APUSH final

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.

Transcontinental Railroad

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.

gold standard (p. 515)

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.

Homestead Act (p. 516)

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.

Comstock Lode (p. 516)

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.

Exodusters (p. 520)

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

Sand Creek massacre (p. 527)

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

Dawes Severalty Act (p. 532)

The 1876 battle begun when American cavalry under George Armstrong Custer attacked an encampment of Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne Indians who resisted removal to a reservation. Custer's force was annihilated, but with whites calling for U.S. soldiers to retaliate, the Native American military victory was short-lived.

Battle of Little Big Horn (p. 533)

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

Ghost Dance movement (p. 534)

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

Wounded Knee (p. 534)

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

Homestead Strike (p. 544)

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

vertical integration (p. 547)

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.

horizontal integration (p. 548)

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."

trust (p. 548)

The elimination of skilled labor under a new system of mechanized manufacturing, in which workers completed discrete, small-scale tasks rather than crafting an entire product. With deskilling, employers found they could pay workers less and replace them more easily.

deskilling (p. 551)

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.

Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (p. 565)

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

Knights of Labor (p. 567)

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

Haymarket Square (p. 568)

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

Farmers' Alliance (p. 568)

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.

Interstate Commerce Act (p. 569)

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.

American Federation of Labor (p. 570)

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

Plessy v. Ferguson (p. 577)

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.

Atlanta Compromise (p. 587)

An idea, actually formulated not by Charles Darwin but by British philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer, that human society advanced through ruthless competition and the "survival of the fittest."

Social Darwinism (p. 594)

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

tenement (p. 614)

A derogatory term for newspapers that specialize in sensationalistic reporting. Yellow journalism is associated with the inflammatory reporting by the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers leading up to the Spanish-American War in 1898. (p. 619)

yellow journalism (p. 619)

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

muckrakers (p. 619)

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.

political machine (p. 619)

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.

progressivism (p. 624)

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.

Hull House (p. 627)

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

Pure Food and Drug Act (p. 629)

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.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (p. 629)

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. Commentators suggested that this era had been followed by a "Progressive Era" in which citizens mobilized for reform. The chronological line between the "Gilded Age" and the "Progressive Era" remains unclear, since the 1870s and 1880s witnessed mass movements of farmers, industrial laborers, and middle-class women for reform. Historians generally agree, however, that the era after 1900 brought about more laws to address industrial poverty, working conditions, and the power of monopolies and trusts.

Gilded Age (p. 638)

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

Sherman Antitrust Act (p. 642)

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

Omaha Platform (p. 643)

A policy of loosening the money supply by expanding federal coinage to include silver as well as gold. Advocates of the policy thought it would encourage borrowing and stimulate industry, but the defeat of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan ended the "free silver" movement and gave Republicans power to retain the gold standard.

free silver (p. 645)

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

Solid South (p. 646)

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

recall (p. 652)

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

referendum (p. 652)

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.

NAACP (p. 655)

A 1914 law that strengthened federal definitions of "monopoly" and gave more power to the Justice Department to pursue antitrust cases; it also specified that labor unions could not generally be prosecuted for "restraint of trade," ensuring that antitrust laws would apply to corporations rather than unions.

Clayton Antitrust Act (p. 662)

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

American exceptionalism (p. 674)

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

"Remember the Maine" (p. 675)

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

Teller Amendment (p. 675)

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.

Platt Amendment (p. 678)

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

open door policy (p. 679)

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

Roosevelt Corollary (p. 683)

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

Zimmermann telegram (p. 686)

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

War Industries Board (p. 688)

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

National War Labor Board (p. 689)

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

Committee on Public Information (p. 690)

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

Sedition Act of 1918 (p. 691)

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. (p. 694)

Great Migration (p. 694)

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

Fourteen Points (p. 696)

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

League of Nations (p. 697)

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. Its long-term impact around the globe — including the creation of British and French imperial "mandates" — was catastrophic.

Treaty of Versailles (p. 697)

Section 1. 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. Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

19th Amendment

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.

Red Scare (p. 708)

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.

Palmer raids (p. 709)

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.

Teapot Dome (p. 710)

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.

dollar diplomacy (p. 711)

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.

prohibition (p. 712)

An organization formed during the Red Scare to protect free speech rights.

American Civil Liberties Union (p. 713)

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.

Scopes trial (p. 713)

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.

National Origins Act (p. 713)

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

Harlem Renaissance (p. 718)

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

Universal Negro Improvement Association (p. 719)

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.

pan-Africanism (p. 720)

The phrase was 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.

Lost Generation (p. 720)

New forms of borrowing, such as auto loans and installment plans, that flourished in the 1920s but helped trigger the Great Depression

Buying on margin (p. 725)

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

Bonus Army (p. 738)

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

fireside chats (p. 740)

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.

Glass-Steagall Act (p. 740)

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

Agricultural Adjustment Act (p. 741)

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.

National Recovery Administration (p. 741)

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

Public Works Administration (p. 741)

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

Civilian Conservation Corps (p. 741)

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

Federal Housing Administration (p. 744)

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.

Securities and Exchange Commission (p. 745)

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.

Liberty League (p. 746)

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

Wagner Act (p. 747)

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.

Social Security Act (p. 747)

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.

Works Progress Administration (p. 749)

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

dust bowl (p. 759)

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

Tennessee Valley Authority (p. 760)

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

Neutrality Act of 1935 (p. 769)

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.

Four Freedoms (p. 771)

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

Lend-Lease Act (p. 771)

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

Atlantic Charter (p. 772)

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

Pearl Harbor (p. 773)

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

Revenue Act (p. 775)

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 (FEPC)

Executive Order 8802 (p. 780)

Popularly known as the GI Bill, legislation authorizing the government to provide World War II veterans with funds for education, housing, and health care, as well as loans to start businesses and buy homes.

GI Bill of Rights (1944) (p. 781)

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.

Zoot Suit Riot (p. 783)

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

Executive Order 9066 (p. 787)

Top-secret project authorized by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 to develop an atomic bomb ahead of the Germans. The Americans who worked on the project at Los Alamos, New Mexico (among other highly secretive sites around the country), succeeded in producing a successful atomic bomb by July 1945.

Manhattan Project (p. 793)

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.

Yalta Conference (p. 806)

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.

United Nations (p. 807)

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

Potsdam Conference (p. 807)

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.

Truman Doctrine (p. 809)