History Key Terms
Terms
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- textile
- Fabric, especially woven or knitted; cloth
- impressed
- Forced into public service, as American sailors forced to serve on British vessels in the late 1700s
- spoils system
- An arrangement by which victorious parties or candidates reward their supporters with jobs, contracts, etc.
- gospel tradition
- A type of music that combines the words of traditional Protestant hymns with various musical styles
- cabinet
- A body of people appointed by the Prsident to lead the various departments of government and to serve as thye President's official advisers
- indentured servant
- A person who agreed to work for a set number of years in return for passage to the Colonies
- mission
- A Spanish settlement built to convert Native Americans to Christianity
- fugitive
- A person who has escaped from slavery and is running from the law
- frontier
- The area where colonist-settled lands bordered on lands of Native Americans
- neutral
- Not choosing a side in a confilict
- national debt
- In the late 1700s, the amount of money owed to Americans and to other countries after the American Revolution; the total amount of money owed by the federal government
- status quo
- The current situation or condition
- conquistadors
- Spanish explorers who conquered the new lands they discovered
- flatboat
- A flat-bottomed, square-ended craft that was typically used to transport goods along inland waterways in the early 1800s
- abolition
- The formal outlawing of slavery
- emancipation
- Freedom from bondage; particularly, freedom of African Americans from slavery
- majority
- More than 50 percent of a group
- carpetbagger
- A Northern opportunist who moved to the South and took advantage of unsettled post-Civil War conditions; scornfully dubbed carpetbagger, after a kind of homemade luggage that many of them carried
- indigenous
- The people who originally inhabit an area; natives
- amnesty
- An act by which the government grants pardon for crimes to a large group of individuals, usually in responce to the group's acts of consolation
- embargo
- A restriction or stoppage of trade
- hard money
- Currency consisiting of gold or silver coins a opposed to paper
- ratify
- To officially approve and accept
- egalitarian
- A culture with no recognized authority figures; where all are considered equal
- lynching
- A mob action in which a person is executed without a trial, often by hanging
- internal tax
- A tax levied on goods produced and consumed within an area, such as the stamp tax imposed by the British Parliament on the American colonies
- treason
- Betrayal of one's government
- checks and balances
- The system by which each of the three branches of government prevents the others from gaining excessive power
- coverture
- A British law under which a woman's inherited property belonged to her husband
- representation
- The right to be represented by delegates chosen in a free election
- selectmen
- Elected officials in Puritan communities who decided such issues as taxes and land dispensation
- gerrymandering
- Dividing voting districs in a way that increases or decreases representation by a certain group or party
- speculator
- A person who buys property, such as land or bonds, in the hope that its value will go up
- wage
- Daily pay
- scorched earth policy
- Policy of breaking the enemy's will by destroying food, shelter, and supplies
- black codes
- Laws adopted in the South that severely restrictecd the rights of newly freed slaves
- pacifism
- Opposition to the use of force
- sharecropping
- A system in which landowners provide farmers with land, seed, and supplies in exchange for a share in the crop
- western passage
- A direct western route from Europe to Asia
- presidio
- A Spanish settlement that served both as a trading center and as a garrison to defend Spanish territories
- sedentary
- Settled in one place
- amendment
- A written change or addition
- turnpike
- A road on which travelers must pay tolls
- nomadic
- Wandering from place to place
- sectionalism
- A devotion to local interests over those of the larger group
- secession
- The act of offically withdrawing from a group
- tariff
- A tax or fee on imported goods
- constitution
- A written document of a plan of government
- external tax
- A tax levied on goods coming into an area, such as the tax the British Parliament imposed on sugar entering the American colonies