| 164388936 | The First Great Awakening | (1720s-1740) a series of emotional religious revivals occurring throughout the American colonies in New England; George Whitefield and Jonathon Edwards became the most dynamic preachers of the Great Awakening; it encouraged greater religious enthusiasm and political independence in the British colonies | |
| 164388937 | The Second Great Awakening | (1790-1840s) a series of American religious revivals occurring throughout that eastern U.S.; these revivals encouraged a culture performing good deeds in exchange for salvation, and therefore became responsible for an upswing in prison reform, the temperance cause, the feminist movement, and abolitionism | |
| 164890008 | Declaration of Independence | a document addressed to King George III of England explaining why the American colonies believed they should be independent from British rule; supported the ideals of self government and human rights; it was signed and sent to England on July 4, 1776; Thomas Jefferson wrote the majority of this document | |
| 164890009 | U.S. Constitution | a document written in 1787 and ratified in 1788 that laid out the structure of the U.S. government; it replaced the Articles of Confederation | |
| 164890010 | French Estates General | the French system of government that originated in the 1300s and finally fell in June of 1789; was made up of three estates: The Clergy (church officials) made up the 1st, the nobles (rich people with power) were the 2nd, and the rest of the French population made up the third; the 1st and 2nd estates had the most power BUT they only made up 3% of the population...problems followed | |
| 164890013 | The Mayflower Compact (1620) | a document written by the Pilgrims establishing themselves as a political society and setting guidelines for self-government | |
| 164890014 | federalism | U.S. system of government in which power is distributed between a central government and individual states | |
| 164894238 | steamboat | a boat that is powered by a steam engine; they became popular in the U.S. in the early 1800s because they were well suited for river travel and could move upstream without wind power | |
| 164894239 | Tom Thumb | a small but powerful locomotive built by Peter Cooper in 1830; it was the first American-built steam locomotive and is credited with bringing "railroad fever" to the U.S. | |
| 164894240 | textile | a type of cloth or woven fabric | |
| 164894241 | craftspeople | people who make goods by hand; many of them lost their jobs with the mass production of manufactured goods during the Industrial Revolution | |
| 164894242 | Industrial Revolution | a period of rapid growth in using machines in manufacturing and production that began in the mid-1700s (1750s-1760s) in Great Britain | |
| 164894243 | textile industry | an industry that produces cloth items and was the first industry to use machines for manufacturing | |
| 164894244 | Transportation Revolution | a period of rapid growth in the speed and convenience of travel because of new methods of transportation; steel, coal, and logging industries expanded as a direct result of this period of growth | |
| 164894245 | telegraph | a device that could send information over wires very quickly and across great distances | |
| 164894246 | Samuel F.B. Morse | the American man who invented the single-wire telegraph in 1832 | |
| 164894247 | The Spinning Jenny | a small, inexpensive machine invented by James Hargreaves that revolutionized the manufacture of cloth by reducing the amount of time needed to produce yarn (thread) | |
| 164894248 | Alexis de Tocqueville | a French political thinker and historian who wrote the book "Democracy in America;" he wrote that Americans were always looking for ways to make life "more comfortable and convenient" | |
| 164894249 | strike | a refusal to work until employers meet demands | |
| 164894250 | trade unions | groups of workers that tried to their improve pay and working conditions, usually through use of strikes or petitions | |
| 164894251 | New England | a region in the northeastern corner of the United States, consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island | |
| 164894252 | Robert Fulton | in 1807 this man designed the "Clermont," the first full-sized commercial steamboat in the United States | |
| 164894253 | Samuel Slater | a British mechanic who immigrated to the U.S. after memorizing the designs of textile mill machines; he started the first textile mill in the U.S. and later developed the Rhode Island System. | |
| 164894254 | Eli Whitney | an American inventor who developed the idea of using interchangeable parts to help mass produce guns for the U.S. government, and later invented the cotton gin in 1793 | |
| 164894255 | interchangeable parts | parts of a machine that are identical | |
| 164894256 | mass production | the process of making large quantities (numbers) of a product quickly and cheaply | |
| 164894257 | War of 1812 | a war fought between the U.S. and Great Britain that lasted from 1812 to 1815. During the war, British ships prevented goods or people from entering or leaving eastern seaports in the U.S. This lead to a shortage of manufactured goods in the U.S. in 1812 and, soon after, to an increase in American manufacturing as the U.S. rushed to produce for itself goods that it had once bought from Britain. | |
| 164894258 | Richard Arkwright | a British inventor who became the wealthiest and most successful textile manufacturer of the early Industrial Revolution; in 1769 he invented the water frame | |
| 164895218 | cash crop | a farm crop grown to be sold or traded rather than used by the farm family | |
| 164895219 | tobacco | a plant whose leaves are dried and turned into material for smoking or chewing; the first major cash crop in the South of the U.S. | |
| 164895220 | yeomen | white owners of small farms who owned a few slaves or none at all; if they did have slaves they worked alongside them in the fields | |
| 164895221 | religious justification of slavery | wealthy white southerners used religion to justify slavery by arguing that God created some people, like themselves, to rule others | |
| 164895222 | slave auctions | a sale in which slaves were sold to planters who bid for them; slaves were treated as property, and sold in the same way that property was sold; at these sales, slaves worried most about becoming separated from their families | |
| 164895223 | spirituals | emotional Christian songs that blended African and European music; they were sung by slaves to express their religious beliefs and boost their spirits | |
| 164895224 | Religion in slave culture | By the early 1800s most slaves were Christian and many of them cape to see themselves, like the slaves in the Old Testament, as God's chosen people who had faith that they would someday live in freedom | |
| 164895225 | Turner's Rebellion | although it was unsuccessful, it was the most violent slave rebellion in American history; took place in 1831 and was led by a slave from Southampton County, Virginia; it prompted many states to strengthen their slave codes | |
| 164895226 | cotton belt | the area of high cotton production in the South, it stretched from North Carolina to Texas | |
| 164895227 | Nat Turner | a slave from Southampton County, Virginia who believed that God had told him to end slavery; he let a violent slave revolt in Virginia in 1831, after which he was arrested and hanged | |
| 164895228 | slave codes | strict laws passed by state governments to control slaves | |
| 164895229 | gang-labor system | a system used on most plantations in which all field hands worked on the same task at the same time | |
| 164895230 | field hands | the lowest class of slaves, they worked in the fields from sunup to sundown | |
| 164895231 | Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and New Orleans, Louisiana | they became three of the largest and most important cities in the south because they are located on the Atlantic coast, an ideal location for trade and shipping | |
| 164895232 | free African-Americans | group in southern society that had limited rights and faced discrimination; there were over 250,000 of these individuals living in the South and most lived in urban areas, working as skilled artisans; they could not vote, travel freely, or hold certain jobs | |
| 164895233 | cotton gin | a machine that removes seeds from short staple cotton, it was invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 and revolutionized the cotton industry, helping to launch the cotton boom in the South; increased the number of slaves needed for labor in the Deep South | |
| 164895234 | planters | the wealthiest and most influential members of southern society, these individuals lived on large plantations, owned 20 or more slaves, and often showed of their wealth by living in beautiful mansions | |
| 164896681 | urban | in, relating to, or characteristic of a city or town | |
| 164896682 | nativists | people who oppose immigration | |
| 164896683 | oppose | to disapprove of and attempt to prevent | |
| 164896684 | Know-Nothing Party | a political organization, founded by American nativists in 1849, that tried to make it difficult for foreigners to become citizens or hold office | |
| 164896685 | immigrant | a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country | |
| 164896686 | transcendentalism | a social movement that developed in New England around 1836; members believed that people could transcend, or rise above, material things in life and that people should follow their own beliefs and think for themselves; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau were all important figures in this movement | |
| 164896687 | utopian communities | groups of transcendentalists who tried to form perfect societies | |
| 164896688 | reform | to change something in order to improve it | |
| 164896689 | temperance movement | a reform movement that tried to get people to stop drinking alcohol | |
| 164896690 | consumption | the eating or drinking of something | |
| 164896691 | common-school movement | a social reform effort, started by Horace Mann in the mid-1800s, that promoted the idea of having all children educated in a common place regardless of social class or background | |
| 164896692 | Horace Mann | an advocate for public education, a graduate of Brown University (my university!!), and a leader of the common-school movement; in 1837, he became Massachusetts's first secretary of education | |
| 164896693 | Dorothea Dix | a female reformer in the movement to treat the insane as mentally ill; beginning in the 1820's, she was responsible for improving conditions in jails, poorhouses and insane asylums throughout the U.S. and Canada | |
| 164896694 | William Lloyd Garrison | an American abolitionist, journalist, and women's rights advocate; he wanted to end slavery immediately; he was the editor and creator of the abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator" and one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society | |
| 164896695 | abolitionist | a person who wants to abolish (get rid of) slavery | |
| 164896696 | abolitionism | a movement to end slavery | |
| 164896697 | Sarah and Angelina Grimké | two sisters, born in South Carolina to a wealthy family of slave owners; after they grow up, they become Quakers, join the abolitionist movement, and later fight for women's rights | |
| 164896698 | Quakers | a Christian movement founded by George Fox in 1650; members of this movement are devoted to peace and social equality; many of the participants in 19th century, American reform efforts were members of this movement | |
| 164896699 | Frederick Douglass | one of the most important African American figures in the abolitionist movement; he taught himself to read and write when he was a boy (even though there was a law against it) and escaped from slavery when he was 20; he created an abolitionist newspaper called "North Star" and wrote an autobiography called "Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass" in which he wrote about the injustices of slavery | |
| 164896700 | injustice | unfair or unreasonable behavior or treatment | |
| 164896701 | justice | fair and reasonable behavior or treatment | |
| 164896702 | Seneca Falls Convention | the first public meeting about women's rights in the U.S.; it was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848; the participants created the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions | |
| 164896703 | Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions | a document in favor of women's rights written by the women and men who attended the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848; the language used in the document was modeled after the language in the Declaration of Independence | |
| 164896704 | Susan B. Anthony | a women's rights advocate who wanted women and men to receive equal pay for work, women to be able to hold the same jobs as men, and women to be able to own their own property and wages; in 1860, largely thanks to her petition for a new property rights law, New York gave married women ownership of their wages and property | |
| 164896705 | Lucretia Mott | an American Quaker, abolitionist, and women's rights activist, she helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton | |
| 164896706 | Elizabeth Cady Stanton | an abolitionist and early leader in the women's rights movement; she attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London but was not allowed to participate; she helped found the National Woman Suffrage Association and helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention along with Lucretia Mott | |
| 164896707 | women's rights movement | the organized effort to improve political, legal, and economic status of women in American society; it was largely inspired by women's frustration with their limited participation rights in the abolitionist movement | |
| 164896708 | Underground Railroad | a network of people who helped thousands of enslaved people escape to free states in the North of the U.S, and to and Canada, by providing transportation and hiding places | |
| 164896709 | Mississippi River | the largest river system in the U.S., it stretches from Minnesota in the North, to the Gulf of Mexico in the South; many routes of the Underground Railroad traveled along this river | |
| 164896711 | Romanticism | a philosophy that emphasized a love of nature, the importance of individual expression (saying what you think, and thinking for yourself), and the rejection of established rules; this philosophy began in Western Europe in the late 1700s and spread to the U.S. in the mid-1800s | |
| 164899048 | Wilmot Proviso | a bill, sponsored by David Wilmot, that would have banned slavery in the remaining territories of the Mexican Cession; it led to the introduction of the idea of popular sovereignty, as a kind of compromise between those who fully supported this bill, and those who opposed it | |
| 164899049 | sectionalism | devotion to the interests of one region instead of to the country as a whole | |
| 164899050 | popular sovereignty | principle that would allow voters in a particular territory to vote on what policies they want to exist in that territory (for example, whether or not they want slavery to be legal) | |
| 164899051 | Free-Soil Party | a small political party, active in the U.S. in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections; the party was formed by antislavery northerners who supported the Wilmot Proviso | |
| 164899052 | Henry Clay | a politician from Kentucky who was responsible for the Missouri Compromise (1820) and the Compromise of 1850; he has been called the "Great Compromiser" | |
| 164899053 | Fugitive Slave Act | a law put into practice in September of 1850, that made it a crime to help runaway slaves and allowed officials to arrest slaves in free states as well as slave states; slaves captured under the law were not allowed to testify for themselves and were not allowed to have a trial with a jury | |
| 164899054 | Uncle Tom's Cabin | a powerful antislavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe | |
| 164899055 | Harriet Beecher Stowe | person who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; Abraham Lincoln once said to her, "So, you're the little lady who made this big war" | |
| 164899056 | Republican Party | formed in 1854 by former Whigs, Free-Soilers, and some Democrats who were united against the spread of slavery in the West and against the Kansas-Nebraska Act; | |
| 164899057 | Whig Party | An American political party formed in the 1830s to oppose President Andrew Jackson and the Democrats, stood for protective tariffs, national banking, and federal aid for internal improvements; fell apart after Bleeding Kansas | |
| 164899058 | The Seventh of March Speech | a speech given by Senator Daniel Webster on the floor of the Senate, in favor of the Compromise of 1850; in the speech, Webster expressed concern that if the southern states seceded, violence would arise | |
| 164899059 | Compromise of 1850 | a plan, developed by Senator Henry Clay, that was meant to help the U.S. maintain peace, while allowing California to be admitted as a free state | |
| 164899060 | David Wilmot | a senator from Pennsylvania who sponsored the Wilmot Proviso | |
| 164899061 | John C. Calhoun | a senator from South Carolina who was Vice President of the U.S. under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson; when debating the Compromise of 1850, he believed that letting California enter as a free state would destroy the nation's balance and lead to war | |
| 164899062 | Presidential Election of 1860 | a presidential election that pitted Abraham Lincoln (Republican) against Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat), John Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell (Constitutional Union Party); the main issue of the election was the debate over the expansion of slavery; Lincoln won and South Carolina seceded | |
| 164899063 | Franklin Pierce | the 14th President of the United States from 1853-1857, he was bullied by Stephen A. Douglas into supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854; he swore to honor the Compromise of 1850 and enforce the Fugitive Slave Act | |
| 164899064 | Stephen A. Douglas | an American politician from Illinois, nicknames the "Little Giant" because he was short, but he was a "giant" in politics; wanted to build a railroad in the North and sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act in a failed attempt to win support for his railroad | |
| 164899065 | secede | (verb) to withdraw, or formally break away from | |
| 164899066 | secession | (noun) the act of withdrawing or formally breaking away from a group or country | |
| 164899067 | Kansas-Nebraska Act | a plan, introduced by Stephen A. Douglas in 1854, that would divide the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase into two territories - Kansas and Nebraska - and allow the people in each territory to decide on the question of slavery (popular sovereignty); it eliminated the Missouri Compromise's restriction on slavery north of the 36°30' line (the southern boundary of Missouri) | |
| 164899068 | Winfield Scott | United States general who was a hero of the Mexican American War (1846-1847) and later, of the Civil War; nicknamed "Old Fuss and Feathers"; the Whig candidate for president in the 1852 presidential election; he came up with the Anaconda Plan during the Civil War | |
| 164899069 | Pottawatomie Massacre | (May 24, 1856) the slaughter of 5 pro-slavery men in Kansas by John Brown and his followers, in reaction to the Sack of Lawrence; as a result of this event, Kansas collapsed into a civil war and over 200 citizens were killed as pro and antislavery advocates attacked each other | |
| 164899070 | Sack of Lawrence | (May 1856) an attack, led by pro-slavery men, on abolitionists living in the city of Lawrence, Kansas; these pro-slavery men were sent to arrest antislavery leaders in Lawrence and in the process, they (the pro-slavery men) burned the town, robbed many buildings, and destroyed printing presses used to print abolitionist newspapers | |
| 164899071 | John Brown | a violent abolitionist who led the Pottawatomie Massacre in Kansas, believing that God had told him to "fight fire with fire..and strike terror in the hearts of pro-slavery people;" he was hanged in 1859 after leading an unsuccessful raid of an arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia | |
| 164899072 | Charles Sumner | a Massachusetts senator who criticized pro-slavery people in Kansas in a 3-day speech in the Senate, in response to Bleeding Kansas; he was beaten unconscious with a cane in the Senate chambers on May 22, 1856, by pro-slavery Representative Preston Brooks, a relative of a pro-slavery senator Sumner insulted during his speech | |
| 164899073 | Preston Brooks | a proslavery representative from South Carolina who used his cane to beat antislavery senator Charles Sumner unconscious on May 22, 1856 | |
| 164899074 | Dred Scott v. Sandford | an 1857 Supreme Court case that finished with Chief Justice Roger B. Tany's ruling that African Americans, whether free or slave, were not citizens of the U.S.; that living in a free state or territory, even for many years, did not free slaves; and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional - meaning that slavery should be allowed in all states, so Congress did NOT have the power to ban slavery | |
| 164899075 | Dred Scott | born a slave in Virginia, this man moved with his slaveholder to the free state of Illinois and then to Wisconsin Territory; after returning to the South, he sued for his freedom, claiming that because he had lived in a state that banned slavery, he was no longer a slave | |
| 164899076 | Lincoln-Douglas debates | a series of debates between Abraham Lincoln (Republican) and Stephen A. Douglas (Democrat) during their campaigns for senator of Illinois in 1858; in each debate, Lincoln stressed that the central issue of the campaign was the spread of slavery in the West; Lincoln accused Democrats of wanting to spread slavery across the nation; Douglas accused Lincoln of wanting to make every state a free state | |
| 164899077 | John Brown's Raid | in 1859, the militant abolitionist John Brown seized the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry in an unorganized effort to end slavery by massacring slave owners and freeing their slaves. Although Brown was determined, the raid failed and Brown was captured and hanged. | |
| 164899079 | The Confederate States of America | the name given to the new nation and government when delegates from the states of South Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia seceded from the Union in 1861; they elected Jefferson Davis as their President | |
| 164899080 | Mexican Cession | land given to the U.S. as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) after the Mexican American War. The U.S. paid $15 million for the land | |
| 164899081 | advocate | (noun) a person who publicly supports a particular cause or policy | |
| 164899691 | Fort Sumter | a federal outpost in Charleston, South Carolina; when it was attacked by Confederates on April 12, 1861, Lincoln declared war on the "rebel" southern states and the Civil War began | |
| 164900390 | Reconstruction | the 12-year process (1865-1877) of reuniting the U.S. by readmitting the former Confederate states to the Union and helping those states to rebuild without slavery; it was started by Abraham Lincoln because he wanted to readmit the former Confederate states to the Union as quickly and as painlessly as possible | |
| 164900391 | Thirteenth (13th) Amendment | a constitutional amendment ratified in 1865 that abolished slavery [made slavery illegal] throughout the United States | |
| 164900392 | Freedmen's Bureau | an agency established by Congress to help poor southerners, both black and white - especially freedpeople (former slaves), poor whites and white refugees; the agency built schools, provided legal aid to former slaves, provided medical care, etc. | |
| 164900393 | freedpeople | African-Americans who had been held as slaves but were set free once the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865 | |
| 164900394 | John Wilkes Booth | an American theater actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865, because he strongly opposed the abolition of slavery in the U.S. and Lincoln's other views on extending more civil rights to African Americans | |
| 164900395 | assassinate (past tense: assassinated) | (verb) to murder an important person in a surprise attack for political or religious reasons | |
| 164900396 | Abraham Lincoln | the Republican 16th President of the United States; wanted to maintain the unity of the country; his election led to the secession of southern states, which quickly led to the Civil War; issued the Emancipation Proclamation and supported the 13th amendment (although it would not become law until after his death); shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre | |
| 164900397 | Andrew Johnson | Abraham Lincoln's Vice President and the 17th President of the United States; a Democrat; impeached by the House of Representatives, but was found not guilty by a single vote in the Senate | |
| 164900398 | Black Codes | laws passed by southern states after the Civil War that greatly limited the freedom of African Americans | |
| 164900399 | Radical Republicans | a small group (within Republican party) of men who thought that the federal government should be very tough with the South during Reconstruction to force it to change; they wanted more protection for freedmen and more guarantees that Confederate nationalism was completely eliminated | |
| 164900400 | nationalism | (noun) feeling or expressing love, loyalty, enthusiasm and a lot of support for one's country | |
| 164900401 | veto | (noun) the rejection of a decision or proposal made by law-makers | |
| 164900402 | Fourteenth (14th) Amendment | a constitutional amendment ratified in 1868 that gave full rights of citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, except for American Indians | |
| 164900403 | to become naturalized | (verb) to become a citizen of a country where you were not born | |
| 164900404 | Why was President Andrew Johnson impeached? | because he fired his secretary of war (Edwin Stanton) without the approval of the Senate, even though Congress had just passed a new law making it illegal for him to fire any cabinet officials without the approval of the Senate | |
| 164900405 | impeachment | the process used by a legislative body [a group of people who make laws] to bring charges of wrongdoing against a public official | |
| 164900406 | cabinet officials | advisors to the President - for example, the Secretary of War, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Agriculture, Attorney General, etc. | |
| 164900407 | Fifteenth (15th) Amendment | a constitutional amendment ratified in 1870 that gave African American men the right to vote | |
| 164900408 | Hiram Revels | he was a Methodist minister from Mississippi who served as a minister in the Union army; in 1870, he became the first African American senator in the U.S. | |
| 164900409 | Ku Klux Klan | a secret society formed in Tennessee in 1866 by a group of people opposed to the increase in government support for civil rights for African Americans; they used violence and terror to prevent African Americans from voting | |
| 164900410 | secret society | (noun) a group whose members are sworn to secrecy about its activities - in other words, the group members promise not to tell anyone outside of the group what they have done or what they will do | |
| 164900411 | lobby (past tense: lobbied) | (verb) to try to influence a politician or a public official to support a certain issue | |
| 164900412 | civil rights | the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality | |
| 164900413 | racial segregation | the forced separation of whites and African Americans in pubic places | |
| 164900414 | Jim Crow laws | laws that enforced racial segregation in the U.S. from 1876 to 1965 | |
| 164900415 | Plessy v. Ferguson | an 1896 Supreme Court Case in which Chief Justice Melville Fuller declared that state laws that enforced racial segregation (such as the Jim Crow laws) were constitutional if "separate but equal" facilities were provided for both races | |
| 164900416 | race | (noun) a group of people with common physical features (skin color, shape of eyes, texture of hair, etc.) | |
| 164900417 | sharecropping | a system of farming in which landowners provided land, tool and supplies to grow crops and workers (usually freedpeople and poor whites) provided the labor; since the workers had to give most of the crops to the landowners, this system left many freedpeople and poor whites with a lot of debt | |
| 164900418 | Ulysses S. Grant | he fought in the Mexican-American War, was the commander of the Union Army during the Civil War, was in command of the U.S. Army during Reconstruction and in 1868, he became the 18th president of the United States | |
| 164901955 | Harriet Tubman | a former slave who became the most important leader of the Underground Railroad, leading escaped slaves to freedom in the North | |
| 164901956 | Bleeding Kansas | (1856) a series of violent fights between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces in Kansas who had moved to Kansas to try to influence the decision of whether or not Kansas would a slave state or a free state. | |
| 164959046 | judicial review | the Supreme Court's power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional; this principle was established by the U.S. Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison in 1803 | |
| 164959047 | Great Compromise (1787) | an agreement worked out at the Constitutional Convention establishing that a state's population would determine representation in the lower house of the legislature, while each state would have equal representation in the upper house of the legislature | |
| 164973819 | habeus corpus | the constitutional protection against unlawful imprisonment | |
| 164973820 | Hartford Convention (1815) | a meeting of Federalists at Hartford, Connecticut, to protest the War of 1812 | |
| 164973821 | Homestead Act (1862) | a law passed by Congress to encourage settlement in the West by giving government-owned land to small farmers | |
| 164973822 | hunter-gatherer | a person who hunts animals and gathers wild plants to provide for his or her needs | |
| 164975276 | imperialism | the practice of extending a nation's power by gaining territories for a colonial empire | |
| 164975277 | Indian Removal Act (1830) | a congressional act that authorized the removal of Native Americans who lived east of the Mississippi River; relocated thousands of Cherokee Indians from Georgia to Indian Territory in Oklahoma; made that land available for white miners (gold was discovered there) and farmers (very fertile land) | |
| 164975278 | inflation | increased prices for goods and services combined with the reduced value of money | |
| 164975279 | Intolerable Acts (1774) | laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colonists for the Boston Tea Party and to tighten government control of the colonies | |
| 164975280 | ironclad | a warship that is heavily armored with iron; developed by the Confederates during the Civil War to fight against the Union ships blockading their port cities | |
| 164975281 | isolationism | a national policy of avoiding involvement in other countries' affairs | |
| 164975282 | Jamestown | the first colony in America; set up in 1607 along the James River in Virginia | |
| 164977561 | joint-stock company | a business formed by a group of people who jointly make an investment and share in the profits and losses | |
| 164977562 | Kitchen Cabinet | President Andrew Jackson's group of informal advisors; so called because they often met in the White House kitchen | |
| 164977563 | Knights of Labor | secret society that became the first truly national labor union in the United States | |
| 164977564 | laissez-faire | the theory that the economy works best with as few regulations as possible | |
| 164977565 | Lewis and Clark expedition | an expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark that began in 1804 to explore the land in the Louisiana Purchase | |
| 164977917 | Louisiana Purchase | (1803) the purchase of French land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains that doubled the size of the United States | |
| 164977918 | Loyalists | colonists who sided with Britain in the American Revolution | |
| 164977919 | Magna Carta | (1215) a charter of liberties (freedoms) that King John "Lackland" of Englad was forced to sign; it made the king obey the same laws as the citizens of his kingdom | |
| 164977920 | majority rule | the idea that policies are decided by the greatest number of people | |
| 164978293 | Marbury v. Madison (1803) | a U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review | |
| 164979044 | Middle Passage | a voyage that brought enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to North America and the West Indies | |
| 164979045 | Missouri Compromise (1820) | an agreement dealing with states' rights that was proposed by Henry Clay (the Great Compromiser!); allowed Missouri to enter the U.S. as a slave state, Maine to enter as a free state, AND outlawed slavery in any territories or states north of the 36°30' latitude | |
| 164986754 | Reconstruction Amendments | 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution that were intended to solve problems relating to civil rights | |
| 164986755 | Gettysburg Address | (1863) a speech given by Abraham Lincoln after the Battle of Gettysburg, in which he praised the bravery of Union soldiers and renewed his commitment to winning the Civil War; supported the ideals of self-government and human rights | |
| 164986756 | Gadsden Purchase | (1853) U.S. purchase of land from Mexico that included the southern parts of present-day Arizona and New Mexico; set the current borders of the contiguous United States (the U.S. states, minus Hawaii, Alaska, and commonwealth of Puerto Rico) | |
| 164986757 | (The Commonwealth of) Puerto Rico | an island in the northeastern Caribbean Sea that is currently an unincorporated territory of the United States | |
| 164996189 | Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions | (1798-1799) Republican documents that argued that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional; dealt with states' rights | |
| 164996190 | Alien and Sedition Acts | (1798) laws passed by a Federalist-dominated Congress aimed at protecting the government from treasonous ideas, actions, and people | |
| 164996191 | Nullification Crisis | a dispute over states' rights led by John C. Calhoun that said that states could ignore federal laws if they believed those laws violated the Constitution | |
| 164996192 | Monroe Doctrine | (1823) President James Monroe's statement forbidding further expansion and colonization in the Americas and declaring that any attempt by a foreign country to colonize would be considered an act of hostility | |
| 164996193 | Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (Speech) | (March 4, 1865) Abraham Lincoln's speech when he was sworn in for his second term as President; he explained that his vision for the future of the U.S. after the Civil War was to rebuild the Union and restore peace | |
| 164996194 | Jefferson Davis | President of the Confederate States of America from 1861 until the Confederacy lost the Civil War in 1865 | |
| 164996195 | Anaconda Plan | the Union (Northern) plan devised by General Winfield Scott ("Old Fuss and Feathers") to gain control of the Mississippi River AND blockade all of the Southern port cities to prevent Southern efforts to sell cotton in Europe in exchange for war supplies; hurt the Southern economy | |
| 164996196 | Horace Greeley | an American newspaper editor and founder of the Liberal Republican Party; he was opposed to slavery; during Reconstruction, he wrote about the corruption of President Ulysses S. Grant's Republican administration; famous for the quotation supporting Manifest Destiny: "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country." | |
| 164996197 | Manifest Destiny | a belief shared by many Americans in the mid-1800s that the United States should expand across the continent to the Pacific Ocean; it was completed when the U.S. gained the land of the Mexican Cession and the Gadsden Purchase | |
| 164996198 | Bear Flag Revolt | (1846) a revolt that took place during the Mexican American War when 500 Americans (Anglos) in Mexican California took the city of Sonoma, CA in the spirit of Manifest Destiny and declared California to be an independent nation | |
| 164996199 | Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | (1848) treaty signed by the U.S. and Mexico that officially ended the Mexican-American War; Mexico had to give up much of its northern territory to the U.S (Mexican Cession); in exchange the U.S. gave Mexico $15 million and said that Mexicans living in the lands of the Mexican Cession would be protected | |
| 164996200 | Mexican Cession | a huge chunk of the northern territory of Mexico that was given over to the U.S. at the end of the Mexican-American War as one of the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; increased the size of the U.S. by 25% | |
| 164996679 | Bacon's Rebellion | (1676) an attack led by Nathaniel Bacon against American Indians and the colonial government in Virginia | |
| 165917695 | Alexander Graham Bell | (1847-1922) in 1876 he patented his invention of the telephone | |
| 165917696 | Andrew Carnegie | (1835-1919) a Scottish-American industrialist who created the company 'U.S. Steel;' built Carnegie Hall (a concert hall in New York City); earned most of his fortune in the steel industry; remembered as one of the richest men in American history | |
| 165917697 | child labor | using children to work in factories and businesses | |
| 165917698 | Chinese Exclusion Act | an act, passed in 1882, that banned people from China from immigrating to U.S for 10 years | |
| 165917699 | Darwin | (1809-1882) he was an English natural scientist who came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection (survival of the fittest) | |
| 165917700 | Henry Ford | (1863-1947) he was an American businessman, the founder of Ford Motor Company, the father of modern assembly lines, and an inventor credited with 161 patents | |
| 165917701 | Hull House | group in Chicago that helped new immigrants learn English and beome educated | |
| 165917702 | John D. Rockefeller | he was an American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870; he became the world's richest man and the first billionaire in the U.S. | |
| 165917703 | Leland Stanford | one of the "Big Four" tycoons who became president of the Central Pacific Railroad and later went on to become governor of California. | |
| 165917704 | new immigrants | immigrants who came to the US during 1880s, mostly from EASTERN Europe | |
| 165917705 | old immigrants | immigrants who came to the US before the 1880s, mostly from WESTERN Europe | |
| 165917706 | Orville and Wilbur Wright | these brothers were bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio who built and flew the first airplane, called the "Flyer," out of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903 | |
| 165917707 | Second Industrial Revolution | a period of rapid growth in U.S. manufacturing in the late 1800s | |
| 165917708 | Sherman Antitrust Act | a law that made it illegal to create monopolies; it was the first federal action against monopolies; it was used extensively by President Theodore Roosevelt for "trust-busting" | |
| 165917709 | Social Darwinism | applying the theory of evolution to businesses; only the strong will survive | |
| 165917710 | Standard Oil | the first major monopoly in the US; John D. Rockefellar was in charge | |
| 165917711 | Thomas Edison | he invented numerous devices; most well-known for perfecting the electric light bulb in 1879 | |
| 165917712 | Emancipation Proclamation | a law issued by President Lincoln on September 22, 1862 (after the Union victory at Antietam) that freed slaves ONLY in areas controlled by the Confederacy; it went into effect on January 1, 1863; it was more symbolic than anything, as southerns didn't recognize Lincoln as their President and chose to ignore the law | |
| 165933122 | Fort Sumter | a federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, at which the first battle of the Civil War took place on April 12, 1861 | |
| 165933123 | secession | formal withdrawal from a group; in US history, the formal withdrawal of 11 Southern states from the Union in 1860-1861, leading to the Civil War | |
| 165933124 | Compromise of 1850 | measures passed by Congress in 1850 to admit CA into the Union as a free state, to divide the rest of the Southwest into the New Mexico and Utah territories, with the people there determining for themselves through popular sovereignty whether or ot to accept slavery, to ban slavery in Washington, DC and to establish a new, stronger fugitive slave law | |
| 165933125 | Republican Party | one of the two major US political parties; founded in 1854 by antislavery opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act | |
| 165933126 | urban | characteristic of or relating to a city | |
| 165933127 | Fugitive Slave Law | a law first passed by Congress in 1793 to allow the seizure and return of slaves who escaped into another state or a federal territory; Congress passed a second version of the law in 1850 to establish fines on federal officials who refused to enforce the law or from whom a runaway slave escaped, to establish fines on individuals who helped slaves escape, to ban runaway slaves from testifying on their own behalf in court, and to give special commissioners power to enforce the law | |
| 165933128 | Uncle Tom's Cabin | a 1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that described the cruelties of slavery so clearly that it increased the fervor with which both proslavery and antislavery Americans supported their cause | |
| 165933129 | nullification | the doctrine that a state can declare null and void a federal law that, in the state's opinion, violates the Constitution. | |
| 165933130 | industrial | having highly developed industries | |
| 165933131 | agrarian | relating to land; relating to the management or farming of land | |
| 165933132 | free soilers | northern antislavery politicians, like Abraham Lincoln, who rejected radical abolitionism but sought to prohibit the expansion of slavery in the western territories | |
| 165933133 | Underground Railroad | a system of secret routes used by escaping slaves to reach freedom in the North or in Canada | |
| 165933134 | American Colonization Society | a Society that thought slavery was bad and decided to buy land in Africa - creating what is now the country of Liberia - and encourage free African Americans to move there | |
| 165933135 | Raid on Haper's Ferry | an attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. | |
