Glossary

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

Liberal Protestants: Those who held the belief that religion had to be adapted to the scientific temper of the modern age. The Bible was to be mined for its ethical values rather than for its literal wording.

Luftwaffe: The German air force.

lame-duck: The period between when a candidate or party loses an administration election and when the successor takes office. John Adams had the first lame-duck administration after he lost the election of 1800 to Jefferson.

lame-duck: The portion of a president's term between the time when presidency his party fails towin an election and the time he officially leaves office.

lateen: A triangular sail borrowed from the Arabs by the Portuguese.

legal tender: Any type of money that the government requires everyone to accept at face value.

levee: An earthen dike or mound, usually along the banks of rivers, used to prevent flooding.

liberty bonds: Thirty-year government bonds sold to individuals with an annual interest rate of three and one-half percent. They were offered in five issues between 1917 and 1920, and their purchase was equated with patriotic duty.

liberty tree: A term for the gallows on which enemies of the people deserved to be hanged. The best known was in Boston.

life-adjustment skills: Skills such as getting along with others and accommodating social change. Many complained that schools emphasized these types of skills instead of teaching the traditional academic subjects. As a result, critics claimed, American schools were falling behind those in other countries.

limited liability: A term used to describe the protection of directors and stockholders from debts incurred by their bank. The bank debts were separate from their personal liabilities. Usually, their liability was limited to the amount of capital they had invested.

lintheads: A term used by wealthier whites to describe poor whites who labored in southern cotton mills.

living-room war: Television coverage brought the Vietnam War into the living rooms of Americans. Media coverage eventually made many Americans question the war.

lockout: The act of closing down a business by the owners during a labor dispute.

logistics: Military activity relating to such things as the transporting, supplying, and quartering of troops and their equipment.

long knives: The term Indians used to describe Virginians.

long-term joblessness: Unemployment that lasted for a year or longer.

longhorn: Breed of cattle introduced into the Southwest by the Spanish. It became the main breed of livestock on the cattle frontier.

loyalist: People in the thirteen colonies who remained loyal to Britain during the Revolution.