Final review American History since 1865

Freedmen's Bureau

was established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65).

Black codes

were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

was the first United States federal law to define US citizenship and affirmed that all citizens were equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, in the wake of the American Civil War.

Fourteenth Amendment

an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, defining national citizenship and forbidding the states to restrict the basic rights of citizens or other persons.

Fifteenth Amendment

prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Military Reconstruction Act

passed into law on March 2, 1867 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The act applied to all the ex-Confederate states in the South, except Tennessee who had already ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. (begins legislated reconstruction)

Carpetbagger

a person from the northern states who went to the South after the Civil War to profit from the Reconstruction.

Scalawag

a white Southerner who collaborated with northern Republicans during Reconstruction, often for personal profit. The term was used derisively by white Southern Democrats who opposed Reconstruction legislation.

Ku Klux Klan

a secret organization in the southern U.S., active for several years after the Civil War, which aimed to suppress the newly acquired powers of blacks and to oppose carpetbaggers from the North, and which was responsible for many lawless and violent proceedings.

Sharecropping

is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on the land.

Redeemers

were a white political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War. Redeemers were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business faction in the Democratic Party, who pursued a policy of Redemption, seeking to oust the Radical Republican coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They generally were led by the rich landowners, businessmen and professionals, and dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.

Compromise of 1877

was a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election, pulled federal troops out of state politics in the South, and ended the Reconstruction Era. Through the Compromise, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops

Comancheria

is the name commonly given to the region of New Mexico, west Texas and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s.

Black Hills

Sacred to the Sioux. The opening of the Black Hills to settlement by whites in 1874 led to the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Battle of Little Big Horn

Lieutenant Colonel Custer and his U.S. Army troops are defeated in battle with Native American Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne, on the Little Bighorn Battlefield, June 25, 1876 at Little Bighorn River, Montana.

Carlisle Indian School

The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. (Americans trying to assimilate Indians into traditional American culture)

Dawes Allotment Act

1887. A federal law intended to turn Native Americans into farmers and landowners by providing cooperating families with 160 acres of reservation land for farming or 320 acres for grazing.

Ghost Dance

a group dance of a late 19th century American Indian messianic cult believed to promote the return of the dead and the restoration of traditional ways of life.

Wounded Knee

Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota,was the site of two conflicts between North American Indians and representatives of the U.S. government.An 1890 massacre left some 150Native Americansdead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux.

Comstock Lode

The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Nevada. It was the first major discovery of silver ore in the United States.

Chinese Exclusion Act

was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. It was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in US history, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.

Homestead Act of 1862

Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land.

(First) Transcontinental Railroad

A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was the project of two railroad companies: the Union Pacific built from the east, and the Central Pacific built from the west. The two lines met in Utah.

Gilded Age

was an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the North and West. American wages, especially for skilled workers, were much higher than in Europe, which attracted millions of immigrants.

Finance capitalism

is the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system.

Social Darwinism

the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Now largely discredited, social Darwinism was used mostly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and reform.

Gospel of Wealth

"Wealth", more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth", is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy.

Spoils system

the practice of a successful political party giving public office to its supporters.

Jim Crow

the former practice of segregating black people in the US.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity.

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

1887 is a United States federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices. The Act required that railroad rates be "reasonable and just," but did not empower the government to fix specific rates. (Gave birth to the commission

Sherman Antitrust Act

A federal law passed in 1890 that committed the American government to opposing monopolies. The law prohibits contracts, combinations, or conspiracies "in the restraint of trade or commerce."

Free silver

denoting a US political movement for the free coinage of silver, especially that of the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Great Railroad Strike

sometimes referred to as the Great Upheaval, began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States and ended some 45 days later, after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops.

Knights of Labor

a member of a 19th century secret labor organization formed in 1869 to secure and maintain the rights of workingmen in respect to their relations to their employers.

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was the first federation of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in May 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association.

Haymarket bombing

On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing.

Bossism

a situation in which a political party is controlled by party managers.

World's Columbian Exposition

1893. Organized to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landfall in the New World, the World's Columbian Exposition became a defining moment in Chicago's history and the history of the United States as a whole.

Cult of domesticity

The home and the idea of domesticity were so important in 19th century culture that historians speak of the "cult" of domesticity. The phrase "True Womanhood" was used by mid-nineteenth century authors who wrote about the subject of women.

Farmer's Alliance

was an organized agrarian economic movement among American farmers that developed and flourished in the 1870s and 1880s.

People's Party (Populist Party)

a political party (1891-1904), advocating expansion of currency, state control of railroads, the placing of restrictions upon ownership of land, etc.; Populist party

Homestead lockout

also known as the Homestead Steel Strike, was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892.

Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894

was a five-month strike by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Cripple Creek, Colorado, USA. It resulted in a victory for the union and was followed in 1903 by the Colorado Labor Wars.

Pullman boycott

was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States in the summer of 1894. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States in the summer of 1894. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.

Coxey's army

was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time.

Boxer uprising

In 1900, in what became known as the Boxer Rebellion (or the Boxer Uprising), a Chinese secret organization called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising in northern China against the spread of Western and Japanese influence there.

Monroe Doctrine

a principle of US policy, originated by President James Monroe in 1823, that any intervention by external powers in the politics of the Americas is a potentially hostile act against the US.

Open Door Policy

is a term in foreign affairs initially used to refer to the United States policy established in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, and outlined in Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door Note, dispatched in 1899 to his European counterparts.

Spanish American War

A war between Spain and the United States, fought in 1898. The war began as an intervention by the United States on behalf of Cuba.

Yellow journalism

journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration. (Muckrakers)

Progressivism

is a broad philosophy based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advancement in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to improve the human condition.

Settlement houses

an institution in an inner-city area providing educational, recreational, and other social services to the community.

Social gospel

is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States

Muckraking

people who write yellow journalism

Roosevelt Corollary

was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-03.

The New Nationalism

was Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive political philosophy during the 1912 election.

The New Freedom

The first comprises the campaign speeches and promises of Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential campaign; it called for limited government.

Socialist Party

a political party formed to promote public control of the means of production and distribution. In 1898 the Social Democratic party was formed by a group led by Eugene V. Debs and Victor Berger.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

a former international labor union and radical labor movement in the United States; founded in Chicago in 1905 and dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism; its membership declined after World War I.

Birth control movement

was a social reform campaign from 1914 to around 1945 that aimed to increase the availability of contraception in the U.S. through education and legalization.

Plessy v. Ferguson

(1896), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

Triple Alliance

was a military alliance among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. It lasted from 20 May 1882 until World War I in 1914.

Triple Entente

was the alliance linking the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente on 31 August 1907.

Lusitania

a British luxury liner sunk by a German submarine in the North Atlantic on May 7, 1915: one of the events leading to U.S. entry into World War I.

Bolshevik

a member of the more radical majority of the Social Democratic Party, 1903-17, advocating immediate and forceful seizure of power by the proletariat.

Eighteenth Amendment (prohibiton)

established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring illegal the production, transport and sale of alcohol (though not the consumption or private possession).

Nineteenth Amendment (woman's suffrage)

prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920.

Fourteen Points

Fourteen goals of the United States in the peace negotiations after World War I. President Woodrow Wilson announced the Fourteen Points to Congress in early 1918.

League of Nations

was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War.

Versailles treaty

was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Red Scare

The rounding up and deportation of several hundred immigrants of radical political views by the federal government in 1919 and 1920. This "scare" was caused by fears of subversion by communists in the United States after the Russian Revolution.

Schenck v. United States

Supreme Court decision concerning enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War I.

Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)

was a government corporation in the United States that operated between 1932 and 1957 which provided financial support to state and local governments and made loans to banks, railroads, mortgage associations and other businesses.

Scottsboro Boys

were nine black teenagers accused in Alabama of raping two white women on a train in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included an angry lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, a frameup, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is frequently cited as an example of an overall miscarriage of justice.

New Deal Coalition

refers to the alignment of interest groups and voting blocs that supported the New Deal and voted for Democratic presidential candidates from 1932 until the late 1960s. Appoint more Supreme Court Justices, coalition forged by the Democrats who dominated American politics from the 1930's to the 1960's. its basic elements were the urban working class, ethnic groups, Catholics and Jews, the poor, Southerners, African Americans, and intellectuals.

Under consumption

purchase of goods and services at a level lower than that of their supply. (said to be the main reason for the great crash of 1929)

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

is an independent agency of the United States (U.S.) federal government that preserves public confidence in the banking system by insuring deposits.

Fireside chats

one of a series of radio broadcasts made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the nation, beginning in 1933.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families as part of the New Deal.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

was a United States federal law of the New Deal era which reduced agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land and to kill off excess livestock. Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus and therefore effectively raise the value of crops.

The National Recovery Administration

was a prime New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices.

Works Progress Administration

Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs.

The Wagner Act

or the National Labor Relations Act, was a New Deal reform passed by President Franklin Roosevelt on July 5, 1935. It was instrumental in preventing employers from interfering with workers' unions and protests in the private sector

The CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization)

was founded on November 9, 1935, by eight international unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor. In its statement of purpose, the CIO said it had formed to encourage the AFL to organize workers in mass production industries along industrial union lines.

Social Security

a federal insurance program that provides benefits to retired people and those who are unemployed or disabled

Court Packing Plan

A move by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to increase the size of the Supreme Court and then bring in several new justices who would change the balance of opinion on the Court.

Crash of 1929

An enormous decrease in stock prices on the stock exchanges of Wall Street in late October 1929. This crash began the Great Depression.

Good neighbor policy

a diplomatic policy of the U.S., first presented in 1933 by President Franklin Roosevelt, for the encouragement of friendly relations and mutual defense among the nations of the Western Hemisphere.

The Neutrality Acts

were passed by the United States Congress in the 1930s, in response to the growing turmoil in Europe and Asia that eventually led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following its costly involvement in World War I, and sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts.

Appeasement

in a political context is a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an enemy power in order to avoid conflict

Lend-Lease Act

passed in March 1941; was the principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II.

Internment

means putting a person in prison or other kind of detention, generally in wartime. During World War II, the American government put Japanese-Americans in internment camps, fearing they might be loyal to Japan.

The Selective Service Act or Selective Draft Act

(May 18, 1917) authorized the federal government to raise a national army for the American entry into World War I through the compulsory enlistment of people.

The Battle of Midway

was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. American naval battle with the Japanese

The Double V Campaign

also sought to generate more support for the war among the African American community. Ira Lewis, the editor of The Courier, thought that by showing support and encouraging the black community to do all it could for the war effort, they could in turn help convince the U.S. government to do all it could to increase racial equality in the country.

GI Bill

A law passed in 1944 that provided educational and other benefits for people who had served in the armed forces in World War II. Benefits are still available to persons honorably discharged from the armed forces.

Holocaust

genocide and destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.

D Day

the day (June 6, 1944) in World War II on which Allied forces invaded northern France by means of beach landings in Normandy.