- Industry: Education
- Number of terms: 9909
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Radical leaders in the South during the years leading up to the Civil War, the fire eaters were persons who took an extreme pro slavery position. They repeatedly expressed their desire to see slavery spread throughout the United States, and they used states' rights arguments to support their uncompromising position.
Industry:History
A broadly influential philosophical and intellectual movement that began in Europe during the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment unleashed a tidal wave of new learning, especially in the sciences and mathematics, that helped promote the notion that human beings, through the use of their reason, could solve society's problems. The Enlightenment era, as such, has also been called the "Age of Reason. " Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were leading proponents of Enlightenment thinking in America.
Industry:History
President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation in September 1862 that all slaves would be declared free in those states that were still in rebellion against the Union at the beginning of 1863. Receiving no official response from the Confederacy, Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. All slaves in the rebellious Confederate states were to be forever free. However, slavery could continue to exist in border states that were not at war against the Union. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represented the beginning of the end of chattel slavery in the United States.
Industry:History
An attempt to stop British and French interference with American shipping by prohibiting foreign trade.
Industry:History
As the demand for wool heightened in England during the sixteenth century because of the emerging textile industry, Parliament passed laws that allowed profit seeking landowners to fence in their open fields to raise more sheep. Thousands of peasants who, as renters, had been farming these lands for generations were evicted and thrown into poverty. Many moved to the cities, where as "sturdy beggas" they too often found little work. In time, some migrated to English colonies in America, where work opportunities were far more abundant.
Industry:History
The government in Spain gave away large tracts of conquered land in Spanish America, including whole villages of indigenous peoples, to court favorites, including many conquistadores. These new landlords, or encomenderos, were supposed to educate the natives and teach them the Roman Catholic faith. The system was rife with abuse, however. Landlords rarely offered much education, preferring instead to exploit the labor of the local inhabitants, whom they treated like slaves.
Industry:History
The inventor of the cotton gin, Whitney pioneered a system of mass production of interchangeable parts. Whitney's cotton gin, which separated cotton from its seeds, met the growing demand for cotton from the textile industry and breathed new life into the institution of slavery.
Industry:History
Organizer of the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, Stanton led the struggle for woman suffrage.
Industry:History
A Missouri slave, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him onto free soil. The Supreme Court ruled in 1857 that Scott was not a citizen and that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the federal territories.
Industry:History
