History & civics definitions

24 history & civics terms from Achievable exam prep courses, each defined in plain language with links into the course textbook.

• American RevolutionThe American Revolution was the conflict from 1765 to 1783 in which thirteen British colonies rejected imperial authority, declared independence in 1776, and won it through war. It produced the United States and a republican government grounded in popular sovereignty.
• Articles of ConfederationThe Articles of Confederation were the first constitution of the United States, in effect from 1781 to 1789. They created a loose league of sovereign states with a weak central government that had no power to tax or regulate trade.
• Columbian ExchangeThe Columbian Exchange was the transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Americas and Europe, Africa, and Asia after 1492. It reshaped diets, economies, and populations on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Compromise of 1850The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five laws passed by Congress to settle disputes over slavery in territory won from Mexico. It admitted California as a free state and enacted a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, delaying but not preventing sectional conflict.
• Constitutional ConventionThe Constitutional Convention was a gathering of delegates from twelve states in Philadelphia from May to September 1787. Called to revise the Articles of Confederation, it instead drafted an entirely new United States Constitution.
• Election of 1860The election of 1860 was the U.S. presidential contest in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated a divided field of three opponents. His victory without a single Southern electoral vote triggered the secession of seven Southern states and set the country on the path to the Civil War.
• French and Indian WarThe French and Indian War (1754–1763) was the North American theater of the Seven Years' War, pitting Britain and its colonists against France and their respective Native allies. Britain's victory expelled France from mainland North America and set off the crisis that led to the Revolution.
• Gilded AgeThe Gilded Age was the period in United States history from roughly the 1870s to 1900, marked by rapid industrialization, concentrated wealth, mass immigration, and political corruption. The name suggests a thin gilding of prosperity over deep social problems.
• Harlem RenaissanceThe Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African American literature, art, music, and thought centered in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s and early 1930s. It produced writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and reshaped American culture.
• Industrial capitalismIndustrial capitalism is an economic system in which private owners invest capital in large-scale mechanized industry — factories, railroads, steel, oil — to produce goods for profit. It transformed the United States in the late nineteenth century.
• Informal powers of the presidentThe informal powers of the president are tools of influence not explicitly listed in the Constitution, such as executive orders, executive agreements, signing statements, and the bully pulpit. Presidents use them to shape policy beyond their formal constitutional powers.
• Interest groupsInterest groups are organizations of people who share policy goals and work to influence government decisions. Unlike political parties, they do not run candidates for office; they shape policy through lobbying, litigation, and mobilizing members.
• Jacksonian democracyJacksonian democracy was the political movement of the 1820s–1840s, associated with President Andrew Jackson, that expanded voting rights to most white men, celebrated the "common man," and strengthened the power of the presidency.
• Jeffersonian eraThe Jeffersonian era was the period of U.S. history from roughly 1800 to the 1820s, shaped by Thomas Jefferson's vision of limited federal government, agrarian republicanism, and westward expansion, beginning with his election in 1800.
• Manifest DestinyManifest Destiny was the 19th-century belief that the United States was destined — even divinely ordained — to expand across the North American continent. It fueled westward migration, the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican-American War in the 1840s.
• Market RevolutionThe Market Revolution was the transformation of the United States economy between roughly 1800 and 1848, as new transportation, communication, and manufacturing technologies shifted Americans from local subsistence economies to producing goods for regional and national markets.
• Mexican-American WarThe Mexican-American War (1846–1848) was a conflict between the United States and Mexico sparked by the annexation of Texas and a border dispute. The U.S. victory added vast southwestern territory and intensified the national debate over slavery's expansion.
• New SouthThe New South was a vision promoted after Reconstruction, most famously by Atlanta editor Henry Grady, calling for a Southern economy rebuilt on industry, railroads, and Northern investment rather than plantation agriculture.
• ReconstructionReconstruction (1865–1877) was the period after the American Civil War when the federal government worked to rebuild the South, readmit the former Confederate states, and define the rights of newly freed African Americans.
• Romanticism and TranscendentalismRomanticism was a 19th-century literary and artistic movement that prized emotion, imagination, and nature over Enlightenment rationalism; Transcendentalism was its American offshoot, emphasizing individual intuition and the divinity found in nature.
• Second Great AwakeningThe Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival that swept the United States from the 1790s through the 1840s. Its camp meetings and message of personal salvation fueled major reform movements, including temperance and abolitionism.
• Taxation without representationTaxation without representation was the central grievance of American colonists taxed by the British Parliament, where they elected no representatives. The protest slogan fueled colonial resistance and helped spark the American Revolution.
• The US ConstitutionThe US Constitution is the supreme law of the United States, drafted at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and ratified in 1788. It established the federal government's structure of three branches, a system of checks and balances, and the division of power between the national government and the states.
• Westward expansionWestward expansion was the migration of American settlers across the trans-Mississippi West during the 19th century, driven by land, mining, railroads, and the ideology of manifest destiny. It transformed the US economy and devastated Native American nations.