Intended to protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition, the American System was the brainchild of Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay. It involved a political trade-off: In return for eastern support for federal aid to railroad and canal construction, the West would back protective tariffs. This arrangement would stimulate manufacturing and a demand for raw materials, and increase the market for manufactured goods.
The American Protective League was one of the leading vigilante organizations that suppressed dissent while promoting reactionary causes during World War I.
The American system of manufacturing was a technique of production pioneered in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century that relied on precision manufacturing with the use of interchangeable parts.
This series of agreements reached in the British-American Convention of 1818 fixed the western boundary between the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel, allowed for the joint occupation of the Oregon Country, and restored to Americans fishing rights off Newfoundland.
American nativists, who disliked Catholics and minority groups, organized the American Protective Association in 1887. The skilled workers and small businessmen who formed the association tried to limit immigration to America and block the upward mobility of newly arrived "new" immigrants, in favor of saving jobs for Protestant workers.
The founding of the American Temperance Union in 1826 by evangelical Protestants signaled the start of a national crusade against drunkenness. Using a variety of techniques, the union set out to persuade people not to drink intoxicating beverages and was successful in sharply lowering per capita consumption of alcohol.
Members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) demanded the return of lands taken illegally from their ancestors. They launched a concerted effort to revive tribal cultures and used confrontations with the federal government to publicize their case for Indian rights. Some sought Indian nationalism in the form of establishing Indian states within states.
Commonly known as the Sugar Act, this law passed in 1764 raised revenue in the American colonies by lowering the duty from 6 pence to 3 pence per gallon on foreign molasses imported into the colonies and increased the restrictions on colonial commcerce.
The first members of the AEF, American troops who served in Europe in World War I, arrived in Paris in July 1917. They were under the command of General John J. Pershing, who insisted that they fight as independent units and not be integrated into British and French (Allied) forces.
The American Colonization Society was founded in 1817. It purchased land in Africa (Liberia) with the intention of solving the "Negro problem" by transporting freed slaves there. Society backers were convinced that both blacks and whites would benefit from racial separation. Few blacks wished to migrate to Africa and the society accomplished little.
The Spanish-American War was a brief 1898 conflict in which the United States defeated Spanish forces in Cuba and the Philippines and forced Spain to relinquish control over Cuba and cede the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and other territories to the United States.
The French and Americans signed a commercial treaty and a formal treaty of alliance in 1778. They agreed to aid each other, and the French guaranteed the sovereignty and independence of the United States.
The Pan-American Conference (1889) was a disappointment to Secretary of State James Blaine. He wanted a trade-reciprocity agreement with Latin American nations that would stimulate the marketing of U.S. goods, but the conference merely created a Pan-American Union to promote commercial and cultural exchanges.
The Organization of American States (OAS) was a western-hemisphere mutual-defense treaty signed in 1947. OAS decisions are reached by a two-thirds majority vote; the United States has no veto or special position.
