Concepts

78 entries

Featured

American Slavery

The institution that built the republic's wealth, defined its politics, and nearly destroyed the nation

Checks and Balances

The constitutional design that prevents any branch of government from becoming supreme

Manifest Destiny

The 19th-century belief that American expansion across the continent was fated and righteous

The Industrial Revolution

The transformation of American labor, production, and daily life, 1820–1900

Browse by Subcategory

Political Movements

Ideologies, parties, and political traditions — from Federalism to Progressivism to Populism — that organized American public life.

Economic Systems

Capitalism, the New Deal, the regulatory state, and the doctrines that have organized American economic life over time.

Race, gender, class, immigration, and the social questions Americans have argued over since the founding — and continue to argue over.

Foreign Policy Doctrines

The grand strategies — Monroe Doctrine, containment, détente, manifest destiny — that have framed America's engagement with the world.

Religion & Society

The role of faith in American public life — from Puritan New England to evangelical politics, revivals to disestablishment.

All Concepts (A–Z)

A B C D E F G I J K L M N O P R S T U W Y

A

The movement to end slavery in America, from moral argument to political force

Affirmative Action

The Six-Decade Legal and Political Battle Over Race-Conscious Remediation

The belief that effort and merit guarantee opportunity in America

American Exceptionalism

The conviction that the United States occupies a unique and exemplary place in world history

American Imperialism

The expansion of U.S. power, territory, and influence beyond its continental borders

American Innovation

How a culture of invention turned the United States into the engine of the modern world

American Slavery

The institution that built the republic's wealth, defined its politics, and nearly destroyed the nation

B

Big Stick Diplomacy

Roosevelt's doctrine of speaking softly while projecting American power across the hemisphere

Black Lives Matter

The movement against racism and police violence born of a hashtag

A movement demanding Black self-determination, pride, and political independence

C

The economic system that built American prosperity — and its persistent contradictions

Checks and Balances

The constitutional design that prevents any branch of government from becoming supreme

Civil Disobedience

The deliberate, nonviolent refusal to obey unjust laws as a form of moral protest

America's Cold War strategy to halt the spread of Soviet communism

The Counterculture of the 1960s

The cultural rebellion that challenged postwar conformity and permanently altered American life

D

Dollar Diplomacy

Taft's strategy of substituting American investment for military force — with mixed results

The Domino Theory

The Cold War premise that communist takeover in one country would trigger a regional chain reaction

The constitutional guarantee that government cannot deprive citizens of life, liberty, or property without fair procedures

Nixon and Kissinger's strategy of easing Cold War tensions through direct diplomacy

E

Electoral College

The constitutional mechanism for electing presidents — and the perpetual argument about it

The Environmental Movement

From Theodore Roosevelt's conservation to Rachel Carson's alarm to the unresolved politics of climate

Equal Protection

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that government must treat similarly situated people equally under the law

Evangelical Christianity

The faith of revivals, reform movements, and the most durable political coalition in modern American history

Executive Order

The presidential tool the Constitution never named — and no president has stopped using

F

The division of power between national and state governments that defines American governance

First Great Awakening

The 1730s–1740s religious revival that made Americans a people before they were a nation

The Frontier Thesis

The argument that the American frontier made America — and what happened when it closed

G

The art of drawing district lines to choose your voters before they choose you

The Great Society

Lyndon Johnson's legislative program to end poverty and expand opportunity

I

The continuous movement of people that built, transformed, and defined the United States

The Industrial Revolution

The transformation of American labor, production, and daily life, 1820–1900

The foreign policy doctrine that kept America out of two world wars — until it didn't

J

The system of racial segregation that governed the South from Reconstruction to the 1960s

Judaism in America

From a 1654 landing in New Amsterdam to the largest Jewish diaspora community in history

Judicial Review

The power of courts to strike down laws that violate the Constitution

K

Keynesian Economics

The Theory That Government Spending Could Save a Failing Economy

The Knights of Labor

The first great American union — and its rise and sudden fall

L

The Labor Movement

The century-long fight by American workers for fair wages, safe conditions, and human dignity

The Confederate mythology that rewrote the Civil War — and shaped a century of American race relations

M

Machine Politics

The urban political organizations that traded services for votes and ran American cities for a century

Manifest Destiny

The 19th-century belief that American expansion across the continent was fated and righteous

The anti-communist witch hunt that suppressed dissent and defined postwar American politics

The Middle Passage

The brutal Atlantic crossing that carried millions into American slavery

Military-Industrial Complex

Eisenhower's Warning About the Alliance Between Defense Industry and Government Power

The only major religion born in America — and the only one expelled from multiple states at gunpoint

The Progressive Era journalism that exposed America's hidden costs of industrial prosperity

N

The recurring American belief that immigrants threaten the national character

The alliance that deterred a war for 40 years — and redefined itself when that war never came

Franklin Roosevelt's 1933–1939 legislative program to combat the Great Depression

O

The Open Door Policy

America's turn-of-the-century bid for equal access to China

P

The agrarian movement that challenged corporate power and reshaped American democracy

The theology that named America a chosen nation — and what survived when the faith faded

R

Two Episodes of Anti-Communist Hysteria That Reshaped American Civil Liberties

S

The Second Great Awakening

The religious revival that reshaped American faith, reform, and politics, 1800–1840

The regional rivalry between North and South that drove America toward Civil War

The Legal and Social System That Enforced Racial Separation Across American Life

Separation of Church and State

The constitutional principle Jefferson named, the courts refined, and America has been arguing about ever since

Separation of Powers

The constitutional division of government authority among three independent branches

Social Darwinism

The Gilded Age ideology that dressed inequality in the language of natural law

Sports in America

How games became one of the nation's great stages for race, money, and identity

The constitutional doctrine that shaped — and shadowed — American history

Suburbanization

How Postwar America Built a New Geography — and Who It Left Out

T

Temperance Movement

The campaign against alcohol that reshaped American social and political life

Transcendentalism

The New England movement that gave America its philosophy of individual conscience

Truman Doctrine

The Cold War Policy That Committed America to Containing Communism

The Progressive Era campaign to break up industrial monopolies and restore competition

U

U.S.–Britain Relations

From the empire America rebelled against to its closest ally — two centuries from war to the "special relationship"

U.S.–China Relations

From Open Door to trade war — the relationship that will define the 21st century

U.S.–France Relations

The ally that won America its independence, sold it a third of a continent, and gave it the Statue of Liberty

U.S.–Mexico Relations

A 1,954-mile border, a war that one side calls an invasion, and two centuries of inseparable entanglement

U.S.–Soviet Relations

Allies for four years, adversaries for 46 — the rivalry that defined the 20th century

U.S.–Spain Relations

From the empire that colonized half the continent to the war that ended its American reach

Underground Railroad

The secret network of routes and safe houses that carried enslaved people to freedom

The institution America built, funds, defies, and cannot replace

The great demographic transformation that moved America from a rural to an urban nation

W

Westward Expansion

The century-long process by which the United States spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific

Women's Liberation Movement

The feminist uprising of the 1960s and '70s that transformed American law and culture

Y

Yellow Journalism

The Sensational Press That Helped Start a War and Shaped American Media