Glossary
American Passages: A History of the United States, Brief, 1st Edition
Ayers, Gould, Oshinsky, Soderlund
Safety-Fund Law: This New York state law required banks to pool a fraction of their resources to protect both bankers and small stockholders in case of bank failures.
Shaysites: Farmers in western Massachusetts who took up arms in 1786-1787 to resist taxes and creditors.
States General: The legislative assembly of the Netherlands.
Sunday schools: These first appeared in the 1790s to teach working-class children to read and write. By the 1820s and 1830s, they were becoming moral training grounds.
sachem: A word in the Iroquoian Indian language meaning chief.
sagebrush rebellion: Movement in which western interests protested what they viewed as restrictive policies on the use of public lands.
saint: A name used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, to describe a member of their religious group. A gentile was a non-Mormon.
sanctuary movement: Church-based movement that opposed U.S. policies in Central America and that helped illegal aliens in the United States.
saturation bombing: Intensive bombing to destroy a target totally.
scabs: Another term for strikebreakers-those who were willing to act as replacements for striking workers, thus undermining the effect of strikes as leverage against company owners.
scalawags: Term used by southern Democrats to describe southern whites who worked with the Republicans.
secession: The act of a state withdrawing from the Union. South Carolina was the first state to attempt to do this in 1860.
sedentary: Societies that are rooted locally or are nonmigratory. Semisedentary societies are migratory for part of the year.
seigneurs: The landed gentry who claimed most of the land between Quebec and Montreal. They were never as powerful as the aristocrats in France.
separate spheres: The idea that there were two spheres in life: a public sphere of work and politics dominated by men and a private sphere of housework and child care reserved for women.
separatists: One of the most extreme English Protestant groups that were followers of John Calvin. They denied that the Church of England was a true church and began to separate and form their own congregations.
serfdom: Early medieval Europe's predominant labor system that tied peasants to their lords and the land. They were not slaves because they could not be sold from the land.
service jobs: Occupations such as secretarial work, teaching, and nursing that provide service for the public. Frequently held by women who were paid poorly.
settlement houses: Centers established by middle-class reformers in urban slums to help the largely immigrant poor cope with the harsh conditions of city life.
share wages: The payment of workers' wages with a share of the crop rather than with cash.
sharecropping: Working land in return for a share of the crops produced instead of paying cash rent. Shortage of currency in the South made sharecropping a frequent form of land tenure. African-American families preferred it because it eliminated the labor gangs used in the days of slavery.
sickle cell: A crescent- or sickle-shaped red blood cell sometimes found in African Americans. It helped protect them from malaria but exposed their children to the dangerous condition of sickle cell anemia.
sit-in movement: Activity by groups of young persons challenging legal segregation by demanding that blacks have the same access to public facilities as white citizens. They staged nonviolent demonstrations at restaurants, bus and train stations, and other public places.
sitdown: An act of protest. Workers refused to leave their workplace during a labor dispute, preventing management's use of strikebreakers.
sitzkrieg: Sitting war; temporary lull between the conquest of Poland in the fall of 1939 and the resumption of military action in the spring of 1940.
slash and burn: A system of agriculture in which trees were cut down, girded, or in some way destroyed. The underbrush then was burned and a crop was planted. This method helped develop separate gender roles among Indians. Men created the farms and women managed the farming. The system eventually depleted the fertility of the soil, and the entire tribe would move to a new area in a few years.
social Darwinism: A philosophy that allegedly showed how closely the social history of humans resembled the physical evolution of animals (the biological evolution documented by English botanist Charles Darwin with his principle of "survival of the fittest"). According to this theory, human social history could be understood as a struggle among races, with the strongest and the fittest invariably triumphing.
socialism: A political theory that in the early twentieth century stood for the transfer of control from a few industrialists to the laboring masses. Socialists believed that such a transfer, usually defined in terms of government ownership and operation of economic institutions, would make it impossible for wealthy elites to control society.
sodbuster: A small farmer in parts of the West who adapted to the treeless plains and prairies. One of these adaptations was the construction of homes out of sod.
southern yeoman: A farmer who owned relatively little land and few or no slaves.
sovereign power: A term used to describe supreme or final power.
space shuttle: Manned rocket that served as a space laboratory and could be flown back to the earth for reuse.
space station: Earth-orbiting platform from which to conduct experiments and research.
specie: Metal money or coins, usually made of gold or silver.
specie: A term used to describe metal money. In colonial times, it usually meant silver, but it also could be gold coins.
specie: Metal money or coins, usually made of gold or silver.
spirituals: Religious songs of slaves that told of their ultimate deliverance from slavery.
spoils system: A system by which the victorious political party rewarded its supporters with government jobs.
spoils system: A system by which the victorious political party rewarded its supporters with government jobs.
stagflation: Period of economic stagnation and price inflation; an unprecedented period when both unemployment and prices rise.
staple crop: A crop grown for commercial sale. It usually was produced in a colonial area and was sold in Europe. The first staple crop was sugar.
stay laws: A law that delays or postpones something. During the 1780s many states passed stay laws to delay the due date on debts because of the serious economic problems of the times.
straddle the fence: Description of a political party that refuses to take a firm stand on a controversial issue. This was fairly common in the years before the Civil War when the parties were uncertain about the opinions of the voters.
stratified societies: Societies divided into separate social classes or different levels of status.
stretch-out: Term used in the textile industry to describe an increase in the number of spinning or weaving machines each worker was expected to operate. Normally these workers did not receive any higher wages for an increase in their work load.
strict: The belief that the Federal government had no constructionist powers beyond those specified in the Constitution. This view was first expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the debates over the Bank of the United States.
student deferment: All young men at the time were required by law to register for possible military service. Local draft boards usually granted men who were attending college a deferment, but these expired upon graduation and could be revoked or denied.
subtreasuries: Federal warehouses for crop storage that enabled farmers to wait until market prices were more favorable to sell their crops. Low-interest loans available on the crops allowed farmers to pay their annual debts. Thus, they could escape the ruinous interest rates of the crop lien system in the South and bank mortgages in the West.
subversive: Systematic, deliberate attempt to overthrow or undermine a government or society by people working secretly within the country.
sunbelt: Southern part of the United States, from Florida to California.
supply-side economics: This economic theory held that tax reductions would stimulate the economy by putting more money in the hands of investors and consumers.
sweated: Describes a type of worker, mostly women, who worked in their homes producing items for subcontractors. They worked mainly in the clothing industry and were paid by the piece or item, rather than by the hour.
synod: The governing body of the Presbyterian church. A meeting or convention of church officials or an assembly of churches.