Glossary

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

Half-Way Covenant: The Puritan practice whereby parents who had been baptized but had not yet experienced conversion could bring their children before the church and have them baptized.

Hessians: A term used by Americans to describe the seventeen thousand mercenary troops acquired by Britain from the German states, especially Hesse.

High Federalists: A term used to describe Alexander Hamilton and some of his less-moderate supporters. They wanted the naval war with France to continue and also wanted to severely limit the rights of an opposition party.

Hmong: An ethnically distinct people who inhabited lands extending across the borders of the Indochinese countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Hooverville: Makeshift "village," usually on the edge of a city, with "homes" constructed of cardboard, scrap metal, or whatever was cheaply available. Named for President Hoover, who was despised by the poor for his apparent refusal to help.

House of Burgesses: The assembly of early Virginia that settlers were allowed to elect. Members met with the governor and his council and enacted local laws. It first met in 1619.

Huguenots: French Protestants who followed the beliefs of John Calvin.

habeas corpus: The right of an individual to obtain a legal document as protection against illegal imprisonment.

hacienda: Large estates established by the Spanish.

hard money Democrats: Those who wanted to eliminate paper money and regarded banks as centers of trickery and privilege.

hawks: Those who favored intensified military efforts in the Vietnam War.

headright: A colonist received fifty acres of land for every person whose passage to America he financed. This was the most popular reform in Virginia.

heathen: A term used sometimes by Christians to refer to anyone who was not a Christian or a Jew.

herrenvolk: A concept that emphasized the equality of all who belonged democracy to the master race-not all mankind.

heterodoxy: Early twentieth-century group that held different beliefs and behavior standards from the majority of the surrounding population. Primarily women, many of them lived in Greenwich Village, a bohemian community in Manhattan, New York. They were among the first to use the term feminism.

hidalgos: The minor nobility of Spain. Often they possessed little wealth and were interested in improving their position through the overseas empire.

hippies: People who rejected customary standards of society. In the 1960s counterculture, they were depicted as dabbling with mind-altering drugs, communal living arrangements, and new forms of music.

holding company: A corporation established to own all or portions of other businesses.

homophobia: Strong dislike or aversion to homosexual people or to their lifestyles.

household industry: City merchants would provide rural workers with raw materials and would pay them for finished goods, such as shoes, furniture, cloth, and brooms. Usually work was done in the home by women and children, and the money earned would be given to the male head of the household.

hydraulic mining: Used high-pressure streams of water to wash gold or other minerals from soil.