Glossary / Vocabulary Terms

Chapter 15: Reconstruction and The New South

Glossary

1. solid South: Refers to the fact that the South became overwhelmingly Democratic as a reaction to Republican actions during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Democratic domination of Southern politics persisted for over a century despite occasional cracks, especially in presidential elections.
2. spoils system: The political equivalent of the military axiom "To the victor belong the spoils." In the nineteenth century, the victorious political party in national, state, and local elections routinely dismissed most officeholders and replaced them with workers loyal to the incoming party. The "spoils" were the many patronage jobs available in the government. At the national level, this included thousands of post office and customs positions. Political organizations especially adept at manipulating spoils to remain in power were often called machines. Civil- service reformers demanded that non-policymaking jobs be filled on the basis of competitive examinations and that officeholders would continue in office as long as they performed satisfactorily.
3. Unionists: Residents of the Confederate states who counseled against secession and who often remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. Unionists were more common in upcountry regions of the South, where the slave-based plantation economy was less influential than in coastal areas of the South. Some Unionists left the South during the Civil War, but many remained.
4. veto/pocket veto: The president's refusal to sign a bill passed by Congress. He must send it back to Congress with his objections. Unless two-thirds of each house votes to override the president's action, the bill will not become law. A pocket veto occurs when Congress has adjourned and the president refuses to sign a bill within ten days. Because Congress is not in session, the president's action cannot be overridden. (See the Constitution, Article I, Section 7.)
5. Whigs: A major political party between 1834 and the 1850s. The Whigs were unified by their opposition to Andrew Jackson and their support for federal policies to aid business. The party was strongest among the merchants and manufacturers of the Northeast, the wealthy planters of the South, and the farmers of the West most eager for internal improvements. Abraham Lincoln and many other Republicans had been Whigs before the issues of sectionalism destroyed the party.

Chapter 16: The Conquest of the Far West

Glossary

1. barrios: Urban neighborhoods occupied, principally, by lower-class Mexican Americans. Spanish language dominates in the barrio, and businesses, churches, and other social institutions catering to Mexican Americans are concentrated in these neighborhoods. Barrios were often, but not always, located on the fringe of the city.
2. frontier: In the American sense, an unexplored, unsettled, or recently settled geographic region.
3. placer mining: The process of removing gold from the sand and gravel of stream beds. Placer mining is the easiest and cheapest method of gold mining because only a simple pan or wooden sluice box is required to separate the gold from the sand and gravel.
4. quartz mining: The process of removing gold or silver from lodes in ore-bearing rock and earth. It is an expensive process involving digging, blasting, crushing, and smelting.
5. territory: A geographical and governmental subdivision under the jurisdiction of the United States but not included within any state. Beginning with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the federal government divided the West into territories to facilitate control until the area was prepared for statehood. Territories were allowed some self-government by territorial legislatures, but the president appointed the territorial governor. Because of the peculiar circumstances surrounding their entry into the union, Texas and California never went through the territorial stage.
6. hegemony: Notable political influence or domination over a particular geographic area, such as American hegemony over North and South America

Chapter 17: Industrial Supremacy

Glossary

1. capitalism: A national economic and business system in which the great majority of the basic means of production and distribution of goals are privately owned and managed for profit.
2. collective bargaining: A system in which a labor union negotiates with management to set the wages and working conditions of all members of the union. This is in contrast to the traditional system, in which each worker dealt individually with management.
3. law of supply and demand: An economic axiom that asserts that when the demand for goods and services exceeds the supply, prices will rise, and when supply surpasses demand, prices will fall.
4. monopoly: A business situation in which one company controls virtually the entire market for a particular good or service. The monopoly may be regional or national. (When a few businesses control the market, it is called an oligopoly.)
5. patent: An official government grant, given as an incentive for technological advancement, which entitles an inventor to exclusive right to the proceeds of his or her work for a limited number of years. (See U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8.)
6. laissez faire: The theory that the economy functions best when it is free from governmental interference. In a strict laissez-faire system, the government neither helps nor hinders business, but many American businessmen who professed laissez-faire doctrines were happy to accept government aid in the form of protective tariffs and railroad subsidies.
7. Adam Smith: Scottish philosopher and economist who advocated laissez faire. Scottish-born Smith was the author of the extremely influential book The Wealth of Nations (1776), which argues that the "free hand" of competition will best produce wealth and that governments should not interfere with business.
8. socialism: An economic theory that emphasizes the importance of class and argues that the interests of workers and capitalists are inherently antagonistic. Socialists believe that a more equitable distribution of the economic benefits of society will result if the people as a whole, through their government, own and manage the basic means of production and distribution.
9. Marxism/communism: A variety of extreme socialism, based on the writings of Karl Marx, that assumes that the inherent conflict between labor and capital will inevitably lead to socialist revolution, the collapse of capitalism, and the emergence of a classless society.

Chapter 18: The Age of the City

Glossary

1. suburb: A residential area adjacent to, and dependent on, a city. In some cases, suburbs are absorbed into the city as it grows; in other instances, suburbs form their own municipal governments or draw services from county governments.

2. urban: Unless otherwise specified, a Census Bureau term referring to any city or town with a population exceeding 2,500. The term must be used with care because this definition includes many places normally thought of as small towns. The "urban" developments described in this chapter occur mostly in big cities with populations exceeding 100,000.

3. xenophobia: an intense fear or dislike of foreign people, their customs and culture.

Chapter 19: From Stalemate to Crisis

1. cooperatives: Business enterprises owned by members of an organization and operated for members’ benefit and profit. Farmers hoped to avoid reliance on businessmen by forming their own cooperatives, but most of these enterprises failed.

Chapter 20: The Imperial Republic

Glossary

1. filibustering: (1) long or irrelevant speech or several such speeches used to delay or prevent the passage of legislation. (2)The launching of invasions or attacks by private individuals organized as a military force. Anti-Spanish Cubans used the United States as a base for filibustering expeditions against the Spanish government of Cuba.
2. Monroe Doctrine: President James Monroe's declaration in 1823 that the Western Hemisphere was off limits to further European colonization and that the United States would consider any effort by the European powers "to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." This policy of opposing outside interference in Western Hemisphere affairs has been the enduring cornerstone of United States policy toward Latin America.

Chapter 21: The Rise of Progressivism

Glossary

1. at-large election: An election in which each candidate for a city council (or other representative body) is voted on by all the voters within a jurisdiction rather than by only the residents of a specific ward or district.

2. encyclical: A letter on a current issue of church concern, circulated to Roman Catholic clergy by the pope. Encyclicals, such as Rerum Novarum, are considered to constitute official church policy.

Chapter 22: The Battle for National Reform

Glossary

1. arbitration: The settling of a labor-management dispute by submission of the issues to an impartial third party empowered to issue a binding settlement. Arbitrators often "split the difference" between competing demands, but they also have the right to choose between the competing demands.

2. national banks: Privately owned banks chartered by the national government and operated under federal regulations. State banks, also privately owned, are chartered and regulated by state governments. Most large banks are national banks.

Chapter 23: America and The Great War

Glossary

1. belligerent: Any nation involved in a war.

2. Bolsheviks: The most radical and organizationally the strongest of the contending socialist groups in Russia in 1917. Also known as Reds, or simply as communists. Led by Lenin, in November 1917 the Bolsheviks won control of the central government of Russia from a moderate coalition that had taken charge provisionally after the March 1917 popular revolution, which deposed the czar.

Chapter 24: The New Era

Chapter 25: The Great Depression

Glossary

bear market: A situation in which stock market prices are falling and investors are pessimistic.

bull market: A situation in which stock market prices are rising and investors are optimistic about continued gains.

Chapter 26: The New Deal

Glossary

1. refinance: To renew or reorganize financing— often achieved in a process whereby an existing loan or mortgage is paid off with the proceeds of a new loan secured by the same collateral. Refinancing is often undertaken to avoid foreclosure. The new loan is usually at a lower interest rate for a longer term and with lower payments

Chapter 27: The Global Crisis, 1921-1941

1. blitzkrieg: A quick, coordinated military attack utilizing armored ground vehicles and intensive air support. The word is German for "lightning war."
2. fascism: A political system that glorifies the nation, minimizes individual rights, and operates through an autocratic central government that tightly controls all economics, political, and social behavior. In the 1930s and 1940s, the term applied to governments under Benito Mussolini in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany, and Francisco Franco in Spain.

Chapter 28: America in A World at War

Glossary

1. Free French: French military forces that refused to recognize the legitimacy of the German puppet French government at Vichy. Under the principal leadership of Charles de Gaulle, Free French forces fought on the side of the Allies.

Chapter 29: The Cold War

Glossary

1. filibuster: A parliamentary practice that, in effect, allows a minority of United States senators to kill a bill that the majority favors by tying up the business of the chamber with continuous speech making. In the 1950s, a vote of two-thirds (now three-fifths) of the senators was needed to end a filibuster by cloture. Opponents of civil rights legislation were the main users of the filibuster in the decade and a half after World War II.
2. "right-to-work": Nickname given by antiunion forces to section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows states to prohibit union shops. In right-to-work states, a person cannot be required to join a union even if the majority of workers at the site are union members and have a collective bargaining agreement with management.

Chapter 30: The Affluent Society

Glossary

1. summit conference: A diplomatic meeting of the heads of government of major nations; that is, a conference held at the summit of power.
2. Third World: A convenient way to refer to all the nations of the world besides the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, China, and the countries of Europe. Basically, the Third World is made up of the less industrially developed regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The term sometimes also excludes Mexico, South Africa, and much of the oil-rich Middle East.
3. Zionists: Members of a militant worldwide movement dedicated to the goal of establishing a Jewish nation in Palestine. The Zionist movement took its name from a hill in Jerusalem on which Solomon's Temple had been built.

Chapter 31: The Ordeal of Liberalism

Glossary

1. affirmative action: The policy of making a special effort to provide jobs, college admission, or other benefits to members of a group that was previously discriminated against, such as blacks or women.
2. fiscal and monetary policy: The practice of influencing the economy through manipulation of government spending (fiscal) and the money supply (monetary).