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The American Yawp, Volume 2, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
| Term | Short definition |
|---|---|
| Primary / secondary source | Made during the era studied / a later account that interprets it |
| Reconstruction (to 1877) | Readmitting Southern states and redefining Black citizenship |
| Black Codes | Postwar Southern laws that controlled Black labor and barred Black jurors and testimony |
| Gilded Age | Late 1800s: shiny wealth covering deep inequality and corruption |
| Social Darwinism | Applying "survival of the fittest" to society to justify inequality (Spencer) |
| Settler colonialism | Settlers seize Native land first; the army then secures it |
| Roosevelt Corollary (1904) | Claimed a US right to intervene in Latin America |
| Dollar diplomacy | Control through bank loans instead of troops |
| New immigrants / nativists | Southern and Eastern Europeans and Asians / people who opposed mass immigration |
| Lost Cause | Myth glorifying the Confederacy and denying slavery's role in the war |
| Muckrakers | Journalists who exposed abuses (Sinclair, Riis, Baker) |
| Trust | Monopoly or cartel controlling an industry |
| Associationalism | Hoover's voluntary, non-government approach to relief |
| Containment | Stop the spread of communism without direct war (Kennan) |
| MAD | Nuclear deterrence: either side could destroy the other |
| Redlining | Grading minority areas "D" (red) on maps and denying them loans |
| Great Society | Johnson's 1964 programs against poverty and racism (Medicare, Medicaid) |
| Stagflation | High inflation plus economic stagnation at the same time (1970s) |
| Supply-side economics | Cutting taxes to spur investment; gains said to "trickle down" |
| Bush Doctrine | Unilateral, preemptive strikes against threats |
| Amendment | Rule |
|---|---|
| 13th (1865) | Ends slavery, except as punishment for a crime |
| 14th (1868) | Birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection |
| 15th (1870) | No voting bar by race (sex not covered) |
| 19th (1920) | Women's suffrage |
| Misconception | Correction |
|---|---|
| Every opinion about the past is equally valid | Interpretations must be backed by evidence and sound method |
| "Revisionist" means faking history | All history is revised as new evidence and new questions appear |
| The crash of 1929 alone caused the Depression | Only about 2.5% of Americans owned stock. Inequality, weak demand and farm collapse were the deeper causes |
| The Indian wars were random skirmishes | They were tied to railroads, settlement and resource extraction |
| Immigrants either melted in or never changed | They adapted while keeping ethnic churches, presses and aid societies |
| The flapper was the typical 1920s woman | Race, class and marriage shaped lives; only about 10% of married women worked |
| The 1920s Klan was Southern and lower class | It was national and middle class, with 4–5 million members |
| Reagan alone toppled the USSR | Internal pressures mattered most: Solidarity, the Church, Gorbachev |
| Reagan shrank government | Debt rose from $914B to $2.7T, and most New Deal programs survived |
