Fast Facts

Robert E. Lee

• The Confederacy’s most famous general in the American Civil War.

• In 1862, he was made commander of the Confederate Army of northern Virginia, and over the next three years became famous as he led the army to a series of victories over the larger and better-equipped Union forces.

• He was defeated at the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg and finally surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, which ended the war.

“GOSPEL OF WEALTH”

• An essay written by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1889 that described the responsibility of philanthropy on the part of the new upper class of self-made monopolists.

• The wealthy entrepreneur must assume responsibility of distributing his fortune in a way that it will be put to good use and not wasted on frivolous expenditures.

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

• The group of people selected by each state to elect the President and Vice President of the United States.

• The number of votes each state receives is determined by the number of representatives they have in Congress—the number of the state’s congressional representatives plus their two senators.

MARBURY V. MADISON

• Established the doctrine of judicial review, which recognizes the authority of courts to declare statutes unconstitutional.

Dred Scott Decision

• Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri. His master took him to live in the free state of Illinois. They returned to Missouri where his master died. Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he lived in a free territory.

• The Supreme Court ruled that slaves were property and could be taken anywhere.

• The Court’s decision made it possible to extend slavery into all territory.

Herbert Hoover

• Thirty-first President of the United States (1929-1933). After the stock market crash of 1929, he was unwilling to finance employment through federal intervention and lost the presidency to FDR in 1932.

Fast Fact• Reformation: 16th century movement

resulting in the separation of the protestant churches from the Roman Catholic Church. – As a result of the reformation, people left the

Catholic Church to form their own churches.– Pilgrims from England sought religious freedom

in the New World, and Spanish Catholics went to the New World to convert Native Americans to Catholicism.

THE CRUSADES

• Holy Wars waged by Europeans on the Muslims in the Middle East to region the Holy Land of Christianity’s founder, Jesus Christ. As a result, the Crusades gave Europeans a taste for new foods, spices and cloth.

GREAT AWAKENING

• A series of religious revivals that swept over the American colonies during the middle of the eighteenth century and resulted in doctrinal changes influenced by social and political thought.

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Barter

• Direct trading of goods and services between people without the use of money

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

• Term used to describe a flowering of African-American literature and art in the 1920’s, mainly in the Harlem district of New York City.

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ABOLITIONIST

• A person who wanted slavery stopped.

SAMUEL ADAMS

• American Revolutionary War leader whose agitations spurred Bostonians toward rebellion against British occupation and rule.

• He was a member of the First and Second Continental Congresses.

• He signed the Declaration of Independence and served as governor of Massachusetts.

AMENDMENT

• Change in, or addition to, the Constitution;

• Proposed by two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, or proposed at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures;

• Ratified by approval of three-fourths of the states.

THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT

• The amendment that abolished slavery in the United States; ratified in 1865.

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

• The amendment that made the Bill of Rights applicable to all Americans, including African Americans; ratified in 1866.

FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT

• The amendment that gave African-American men the right to vote; ratified in 1870.

EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT

• The amendment that forbid the sale or manufacture of alcoholic beverages in the United States; ratified in 1919.

NINETEENTH AMENDMENT

• The amendment that gave all American women the right to vote; ratified in 1920.