Semester 2 Keyterms

Andrew Carnegie

• Scottish-born industrialist who developed the U.S. steel industry; his is a rags-to riches story, as he made a fortune in business and sold his holdings in 1901 for $447 million. He spent the rest of his life giving away $350 million to worthy cultural and educational causes

Bloody Shirt

Republican campaign tactic that blamed the Democrats for the Civil War; it was used successfully in campaigns from 1868 to 1876 to keep Democrats out of public office, especially the presidency.

Coxey's Army

• unemployed workers led by Jacob Coxey who marched to Washington demanding a government road-building program and currency inflation for the needy; Coxey was arrested for stepping on grass at the Capitol and the movement collapsed.

Credit Mobilier

• a major scandal in Grant's second term; a construction company, aided by members of Congress, bilked the government out of $20-40 million in building the transcontinental railroad. Members of Congress were bribed to cover up the overcharges.

Dawes General Allotment(Severalty) Act(1887)

• abolished communal ownership on Indian reservations; each family head got 160 acres of reservation land; 80 acres for a single person; 40 acres for each dependent child. More than two-thirds of Indians' remaining lands were lost due to this law

Eugene V. Debs

• Labor leader arrested during the Pullman Strike (1894); a convert to socialism, Debs ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920. In 1920, he campaigned from prison where he was being held for opposition to American involvement in World War I.

"Free silver"

political movement to inflate currency by government issuance of $16 of silver for every $1 of gold in circulation; it was supported by farmers, who sought to counter declining crop prices and increase the money supply. It became a symbol of liberating poor farmers from the grasp of wealthy easterners.

"Grandfather clause"

laws in southern states that exempted voters from taking literacy tests or paying poll taxes if their grandfathers had voted as of January 1, 1867; it effectively gave white southerners the vote and disenfranchised African Americans.

Granger Movement(National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry)(1867)

a farmers' organization and movement that started as a social/educational association; the Grange later organized politically to pass a series of laws to regulate railroads in various states.

Grover Cleveland

only Democrat elected to presidency from 1856 to 1912; he served two nonconsecutive terms; elected in 1884, losing in 1888, and winning again in 1892. His second term was marred by the Depression of 1893.

Haymarket Riot(1886)

violet incident at a workers' rally held in Chicago's Haymarket Square; political radicals and labor leaders called the rally to support a strike at the nearby McCormick Reaper works. When police tried to break it up, a bomb was thrown into their midst, killing 8 and wounding 67 others. The incident hurt the Knights of Labor and Governor John Altgeld, who pardoned some of the anarchist suspects.

Homestead Act(1862)

— encouraged westward settlement by allowing heads of families to buy 160 acres of land for a small fee ($10--30); settlers were required to develop and remain on the land for five years. Over 400,000 families got land through this law.

James B. Weaver

former Civil War general who ran for president with the Greenback Party (1880) and the Populist Party (1892).

Jim Crow laws

series of laws passed in southern states in the 1880s and 1890s that segregated the races in many facets of life, including public conveyances, waiting areas, bathrooms, and theaters; it legalized segregation and was upheld as constitutional by Plessy v. Ferguson.

John D. Rockefeller

• founder of Standard Oil Company; at one time his companies controlled 85-90 percent of refined oil in America. Standard Oil became the model for monopolizing an industry and creating a trust.

Knights of Labor

labor union founded in 1869 and built by Terence V. Powderly; the Knights called for one big union, replacement of the wage system with producers' cooperatives, and discouraged use of strikes. By 1886, they claimed membership of 700,000. Membership declined after the union's association with the Haymarket Riot of 1886.

Pendleton Act(Civil Service Reform Act)(1883)

reform passed by Congress that restricted the spoils system; passed in part in reaction to assassination of President Garfield by a disappointed office seeker in 1881, it established the U.S. Civil Service Commission to administer a merit system for hiring in government jobs.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Supreme Court case about Jim Crow railroad cars in Louisiana; the Court decided by 7 to 1 that legislation could not overcome racial attitudes, and that it was constitutional to have "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites.

Populist Party (1892)

a largely farmers' party aiming to inflate currency and to promote government action against railroads and trusts; it also called for a graduated income tax and immigration restrictions. Its platform was never enacted in the 1890s, but it became the basis of some Progressive reforms in the early twentieth century. It is also known as the Peoples Party.

Samuel Gompers

• labor leader and president of American Federation of Labor, founded in 1886; Gompers believed that craft unionism would gain skilled workers better wages and working conditions. He emphasized support for capitalism and opposition to socialism.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)

• first federal action against monopolies; the law gave government power to regulate combinations "in restraint of trade." Until the early 1900s, however, this power was used more often against labor unions than against trusts.

Social Darwinism

the application of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to the business world; William Graham Sumner, a Yale professor, promoted these ideas and lobbied against any government regulation in society. Industrialists and social conservatives used these arguments to justify ruthless business tactics and widespread poverty among the working class.

Stalwarts

Republicans in the 1870s who supported Ulysses Grant and Roscoe Conkling; they accepted machine politics and the spoils system and were challenged by other Republicans called Half-Breeds, who supported civil service reform.

Transcontinental railroad

• linked the nation from coast to coast in 1869; the Union Pacific Railroad was built west from Omaha and the Central Pacific started east from Sacramento. The federal government supported construction with over $75 million in land grants, loans, and cash.

Tweed Ring

scandal in New York City (1868-1871); William Marcy Tweed headed a corrupt Democratic political machine (Tammany Hall) that looted $100-200 million from the city. Crusading journalists and others pointed to this organization and its activities as another example of the need for social and political reform.

William Jennings Bryan

a spokesman for agrarian western values, 1896 - 1925, and three-time Democratic presidential candidate (1896, 1900, 1908); in 1896 his "Cross of Gold" speech and a free-silver platform gained support from Democrats and Populists, but he lost the election.

William McKinley

• Republican president, 1897-1901, who represented the conservative Eastern establishment; he stood for expansion, high tariffs, and the gold standard. He led the nation during the Spanish-American War (1898) and was assassinated in 1901 by a radical political anarchist.

Alfred Thayer Mahan

• naval officer, writer, teacher, and philosopher of the new imperialism of the 1890s; he stressed the need for naval power to drive expansion and established America's place in the world as a great power.

Big Stick policy

Theodore Roosevelt's method for achieving American goals in the Caribbean; it featured the threat and use of military force to promote America's commercial supremacy, to limit European intervention in the region, and to protect the Panama Canal.

Boxer Rebellion

• an uprising against foreigners in China that trapped a group of diplomats in Peking (Beijing); their rescue by an international army created fears in the United States that China would be partitioned and prompted the Second Open Door Note.

Dollar Diplomacy

• President Taft's policy that encouraged American business and financial interests to invest in Latin American countries to achieve U.S. economic and foreign policy goals and maintain control; if problems persisted, the United States reverted to the Big Stick option of the Roosevelt administration, turning to military intervention and employment of force to restore stability and peace.

Emilio Aguinaldo

Filipino patriot who led a rebellion against both Spain and the United States from 1896 to 1902, seeking independence for the Philippines; his capture in 1901 helped break the resistance to American control of the islands.

George Dewey

• naval hero of the Spanish-American War; his fleet defeated the Spanish at Manila Bay and gave the United States a tenuous claim to the Philippine Islands.

John Fiske

• historian and expansionist who argued that, with the superiority of its democracy, the United States was destined to spread over "every land on the earth's surface."

John Hay

secretary of state in the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt administrations; he was the author of the Open Door Notes, which attempted to protect American interests in China in the early 20th century by asking European countries to pledge equal trading rights in China and the protection of its territory from foreign annexation.

Josiah Strong

expansionist who blended racist and religious reasons to justify American expansion in the 1880s and 1890s; he saw the Anglo-Saxon race as trained by God to expand throughout the world and spread Christianity along the way

The Maine

• U.S. battleship sent to Havana in early 1898 to protect American interests; it blew up mysteriously in February 1898, killing 266 men. American newspapers blamed the Spanish, helping to cause the war. In 1976, it was discovered that the ship blew up accidentally.

Pineapple Republic

• popular name for the government American sugar planters in Hawaii set up in 1894 after they, assisted by the U.S. ambassador there and Marines from a U.S. warship offshore, overthrew the Hawaiian monarch; the rebels immediately sought annexation by the United States, an action supported by many members of Congress. President Cleveland opposed it, and the islands remained independent until 1898, when Congress, with President McKinley's approval, made Hawaii a territory of the United States.

Platt Amendment

an amendment added to Cuba's constitution by the Cuban government, after pressure from the United States; it provided that Cuba would make no treaties that compromised its independence or granted concessions to other countries without U.S. approval. The amendment was abrogated in 1934.

Roosevelt Corollary (1903)

• addendum to the Monroe Doctrine issued after the Dominican Republic got into financial trouble with several European nations; the United States assumed the right to intervene in Latin American countries to promote "civilized" behavior and protect American interests

Teller Amendment

part of the declaration of war against Spain in which Congress pledged that Cuba would be freed and not annexed by the United States as a result of the conflict.

Theodore Roosevelt

• assistant secretary of the navy, who headed a volunteer regiment in the Spanish-American War; nicknamed the Rough Riders by the press, the First Volunteer Cavalry consisted of Roosevelt's colorful friends from the West and his Harvard days. After the war, Roosevelt "rode" his Rough Riders image to the vice presidency and then the presidency of the United States.

Treaty of Paris

ended the Spanish-American War; under its terms, Cuba gained independence from Spain, and the United States acquired Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The United States paid Spain twenty million dollars for the Philippines.

Valeriano Weyler

— Spanish governor in charge of suppressing the Cuban revolution, 1896- 1898; his brutal "reconcentration" tactics earned him the nickname of the "Butcher" in America's yellow press.

William McKinley

president of the United States, 1897-1901; a reluctant expansionist, he led America during the Spanish-American War. His assassination in 1901 brought "that damn cowboy" Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency.

William Seward

— secretary of state, 1861-1869; a dedicated expansionist, he purchased Alaska from Russia, acquired Midway Island, and tried to buy the Virgin Islands in 1867.

Yellow Journalism

— sensational newspaper stories from Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal that stirred Americans against Spanish rule in Cuba; this media coverage proved a force for war in 1898.

"New immigration"

wave of immigration from the 1880s until the early twentieth century; millions came from southern and eastern Europe, who were poor, uneducated, Jewish, and Catholic. They settled in large cities and prompted a nativist backlash and, eventually, restrictions on immigration in the 1920s. These immigrants provided the labor force that allowed the rapid growth of American industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

A. Mitchell Palmer -

attorney general during the height of the Red Scare (1919-1920) who led
raids against suspected radicals; reacting to terrorist bombings, fear of Bolshevism, and his own
presidential aspirations, Palmer arrested 6,000 people and deported over 500

Booker T. Washington –

influential black leader; his “Atlanta Compromise” speech (1895)
proposed blacks accept social and political segregation in return for economic opportunities in
agriculture and vocational areas. He received money from whites and built Tuskegee Institute
into a powerful educational and political machine.

Calvin Coolidge –

taciturn, pro-business president (1923-1929) who took over after Harding’s
death, restored honesty to government, and accelerated the tax cutting and antiregulation
policies of his predecessor; his laissez-faire policies brought short-term prosperity from 1923 to
1929.

Carrie Chapman Catt –

president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association; Catt
led the organization when it achieved passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 and later
organized the League of Women Voters.

Charles Lindbergh –

mail service pilot who became a celebrity when he made the first flight
across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927; a symbol of the vanishing individualistic hero of the frontier
who was honest, modest, and self-reliant, he later became a leading isolationist.

Eighteenth Amendment (1919) –

prohibited the sale, transportation, and manufacture of alcohol;
part of rural America’s attempt to blunt the societal influence of the cities, it was called the “Noble
Experiment” until it was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment (1933).

Federal Reserve Act (1913) –

established a national banking system for the first time since the
1830s; designed to combat the “money trust,” it created 12 regional banks that regulated interest
rates, money supply, and provided an elastic credit system throughout the country.

Great Migration -

movement of southern, rural blacks to northern cities starting around 1915 and
continuing through much of the twentieth century; blacks left the South as the cotton economy
declined and Jim Crow persisted. Thousands came north for wartime jobs in large cities during
World Wars I and 11.

Harlem Renaissance –

black artistic movement in New York City in the 1920s, when writers,
poets, painters, and musicians came together to express feelings and experiences, especially
about the injustices of Jim Crow; leading figures of the movement included Countee Cullen,
Claude McKay, Duke Ellington, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes.

Ida Tarbell -

crusading journalist who wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company a critical expose that documented john D. Rockefeller's ruthlessness and questionable business tactics.

Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) -

revolutionary industrial union founded in 1905
and led by "Big Bill" Haywood that worked to overthrow capitalism; during World War I, the
government pressured the group, and by 1919, it was in serious decline.

Jane Addams –

social worker and leader in the settlement house movement; she founded Hull
House in 1889, which helped improve the lives of poor immigrants in Chicago, and in 1931 shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ku Klux Klan –

Reconstruction-era organization that was revived in 1915 and rose to political
power in the mid-1920s when membership reached 4 to 5 million; opposed to blacks, Catholics,
Jews, and immigrants, its membership was rural, white, native-born, and Protestant.

Langston Hughes -

leading literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance who wrote verse, essays,
and 32 books; he helped define tie black experience in America for over four decades.

Lincoln Steffens -

a leading muckraking journalist who exposed political corruption in the cities;
best known for IUs The Shame of Cities (1904), he was also a regular contributor to McClure's
magazine.

Marcus Garvey–

black leader in early 1920s who appealed to urban blacks with his program of
racial self-sufficiency / separatism, black pride, and pan-Africanism; his Universal Negro
Improvement Association ran into financial trouble, however. He was eventually arrested for mail
fraud and deported to his native Jamaica in 1927.

New Nationalism--

Theodore Roosevelt's progressive platform in the election of 1912; building
on IUs presidential "Square Deal," he called for a strong federal government to maintain
economic competition and social justice but to accept trusts as an economic fact of life.

Nineteenth Amendment (1920) –

granted women the right to vote; its ratification capped a
movement for women’s rights that dated to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. Although
women were voting in state elections in 12 states when the amendment passed, it enabled 8
million women to vote in the presidential election of 1920.

Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) –

law that regulated the food and patent medicine industries;
some business leaders called it socialistic meddling by the government.

Red Scare –

period of hysteria after World War I over the possible spread of Communism to the
United States; aroused by the Russian Revolution (1917), the large number of Russian immigrants
in the United States, and a series of terrorist bombings in 1919, it resulted in the denial of civil
liberties, mass arrests and deportations, and passage of the restrictive Immigration Act of 1920.

Robert La Follette–

progressive governor (1900-1904) and senator (1906-1925); he established
the "Wisconsin idea" that reformed the state through direct primaries, tax reform, and
anticorruption legislation. La Follette was the Progressive Party's presidential nominee in 1924.

Sacco and Vanzetti –

Italian radicals who became symbols of the Red Scare of the 1920s; arrested
(1920), tried, and executed (1927) for a robbery/murder, they were believed by many to have
been innocent but convicted because of their immigrant status and radical political beliefs.

Social Gospel -

movement that began in Protestant churches in the late nineteenth century to
apply the teachings of the Bible to the problems of the industrial age; led by Washington Gladden
and Walter Rauschenbusch, it aroused the interest of many clergymen in securing social justice
for the urban poor. The thinking of Jane Addams, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and
other secular reformers was influenced by the movement as well.

Tea Pot Dome Scandal –

biggest scandal of Harding’s administration: Secretary of Interior
Albert Fall illegally leased government oil fields in the West to private oil companies; Fall was
later convicted of bribery and became the first Cabinet official to serve prison time (1931-1932).

Upton Sinclair –

socialist muckraker who wrote The Jungle (1906), in which he hoped to indict the
capitalist system but instead helped convince Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act (1906),
which cleaned up the meat industry.

W.E.B. DuBois –

black intellectual who challenged Booker T. Washington’s ideas on combating
Jim Crow; he called for the black community to demand immediate equality and was a founding
member of the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP).

Warren Harding –

weak but affable president (1921-1923) who allowed his appointees to loot
and cheat the government; after his death, political and personal scandals tarnished his
presidency. Harding is rated as a failure as president by most historians.

Woodrow Wilson (New Freedom) –

successful Democratic presidential nominee in 1912 and his
progressive program that viewed trusts as evil and called for their destruction rather than their
regulation; his social and political philosophy drew heavily on the ideas of Louis Brandeis. As
president (1931-1921). Wilson led the nation through World War I.

Treaty of Versailles (1919) –

ended World War I; it was much harder on Germany than Wilson
wanted but not as punitive as France and England desired. It was harsh enough, however, to set
stage for Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the 1930s.

Big Four–

the leaders who constructed the Treaty of Versailles: Woodrow Wilson, Georges
Clemenceau (France), David Lloyd George (Britain), and Vittorio Orlando (Italy)

Fourteen Points (1918) –

Woodrow Wilson’s vision for the world after World War I; it called for
free trade, self-determination for all peoples, freedom of the seas, open diplomacy, and a League
of Nations. Wilson hoped his Fourteen Points would be the basis for a negotiated settlement to
end the war. However, they were not harsh enough on Germany for the other Allies to accept.
Only a few of them were incorporated into the treaty.

Henry Cabot Lodge –

chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who accepted the
Treaty of Versailles and membership in the League but demanded reservations to the League to
maintain congressional authority in foreign affairs; Wilson’s unwillingness to accept these
conditions caused the Senate to reject the treaty.

John Pershing –

American commander in France during World War I; his nickname of “Black
Jack” resulted from his command of black troops earlier in his career. Before being dispatched to
France, Pershing led an American incursion into Mexico in 1916 in a failed attempt to capture
Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.

Lusitania –

British passenger liner sunk by a German submarine in May 1915; among the 1,200
deaths were 128 Americans. This was the first major crisis between the United States and
Germany and a stepping-stone for American involvement in World War I.

William Borah –

led a group of senators who were irreconcilably opposed to joining the League
of Nations; he promoted ideals of traditional isolationism and believed the League was “an
entangling foreign alliance.”

Zimmermann Note (1917) –

a secret German proposal to Mexico for an alliance against the
United States; Germany offered to help Mexico get back territories it lost to the United States in

1848. Britain alerted the Wilson administration to the plan, and Mexico refused the idea.

Scopes Trial (1925) –

“Monkey Trial” over John Scopes’s teaching of evolution in his biology

classroom in violation of a Tennessee law; it pitted the Bible, fundamentalism, and William

Jennings Bryan against evolution, modernism, and Clarence Darrow. Scopes was convicted, but

fundamentalism was damaged and discouraged by the trial.

A. Philip Randolph

labor and civil rights leader in the 1940s who led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; he demanded that FDR create a Fair Employment Practices Commission to investigate job discrimination in war industries. FDR agreed only after Randolph threatened a march on Washington by African Americans.

Agricultural Adjustment Administration (1933)

New Deal program that paid farmers not to produce crops. It provided farmers with income while reducing crop surpluses and helped stabilize farm production. The Supreme Court declared major parts of this law unconstitutional in 1936, helping lead FDR to his court-packing plan.

Alfred (Al) Smith

first Catholic ever nominated for President; he lost in 1928 because of the nation’s prosperity, but his religion, urban background, and views on Prohibition (he was a “wet”) cost him votes as well.

American Liberty League

a conservative anti-New Deal organization; members included Alfred Smith, John W. Davis, and the Du Pont family. It criticized the “dictatorial” policies of Roosevelt and what it perceived to be his attacks on the free enterprise system.

Atlantic Charter (1941)

joint statement issued by President Roosevelt and Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill of principals and goals for an Allied victory in World War II; it provided for self-determination for all conquered nations, freedom of seas, economic security, and free trade. Later, it became the embodiment of the United Nations Charter.

Black Cabinet

an informal network of black officeholders in the federal government; led by Mary McLeod Bethune, William Hastie, and Robert Weaver, they pushed for economic and political opportunities for African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s.

Bonus Army (1932)

group of jobless World War I veterans who came to Washington to lobby Congress for immediate payment of money promised them in 1945; Hoover opposed payment, and when he used the U.S. Army to drive the veterans out of the capital, he was portrayed as cruel and cold-hearted.

Brain Trust

name applied to college professors from Columbia University such as Rexford Tugwell, Adolf Berle, and Raymond Moley who advised Roosevelt on economic matters early in the New Deal; the Brain Trust took on the role of an “unofficial Cabinet” in the Roosevelt Administration.

Charles Coughlin

Catholic priest who used his popular radio program to criticize the New Deal; he grew increasingly anti-Roosevelt and anti-Semitic until the Catholic Church pulled him off the air.

Court-packing plan

Roosevelt’s proposal in 1937 to “reform” the Supreme Court by appointing an additional justice for every justice over age 70; following the Court’s actions in striking down major New Deal laws, FDR came to believe that some justices were out of touch with the nation’s needs. Congress believed Roosevelt’s proposal endangered the Court’s independence and said no.

Fireside chats

Roosevelt’s informal radio addresses throughout his presidency; they gave the people a sense of confidence that he understood their problems and was trying to help solve them. With these “chats,” FDR was the first president to use the electronic media to spread his message.

Frances Perkins

Roosevelt’s secretary of labor (1933–1945); the first woman to serve as a federal Cabinet officer, she had a great influence on many New Deal programs, most significantly the Social Security Act.

Francis Townsend

retired physician who proposed an Old Age Revolving Pension Plan to give every retiree over age 60 $200 per month, provided that the person spend the money each month in order to receive their next payment; the object of Townsend’s plan was to help retired workers as well as stimulate spending in order to boost production and end the Depression.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

president (1933–1945); elected four times, he led the country’s recovery from the Depression and to victory in World War II. He died in office, however, just weeks before Germany’s surrender. He is generally considered the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.

Harry S. Truman

vice president who became president when FDR died in April 1945; he was elected on his own in 1948. Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, set the course of postwar containment of Communism in the Cold War, and created a Fair Deal program to carry on the New Deal’s domestic agenda.