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scalawags
scalawags , derogatory term used in the South after the Civil War to describe native white Southerners who joined the Republican party and aided in carrying out the congressional Reconstruction program. A Republican who came from the north was called a carpetbagger .
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Balls Bluff
Balls Bluff hill on the south bank of the Potomac River, near Leesburg, Va. In the Civil War, Union troops who had crossed the river were severely repulsed there on Oct. 21, 1861. Dissatisfaction with that defeat and with the general inactivity of the Union armies led to the organization of a joint...
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McCulloch v. Maryland
McCulloch v. Maryland case decided in 1819 by the U.S. Supreme Court, dealing specifically with the constitutionality of a Congress-chartered corporation, and more generally with the dispersion of power between state and federal governments. After the First Bank of the United States (1791) had fold...
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John Eaton
John Eaton 1829-1906, American educator, b. Sutton, N.H., grad. Dartmouth, 1854. After serving as a school principal in Cleveland, Ohio, and as superintendent of schools in Toledo, he enrolled at Andover Theological Seminary in 1859. During the Civil War, he served as a chaplain in the Union army a...
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Nancy Patricia Pelosi
Nancy Patricia Pelosi , 1940-, U.S. congresswoman, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (2007-), b. Baltimore as Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro. The daughter of Thomas J. D'Alesandro, Jr., who served as Baltimore's mayor and a congressman, she moved to California, where she became active in the ...
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Republican party
Republican party American political party.
Origins and Early Years
The name was first used by Thomas Jefferson's party, later called the Democratic Republican party or, simply, the Democratic party . The name reappeared in the 1850s, when the present-day Republican party was founded. At ...
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Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson 1808-75, 17th President of the United States (1865-69), b. Raleigh, N.C.
Early Life
His father died when Johnson was 3, and at 14 he was apprenticed to a tailor. In 1826 the family moved to E Tennessee, and Andrew soon had his own tailor shop at Greeneville. A man of no for...
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Iran-contra affair
Iran-contra affair in U.S. history, secret arrangement in the 1980s to provide funds to the Nicaraguan contra rebels from profits gained by selling arms to Iran. The Iran-contra affair was the product of two separate initiatives during the administration of President Ronald Reagan . The first was ...
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District of Columbia
District of Columbia federal district (2000 pop. 572,059, a 5.7% decrease in population since the 1990 census), 69 sq mi (179 sq km), on the east bank of the Potomac River, coextensive with the city of Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States). The District was established by congressio...
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Benjamin Franklin Wade
Benjamin Franklin Wade 1800-1878, U.S. Senator from Ohio (1851-69), b. near Springfield, Mass. He moved (1821) to Ohio and studied law. He was successively prosecuting attorney of Ashtabula co., state senator, and presiding judge of the third judicial district in Ohio before becoming a Whig Senator...
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