized group of insiders that directs a political party. As the power of notables waned in the 1820s, disciplined political parties usually run by professional politicians appeared in a number of states.

Progressivism

A loose term for political reformers — especially those from the elite and middle classes — who worked to improve the political system, fight poverty, conserve environmental resources, and increase government involvement in the economy. Giving their name to the “Progressive Era,” such reformers were often prompted to act by fear that mass, radical protests by workers and farmers would spread, as well as by their desire to enhance social welfare and social justice.

Hull House

One of the first and most famous social settlements, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and her companion Ellen Gates Starr in an impoverished, largely Italian immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side

Pure Food and Drug Act

A 1906 law regulating the conditions in the food and drug industries to ensure a safe supply of food and medicine.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

A devastating fire that quickly spread through the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City on March 25, 1911, killing 146 people. In the wake of the tragedy, fifty-six state laws were passed dealing with such issues as fire hazards, unsafe machines, and wages and working hours for women and children. The fire also provided a national impetus for industrial reform

Gilded Age

A term invented in the 1920s describing the late nineteenth century as a period of ostentatious displays of wealth, growing poverty, and government inaction in the face of income inequality. Brought about more laws to address industrial poverty, working conditions, and the power of monopolies and trusts.

Sherman Antitrust Act

Landmark 1890 act that forbade anticompetitive business activities, requiring the federal government to investigate trusts and any companies operating in violation of the act.

Omaha Platform

An 1892 statement by the Populists calling for stronger government to protect ordinary Americans.

Free Silver

A policy of loosening the money supply by expanding federal coinage to include silver as well as gold.

Solid South

The post-Reconstruction goal — achieved by the early twentieth century — of almost complete electoral control of the South by the Democratic Party

Recall

A pioneering progressive idea, enacted in Wisconsin, Oregon, California, and other states, that gave citizens the right to remove unpopular politicians from office through a vote.

Referendum

The process of voting directly on a proposed policy measure rather than leaving it in the hands of elected legislators; a progressive reform

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

An organization founded in 1910 by leading African American reformers and white allies as a vehicle for advocating equal rights for African Americans, especially through the courts

Clayton Antitrust Act

A 1914 law that strengthened federal definitions of “monopoly” and gave more power to the Justice Department to pursue antitrust cases

American Exceptionalism

The idea that the United States has a unique destiny to foster democracy and civilization on the world stage.

“Remember Maine”

After the U.S. battle cruiser Maine exploded in Havana harbor, the New York Journal rallied its readers to “Remember the Maine,” galvanizing popular support for the U.S. war against Spain. Evidence of Spanish complicity in the explosion was not found; the likely cause was later found to have been internal to the ship

Teller Amendment

An amendment to the 1898 U.S. declaration of war against Spain disclaiming any intention by the United States to occupy Cuba. The amendment assured the public that the United States would uphold democracy abroad as well as at home.

Platt Amendment

A 1902 amendment to the Cuban constitution that blocked Cuba from making a treaty with any country except the United States and gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs. The amendment was a condition for U.S. withdrawal from the newly independent island.

Open Door Policy

A claim put forth by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay that all nations seeking to do business in China should have equal trade access.

Roosevelt Corollary

The 1904 assertion by President Theodore Roosevelt that the United States would act as a “policeman” in the Caribbean region and intervene in the affairs of nations that were guilty of “wrongdoing or impotence” in order to protect U.S. interests in Latin America.

Zimmerman Telegram

A 1917 intercepted dispatch in which German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmerman urged Mexico to join the Central Powers and promised that if the United States entered the war, Germany would help Mexico recover Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Published by American newspapers, the telegram outraged the American public and help precipitate the move toward U.S. entry in the war on the Allied side.

War Industries Board

A federal board established in July 1917 to direct military production, including allocation of resources, conversion of factories to war production, and setting of prices.

National War Labor Board

A federal agency founded in 1918 that established an eight-hour day for war workers (with time-and-a-half pay for overtime), endorsed equal pay for women, and supported workers’ right to organize.

Committee on Public Information

An organization set up by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I to increase support for America’s participation in the war. The CPI was a national propaganda machine that helped create a political climate intolerant of dissent.

Sedition Act of 1918

Wartime law that prohibited any words or behavior that might promote resistance to the United States or help in the cause of its enemies.

Great Migration

The migration of over 400,000 African Americans from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North during and after World War I.

Fourteen Points

Principles for a new world order proposed in 1919 by President Woodrow Wilson as a basis for peace negotiations at Versailles. Among them were open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free trade, territorial integrity, arms reduction, national selfdetermination, and creation of the League of Nations.

League of Nations

The international organization bringing together world governments to prevent future hostilities, proposed by President Woodrow Wilson in the aftermath of World War I. United States never became a member state.

Treaty of Versailles

The 1919 treaty that ended World War I. The agreement redrew the map of the world, assigned Germany sole responsibility for the war, and saddled it with a debt of $33 billion in war damages.

19th Amendment

Women’s rights to vote

Red Scare

A term for anticommunist hysteria that swept the United States, first after World War I, and led to a series of government raids on alleged subversives and a suppression of civil liberties

Palmer Raids

A series of raids led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer on radical organizations that peaked in January 1920, when federal agents arrested six thousand citizens and aliens and denied them access to legal counsel.

Teapot Dome

: Nickname for scandal in which Interior Secretary Albert Fall accepted $300,000 in bribes for leasing oil reserves on public land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming. It was part of a larger pattern of corruption that marred Warren G. Harding’s presidency

Dollar Diplomacy

Policy emphasizing the connection between America’s economic and political interests overseas. Business would gain from diplomatic efforts in its behalf, while the strengthened American economic presence overseas would give added leverage to American diplomacy

Prohibition

The ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol that went into effect in January 1920 with the Eighteenth Amendment. Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

Scopes Trial

The 1925 trial of John Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating his state’s ban on teaching evolution. The trial created a nationwide media frenzy and came to be seen as a showdown between urban and rural values.

National Origins Act

A 1924 law limiting annual immigration from each country to no more than 2 percent of that nationality’s percentage of the U.S. population as it had stood in 1890. The law severely limited immigration, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe

Harlem Renaissance

A flourishing of African American artists, writers, intellectuals, and social leaders in the 1920s, centered in the neighborhoods of Harlem, New York City

Universal Negro Improvement Association

A Harlem-based group, led by charismatic, Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, that arose in the 1920s to mobilize African American workers and champion black separatism.:

Pan-African-ism

The idea that people of African descent, in all parts of the world, have a common heritage and destiny and should cooperate in political action

Lost Generation

The phrase coined by writer Gertrude Stein to refer to young artists and writers who had suffered through World War I and felt alienated from America’s mass-culture society in the 1920s.

Buying on Margin

Buying stocks or borrowing money from a bank.

Bonus Army

A group of 15,000 unemployed World War I veterans who set up camps near the Capitol building in 1932 to demand immediate payment of pension awards due to be paid in 1945.

Fireside Chats

A series of informal radio addresses Franklin Roosevelt made to the nation in which he explained New Deal initiatives

Glass-Steagall Act

A 1933 law that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits up to $2,500 (and now up to $250,000). The act also prohibited banks from making risky, unsecured investments with customers’ deposits.

Agricultural Adjustment Act

New Deal legislation passed in May 1933 that aimed at cutting agricultural production to raise crop prices and thus farmers’ income

National Recovery Administration

Federal agency established in June 1933 to promote industrial recovery during the Great Depression. It encouraged industrialists to voluntarily adopt codes that defined fair working conditions, set prices, and minimized competition

Public Works Administration

A New Deal construction program established by Congress in 1933. Designed to put people back to work, the PWA built the Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam) and Grand Coulee Dam, among other large public works projects.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Federal relief program that provided jobs to millions of unemployed young men who built thousands of bridges, roads, trails, and other structures in state and national parks, bolstering the national infrastructure

Federal Housing Administration

An agency established by the Federal Housing Act of 1934 that refinanced home mortgages for mortgage holders facing possible foreclosure.

Securities and Exchange Commission

A commission established by Congress in 1934 to regulate the stock market. The commission had broad powers to determine how stocks and bonds were sold to the public, to set rules for margin (credit) transactions, and to prevent stock sales by those with inside information about corporate plans.

Liberty League

A group of Republican business leaders and conservative Democrats who banded together to fight what they called the “reckless spending” and “socialist” reforms of the New Deal.

Wagner Act

A 1935 act that upheld the right of industrial workers to join unions and established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency with the authority to protect workers from employer coercion and to guarantee collective bargaining

Social Security Act

A 1935 act with three main provisions: old-age pensions for workers; a joint federal-state system of compensation for unemployed workers; and a program of payments to widowed mothers and the blind, deaf, and disabled.

Works Progress Administration

Federal New Deal program established in 1935 that provided government-funded public works jobs to millions of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression in areas ranging from construction to the arts.

Dust Bowl

A series of dust storms from 1930 to 1941 during which a severe drought afflicted the semiarid states of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arkansas, and Kansas.

Tennessee Valley Authority

An agency funded by Congress in 1933 that integrated flood control, reforestation, electricity generation, and agricultural and industrial development in the Tennessee Valley area

Neutrality Act of 1935

Legislation that sought to avoid entanglement in foreign wars while protecting trade. It imposed an embargo on selling arms to warring countries and declared that Americans traveling on the ships of belligerent nations did so at their own risk

Four Freedoms

Identified by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the most basic human rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The president used these ideas of freedom to justify support for England during World War II, which in turn pulled the United States into the war

Lend-Lease Act

Legislation in 1941 that enabled Britain to obtain arms from the United States without cash but with the promise to reimburse the United States when the war ended. The act reflected Roosevelt’s desire to assist the British in any way possible, short of war

Atlantic Charter

A press release by President Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill in August 1941 calling for economic cooperation, national self-determination, and guarantees of political stability after the war.

Pearl Harbor

A naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that was attacked by Japanese bombers on December 7, 1941; more than 2,400 Americans were killed. The following day, President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan.

Revenue Act

An act that expanded the number of people paying income taxes from 3.9 million to 42.6 million. These taxes on personal incomes and business profits paid half the cost of World War II.

Executive Order 8802

An order signed by President Roosevelt in 1941 that prohibited “discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin” and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission

GI Bill of Rights

Provided World War II veterans with funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing

Zoot Suit Riot

Oversized suits of clothing in fashion in the 1940s, particularly among young male African Americans and Mexican Americans. In June 1943, a group of white sailors and soldiers in Los Angeles, seeking revenge for an earlier skirmish with Mexican American youths, attacked anyone they found wearing a zoot suit in what became known as the zoot suit riots.

Executive Order 9066

An order signed by President Roosevelt in 1941 that authorized the War Department to force Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes and hold them in relocation camps for the rest of the war.

Yalta Conference

A meeting in Yalta of President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Joseph Stalin in February 1945, in which the leaders discussed the treatment of Germany, the status of Poland, the creation of the United Nations, and Russian entry into the war against Japan.

United Nations

An international body agreed upon at the Yalta Conference, and founded at a conference in San Francisco in 1945, consisting of a General Assembly, in which all nations are represented, and a Security Council of the five major Allied powers — the United States, Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union — and seven other nations elected on a rotating basis

Potsdam Conference

The July 1945 conference in which American officials convinced the Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin to accept German reparations only from the Soviet zone, or far eastern part of Germany. The agreement paved the way for the division of Germany into East and West

Truman Doctorine

President Harry S. Truman’s commitment to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” First applied to Greece and Turkey in 1947, it became the justification for U.S. intervention into several countries during the Cold War.

Marshall Plan

Aid program begun in 1948 to help European economies recover from World War II.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

A military alliance of European and North American democracies founded after World War II to strengthen international ties between member states—especially the United States and Europe—and to serve as a counter-balance to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

House Un-American Activities Committee

Congressional committee especially prominent during the early years of the Cold War that investigated Americans who might be disloyal to the government or might have associated with communists or other radicals.

Military Industrial Complex

A term President Eisenhower used to refer to the military establishment and defense contractors who, he warned, exercised undue influence over the national government