Glossary

American Passages: A History of the United States, Brief, 1st Edition
Ayers, Gould, Oshinsky, Soderlund

Beringia: A land bridge across the Bering Straits between Siberia and Alaska. It was once an area where plants, animals, and humans could live.

Bicameral legislature: A legislature with two houses or chambers.

Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments to the Constitution. These contain the basic protection of the rights of individuals from abuses by the federal government.

Black Codes: Laws passed by southern states that defined the rights of former slaves and addressed black-white relationships. In general, these laws created a second-class citizenship for blacks, disallowing them the right to vote and generally discriminating on racial grounds.

Black Republicans: The belief that the Republican Party stood for racial equality. The Democrats used this fear to convince many whites to remain loyal to them.

Black Tuesday: October 29, 1929, the day the spectacular New York Stock Market crash began.

Boston Brahmins: A group of wealthy Boston merchant families who were urbane, elite, and socially responsible. They prospered in the new market economy in banking, insurance, and urban real estate.

Boxers: A Chinese nationalist organization that instigated an uprising to rid China of all foreign influence.

Bucktail Republican: A coalition group in New York state politics that opposed the power of Governor DeWitt Clinton. The name came from the buck's tail worn in the hats of some of the leaders of a New York City political organization. On the national level, they often were considered to be prosouthern. One of the main leaders was Martin Van Buren.

Bull Moosers: The followers of Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election.

baby boom: Sudden increase in births in the years after World War II.

backcountry: A term used in the early days of the republic to refer to the wilderness and the supposed misfits who lived in the western settlements.

balance of trade: The relationship between imports and exports. The difference between exports and imports is the balance between the two. A healthy nation should export more than it imports. This is known as a favorable balance of trade.

bandeirantes: Brazilian frontiersmen who traveled deep into South America to enslave Indians. The slaves then were worked to death on the sugar plantations.

bank holiday: Term Roosevelt used shortly after taking office to describe his plan to prevent any more panic runs on the nation's banks. He ordered all the nation's banks closed for a "bank holiday."

bank notes: Paper money, issued by banks, that circulated as currency.

barrios: Spanish-speaking urban areas. Usually separate districts in southwestern towns and cities.

bateau: A light, flat-bottomed boat with narrow ends that was used in Canada and the northeastern part of the colonies.

battery: A field artillery unit consisting normally of four or six cannons that were carried by horse-drawn vehicles known as caissons. This type of unit consisted of 155 men and 72 horses at the beginning of the Civil War.

belligerent: Country actively engaged in a war.

benefit of clergy: A medieval practice that exempted the clergy from trial or punishment in civil courts. It was used as a legal technicality in the Boston Massacre trial. The accused asserted that they were "clergy" by proving their ability to read.

bilingual education: Education conducted in two languages.

black power: Movement that developed in the mid-1960s calling for renewed pride in, and new emphasis on, racial pride in African-American heritage. Followers of this group believed that to seek full integration into the existing (white) order would be to capitulate to the institutions of racism.

blacklist: In the postwar years, a list of people who could no longer work in the entertainment industry because of alleged contacts with communists.

blast: A plant disease that affected wheat and first appeared in New England in the 1660s. There were no known remedies for the disease, and it gradually spread until wheat production in New England nearly ceased.

blitzkrieg: A "lightning war"; coordinated and unrelenting military strikes on land and in the air by the German military.

block grants: Part of Nixon's new economic plan; a percentage of federal tax dollars are returned to state and local governments to spend the funds as they see fit, within certain limits.

blockade: The closing of a country's harbors by enemy ships to prevent trade and commerce, especially to prevent traffic in military supplies.

blockade runner: A ship designed to run through a blockade.

blockhouse: A small wooden fort with an overhanging second floor. The white settlers of Kentucky used blockhouses in wars with the Indians.

blood sports: Sporting activities that emphasized bloodiness. The most popular in the early nineteenth century were cockfighting, ratting, dogfights, and various types of violence between animals. They were favored by working-class men of the cities.

bona fide: Acting in good faith.

bonanza farms: Huge wheat farms financed by eastern capital and cultivated with heavy machinery and hired labor.

border state: A state in the region between the deep South and the free states of the North. States, such as Kentucky, often were caught in the debate between proslavery and antislavery groups. Many of the compromises negotiated regarding slaves were initiated in the border states.

born-again Christian: One who made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ or who renewed that commitment. Usually these people are Evangelical Christians.

bounty jumpers: Men who enlisted in the Union army to collect the bounties offered by some districts to fill military quotas. These men would enlist and then desert as soon as they got their money. Then they often enlisted again under a new name in a different place.

boycott: A labor group would ask supporters not to purchase any goods in an effort to use economic leverage against an antiunion employer.

braceros: Guest-workers from Mexico, allowed into the United States because of the labor shortage.

bread-and-butter unionism: Union efforts concentrated on the means of a worker's livelihood or issues related directly to the job.

broad wives: The wives of slave men who lived on other plantations and were visited by their husbands during off hours.

bulldozing: Using force to keep African Americans from voting.

bushwhackers: Confederate guerrilla raiders especially active in Missouri. Jayhawkers were the Union version of the same type of people. Both groups did a tremendous amount of damage with raids, arson, ambush, and murder.

bushwhacking: The act of attacking from a hidden place, usually suddenly.

butternuts: Democrats from the southern river-oriented counties of the Northwest region. The name came from the yellow vegetable dye with which they colored their homespun clothing.