Threads in American History

Puritan, Social Gospel Movement, Fundmentalism, New Deal, Great Society, Moral Majority

mercantilism, capitalism, communism, Reaganomics

Thirty-Third Word: Underground Railroad
Category: Foundation

Short Answer - - A system to help slaves escape to the North, including safe houses, methods of transportation, and systems of false identification. It used a code with words like conductor meaning a person who guided escaped slaves. The most famous conductor might have been Harriet Tubman, who oddly enough is not a vocabulary word on this study guide.

Fourteenth Word: Intolerable Acts
Twentieth Word: Boston Tea Party
Category: Foundation

Short Answer - - In response to a tea tax, colonists in Massachusetts dumped a cargo of tea into the Boston Harbor, an event sometimes known as the Boston Tea Party. In retaliation for the loss of the tea and in an attempt to isolate radicals in Massachusetts from the other colonies, the British Parliament closed the Port of Boston and altered some parts of the Massachusetts government. The colonists responded by forming the Continental Congress, which became the first government of the new nation.

Fortieth Word: abolitionist
Category: Foundation

Short Answer - - a person who opposed slavery; usually refers to a person who opposed slavery after the Missouri Compromise and before the end of the Civil War

Ming’s answer

Like I said in another post, slavery in some form may have existed in England in the sixteenth century, but the word had somehow become politically incorrect. We know that because the King James Bible does not use the word. I know that slavery was illegal in France in 1732, at least the form of slavery, in which a person can be the personal property of another person, was illegal. I also know that the form of slavery in which a person can be the real property of another person, usually called serfdom, still existed in Russia.

So slavery appears to have been dying in Europe; but, to paraphrase Lincoln, the existence of African slavery, which the European countries imported to the American continent, seems to have given slavery a new birth of freedom. Abolitionism must have existed as far back as the early seventeenth century, but it must have gone by another name.

I think that the King James Bible does not say slavery because slave was a new word in English at the time.

Thirty-Ninth Word: Benjamin Franklin
Category: Foundation

Short Answer – Signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Enlightenment writer. Famous for work with electricity.

Ming’s Answer

Of the American Founders,* Benjamin Franklin may be the most ubiquitous. He participated in some way at almost every action** that led to the formation of the United States. He began his career as a soap maker. Because the fumes made him sick, his father apprenticed him as a printer. That led to author, publisher, inventor, real estate developer, and scientist. In the 1750’s Franklin became a celebrity because of his work with electricity. The French compared him to Voltaire, the man of physical science to the man of social science, sort of the equivalents of Einstein and Freud.

In the British Empire, the colonies didn’t talk among themselves. Any intercolonial commerce passed through the British Government. That may not be completely true because I know that shipbuilding happened mostly in New England. They had the hard wood and the tall trees for masts. The South had tobacco, rice, and indigo to ship to Europe, so the two areas must have had some communication. The one government function, in which the colonies did cooperate, is the post office, and Franklin was the British Postmaster. He also represented Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts with the problems they had with the British government.

The Albany Congress may have been the first attempt at intercolonial government. Franklin’s activity as Postmaster must have made him a natural choice to be a delegate. At Albany, the representatives of seven colonies met with more than one hundred Iroquois Chiefs because the colonists wanted help fighting the French in what history books call the Seven Years War. I don’t know what the Iroquois said, but the colonial governments didn’t accept the agreement.

Eleven Years later, due to the Stamp Act, representatives of nine colonies met in New York City at what historians call the Stamp Act Congress. Franklin was in England, and he did not attend, but he must have been involved in echoing the colonial protests.

While Franklin was in England, he tried to be recognized as a gentleman. I don’t understand what that means, but if he had been Spanish, it might have meant the he was too much of a Creole to become a Peninsular. Whatever happened, it must have made him ripe to become a rebel.

Nine years later, the representatives of thirteen colonies met in Philadelphia at the First Continental Congress. Franklin represented Pennsylvania.

At year later Franklin attended the Second Continental Congress that appointed Washington to lead the Continental Army and that adopted the Declaration of Independence. Also, Franklin introduced his version of the Articles of Confederation.

At the beginning of the Revolution, Franklin went to Quebec to try to convince them to join the cause. The patriots called their treason, the cause. He went to France where, along with Adams, he got help from the Dutch and the French.

After the war, he was one of the presidents of Pennsylvania, and he attended the Annapolis Convention, which attempted to fix the Articles of Confederation. He attended the Constitutional Convention, which wrote the United States Constitution.

*I could say Founding Fathers. That term has become politically incorrect, but that is another story.
**This word is Aristotle’s word for government activity. Which, according to him is people working for themselves.

Hey ming lee, can I get more pictures of your pretty face?

I'm flattered that people have interest in pictures of rovrey Asain rady, but my mother the no-boys-only-study lady won't allow me to give out pictures for at least the next five years. Maybe then we can talk.

Forty-First Word: Emancipation Proclamation
Category: Foundation

Short Answer - - Executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. It freed slaves in some parts of the Confederate States, which had been occupied by Union forces.

Twenty-Sixth Word: Marbuy v. Madison
Category: Foundation

Short Answer - - The Supreme Court decision, which established the idea of judicial review of federal laws. The first decision that over turned a federal law. .

Thirty-Seventh Word: Dred Scott
Category: Foundation

Short Answer - - The Supreme Court decision, which declared the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. Possible the second Supreme Court decision which overturned a federal law, but I have not been able to verify that. .

Interesting book about judicial review: Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline by Robert H. Bork