Key Terms
Indentured Servants: Workers who, in exchange for their payment to travel across the Atlantic, agreed to serve a master for a certain number of years
Joint-Stock Company: A type of company in which the investors of the company would pool their money together to share its successes and failures. If it failed, one person wouldn’t lose everything because all investors shared responsibility
Pilgrims: Extreme Puritans who crossed the Atlantic and were unhappy with the Church of England
Quakers: A peaceful group of religious dissenters from England who believed in no oaths, no military service, and were accepting of Indians
Cash Crop: Crops grown to be sold rather than to be used locally or eaten
Slave Codes: Codes that restricted the lives and behavior of slaves
Triangular Trade: A three-part journey across the Atlantic that forms the shape of a triangle. Ships from Europe would travel to Africa and trade manufactured goods for slaves. Then ships would sail from Africa to the Americas and trade the slaves for raw materials and goods. Then ships would sail from the Americas to Europe and trade these raw materials for manufactured goods, repeating the cycle all over again.
Salutary Neglect: The idea that, since Britain was so far away from the Americas, while they technically did have control over the colonies, they mostly ignored the colonists and allowed them to do their own things and govern themselves. This led to a desire for self-rule and independence among the colonists.
Consumer Revolution: An occurrence in North America in which now, rich families in the colonies were now rich enough that they could start buying things that they didn’t need and also changed the colonial social hierarchy to being based on wealth instead of ancestry
Chattel Slavery: With chattel meaning property, this was a system of slavery in which slaves were treated as property or as a tool or farm animal
Enlightenment: The Enlightenment was a movement in Europe that emphasized the use of reason and logic to look at the world instead of faith and belief systems. It emphasized rational thinking over tradition and religious revelation
Social Contract: An Enlightenment idea that people were in a contract with their government and that the right to govern was naturally in the hands of the people. This meant that they willingly gave over some of that power to a government that would, in turn, vow to protect their natural rights and that if the government failed to protect them in this regard, the people would have the right to alter or abolish it.
Impressment: A British practice in which they seized men against their will and forced them to serve in the Royal Navy, which was a huge threat to the colonists who lived in seaport cities
Republican Motherhood: An idea after the American Revolution that said that now that America was its own democratic country, the role of women was now especially important because it was their duty to raise educated citizens to practice the principles of republicanism. It was now their civic duty to raise good children knowledgeable in politics and the ideals of democracy.
Articles of Confederation: The first governing document of the United States, ratified in 1781, provided for a very weak federal government and made it very difficult for things to happen because it was heavily influenced by state constitutions and so it failed and was replaced by the Constitution; this document provided for no executive branch (president) and also had a very weak Supreme Court
House of Representatives: Represented states by population, Representatives voted in by the people for two-year terms
Senate: Represented states equally, Senators elected by state legislators for six-year terms
President: Head of the newly-created executive branch, voted in through the electoral college, meaning they would be elected by the states where each state had electors based on their population that would vote for the president
Ratification: The act of approving a treaty, contract, or agreement officially
Federalists: Urban and commercial people who supported a strong government, led by Alexander Hamilton
Anti-Federalists: Rural people and agriculturalists who supported state power, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
Federalist Papers: A series of 85 papers written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to convince states to ratify the Constitution
Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, created to protect individual rights and protect states from abuse of federal power, adopted in 1792
Three Branches of Government: Legislative (responsible for making laws), Executive (responsible for enforcing laws), Judicial (responsible for interpreting laws)
Jeffersonians: Supporters of Thomas Jefferson
Farewell Address: Washington’s address to the United States when his presidency ended, warned against the dangers of creating factions and political parties
Democratic-Republicans: Anti-Federalists, initially led by Thomas Jefferson, became the only political party in the United States after the fall of the Federalists
Louisiana Purchase of 1803: Went against Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican views, France sold French Louisiana (828,000 square miles of land) to the United States for just fifteen million dollars
Hartford Convention: A meeting of New England Federalists in which they threatened to secede from the union due to the War of 1812, after the United States won the war this led to the demise of the Federalists
Balance of Free and Slave: A balance between the amount of free and slaves states was very important, especially for the South, because while the North had the majority in the House of Representatives due to their larger population, the South could stop any legislation that threatened slavery in the Senate because there, states were represented equally by number so there would be a 50/50 split in the vote
Monroe Doctrine: Created by James Monroe which had three key points:
America would not get involved in European wars unless directly impacted
European nations were not welcome in the West and were not allowed to make any new colonies or take back former colonies in the Americas
Anything that happened in the Americas was the responsibility of the U.S. and therefore, any attempt of European influence in the Americas would be considered as an “unfriendly act”
Market Revolution: The linking of northern industries with western and southern farms. During this period, the different regions of America became more connected and united economically and this marked a transition from an agrarian (farming) economy to a capitalist economy focused on producing goods for sale, led to the creation of a middle class
Interchangeable Parts: The idea that instead of people creating a whole product from start to finish, they would instead create parts of a product that would later be combined together, led to the birth of the factory system
Factory System: In factories, workers would mass-produce identical parts of an item and then put them together to be shipped to distant markets instead of creating a whole product all by themselves. This flooded the markets with a lot of more new goods and meant that now, the production of goods could be done by unskilled laborers instead of skilled artisans
Commercial Farming: A practice where people farmed to produce goods to sell, not eat. Focused on the production of cash crops such as cotton or tobacco, and led to the linking of American farms to foreign industries, because of the demand and market for these cash crops
Nativists: People who feared that immigrants would take their jobs and ruin their culture, spread stereotypes against Catholics and Jews, portraying Catholics as religious spies and Jews as greedy scammers, believed that protecting the interests of native-born people (non-immigrants) was the most important thing of all. For example, the Nativists hated that the Irish were Catholic and not Protestants. Some Nativists would later create the Know-Nothing Party. Later in the 20th Century, nativists feared immigration would take their jobs, lower wages, and harm the white face.
Middle Class: Made up of people such as businessmen, journalists, doctors, and lawyers. This new middle class began creating its own culture and often spent their time on leisure activities
Cult of Domesticity: An idea that suggested that the job of women was to have babies, raise good children, and make their home a haven from the outside world, while the job of men was to go out and do real work
Era of the Common Man: A period of expanding democracy in the United States from 1800 to 1848 which led to political parties realigning and changing, and included:
Universal suffrage for men
Creation of Political Nominating Conventions: Established the ways that candidates for offices would be nominated
Use of the Popular Election: Now, voters got to choose their electoral college electors based on a majority vote, instead of state legislature controlling it
National Republicans (Whigs): Split from the Democratic-Republicans: Had a more expansive view of federal power, and thought that the Constitution should be interpreted loosely, an idea known as loose constructionism, favored urban interests and large industries
Democrats: Split from the Democratic-Republicans, continued to be like the original Democratic-Republicans and supported both limited federal power and strict constructionism, meaning that the Constitution should be followed very strictly and literally, supported limited federal power, free trade, local rule, and rural and agricultural interests
Spoils System: An idea that the president should fill their office with their supporters instead of the most qualified people, allowing them to control the government
Trail of Tears: The forced westward migration of natives from the South and Southeast to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi where a third died of disease or starvation
Romanticism: A way of thinking that emphasized warmth, emotion, human taste, and a belief in perfectionism
Transcendentalism: A philosophy that emphasized the transcendent power and beauty of nature, and the belief in human taste, intuition, and perfection
Second Great Awakening: A religious revival among Protestant Christians
Temperance: Abstinence from alcohol
Abolitionism: The movement to end slavery
Seneca Falls Convention: A convention where women advocated for more rights in 1848, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. At this convention, women’s rights were discussed and a document known as the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was created, modeled after the Declaration of Independence and describing what needed to be done to achieve gender equality
Yeoman Farmers: White farmers who worked on their own and had no slaves
Manifest Destiny: The belief that the U.S. had been given the special privilege from Providence, or God, to spread its civilization and culture across the entire continent, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually, this would later justify expansion into islands in the Pacific and Caribbean in order to have access to Asian markets like Japan and China
Southern Position: Many of the people of the South argued that slavery was a constitutional right and they argued that the Missouri Compromise already decided where slavery could and could not exist. They argued that the line established by the Missouri Compromise should keep extending from Missouri all the way to the Pacific Ocean, making Texas, Florida, and New Mexico slave states (should New Mexico become a state in the future). To them, the Missouri Compromise was a guarantee that slavery and the Southern way of life, and their economy would be allowed to exist undisturbed below the line.
Free Soil Movement: The people of this movement were mostly Northern Democrats and Whigs that wanted any new territories of the United States to be made up of free laborers, not enslaved ones. But while they didn’t want slaves in this new territory, there were conflicting views. Some Northern Democrats and Whigs didn’t want any black people in these new territories at all and they wanted white people to be able to live there free from competition. Other groups, especially abolitionists, wanted to see slavery banned not only in new territories but also in every single state of the U.S. Eventually, some of these people would form a new political party, the Free Soil Party.
Popular Sovereignty: These people wanted the people (”popular”) in each territory to have the power (”sovereignty”) to decide whether it should have slavery or not. But both members of the Southern Position and the Free Soil Movement hated this idea because while letting the people decide for themselves sounds like a good idea, they feared that the people would have the opposite opinion of them. For the Southerners, what if the territories chose to not have slavery? For the Free Soilers, what if the territories decided to have slavery instead?
Know-Nothing Party: A political party that revolved entirely around its opposition to immigration. Essentially, the main goals of these people were to limit the cultural and political influence of these immigrants. And a few decades later, this hatred of immigrants would come to target the Mexicans and the Chinese arriving on the West Coast as well.
Underground Railroad: Many abolitionists used a system of routes and safehouses from the South to the North that was used to help slaves escape and find freedom in the North. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped through this passage and some even made it all the way to Canada to be protected from the Fugitive Slave Law.
Cotton Whigs: Whigs who supported slavery
Conscience Whigs: Whigs who were anti-slavery
Republican Party: Created in 1854 as a union of the many other smaller parties that had sprung up over the past few decades. For example, the Republican Party was made up of members of the Know Nothing Party, Northern Democrats, abolitionists, the Free Soil Party, Conscience Whigs, and many others
Secession: Withdrawal from the union, this happened after the election of Abraham Lincoln due to the South seeing the North as violating states’ rights, started with South Carolina in December of 1860. A few weeks later, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined them by February. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina would join them within the following months, creating the Confederate States of America and creating a new Constitution that limited federal power and established slavery as a permanent institution that couldn’t be abolished
Anaconda Plan: A Union strategy during the Civil War in which they would use their navy to block off southern ports and control the Mississippi River in order to split the Confederacy in half. Essentially, their goal was to surround and then suffocate the Confederacy economically.
Radical Republicans: A group of people who saw that the war had caused a lot of damage and loss of life to the nation and therefore, they wanted to see the South be punished severely. And because Johnson wasn't doing anything, they wanted Reconstruction to be carried out through Congress and legislation, not by the president. Created the Freedman’s Bureau, passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and turned it into the 14th Amendment
Sharecropping: A system after the Civil War in which black workers would sign contracts to agree to work in the fields and pick cotton and be perpetually bound to the plantation they worked on. This was basically identical to slavery and allowed the South to have a new way to fuel the agricultural labor force that had disappeared after the Civil War. But over time though, this system did grow less extreme and was replaced by land owners giving workers seed and farm supplies in exchange for part of the harvest for free. And also, poor white people eventually came to be targeted by this sharecropping system too. This system kept sharecroppers in debt because they couldn’t sell their own crops, forcing them to keep working.
Convict Leasing: A system after the Civil War in which black people convicted of crimes had to work for companies for free
Poll Tax: A tax that you must pay before voting, created to discriminate against African Americans
Literacy Test: A test of literacy that people must pass before voting, created to discriminate against African Americans
Ku Klux Klan: A secret society formed in 1867 to terrorize black people and perpetuate the idea of white supremacy. Members of the Klan would burn buildings, control local politics, and even held public and private lynchings of black people.
Mechanization of Agriculture: A movement in which machines were starting to be used in farming instead of manual labor
Bonanza Farms: Farms owned by companies
California Gold Rush: Started in 1848, led to thousands of Americans migrating west with a desire to become rich mining gold and silver and led to more gold being discovered in other territories and the creation of boomtowns where gold was found, also led to a lot of immigration from China
Cattle Frontier: A stretch of land extending all the way from south in Texas north to the Canadian border. In this frontier, cattle ranching became very common. During this period, cowboys steered herds of thousands of cows to Kansas to be shipped away on trains.
Assimilation: The process of making a minority group’s culture become more like a majority group
Ghost Dance: A ritualistic dance in which the practitioners believed that if they performed it, the ghosts of their ancestors would rise from the dead and drive off the white man from their lands. The Lakota Sioux had been practicing this dance and in 1890, the U.S. government sent the military to occupy their reservation and watch them and this led to the Wounded Knee Massacre in which hundreds of natives died.
New South: A term used after the Civil War to call for industrial growth, economic diversity, laissez-faire capitalism, and the end of discrimination and slavery in the South.
Capitalism: Based on laissez-faire economies, with laissez-faire meaning “let alone”, defined by the belief of limited government involvement in the economy and the ownership of private property, supported the idea of private owners owning trade and industry for profit, led to the rise of large corporations
Horizontal Integration: A strategy in which a company buys out all of its competitors until there are none left, leaving behind the company as the only main one remaining
Vertical Integration: A practice in which a company buys out all of the complementary industries that support its business
Trusts: Boards of trustees that manage all of the different companies an organization has for them instead of each company having separate boards to run it
Holding Companies: Companies that don’t make anything and whose sole purpose is to hold the stocks and shares of other companies to form a corporate group
Social Darwinism: The application of biological Darwinism to society. In nature, the strong eat the weak and the fittest survive. Social Darwinism takes that idea and applies it to society, in which strong nations should eat weak nations and strong companies should eat weak companies. They argued that all of these competition and exploitation and practices were natural, because it meant that the “strong/fittest” were demonstrating their superiority and success over the rest of the people.
Gilded Age: The period after Reconstruction, defined by rapid economic growth and change. But at the same time, the Gilded Age was also defined by political corruption, the plight and terrible working conditions of laborers, and class division.
Labor Unions: Organized associations of workers formed to provide workers with a collective voice and advocate for their rights and interests. While it would be easy for a factory owner to fire one worker, it was much harder for them to ignore a union of them. Through labor unions, workers were able to employ political action and strikes in order to fight for what they wanted.
Anti-Union Techniques: Techniques employed by companies to stop unions from having power. Examples: Performing lockouts which meant closing down to break a labor movement before it could organize; sharing blacklists of pro-union workers; making employees sign yellow-dog contracts (which were agreements that they would not join a union); getting court injunctions against strikes; calling upon state militia to stop strikes
Tenements: Tightly-packed and hastily-built apartments. In these tenements, people were packed tightly together and had to live in poorly-constructed and poorly-ventilated rooms. Many of these people had to deal with outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis, of which many died to. In these tenement apartments, most floors only had two toilets in the hallway for everybody living on it. These tenements were very vulnerable to fires because of the way here built, it was very easy for flames to spread from one story to the next and trap everyone. To minimize costs, landlords built apartments very close together and didn’t have windows in their rooms. This allowed over 3,000 people to be housed in a single city block. But by 1870, New York City passed a law that required bedrooms to have at least one window.
Exoduster Movement: A massive migration of black people from the South to the West, specifically to areas such as Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. This led to the creation of several organizations to help them such as the Colored Relief Board and the Kansas Freedmen’s Aid Society. Some of these Exodusters settled in urban Kansas and started working as either domestic servants or trade workers. On the other hand, many others attempted to farm and create homesteads in the remaining land in Kansas that hadn’t already been taken by railroads.
Middle Class: People who didn’t do manual labor nor did they own factories. These people were managers, accountants, secretaries, lawyers, and other positions that mainly had to deal with handling information and giving orders rather than working and making things with their hands. These people were called white-collar workers because they often dressed up in their fancy suits and white collars before going to work. They often worked fewer hours and fewer days than factory workers. With all of this extra time and money, they started to buy things they didn’t necessarily need, and thus came the rise of a leisure culture. Many people went to opera houses, parks, watched sports games, and attended social events. They enjoyed Vaudeville shows, went shopping for fun, traveled, and often went on vacation for enjoyment.
Gospel of Wealth: The belief that the duty of the rich is to reinvest their money into society to help out those who are less fortunate in order to give them a chance at a more comfortable life. The rich should help the poor to provide everyone with a better society and a better future
Industrial Capitalism: An economy in which goods are mass-produced in factories to be sold nationally and also internationally. These factories and businesses flourished due to the lack of government regulation and intervention in how the economy was running. This led to a lot of the wealth from the businesses gathering in the hands of their owners, creating a ridiculously rich upper class.
Muckrakers: Journalists who about the plight of the poor and the corruption inside businesses, helped bring these problems into the public eye, letting more people be informed of what was going on inside many businesses. This led to a wave of political debates over citizenship, corruption, and civil rights alongside a wave of demand for the federal government to step in and start regulating the nation’s problems.
Socialism: An economic ideology in which the means of production, meaning the factories and industries, should be owned by the people as a whole and that the wealth generated from it should be shared among everyone equally
Social Gospel: An idea that believed that it was the duty of Christians to not only be moral and good but also to help cure society’s problems as well. So as a result, near the end of the Gilded Age, many Protestant preachers argued for social justice and for helping the poor. They argued that it was the duty of Christians and the middle class to help solve poverty and get rid of it from society. This led to the creation of charity groups such as the Salvation Army and YMCA.
Laissez-faire Economics: The dominant economic ideology during the Gilded Age. Under this ideology, people believed that the best way to treat the economy was to leave it alone and let everybody act on their own. This started off during the Enlightenment with Adam Smith’s publication of The Wealth of Nations and up until the late 19th century, this ideology had remained unchallenged. And this invisible hand, as Smith said, should thrive under competition. But while many Gilded Age politicians and business owners and tycoons supported laissez-faire economics, they had completely destroyed the competition part of it by buying out all of their competitors.
“Bloody Shirt” Campaigns: Campaigns in which Republicans would, to win elections, remind Americans of all the soldiers that died during the Civil War and all of the suffering that the war veterans had to go through against the South
Patronage: The practice of promising and granting federal jobs to faithful party supporters. This led to presidents spending most of their term handing out jobs to their supporters instead of actually doing anything
Greenback Party: A party that supported printing more paper money
Populist Party: A party that wanted to actually help out the people and fix the economy by removing power from elite banks and trusts. In the Ocala Platform, populists published their beliefs and argued for the direct election of senators, an eight-hour work day, lower tariff rates, the unlimited coinage of silver, a graduated income tax (the higher your income, the more you were taxed), a new banking system regulated by the federal government, federal storage for farmers’ crops, and federal loans in order to decrease farmers’ dependency on creditors. After Populism ended in 1896, the Democrats began taking up many of the Populist viewpoints and demands, such as the unlimited coinage of silver.
Political Machines: Political organizations led by a small group of people that recruited members through incentives and had a lot of control over what their members did. In urban centers, many cities fell under the control of political machines that enticed members with promises of jobs if they were faithful.
Imperialism: A policy of expanding a country’s political, economic, and military influence over another country through either diplomacy or by force
Yellow Journalism: A practice in which journalists would compete for the people’s attention by publishing increasingly shocking and sensational stories to get people to buy their papers. These papers favored attention and getting money rather than truth and responsible journalism. Exaggerated stories about what was happening in Cuba under Spanish rule led to the Spanish-American War
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: Established by Theodore Roosevelt, stated that Europeans should stay out of the Western Hemisphere
Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: Established in 1912, stated that non-European powers were excluded from owning any territory in the Western Hemisphere. This was established after a group of Japanese investors wanted to buy part of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.
Progressives: People who all shared the belief that society could be improved through political action. They were made up of a lot of different people such as labor union leaders, church leaders, feminists, the working class, African Americans, and immigrants. They advocated for limiting the power of big businesses, stabilizing the economy, granting rights to workers, resolving conflicts between factory owners and labor groups, securing the franchise for women, stopping segregation, stopping the problem of alcohol, helping immigrants, and many more. Essentially, these were people that believed government intervention was necessary to improve society. Passed the Australian Ballot, the 16th to 19th Amendments, the initiative, the referendum, the recall, and was partially responsible for the establishment of direct primaries
Direct Primaries: Placed the nominating process of presidential candidates into the hands of voters. Now, candidates were no longer decided by politicians and instead were decided by voters.
World War I: A war caused by the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, fought between the Allies (Britain, Russia (dropped out in 1917), France, Italy (joined in 1915), United States (joined in 1917)) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy (switched sides in 1915), Ottoman Empire (joined in 1915)), resulted in the Allies winning, the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of the Soviet Union and communism, and eventually the Great Depression along with the rise of Nazi Germany and fascist governments
Zimmermann Telegram: A message that Germany tried to send to Mexico, encouraging them to go to war against the United States. Germany promised that after the war in Europe was over, they would help Mexico take back the land Mexico lost during the Mexican Cession. But the British intercepted this telegram and deciphered it and showed it to the U.S., leading to the U.S. joining World war I on the side of the Allies.
Communism: An ideology advocating for the abolishment of social classes, the communal ownership of the means of production and distribution, the removal of private property, and equal payment to everyone, mainly started after the communist revolution in Russia during World War I
Red Scare: An extreme fear of communism that started after the communist revolution in Russia during World War I
Assembly Line: An innovation in which a large conveyer belt would transport a partially built product from worker to worker. Each worker had one specific job and as unfinished products slowly came to them, they would do the same thing over and over again. One worker would turn the same wrench in the same spot for each item, one would put the same bolt in the same hole, and so on and so forth. This assembly line manufacturing was so productive that unskilled assembly line workers soon replaced skilled workers in the manufacturing industry.
Great Migration: Occurred during the 1920s, essentially a continuation of the Exodusters movement in previous decades. In the Great Migration, a lot of black southerners migrated away from the South and towards the North. A lot of them gathered in New York, especially Harlem, and this led to the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance: A revival of music, dance, art, literature, theater, politics, and more among the black population.
Bootleggers: During Prohibition, bootleggers were people who smuggled in beverages and alcohol to the United States from Canada
Great Depression: A period of economic turmoil and depression across the world caused by many things in the United States, including: Buying on margin, the stock market crash on Black Tuesday, overproduction of products and crops, unemployment, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, retaliatory tariffs from other countries, failing banks, and a lack fo government intervention. Ended as a result of FDR’s New Deal and World War II
New Deal: Under FDR, this was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations aimed to help the lives of Americans and relieve the effects of the Great Depression. He addressed three main categories of issues and these were: relief, recovery, and reform.
Democrats: Now, the Democrats were supported by black people, the working class, immigrants, and minorities, and supported federal power and equality due to FDR’s New Deal
Republicans: Now, the Republicans were people who were against heavy government intervention, were anti-immigrant, and supported rural interests
Dawes Plan: A plan in which U.S. banks would make loans to Germany, which would pay their war reparations to the UK and France, which would then return the money to the U.S. to pay their World War I loans. This plan worked in circulating money between the nations and preventing Germany from economically collapsing after World War I until the Great Depression hit.
Fascism: An ultra-nationalist ideology that supported heavy militarism and having a dictatorial leader. Before World War II, these fascist leaders came into power by promising to fix the economies of their countries after World War I
World War II: A war between the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Soviet Union, United States) and the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) that started after the German invasion of Poland in September of 1939. Lasted until 1945 with the Allies winning and led to the use of the first atomic bombs, massive decolonization throughout the world, the creation of Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe, the splitting of Germany into west and east, the end of the Great Depression, and the establishment of the United States and Soviet Union as global superpowers
Total War: A war in which all parts of society, military and domestic, got involved in the fighting for all participating countries
Japanese Relocation: The relocating of Japanese people in the United States to internment camps starting in 1942 due to fear of them being Japanese spies
Holocaust: A mass genocide caused by Germany during World War II in which Jews and many other “undesirable” groups of people in Nazi Germany were sent to concentration camps and either condemned to forced labor or killed in gas chambers and crematoria. In the end, roughly six million Jews had been killed in these camps
Manhattan Project: A secret project during World War II in which the United States developed atomic bombs that had the destructive power equal to 15 kilotons of dynamite. These bombs were used on August of 1945 to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both killing somewhere between 130,000 and 230,000 people, either instantly from the blast, or later from injuries, burns, and radiation poisoning. This led to Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II
Yalta Conference: A conference between FDR, Churchill, and Stalin in February of 1945 to plan out what to do after the war ended. They planned out which nation was going to occupy which part of Germany after the war. Additionally, they agreed that the eastern European nations would have the right to have free elections. But after the war, Stalin claimed these eastern European countries for the Soviet Union and established communist governments in them. He argued that he should be allowed to have influence over these countries in order to use these countries as a buffer zone between Russia and Germany in case Germany ever invaded again for a third time. But this alarmed the United States and Britain and Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that it was like an iron curtain had descended across the European continent.
Marshall Plan: A plan in which the United States would send twelve billion dollars to European nations to help them rebuild. The U.S. did this in order to help these nations recover economically and to get them to ally with the United States before they decided to try fixing their problems with communism. This worked and the United States was able to revive the economies of western Europe, ending the threat of communism there.
Cold War: A conflict or a period of tension between two countries that doesn’t actually result in any direct fighting
Containment Policy (1947): A policy declared by President Harry Truman in which he argued that instead of trying to stop communism entirely, they should work to stop its spread
Truman Doctrine: Advocated for containment through the lending of military and economic support. For example, Truman sent aid to Greece in the face of a communist uprising, and helped Turkey when the USSR demanded some control of the Dardanelles, a strait in Turkey connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean
Berlin Airlift: Organized by the United States, a system of planes making daily roundtrip flights to Berlin to supply the city with food, fuel, and supplies, and this successfully prevented the USSR from taking over the city after the USSR had set up a blockade around the city
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): The idea that although the United States and the USSR both had nuclear weapons, neither could use them because if either one attacked the other, neither would survive because they would both destroy the other and leave nothing remaining. This idea of MAD kept either of them from directly attacking the other
“Open Skies” Policy: A failed proposal during the Geneva Convention made by the United States in which both sides would agree to allow the performance of aerial photography over the other’s territory
SALT I: Signed by Nixon and Brezhnev in Moscow, limited the two superpowers to just two hundred anti-ballistic missiles each
SALT II: Signed by Carter and the USSR in 1979, banned new missile programs and limited the size of each superpower’s nuclear delivery system
Carter Doctrine: Issued by Carter, halted grain exports and technology to the USSR and boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979
Second Red Scare: A mass panic over the threat of communism in the United States after World War II. Led to the Loyalty Review Board, the McCarren Internal Security Act, the Un-American Activities Committee, the Hiss case, the Rosenberg Case, and McCarthyism
McCarthyism: A 4.5 year-long period of hunting down communists in the government starting in 1950 due to Senator Joseph McCarthy claiming that he had a list of communists in the government
Modern Republicanism: A continuation of the New Deal programs during Eisenhower’s presidency. He extended social security to more than ten million citizens, raised minimum wage, built additional public housing, created the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and opposed federal healthcare insurance and federal aid to education. Under Eisenhower, the Interstate Highway System was also passed in 1956
Civil Rights Movement: A social and political movement in the 1950s and 1960s in which people worked to abolish racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement through protests, sit-ins, and marches all throughout the United States. Led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 along with many other movements soon afterward such as the Women’s Movement, Gay Liberation Movement, and American Indian Movement
Affirmative Action: The idea that because there are many groups that have been marginalized and gone through discrimination, the government needed to intervene and ensure that these groups now had increased employment or admission in jobs and institutions. This meant that they wanted to move beyond equal opportunity (everybody has the same chance) to equal results (different groups have the same percentage of success in getting jobs)
Domino Theory: A theory supported by Eisenhower in which he believed that Vietnam needed to be protected at all costs because if Vietnam fell to communism, a domino effect would happen in which Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and then the rest of South Asia would turn communist with it
Military-Industrial Complex: Eisenhower warned that ever since World War II and the Cold War started, a lot of people have been working in factories and manufacturing centers to produce military weapons and supplies. This meant that now, there was a growing relationship between the military and American industry. He argued that with the military’s interests so closely tied to industry and manufacturing, and by association, the economy, the United States might get itself involved in a lot of wars or military interventions based on the economic interests of the manufacturers.
Tet Offensive: In January of 1968, the Vietcong launched an all-out surprise attack on South Vietnam and started attacking every American base in South Vietnam. While the U.S. military was able to counterattack and fight off the Vietcong, this event greatly changed public opinion of the Vietnam War at home. Due to the mass destruction caused by the Tet Offensive, millions of Americans back home believed that LBJ had failed in the war. His advisors turned against the further escalation of war and on March of 1968, LBJ told the American people that he would try to negotiate peace. He also decided to not run for a second term.
Nixon Doctrine: Declared that while future Asian countries would receive U.S. support against communism, the U.S. would not intervene with their military
Great Society: A series of programs launched under LBJ to combat poverty, and many of these were based on what Roosevelt had done previously in his New Deal. Included Medicare and Medicaid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Food Stamp Act, the National Foundation of Arts and Humanities, the Higher Education Act, and the Child Nutrition Act
Counterculture: A movement to reject social norms and the traditional culture of the time among young people. The Counterculture was defined by the rise in rebellious styles of dress, new music, and the increased use of drugs. In addition, many young people of this time started participating in casual sex instead of preserving themselves for marriage. In addition, the rise of medicine such as antibiotics and birth control pills led to changing attitudes and beliefs about sex with multiple partners. Premarital sex, contraception, and abortion became less taboo topics of conversation and sexual themes became more prevalent in magazines and films.
Reaganomics: Advocated for supply-side economies, meaning that the government should increase the supply of goods as much as possible to revive the economy
Keynesian Economics: The main economic system of the Democrats, which relied on government spending to increase demand as much as possible, instead of supply as compared to supply-side economics
War on Drugs: A government-led initiative to stop the use of and the trade of drugs in the United States
“Just Say No” Campaign: Encouraged children to just say no to drugs.
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI): An antimissile system that was planned to use lasers to destroy missiles in outer space. This idea was dubbed “Star Wars” by the media
Sandinistas: People who had overthrown the authoritarian Nicaraguan government and were accused of being socialists by Reagan
Contras: Exiles fighting against the Sandinistas that were being supplied by the CIA
Iran-Contra Affair: A scandal in which the Reagan administration was revealed to have been secretly selling arms to Iran in exchange for Americans held hostage there. Then the U.S. was using the profits from the sale to support the Contras in Nicaragua. This led to calls for Reagan’s impeachment but nothing came of it and later in 1992, President H. W. Bush pardoned those who were involved in the affair.
Tiananmen Square Massacre: During the spring of 1989 in China, pro-democracy protests erupted in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and soon after, the Chinese communist government sent the military to stop the protest after several weeks, killing hundreds
Persian Gulf War: In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait to take control of its oil reserves. In response, 41st President George H. W. Bush persuaded Saudi Arabia to accept a buildup of American troops. This was called Desert Shield and Bush hoped that this would prevent Iraq from any further aggression in the region. But after sanctions failed to remove Iraq from Kuwait, Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm and Bush persuaded Congress to approve the use of military force to liberate Kuwait. Then, in 1991, an assault on Kuwait City was launched, liberating the country and greatly improving Bush’s approval ratings. As a result of the war, the price of oil fell.
Multinational Corporations: Corporations that operate in multiple countries
Rust Belt: A stretch of industrial Midwest cities such as Pittsburgh and Detroit that were degrading and rusting away due to the closing of factories and the lack of manufacturing needed in them anymore
World Wide Web: The Internet, went public in 1991
Manufacturing Economy: An economy based on manufacturing things in factories
Post-Industrial Economy: An economy that has moved on from manufacturing things and instead, now, many people are working minimum-wage jobs in the service sector without union protection
Silicon Valley: An area in California around the Bay Area that became highly populated and became the birthplace of the new computer and technology industries starting in the 1980s
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): A program established in 2012 by Obama to protect undocumented children in the United States from being deported. But this was slightly controversial because Obama had passed this through an Executive Order after a bill to fix the immigration system failed in Congress, causing an argument over the separation of powers to emerge
9/11: Attacks on September 11, 2001, in which al Qaeda drove planes into the Twin Towers and killed thousands of people. This led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and the War on Terror
War on Terror: After 9/11, Bush declared a “War on Terror” and launched the Bush Doctrine. This led to a war in Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama bin Laden. While the U.S. was able to overthrow the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the U.S. failed to capture bin Laden until 2011 and Afghanistan became very unstable as a country; while the War on Terror worked, it led to a lot of criticisms against the government and in 2014, the U.S. began withdrawing from Afghanistan and changed their focus to training the Afghan military there instead of occupying them. Also as part of the War on Terror, Bush also accused Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction. But even after the UN Security Council failed to find evidence of these weapons in 2003, the U.S. launched an invasion of Iraq from Kuwait anyways in Operation Iraqi Freedom and this led to another war in Iraq
Bush Doctrine: Declared that the U.S. had the right to do “pre-emptive strikes” against enemies before they attacked the U.S.
Great Recession of 2008: A recession in which the housing market collapsed and many banks failed. This led to a credit crisis because banks couldn’t make loans and so the economy slowed down. The stock market lost half its value, gas prices rose, and unemployment spread. As a result, the federal government started taking over a few critical financial institutions and also sent out a stimulus package for the people. Led to the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
Trading Post Empire: An empire defined by the creation of trading posts all around the world in key ports rather than taking over large areas of land
Maritime Technology: Technology related to the sea
Northwest Passage: The idea that there was a water passage that cuts through the Americas connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the passage didn’t actually exist
Columbian Exchange: The mutual sharing of animals, food, minerals, goods, people, and diseases between the New World (Americas) and the Old World (Europe and Africa), between the east and the west. This exchange resulted in the drastic transformation of the societies, economies, demographics, and environments of all three continents
Conquistador: A conqueror from Spain
Feudalism: A system in medieval European society in which peasants lived and worked on the land of a noble in exchange for armed protection
Capitalism: An economic system based on private ownership and the free exchange of goods
Middle Passage: The passage from Africa to the Americas through the Atlantic Ocean that slaves would take while crammed into ships
Mercantilism: The economic belief that the goal of a state should be to maximize profits and exports while minimizing imports, and that there is only a limited amount of wealth in the world measured in gold and silver, and that the goal of a nation should be to get as much wealth as possible
Encomienda System: A labor system in which the king of Spain gave grants of land and natives to people in exchange for their loyalty. These natives had to far or work in mines and in exchange for their labor, their masters had to “care” for them. Failed because natives kept either dying of diseases or escaping, and so the Spanish started replacing them with African slaves instead.
Casta System: A social hierarchy based on racial ancestry with Peninsulares (people born in Spain) at the top, followed by Criollos (Spanish people born in the Americas), Mestizoes (mixed Spanish and Native Americans), Mulattoes (mixed Spanish and Africans), Native Americans, and then Africans at the very bottom
Mission System: A system in which Spain would send missionaries to the Americas to convert the natives