Henretta Glossary

abolitionism

The social reform movement to end slavery immediately and without compensation that began in the United States in the 1830s.

America First Committee

A committee organized by isolationists in 1940 to oppose the entrance of the United States into World War II. The membership of the committee included senators, journalists, and publishers and such well-respected figures as the aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Abu Ghraib prison

A prison just outside Baghdad, Iraq, where American guards were photographed during the Iraq War abusing and torturing suspected insurgents.

American, or Know-Nothing, Party

A political party formed in 1851 that drew on the anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic movements of the 1840s. In 1854, the party gained control of the state governments of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

Adams-Onís Treaty

An 1819 treaty in which John Quincy Adams persuaded Spain to cede the Florida territory to the United States. In return, the American government accepted Spain's claim to Texas and agreed to a compromise on the western boundary for the state of Louisiana.

American Civil Liberties Union

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

Adkins v. Children's Hospital

The 1923 Supreme Court case that voided a minimum wage for women workers in the District of Columbia, reversing many of the gains that had been achieved through the groundbreaking decision in Muller v. Oregon.

American Colonization Society

A society founded by Henry Clay and other prominent citizens in 1817. The society argued that slaves had to be freed and then resettled, in Africa or elsewhere.

Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET)

A decentralized computer network developed in the late 1960s by the U.S. Department of Defense in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Internet grew out of the ARPANET.

American exceptionalism

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

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.

American GI Forum

A group founded by World War II veterans in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1948 to protest the poor treatment of Mexican American soldiers and veterans.

American Indian Movement (AIM)

Organization established in 1968 to address the problems Indians faced in American cities, including poverty and police harassment. AIM organized Indians to end relocation and termination policies and to win greater control over their cultures and communities.

The Affluent Society

A 1958 book by John Kenneth Galbraith that analyzed the nation's successful middle class and argued that the poor were only an 'afterthought' in the minds of economists and politicians.

Agricultural Adjustment Act

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

American Protective Association

A powerful political organization of militant Protestants, which for a brief period in the 1890s counted more than two million members. In its virulent anti-Catholicism and calls for restrictions on immigrants, the APA prefigured the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.

Al Qaeda

A network of radical Islamic terrorists organized by Osama bin Laden, who issued a call for holy war against Americans and their allies.

a!rmative action

Policies established in the 1960s and 1970s by governments, businesses, universities, and other institutions to overcome the effects of past discrimination against specific groups such as racial and ethnic minorities and women.

measures to ensure equal opportunity

Setting goals for the admission, hiring, and promotion of minorities; considering minority status when allocating resources; and actively encouraging victims of past discrimination to apply for jobs and other resources.

Al Qaeda

A network of radical Islamic terrorists organized by Osama bin Laden, who issued a call for holy war against Americans and their allies. Members of Al Qaeda were responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

An economic stimulus bill passed in 2009, in response to the Great Recession, that provided $787 billion to state and local governments for schools, hospitals, and transportation projects. It was one of the largest single packages of government spending in American history.

Alamo

The 1836 defeat by the Mexican army of the Texan garrison defending the Alamo in San Antonio. Newspapers urged Americans to 'Remember the Alamo,' and American adventurers, lured by offers of land grants, flocked to Texas to join the rebel forces.

American Renaissance

A literary explosion during the 1840s inspired in part by Emerson's ideas on the liberation of the individual.

amalgamation

A term for racial mixing and intermarriage, almost universally opposed by whites in the nineteenth-century United States.

American System

The mercantilist system of national economic development advocated by Henry Clay and adopted by John Quincy Adams, with a national bank to manage the nation's financial system; protective tariffs to provide revenue and encourage industry; and a nationally funded network of roads, canals, and railroads.

Alexander Hamilton's argument

Hamilton argued that the bank would provide stability to the specie-starved American economy by making loans to merchants, handling government funds, and issuing bills of credit.

American Temperance Society

A society invigorated by evangelical Protestants in 1832 that set out to curb the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

American Woman Suffrage Association

A women's suffrage organization led by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and others who remained loyal to the Republican Party, despite its failure to include women's voting rights in the Reconstruction Amendments.

Battle of Little Big Horn

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.

Battle of Long Island (1776)

First major engagement of the new Continental army, defending against 32,000 British troops outside of New York City.

Battle of Saratoga (1777)

A multistage battle in New York ending with the surrender of British general John Burgoyne. The victory ensured the diplomatic success of American representatives in Paris, who won a military alliance with France.

anarchism

The advocacy of a stateless society achieved by revolutionary means. Feared for their views, anarchists became scapegoats for the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing.

Battle of Tippecanoe

An attack on Shawnee Indians at Prophets-town on the Tippecanoe River in 1811 by American forces headed by William Henry Harrison, Indiana's territorial governor.

Battle of Yorktown (1781)

A battle in which French and American troops and a French fleet trapped the British army under the command of General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia.

Antifederalists

Opponents of ratification of the Constitution. They feared that a powerful and distant central government would be out of touch with the needs of citizens and complained that it failed to guarantee individual liberties in a bill of rights.

Articles of Confederation

The written document defining the structure of the United States government prior to the Constitution.

Articles of Confederation

The written document defining the structure of the government from 1781 to 1788, under which the Union was a confederation of equal states, with no executive and limited powers, existing mainly to foster a common defense.

Bay of Pigs

A failed U.S.-sponsored invasion of Cuba in 1961 by anti-Castro forces who planned to overthrow Fidel Castro's government.

artisan republicanism

An ideology that celebrated small-scale producers, men and women who owned their own shops (or farms). It defined the ideal republican society as one constituted by, and dedicated to the welfare of, independent workers and citizens.

Beats

A small group of literary figures based in New York City and San Francisco in the 1950s who rejected mainstream culture and instead celebrated personal freedom, which often included drug consumption and casual sex.

Benevolent Empire

A broad-ranging campaign of moral and institutional reforms inspired by evangelical Christian ideals and endorsed by upper-middle-class men and women in the 1820s and 1830s.

associated state

A system of voluntary business cooperation with government. The Commerce Department helped create two thousand trade associations representing companies in almost every major industry.

benevolent masters

Slave owners who considered themselves committed to the welfare of their slaves.

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.

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the Constitution, officially ratified by 1791. The amendments safeguarded fundamental personal rights, including freedom of speech and religion, and mandated legal procedures, such as trial by jury.

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.

baby boom

The surge in the American birthrate between 1945 and 1965, which peaked in 1957 with 4.3 million births.

black nationalism

A major strain of African American thought that emphasized black racial pride and autonomy.

Bakke v. University of California

1978 Supreme Court ruling that limited affirmative action by rejecting a quota system.

Bank of the United States

A bank chartered in 1790 and jointly owned by private stockholders and the national government.

Chicago school

A school of architecture dedicated to the design of buildings whose form expressed, rather than masked, their structure and function.

Chicano Moratorium Committee

Group founded by activist Latinos to protest the Vietnam War.

Chinese Exclusion Act

The 1882 law that barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States. It continued in effect until the 1940s.

Christianity

A religion that holds the belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God.

Black Panther Party

A militant organization dedicated to protecting African Americans from police violence, founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

black Protestantism

A form of Protestantism that was devised by himself divine.

"City Beautiful" movement

A turn-of-the-twentieth-century movement that advocated landscape beautification, playgrounds, and more and better urban parks.

Christian slaves

Emphasized the evangelical message of emotional conversion, ritual baptism, communal spirituality, and the idea that blacks were 'children of God' and should be treated accordingly.

civic humanism

The belief that individuals owe a service to their community and its government.

"Bleeding Kansas"

Term for the bloody struggle between pro-slavery and antislavery factions in Kansas following its organization as a territory in the fall of 1854.

blues

A form of American music that originated in the Deep South, especially from the black workers in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Legislation passed by Congress that nullified the Black Codes and affirmed that African Americans should have equal benefit of the law.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

A law that required 'full and equal' access to jury service and to transportation and public accommodations, irrespective of race.

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.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Law that responded to demands of the civil rights movement by making discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations illegal.

Bretton Woods

An international conference in New Hampshire in July 1944 that established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

A prominent black trade union of railroad car porters working for the Pullman Company.

Civil Rights Cases

A series of 1883 Supreme Court decisions that struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, rolling back key Reconstruction laws.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Supreme Court ruling that overturned the 'separate but equal' precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

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.

Burlingame Treaty

An 1868 treaty that guaranteed the rights of U.S. missionaries in China and set official terms for the emigration of Chinese laborers to work in the United States.

classical liberalism, or laissez-faire

The principle that the less government does, the better, particularly in reference to the economy.

Californios

The elite Mexican ranchers in the province of California.

classical liberalism

The political ideology of individual liberty.

carpetbaggers

A derisive name given by ex-Confederates to northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction.

caucus

A meeting held by a political party to choose candidates, make policies, and enforce party discipline.

chattel principle

A system of bondage in which a slave has the legal status of property and so can be bought and sold.

Clayton Antitrust Act

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

chattel slavery

A system of bondage in which a slave has the legal status of property and so can be bought and sold like property.

companionate marriage

A marriage based on the republican values of equality and mutual respect.

competency

The ability of a family to keep a household solvent and independent and to pass that ability on to the next generation.

closed shop

A workplace in which a job seeker had to be a union member to gain employment.

Compromise of 1850

Laws passed in 1850 that were meant to resolve the dispute over the status of slavery in the territories.

coastal trade

The domestic slave trade with routes along the Atlantic coast that sent thousands of slaves to sugar plantations in Louisiana and cotton plantations in the Mississippi Valley.

code talkers

Native American soldiers trained to use native languages to send messages in battle during World War II.

Comstock Act

An 1873 law that prohibited circulation of 'obscene literature,' defined as including most information on sex, reproduction, and birth control.

Comstock Lode

Immense silver ore deposit discovered in 1859 in Nevada that touched off a mining rush.

Coercive Acts

Four British acts of 1774 meant to punish Massachusetts for the destruction of three shiploads of tea.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Civil rights organization founded in 1942 in Chicago that espoused nonviolent direct action.

Cold War liberalism

A combination of moderate liberal policies that preserved the programs of the New Deal welfare state and forthright anticommunism.

collective bargaining

A process of negotiation between labor unions and employers.

The Conscience of a Conservative

A 1960 book that set forth an argument for conservative principles.

Columbian Exchange

The massive global exchange of living things, including people, animals, plants, and diseases, between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres that began after the voyages of Columbus.

conscience Whigs

Whig politicians who opposed the Mexican War (1846-1848) on moral grounds, maintaining that the purpose of the war was to expand and perpetuate control of the national government.

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.

consolidated government

A term meaning a powerful and potentially oppressive national government.

constitutional monarchy

A monarchy limited in its rule by a constitution.

Committee to Defend America By Aiding the Allies

A group of interventionists who believed in engaging with, rather than withdrawing from, international developments.

consumer credit

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

consumer revolution

An increase in consumption in English manufactures in Britain and the British colonies fueled by the Industrial Revolution.