Glossary
American Passages: A History of the United States, Brief, 1st Edition
Ayers, Gould, Oshinsky, Soderlund
POW: Prisoner of war.
Protestant Fundamentalism: Regarded the Bible as God's word and thus the source of all fundamental truth. Its followers believed that every event depicted in the Bible happened just as the Bible described it.
Puritans: An English religious group that followed the teachings of John Calvin. They wanted a fuller reformation of the Church of England and hoped to replace the Book of Common Prayer with sermons. They wanted to purify the Church of England.
pacifist: A person opposed to war or violence. The religious group that was most commited to pacifism was the Quakers.
padroni: A term used for Italian labor contractors.
paramilitary: Civilian groups organized as military units.
parish: Originally, a term used to describe an area served by one church. Gradually, the word was used to describe a political area that was the same as that served by the church. The term was used primarily in regions settled by members of the Church of England.
parochial schools: Schools associated with a church, usually Roman Catholic, but not always. The funding of these became a major political issue in the 1850s.
passive civil disobedience: Nonviolent refusal to obey a law in an attempt to call attention to government policy that is considered unfair.
patriarchal: A society dominated by the male or father in a household.
patronage: Government jobs given out by political figures to their supporters, regardless of ability.
patronage: The act of appointing people to government jobs or awarding them government contracts, often based on political favoritism rather than on abilities.
patronage: Government jobs were given out to the political supporters of the winning party, regardless of ability.
patroonships: Vast estates along the Hudson River that were established by the Dutch. They had difficulty attracting peasant labor, and most were not very successful.
people's capitalism: The philosophy that everyone could own a piece of corporate America, not just a few. All could have a share of the luxuries and amenities of life.
per capita: A term used to describe income and production and means "per person."
perestroika: Russian term describing economic liberalization that began in the late 1980s.
personal liberty: Laws enacted by nine northern states to prohibit the use of laws state facilities,such as jails or law officers, in the recapture of fugitive slaves.
personal registration laws: Laws passed by nearly every state between 1890 and 1920, requiring prospective voters to appear at a designated government office with proper identification in order to register before being allowed to vote.
pet banks: The term used by the Whigs to refer to carefully selected banks in which Democratic Secretary of the Treasury Roger B. Taney deposited government funds.
peyote: Variety of cactus that produces a narcotic drug used by some native Americans in their traditional religious ceremonies.
piedmont: A term referring to the land above the waterfalls but below the Appalachian Mountains.
placer mining: Mining where the minerals, especially gold, were found in glacial or alluvial deposits. Gold nuggets and dust were washed from the rivers and creeks or dried stream beds.
plumbers: Nixon's secret intelligence unit. He used this group to stop the leak of information to the media.
plurality: An election won by less than a majority.
pocket veto: President's indirect veto by failure to sign a bill passed at the end of a congressional session. Without the president's signature, a bill does not become a law.
politics of harmony: A system of ritualized mutual flattery in which the governor and the colonial assembly worked through persuasion rather than through patronage or bullying.
politique: A man who believed that the survival of the state took precedence over religious differences.
poll tax: A tax based on people or population rather than property. It was usually a fixed amount per adult.
polygamy: The act of having more than one wife.
pools: One technique used by railroads to divide up traffic and fix rates, thereby avoiding ruinous competition.
popular: The concept that settlers of each territory would decide sovereignty for themselves whether to allow slavery.
popular sovereignty: The theory that all power must be derived from the people themselves.
post-Vietnam syndrome: Failure of the government to act strongly in foreign affairs; passivity and loss of will for strong action.
postal campaign: One of the ways the abolitionists used to make the nation confront the slavery question. They flooded the mails, both North and South, with antislavery literature, which many northerners and most southerners considered incendiary.
postmillennialism: The belief (held mostly by middle-class evangelists) that Christ's second coming would occur when missionary conversion of the world brought about a thousand years of social perfection. Premillennialism assumed that the millennium would arrive with world-destroying violence, followed by a thousand years of Christ's rule on earth. It was assumed that God would end the world in his own time. Most ordinary Baptists, Methodists, and Disciples of Christ followed this belief.
powwow: Originally, a word used to identify tribal prophets or medicine men. Later it was used also to describe the ceremonies held by them.
praying Indians: The Christian Indians of New England.
predestination: A theory that states that God has decreed, even before he created the world, who will be saved and who will be damned.
prehistoric: A civilization that has no written past. Study of such societies is based on the investigation of their artifacts rather than on written documents. Historic cultures can be examined through their written records.
preservationist agenda: Political agenda that was concerned primarily with the aesthetics of nature and the protection and enjoyment of the natural environment.
presidios: Military posts constructed by the Spanish to protect the settlers from hostile Indians. They also were used to keep non-Spanish settlers from the area.
primogeniture: The English practice requiring that the eldest son inherited all the land of his father's estate.
primogeniture: The English practice requiring that the eldest son inherited all the land of his father's estate.
private fields: Farms of up to five acres on which slaves were allowed to produce items for sale in a nearby market. It was permitted because slaves on the task system worked hard, required minimal supervision, and made money for their owners. The system was used most commonly in South Carolina and Georgia.
privateers: A privately owned ship that was authorized by a government to attack enemy ships during times of war. The owner of the ship got to claim a portion of whatever was captured. This was a way to damage the ability of the enemy country to engage in shipping without the expense of expanding the navy.
probable cause: Reasonable grounds for an assumption about a crime or suspected criminal.
proprietary colony: A colony owned by an individual(s) who had vast discretionary powers over the colony. Maryland was the first proprietory colony, but others were founded later.
protective tariff: A tariff that increases the price of imported goods that compete with American products and thus protects American manufacturers from foreign competition.
provincial congress: A type of convention elected by the colonists to organize resistance. They tended to be larger than the legal assemblies they displaced, and they played a major role in politicizing the countryside.
public friends: The men and women who spoke most frequently and effectively for the Society of Friends. They were as close as the Quakers came to having a clergy. They occupied special elevated seats in the meeting house.
public virtue: To the Revolutionary generation, this meant patriotism and the willingness of a free and independent people to subordinate their interests to the common good and even to die for their country.