Book Seven Vocabulary
A History of US
Terms
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- P.T. Barnum
- the most famous showman of his time, helped found the most famous circus in history
- land redistribution
- the breakup of large landholdings and the redistribution of the land to farmers who have little land or none
- Blanche K. Bruce/Hiram R. Revels
- examples of well-educated black men who became U.S. Senators during the congressional Reconstruction period
- carpetbaggers
- a term of scorn and hostility used by white Southerners to describe Northerners active in the Republican Party in the South after the American Civil War
- Amendment 14
- gave citizenship to blacks
- Humbug
- something designed to deceive and mislead
- Civil Rights Act of 1866
- guaranteed various legal rights of the former slaves
- duplicity
- doubleness of heart, thought, speech, or action, deception by pretending to entertain one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another
- Louisa Ann Swain
- first woman in the US to legally caste a vote (September 6, 1870)
- reconstruction
- the reorganization and reestablishment in the Union during a period (1867-1877) following the American Civil War of those states that had seceded
- sharecropping
- an arrangement whereby a farmer gets to use land owned by another in trade for a portion (share) of whatever crop is produced
- scalawags
- white Southerners active in the Republican Party during Reconstruction
- Amendment 13
- abolition of slavery
- Alfred Ely Beach
- American editor and inventor who built a demonstration pneumatic subway under Broadway in New York City in 1870
- segregation
- the separation or isolation of individuals or groups from a larger group or from society
- Wild Bill Hickok
- American frontier army scout, peace officer, stagecoach driver, gambler
- paternalistic
- the care or control of subordinates in a fatherly manner, especially the principles or practices of a government that undertakes to supply needs or regulate conduct of the governed in matters affecting them as individuals as well as in their relations to the state and to each other
- vigilante justice
- taking law enforcement into one's own hands apart from duly established legal authority; justice meted out by member of a vigilante committee
- milliner
- ladies' hatmaker
- perjury
- the voluntary violation of an oath or vow either by swearing to what is untrue or by omission to do what has been promised under oath
- W.E.B. DuBois
- one of the most important leaders of African American protest in the United States
- William Marcy Tweed
- an American politician who swindled New York City out of millions of dollars
- King Wheat
- refers to the idea that wheat production exploded in America between 1860 and 1890; sales and exports of wheat became huge and hugely important to the American economy
- Ku Klux Klan
- a group of white secret societies who oppose the advancement of blacks, Jews, and other minority groups
- Congressional Reconstruction
- Reconstruction Acts passed by Congress in 1867
- Jesse Chisholm
- a mixed-blood Cherokee Indian trader
- NAACP
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- Jim Crow
- a fictional black man who would sing and dance and cause no problems; his name came to stand for the practice of segration
- Presidential Reconstruction
- Reconstruction under the direction of the president
- Tuskegee Institute
- a vocational school for blacks in Tuskegee, Alabama
- John Wesley Powell
- American geologist, an authority on irrigation, and a student of American Indians
- Thaddeus Stevens
- leader of the Radical Republicans
- Thomas Nast
- American political cartoonist
- Nez Perce
- a tribe of Indians that lives in north-central Idaho
- Plessy v. Ferguson
- a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning racial segregation
- Booker T. Washington
- African-American educator
- millennium
- religiouse sense
- franchise (with respect to politics)
- the right to vote
- Chisholm Trail
- a famous route that Texas cowboys used in driving cattle herds north to the railroads in Kansas
- Samuel Clemens
- legal name of "Mark Twain"
- welfare capitalism
- capitalism characterized by a concern for the welfare of various social groupings expressed usually through social-security programs, collective-bargaining agreements, state, industrial codes, and other guarantees against insecurity
- vicariously
- experiencing something through another person (by means of their description, for example, or by means of their telling you the story), rather than experiencing it directly
- Jacob Riis
- Danish-American photographer who focused on the lives of the poor immigrants in America
- Calamity Jane
- a very independent-minded woman who did a lot of things in the West that normally only tough men got involved in
- patent
- a government grant of a monopoly right that gives to one who invents or discovers a new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter or a new and useful improvement thereof the exclusive right for a specific term of 17 years with certain rights of extension to make, use, or sell his invention or discovery or to assign or license less than the full patent right and that when issued is prima facie evidence of its own validity but may be attacked in a federal court
- William Seward
- served as United States secretary of state during the Civil War
- incandescent
- emitting visible light as a result of being heated
- impeach/impeachment
- in the Constitution: to be charged, formally, with "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors"; the House of Representatives impeaches; the Senate then tries the impeached person to determine if he is "guilty as charged"
- John Wesley Powell
- a Civil War veteran, led an expedition down the Colorado River in 1869. He mapped the Grand Canyon and wrote a book about his adventures. He sought to preserve our natural wonders as national parks.
- lynch
- to hang or otherwise kill by mob action in punishment of a presumed crime of offense
- poll tax
- a tax of a fixed rather than a graduated amount per head or person which is levied on adults and payment of which is often made a requirement for voting
- vocational training
- training in a specific skill or trade usually with a view to gainful employment soon after completion of the course
- nativism
- the idea that only "natives" should have citizenship rights (though the "natives" were only whites, and not blacks or Indians)
- Radical Republicans
- dominated Congress after the congressional elections of 1866
- Joe McCoy
- American cattle-trader pioneer
- the "Big Muddy"
- the Missouri River
- Joseph Glidden
- designed the first commercially successful barbed wire
- Cyrus McCormick
- invented a reaping machine that revolutionized grain harvesting
- Antebellum
- existing before the war
- aristocrat
- a high-ranking or otherwise superior individual
- Gilded Age
- a term developed by Twain and a friend from Shakespeare's verse about gilding refined gold and painting lilies: such behavior is "wasteful and ridiculous excess"; Twain and his friend (and a lot of other people, thought that the 1890s were full of such wasteful and ridiculous excess)
- Freedmen's Bureau
- primarily designed to help newly freed slaves, providing food, clothing, shelter, even education; "Its greatest accomplishments were in education: more than 1,000 black schools were built and over $400,000 spent to establish teacher-training institutions. All major black colleges were either founded by, or received aid from, the bureau"
- Ellis Island
- United States reception center for immigrants for more than 60 years
- Esther Morris
- woman from Wyoming who requested the commitment of both (opposing) candidates for the Wyoming legislature to commit themselves, if they got elected, to introduce a women's suffrage bill in the Wyoming legislature; the date was 1869, both candidates made the commitment, and the winner followed through, making Wyoming the first state to permit women to vote: November 9, 1869
- mark, twain
- the words called out by the man who measured the depth of water below a riverboat; "mark, twain!" meant the water was (at least) two fathoms (12 feet) deep, and, therefore, safe for a steam boat to travel through
- Black codes
- state laws regulating the activities of blacks in the Southern United States after the American Civil War
- George Washington Carver
- black American scientist who won international fame for his agricultural research
- Chief Joseph
- Nez Perce chief famous for a retreat he led through Idaho and Montana in 1877
- Roughing It
- story by Twain about living in the Western mining camps of the late 1800s
- Tammany Hall
- a group of powerful Democratic politicians
- due process of law
- following prescribed standards through the court system
- Ida Wells
- a black journalist who wrote about segregation and lynchings in the South; her newspaper columns were printed in several papers and she became well known both in the US and in Europe
- Alexander Stephens
- vice president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War
- A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court
- an imaginary story about...a Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court!
- lynch
- to kill someone for a crime without first holding a trial to determine innocence or guilt
- legal brief
- a written legal argument
- Amendment 15
- black suffrage
- Alderman
- a member of a legislative body of a city