APUSH

abolitionism

The social reform movement to end slavery immediately and without compensation that began in the United States in the 1830s. (p. 357)

Abu Ghraib prison

A prison just outside Baghdad, Iraq, where American guards were photographed during the Iraq War abusing and torturing suspected insurgents. (p. 1029)

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. (p. 243)

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.(p. 707)

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. (p. 1012)

affirmative 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 include 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. (p. 950)

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. (p. 843)

Agricultural Adjustment Act

New Deal legislation passed in May 1933 that aimed at cutting agricultural production to raise crop prices and thus farmers’ income. (p. 741)

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. (p. 1002)

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. (p. 391)

amalgamation

A term for racial mixing and intermarriage, almost universally opposed by whites in the nineteenth-century United States. (p. 364)

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. (p. 771)

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. (p. 432)

American Civil Liberties Union

An organization formed during the Red Scare to protect free speech rights. (p. 713)

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. (p. 267)

American exceptionalism

The idea that the United States has a unique destiny to foster democracy and civilization on the world stage. (p. 674)

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. (p. 570)

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. (p. 877)

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. (p. 898)

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. (p. 600)

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. (p. 1031)

American Renaissance

A literary explosion during the 1840s inspired in part by Emerson’s ideas on the liberation of the individual. (p. 346)

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. (p. 319)

American Temperance Society

A society invigorated by evangelical Protestants in 1832 that set out to curb the consumption of alcoholic beverages. (p. 310)

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. Stressing the urgency of voting rights for African American men, AWSA leaders held out hope that once Reconstruction had been settled, it would be women’s turn. (p. 486)

anarchism

The advocacy of a stateless society achieved by revolutionary means. Feared for their views, anarchists became scapegoats for the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing. (p. 568)

animism

Spiritual beliefs that center on the natural world. Animists do not worship a supernatural God; instead, they pay homage to spirits and spiritual forces that they believe dwell in the natural world. (p. 17)

Antifederalists

Opponents of ratification of the Constitution. Antifederalists feared that a powerful and distant central government would be out of touch with the needs of citizens. They also complained that it failed to guarantee individual liberties in a bill of rights. (p. 207)

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. (p. 200)

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. (p. 291)

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. (p. 710)

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. (p. 587)

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. (p. 772)

baby boom

The surge in the American birthrate between 1945 and 1965, which peaked in 1957 with 4.3 million births. (p. 850)

Bakke v. University of California

1978 Supreme Court ruling that limited affirmative action by rejecting a quota system. (p. 951)

Bank of the United States

A bank chartered in 1790 and jointly owned by private stockholders and the national government. Alexander 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. (p. 218)

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. Custer’s force was annihilated, but with whites calling for U.S. soldiers to retaliate, the Native American military victory was short-lived. (p. 533)

Battle of Long Island (1776)

First major engagement of the new Continental army, defending against 32,000 British troops outside of New York City. (p. 184)

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. (p. 187)

Battle of Tippecanoe

An attack on Shawnee Indians at Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe River in 1811 by American forces headed by William Henry Harrison, Indiana’s territorial governor. The governor’s troops traded heavy casualties with the confederacy’s warriors and then destroyed the holy village. (p. 236)

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. The Franco-American victory broke the resolve of the British government. (p. 195)

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. (p. 830)

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. (p. 849)

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. (p. 305)

benevolent masters

Slave owners who considered themselves committed to the welfare of their slaves. (p. 382)

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. (p. 216)

Black Codes

Laws passed by southern states after the Civil War that denied ex-slaves the civil rights enjoyed by whites, punished vague crimes such as “vagrancy” or failing to have a labor contract, and tried to force African Americans back to plantation labor systems that closely mirrored those in slavery times. (p. 481)

black nationalism

a major strain of African American thought that emphasized black racial pride and autonomy. Present in black communities for centuries, it periodically came to the fore, as in Marcus Garvey’s pan-Africanist movement in the early twentieth century and in various organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party. (p. 892)

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. In the late 1960s the organization spread to other cities, where members undertook a wide range of community-organizing projects, but the Panthers’ radicalism and belief in armed selfdefense resulted in violent clashes with police. (p. 894)

black Protestantism

A form of Protestantism that was devised by Christian slaves in the Chesapeake and spread to the Cotton South as a result of the domestic slave trade. It 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. (p. 395)

“Bleeding Kansas”

Term for the bloody struggle between proslavery and antislavery factions in Kansas following its organization as a territory in the fall of 1854. (p. 433)

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. (p. 618)

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. (p. 738)

Bretton Woods

An international conference in New Hampshire in July 1944 that established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (p. 840)

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

A prominent black trade union of railroad car porters working for the Pullman Company. (p. 873) “monopoly” and gave more power to the Justice Department to pursue antitrust cases; it also specified that labor

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Supreme Court ruling that overturned the “separate but equal” precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Court declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment. (p. 878)

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. (p. 511)

Californios

The elite Mexican ranchers in the province of California. (p. 415)

carpetbaggers

A derisive name given by ex-Confederates to northerners who, motivated by idealism or the search for personal opportunity or profit, moved to the South during Reconstruction. (p. 493)

caucus

A meeting held by a political party to choose candidates, make policies, and enforce party discipline. (p. 318)

chattel principle

A system of bondage in which a slave has the legal status of property and so can be bought and sold. (p. 381)

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. (p. 40)

Chicago school

A school of architecture dedicated to the design of buildings whose form expressed, rather than masked, their structure and function. (p. 608)

Chicano Moratorium Committee

Group founded by activist Latinos to protest the Vietnam War. (p. 923)

Chinese Exclusion Act

The 1882 law that barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States. It continued in effect until the 1940s. (p. 561)

Christianity

A religion that holds the belief that Jesus Christ was himself divine. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church was the great unifying institution in Western Europe, and it was from Europe that Christianity spread to the Americas. (p. 21)

“City Beautiful” movement

A turn-of-the-twentieth-century movement that advocated landscape beautification, playgrounds, and more and better urban parks. (p. 626)

civic humanism

The belief that individuals owe a service to their community and its government. During the Renaissance, political theorists argued that selfless service to the polity was of critical importance in a self-governing republic. (p. 20)

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. (p. 481)

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. (p. 496)

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. It was the strongest such measure since Reconstruction and included a ban on sex discrimination in employment. (p. 890)

Civil Rights Cases

A series of 1883 Supreme Court decisions that struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, rolling back key Reconstruction laws and paving the way for later decisions that sanctioned segregation. (p. 500)

Civilian Conservation Corps

Federal relief program that provided jobs to millions of unemployed young men who built thousands of bridges, roads, trails, and other structures in state and national parks, bolstering the national infrastructure. (p. 741)

classical liberalism, or laissez-faire

The principle that the less government does, the better, particularly in reference to the economy. (p. 332)

classical liberalism

The political ideology of individual liberty, private property, a competitive market economy, free trade, and limited government. The idea being that the less government does, the better, particularly in reference to economic policies such as tariffs and incentives for industrial development. Attacking corruption and defending private property, late-nineteenth century liberals generally called for elite governance and questioned the advisability of full democratic participation. (p. 498)

Clayton Antitrust Act

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. (p. 662)

closed shop

A workplace in which a job seeker had to be a union member to gain employment. The closed shop was advocated by craft unions as a method of keeping out lower-wage workers and strengthening the unions’ bargaining position with employers. (p. 570)

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.(p. 380)

code talkers

Native American soldiers trained to use native languages to send messages in battle during World War II. Neither the Japanese nor the Germans could decipher the codes used by these Navajo, Comanche, Choctaw, and Cherokee speakers, and the messages they sent gave the Allies great advantage in the battle of Iwo Jima, among many others. (p. 776)

Coercive Acts

Four British acts of 1774 meant to punish Massachusetts for the destruction of three shiploads of tea. Known in America as the Intolerable Acts, they led to open rebellion in the northern colonies. (p. 168)

Cold War liberalism

A combination of moderate liberal policies that preserved the programs of the New Deal welfare state and forthright anticommunism that vilified the Soviet Union abroad and radicalism at home. Adopted by President Truman and the Democratic Party during the late 1940s and early 1950s. (p. 818)

collective bargaining

A process of negotiation between labor unions and employers, which after World War II translated into rising wages, expanding benefits, and an increasing rate of home ownership. (p. 844)

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. (p. 43)

Committee on Public Information

An organization set up by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I to increase support for America’s participation in the war. The CPI was a national propaganda machine that helped create a political climate intolerant of dissent. (p. 690)

Committee to Defend America By Aiding the Allies

A group of interventionists who believed in engaging with, rather than withdrawing from, international developments. Interventionists became increasingly vocal in 1940 as war escalated in Europe. (p. 771)

committees of correspondence

A communications network established among towns in the colonies, and among colonial assemblies, between 1772 and 1773 to provide for rapid dissemination of news about important political developments. (p. 168)

Commonwealth System

The republican system of political economy created by state governments by 1820, whereby states funneled aid to private businesses whose projects would improve the general welfare. (p. 256)

companionate marriage

A marriage based on the republican values of equality and mutual respect. Although husbands in these marriages retained significant legal power, they increasingly came to see their wives as loving partners rather than as inferiors or dependents. (p. 258)

competency

The ability of a family to keep a household solvent and independent and to pass that ability on to the next generation. (p. 117)

Compromise of 1850

Laws passed in 1850 that were meant to resolve the dispute over the status of slavery in the territories. Key elements included the admission of California as a free state and the Fugitive Slave Act. (p. 429)

Comstock Act

An 1873 law that prohibited circulation of “obscene literature,” defined as including most information on sex, reproduction, and birth control. (p. 585)

Comstock Lode

Immense silver ore deposit discovered in 1859 in Nevada that touched off a mining rush, bringing a diverse population into the region and leading to the establishment of boomtowns. (p. 516)

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Civil rights organization founded in 1942 in Chicago by James Farmer and other members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) that espoused nonviolent direct action. In 1961 CORE organized a series of what were called Freedom Rides on interstate bus lines throughout the South to call attention to blatant violations of recent Supreme Court rulings against segregation in interstate commerce. (p. 870)

The Conscience of a Conservative

A 1960 book that set forth an uncompromising conservatism and inspired a Republican grassroots movement in support of its author, Barry Goldwater. (p. 975)

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. (p. 421)

Continental Congress

September 1774 gathering of colonial delegates in Philadelphia to discuss the crisis precipitated by the Coercive Acts. The Congress produced a declaration of rights and an agreement to impose a limited boycott of trade with Britain. (p. 169)

“consolidated government”

A term meaning a powerful and potentially oppressive national government. (p. 320)

constitutional monarchy

A monarchy limited in its rule by a constitution. (p. 87)

consumer credit

New forms of borrowing, such as auto loans and installment plans, that flourished in the 1920s but helped trigger the Great Depression. (p. 725)

consumer revolution

An increase in consumption in English manufactures in Britain and the British colonies fueled by the Industrial Revolution. Although the consumer revolution raised living standards, it landed many consumers — and the colonies as a whole — in debt. (p. 141)