Principles of the Constitution
This principle ensures that the government is not all-powerful and may only do those things that the people have given it the power to do.
Limited Government
These English laws were designed to tighten control over colonial trade by requiring that goods be transported on English ships and pass through English ports.
Navigation Acts
Doubling the size of the U.S. in 1803, this land acquisition from France forced Thomas Jefferson to set aside his "strict constructionist" views of the Constitution.
Louisiana Purchase
This late-19th-century transition focused on heavy industry, such as steel, oil, and electricity, rather than the textiles and steam of the early 1800s.
Second Industrial Revolution
This 1882 law was the first significant federal legislation to restrict immigration based on nationality or race.
Chinese Exclusion Act
To prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful, this system gives each branch the ability to monitor and limit the actions of the others.
Checks and Balances
This unofficial British policy of "beneficial ignorance" allowed the American colonies to thrive economically and develop self-government by not strictly enforcing trade laws.
Salutary Neglect
This 1830 law authorized the forced relocation of the Five Civilized Tribes to territory west of the Mississippi, eventually leading to the "Trail of Tears."
This economic philosophy argues that the government should stay out of the economy, allowing "natural" competition to regulate prices and wages.
Laissez-Faire
Unlike the Knights of Labor, this group (led by Samuel Gompers) focused only on "bread and butter" issues like higher wages and shorter hours for skilled workers only.
American Federation of Labor (AFL)
To prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful, this system gives each branch the ability to monitor and limit the actions of the others.
Tyranny of the Majority
Established in Virginia in 1619, this was the first representative legislative assembly in the American colonies.
House of Burgesses
Orchestrated by Henry Clay, this 1820 agreement admitted Maine as a free state and established the 36°30' line as the boundary for slavery in the West.
Missouri Compromise
Andrew Carnegie used this method to control every stage of production (from mines to shipping), while John D. Rockefeller used this other method to buy out competing refineries.
Vertical Integration vs. Horizontal Integration
This legal loophole allowed poor whites to vote while disenfranchising Black citizens by exempting anyone whose ancestors had voted before 1867 from literacy tests.
Grandfather Clause
Rooted in the "consent of the governed," this principle asserts that the people are the ultimate source of any and all governmental power.
Popular Sovereignty
While the status of the former was temporary and governed by contract, the status of the latter was lifelong and codified into "slave codes" that defined them as chattel.
White Indentured Servants vs. Enslaved Africans
This 1831 uprising in Virginia was the bloodiest slave revolt in U.S. history, resulting in much stricter "slave codes" and ending the organized manumission movement in the South.
Nat Turner's Rebellion
This Carnegie essay argued that the rich had a moral obligation to act as "trustees" for the poor and use their wealth for the benefit of society.
Gospel of Wealth
This post-Civil War labor system kept many freedmen in a cycle of debt by requiring them to give a portion of their crops to landowners in exchange for land and tools.
Sharecropping
This is the shared and division of power between the national (central) government and the various state governments.
Federalism
While this northern region was settled by Puritan families seeking religious freedom and practiced a diversified economy of small farms and trade, its southern counterpart was settled primarily by young, single men seeking wealth through a plantation-based tobacco economy.
New England Colonies vs. Chesapeake Colonies
This legislative "olive branch" ended the Nullification Crisis by gradually lowering protective tariffs, preventing a military confrontation between Andrew Jackson and South Carolina.
Compromise of 1833
This 1896 Supreme Court case provided the legal "stamp of approval" for the "New South's" system of racial segregation.
Plessy v. Ferguson
These state and local laws institutionalized segregation in the South, creating "separate but equal" facilities for Black and white citizens.
Jim Crow Laws