Reading...
Play button
Play button
Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
20 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
Crane, Stephen
|
An American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.
|
|
|
CREEP
|
Committee to Reelect the President
A fundraising organization of United States President Richard Nixon's administration. Besides its re-election activities, CRP employed money laundering and slush funds and was directly and actively involved in the Watergate scandal. |
|
|
Cuban Missile Crisis
|
A confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in October 1962, during the Cold War. In September 1962, the Cuban and Soviet governments placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. When United States military intelligence discovered the weapons, the U.S. government did all it could to ensure the removal of the missiles. The crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War, and is generally regarded, along with the Able Archer 83 incident in 1983, as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war.
|
|
|
Davis, Jefferson
|
An American military officer, statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as the president of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, 1861 to 1865.
|
|
|
De Lome Letter
|
A note written by Señor Don Enrigue Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish Ambassador to the United States, to Don José Canelejas, the Foreign Minister of Spain, reveals de Lôme’s opinion about the Spanish involvement in Cuba and President McKinley’s diplomacy. Cuban revolutionaries intercepted the letter from the mail and released it to the Hearst press, which published it on February 9, 1898, in the New York Journal. De Lôme’s unflattering remarks about McKinley helped fuel this country’s aggressive, warlike foreign policy.
|
|
|
Debs, Eugene
|
An American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), as well as candidate for President of the United States as a member of the Social Democratic Party in 1900. Later he was a presidential candidate as a member of the Socialist Party of America in 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920.[2] Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs would eventually become one of the best-known socialists in the United States.
|
|
|
Declaration of Independence
|
A statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The birthday of the United States of America—Independence Day—is celebrated on July 4, the day the wording of the Declaration was approved by Congress.
|
|
|
Detente
|
The easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, a thawing of the Cold War, which occurred from the late 1940s with the Berlin airlift in 1948 - 1949 until the start of the 1980s.
|
|
|
Dewey, George
|
An admiral of the United States Navy. Many historians called him the "hero of Manila." He is best known for his victory (without the loss of a single life of his own forces due to combat; one man died of heat stroke) at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. He was also the only person in the history of the United States to have attained the rank of Admiral of the Navy, the most senior rank in the United States Navy.
|
|
|
Dickinson, John
|
An American lawyer and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. He was a militia officer during the American Revolution, a Continental Congressman from Pennsylvania and Delaware, a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, President of Delaware and President of Pennsylvania. Among the wealthiest men in the British American colonies, he is known as the "Penman of the Revolution" for his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania; upon receiving news of his death, President Thomas Jefferson recognized him as being "among the first of the advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain" whose "name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution."
|
|
|
Dien Bien Phu
|
The climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The battle occurred between March and May 1954 and culminated in a comprehensive French defeat that influenced negotiations over the future of Indochina at Geneva. Military historian Martin Windrow wrote that Điện Biên Phủ was "the first time that a non-European colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western occupier in pitched battle."
|
|
|
Dix, Dorothea
|
An American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War, she served as Superintendent of Army Nurses.
|
|
|
Douglas, Stephen
|
An American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed series of debates. He was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short of stature but was considered by many a "giant" in politics. Douglas was well-known as a resourceful party leader, and an adroit, ready, skillful tactician in debate and passage of legislation.
As chairman of the Committee on Territories, Douglas dominated the Senate in the 1850s. He was largely responsible for the Compromise of 1850 that apparently settled slavery issues. However, in 1854 he reopened the slavery question by the highly controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed the people of the new territories to decide for themselves whether or not to have slavery (which had been prohibited by earlier compromises). The protest movement against this became the Republican Par |
|
|
Douglass, Frederick
|
An American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman, minister and reformer. Escaping from slavery, he made strong contributions to the abolitionist movement, and achieved a public career that led to his being called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia". Douglass is one of the most prominent figures in African American and United States history.
He was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. He was fond of saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." |
|
|
Dred Scott Decision
|
A decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants[2]—whether or not they were slaves—were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States. It also held that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Court also ruled that because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Lastly, the Court ruled that slaves—as chattel or private property—could not be taken away from their owners without due process.
|
|
|
DuBois, W.E.B.
|
An American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, and editor. Historian David Levering Lewis wrote, "In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism— scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity."
|
|
|
Dust Bowl
|
A period of severe time where dust storms caused major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.[1] Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had killed the natural grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.
|
|
|
Edison, Thomas
|
An American inventor, scientist and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.
|
|
|
Edwards, Jonathan
|
A preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian,"[3] and one of America's greatest intellectuals.[4] Edwards's theological work is very broad in scope, but he is often associated with his defense of Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first fires of revival in 1733-1735 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts
|
|
|
Eisenhower, Dwight D.
|
A five-star general in the United States Army and the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.
As President, Ike oversaw the cease-fire of the Korean War, maintained pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, launched the Space Race, signed legislation that enlarged the Social Security program, and began the Interstate Highway System. He was the last World War I veteran to serve as U.S. president, and the last president born in the 19th century. Eisenhower ranks highly among former U.S. presidents in terms of approval rating. |
