The Oxford Companion to United States History

The Oxford Companion to United States History

by Paul S. Boyer
ISBN-10:
0195082095
ISBN-13:
9780195082098
Pub. Date:
07/04/2001
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0195082095
ISBN-13:
9780195082098
Pub. Date:
07/04/2001
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
The Oxford Companion to United States History

The Oxford Companion to United States History

by Paul S. Boyer
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Overview

Here is a volume that is as big and as varied as the nation it portrays. With over 1,400 entries written by some 900 historians and other scholars, it illuminates not only America's political, diplomatic, and military history, but also social, cultural, and intellectual trends; science, technology, and medicine; the arts; and religion.

Here are the familiar political heroes, from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, to Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But here, too, are scientists, writers, radicals, sports figures, and religious leaders, with incisive portraits of such varied individuals as Thomas Edison and Eli Whitney, Babe Ruth and Muhammed Ali, Black Elk and Crazy Horse, Margaret Fuller, Emma Goldman, and Marian Anderson, even Al Capone and Jesse James. The Companion illuminates events that have shaped the nation (the Great Awakening, Bunker Hill, Wounded Knee, the Vietnam War); major Supreme Court decisions (Marbury v. Madison, Roe v. Wade); landmark legislation (the Fugitive Slave Law, the Pure Food and Drug Act); social movements (Suffrage, Civil Rights); influential books (The Jungle, Uncle Tom's Cabin); ideologies (conservatism, liberalism, Social Darwinism); even natural disasters and iconic sites (the Chicago Fire, the Johnstown Flood, Niagara Falls, the Lincoln Memorial). Here too is the nation's social and cultural history, from Films, Football, and the 4-H Club, to Immigration, Courtship and Dating, Marriage and Divorce, and Death and Dying. Extensive multi-part entries cover such key topics as the Civil War, Indian History and Culture, Slavery, and the Federal Government.

A new volume for a new century, The Oxford Companion to United States History covers everything from Jamestown and the Puritans to the Human Genome Project and the Internet—from Columbus to Clinton. Written in clear, graceful prose for researchers, browsers, and general readers alike, this is the volume that addresses the totality of the American experience, its triumphs and heroes as well as its tragedies and darker moments.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780195082098
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 07/04/2001
Series: Oxford Companions
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 984
Product dimensions: 10.25(w) x 7.50(h) x 2.50(d)
Age Range: 13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Paul S. Boyer is Merle Curti Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, and the author of Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft.

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Excerpt

A


ABM TREATY. See Nuclear Arms Control Treaties.


ABOLITIONISM. See Antislavery.


ABORTION. The legal status of abortion in the United States has undergone dramatic shifts but its practice has been consistent: Throughout American history, many women have relied on abortion to control their fertility. Before the mid-nineteenth century, abortion induced prior to quickening (the moment when the pregnant woman feels fetal movement) was a legal and accepted practice, especially for young, unmarried women. By midcentury, the commercialization of abortion gave greater visibility to its prevalence among married, white, native-born women. This increased visibility coincided with growing agitation by women for fuller inclusion in public life and with increased *immigration of ethnically diverse people, both of which provoked concern about the nation's changing character. Thus when physicians pursued the criminalization of abortion in an effort to stabilize their professional standing through laws restraining their competitors, especially midwives, their proposals resonated with legislators' gender, ethnic, and nationalist fears. In the twenty years between 1860 and 1880, with little public debate, every state made abortion illegal, except when performed by a licensed physician to save the life of the pregnant woman. In this same period, federal and state laws also prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information and devices.

    At times during the one hundred years when abortion was illegal, police allowed its practice tocontinue undisturbed; at times it was repressed. Throughout the period, many women continued to procure abortions despite the risks, and juries often refused to convict abortionists, indicating continued public acceptance of the practice. During the 1930s, abortion clinics run by licensed physicians operated quite openly, contributing to an estimated 800,000 abortions a year. However, the procedure was still quite risky; induced abortions accounted for 14 percent of maternal mortality. After *World War II, *hospitals tightened the practice of therapeutic abortion by establishing physician review boards, leading to a dramatic reduction in hospital abortions. Police raids on the illegal clinics that had thrived in the 1930s made abortion even more difficult and dangerous to obtain. Abortion death rates doubled between 1951 and 1962, with the risk falling most heavily on women of color who were four times more likely than white women to die from abortion.

    Political challenges to abortion laws were rare before the 1960s. The birth control movement led by Margaret *Sanger did not contest abortion restrictions, instead pointing to the high rates of injury and death from criminal abortion as a compelling reason to decriminalize contraception. As repression of abortion increased through the 1950s, leading women to take more desperate risks, physicians and women began to seek reform of abortion laws. By 1973, through legislative and court actions, the abortion reform/repeal movement won changes in nineteen state laws. At the same time, networks were organized to provide women with access to safe and affordable illegal abortions. In *California, the Society for Humane Abortion inspected facilities, bargained over fees, and referred thousands of women to clean and inexpensive illegal abortions in Mexico. In *Chicago, self-trained women organized an abortion service called Jane that performed twelve thousand abortions between 1969 and 1973 without a single fatality. These referral networks were part of the resurgent women's movement, which also pushed beyond reform to seek repeal of abortion laws. They argued that the decision to abort a pregnancy involved the fundamental right of women to control their bodily processes.

    This activism ended in 1973 with the *Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade landmark decision. Grounded in the 1965 decision Griswold v. Connecticut, which had established the right to privacy in contraceptive decision-making, Roe established a fundamental right to abortion. Under Roe, except to ensure maternal health, states could not restrict abortion before fetal viability. (Viability is the point in pregnancy when the fetus is "capable of meaningful life outside the womb," roughly the end of the second trimester.) After Roe, maternal mortality rates dropped by almost one half.

    Efforts to undercut Roe began almost immediately. Small groups opposed to abortion reform blossomed into the "pro-life" movement, arguing that abortion violated the fetus's right to life. Initially led by the American Roman Catholic church, the movement expanded as social conservatives and Protestant fundamentalists (some intent on rebuilding the *Republican party after *Watergate) took up the issue. Early successful restrictions centered on ending federal funding of abortion for poor women and requiring parental consent and notification laws for teenagers. Outside the courtroom and legislature, organized efforts emerged to disrupt the practice of abortion. Harassment of clinic patients and abortion providers became common. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Operation Rescue, led by Randall Terry, blockaded abortion clinics in cities nationwide. The goal of this activity was to publicize the pro-life cause and make abortion difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. Between 1982 and 1998, there were more than 150 bombings and 5 murders associated with anti-abortion activity.

    While not recriminalizing abortion, the Supreme Court in 1992 retreated from its holding in Roe. In the Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision, which upheld mandatory waiting periods and state-mandated counseling, the Court ruled that the state's interest in protecting potential life permitted some restrictions on abortion throughout pregnancy, as long as the restrictions did not impose an undue burden on women. Thus, abortion was no longer a fundamental right; the lower standard of "undue burden" gave legislators greater leeway to limit abortion. As the twentieth century ended, abortion remained legal, but practical access was increasingly problematic. Harassment, violence, and restrictions led many hospitals and practitioners to stop providing abortion. An estimated 83 percent of U.S. counties had no abortion provider. At the same time, however, federal and state laws protecting women's access to clinics, and the innovative use of antiracketeering laws against organizers of clinic blockades, continued to hinder efforts to stop abortion completely.

    [See also Birth Control and Family Planning; Medicine; Roman Catholicism; Women's Rights Movements.]


· James Mohr, Abortion in America. 1978. Laurence Tribe, Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, 1990. Janet Farrell Brodie, Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth Century America, 1994. David Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade, 1994. Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime, 1997. Rickie Solinger, Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle 1950-2000, 1998.

—Carole R. McCann


ABRAMS v. UNITED STATES (1919). This *Supreme Court case from the *World War I era involved Russian-born anarchists convicted under the 1918 Sedition Act of distributing leaflets denouncing U.S. military intervention against Russia's new Bolshevik government. Writing for the majority, Justice John Clarke followed recent rulings by Justice Oliver Wendell *Holmes Jr. in *Schenck v. United States and Debs v. United States upholding the conviction of socialists for making antiwar statements on the grounds that such statements posed a "clear and present danger" in wartime America. The Abrams case involved the same principle, Clarke held, because the anarchists' leaflets created a "clear and present danger" of causing "the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

    Justice Holmes, joined by Justice Louis *Brandeis, dissented. Although Holmes denied that he was shifting ground, recent scholarship has shown that in his Abrams dissent, Holmes—stung by criticism from libertarian friends such as Zechariah Chafee of Harvard Law School and Harold J. Laski—did indeed seek to rework the Schenck and Debs test. In those cases, Holmes had linked the "clear and present danger" test to the broader claim that speech need not produce action in order to carry criminal liability. But in Abrams, he narrowed the "clear and present danger" test to make it more protective of First Amendment, free-speech rights in hopes that, first, the courts would adopt it as a test of fundamental constitutional law and, second, that it might protect speech, such as that of the Abrams defendants, which had little likelihood of producing dangerous consequences. The Abrams dissent made Holmes a libertarian hero and propelled his "clear and present danger" test to the center of First Amendment discourse.

    [See also Bill of Rights; Censorship; Civil Liberties; Sedition; Socialist Party of America].


· Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech, 1987. G. Edward White, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self, 1993.

—Norman L. Rosenberg


ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM, a dominant style of art in America from the end of *World War II to the early 1960s. Abstract Expressionism included the gestural painting of Jackson *Pollock, Willem *de Kooning, and Helen Frankenthaler (1928-); the improvisatory nonobjective metal-welded sculpture of Herbert Ferber (1906-1991), David Smith (1906-1965), and Seymour Lipton (1903-1986); and the tonal studies of Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Sometimes called "The New York School" because of the many Abstract Expressionist artists centered there from the late 1940s through the 1950s, the style simultaneously erupted in the San Francisco Bay area in the paintings and sculptures of Clyfford Still (1904—1980), Richard Diebenkorn (1922-), and Manuel Neri (1930-), and was subsequently embraced by artists across America. Concurrent with U.S. global ascendancy in politics and industrial production, Abstract Expressionism was critically acclaimed as a uniquely American form of modern art, and *New York City declared the capital of contemporary art.

    In 1945, art critic Robert Coates of the New Yorker magazine first reported that a style of abstract art, largely devoid of representational subject matter and painted in a gestural and expressionist manner, was gaining ascendancy in America. Abstract Expressionists rejected the narrative and representational styles, widespread public appeal, and political views of 1930s *New Deal Era and social realist artists such as Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) and Ben Shahn (1898-1969), as well as the hard-edged abstract art of interwar modernists like Stuart Davis (1894-1964). Instead, they pioneered improvisational modes of art focused on the physicality of media and personal expression. Pollock's much-publicized "drip paintings" (1947-1950), dubbed "action painting" by critic Harold Rosenberg were made by placing unprimed canvases on the floor and pouring and dripping paints in precise patterns onto their surfaces. David Smith similarly experimented with materials, techniques, and composition in his abstract metal sculptures of the 1950s. Abstract Expressionist art embodies profound disaffection with the postwar political climate of consensus, *Cold War, and nuclear menace, as well as artistic yearning for self-determination. Some Abstract Expressionist artists retained identifiable subjects as in de Kooning's Woman I, 1950-1952, for example, while others, including Barnett Newman (1905-1970), pursued flatter, nongestural styles.

    Despite their differing stylistic preferences, Abstract Expressionist artists were generally allied in aesthetic and technical experimentation, a focus on the creative process, the use of art as a means of self-realization, the separation of art and popular culture, and the rejection of art for public or social purposes.

    The stylistic origins of Abstract Expressionism can be found in Surrealist art (many European artists, such as Hans Hoffman, André Masson, and Max Ernst, as well as the Chilean painter Roberto Matta Echaurren, found refuge in the United States during World War II); the indigenous arts of North America (represented in several exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1930s and 1940s); and renewed interest in nineteenth-century American transcendentalist landscape painting. The movement's cultural and intellectual underpinnings include the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung; existential philosophy (Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism was translated into English in 1948); and Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), a study of myth and the importance of modern mythmakers. The context of Abstract Expressionism also includes such diverse forms of postwar cultural experimentation as the Beat movement in literature; the *jazz of John *Coltrane, Miles *Davis, and Charlie *Parker; avant-garde *dance and composition; the rock-and-roll movement in popular music; and the rebellious youth-culture films of James Dean and Marlon Brando.

    Critics such as Clement Greenberg championed Abstract Expressionism as evidence of American cultural superiority and heroic individualism. Later cultural historians explored the ways it illuminated the interconnections of Cold War art and politics. Although succeeded by other art styles such as Pop and Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism remained a major point of departure for artistic and critical explorations, from the process art of Eva Hesse (1936-1970) to the 1980s movement of Neo-Expressionism.

    [See also Fifties, The; Painting: To 1945; Painting: Since 1945.]


· Dore Ashton, The New York School, A Cultural Reckoning, 1972. Michael Auping, ed., Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments, 1987. Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism, 1991. Stephen Polcari, Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience, 1991. Michael Leja, Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and 'Painting in the 1940s, 1993. Ann Eden Gibson, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics, 1997.

—Erika Doss


ACADEMIC FREEDOM. The American tradition of academic freedom drew inspiration from the German concept of Lehrfreiheit, the statutory rights of professors in state universities to teach and do research freely. Ultimately, the tradition is rooted in the Enlightenment conviction that reason, if left free, could discover useful knowledge and foster human progress. The liberal intellectual system that grew from this conviction was understood as a social community with indefinite possibilities created by human intellectual diversity, but also one that recognized the inherent fallibility of human thought.

    In this system, knowledge is the evolving critical consensus of a decentralized community that adheres to the principle that all knowledge claims, regardless of the source, must be capable of being checked. The professoriate saw a unique opportunity to contribute to the progress of knowledge as a community of checkers with specialized training, information, and skills.

    For many years after the initial founding of institutions of higher education in colonial America, professors labored under the prevailing assumption that employees had no control over the conditions placed upon them, including restrictions on free expression. As the modern university and its research mission developed in the late 1800s, and as professors increasingly challenged the cherished beliefs of the time, the lack of protection for academic speech became a critical problem.

    At the turn of the twentieth century, as social scientists began a critical analysis of the economic order, wealthy members of some governing boards sought to coerce academic speech. For example, in 1900, Jane Lathrop Stanford, the sole trustee of Stanford University, forced Professor Edward Ross to resign because of his support of the *free silver movement and his criticism of the corporate and political order. A second faculty member was dismissed for defending Ross, and seven others resigned, including Professor Arthur Lovejoy, who joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University. Lovejoy in 1913 drafted a letter to colleagues at nine other leading universities, signed by seventeen professors at Johns Hopkins, proposing a professional association, the *American Association of University Professors (AAUP). With the founding of the AAUP in 1915, the professoriate sought to pressure university employers to protect the freedom of academic speech.

    As the American tradition of academic freedom evolved, university employers, acknowledging the university's unique mission of creating and disseminating knowledge, granted rights of exceptional vocational freedom of speech to professors in teaching, research, and extramural utterance without interference, so long as they met the obligation of professional competence and ethical conduct. The faculty as a collegial body also assumed the duty of peer review to enforce the obligations imposed upon individual professors and to defend the academic freedom of colleagues. Peer review is in fact, an essential corollary of academic freedom in the United States.

    Building on this tradition, the U.S. *Supreme Court in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957) expanded the First Amendment's free speech guarantees to protect academic decisions by universities and individual professors from coercion by the government (ruling that interrogatories by New Hampshire's attorney general about the content of a course were unlawful). In Pickering v. Board of Education (19681), the Court also expanded the First Amendment to protect the speech of government employees, including professors employed in public universities (ruling that a teacher's newspaper editorial criticizing the school board was protected speech).

    Since the formation of the AAUP, academic freedom has been threatened repeatedly by waves of zealotry from outside the university, including strident patriotism during *World War I, *anticommunism prior to *World War II, and McCarthyism in the early 1950s. The two most recent waves have come from inside the university: student activism in the 1960s and the "political correctness" standards of the academic left in the 1990s.

    [See also Bill of Rights; Civil Liberties; Education: Rise of the University; McCarthy, Joseph.]

· Lewis Joughin, ed., Academic Freedom and Tenure, 1969. American Association of University Professors, Policy Documents and Reports, 8th ed., 1994. Neil W. Hamilton, Zealotry and Academic Freedom: A Legal and Historical Perspective, 1995.

—Neil W. Hamilton


ACHESON, DEAN (1893-1971), statesman. Born to a privileged background, Acheson attended Groton, Yale, and Harvard Law School. After a clerkship with Justice Louis *Brandeis, he joined the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling in 1921.

    A conservative Democrat, Acheson joined Franklin Delano *Roosevelt's administration in 1933 as undersecretary of the treasury but resigned quietly that same year in disagreement over monetary policy. With the onset of war in Europe he became a fervent interventionist and pushed for measures supporting Great Britain. Named assistant secretary of state for economic affairs in 1941, he played an important role at the *Bretton Woods Conference (1944), which established the *International Monetary Fund and the *World Bank.

    Promoted to undersecretary of state in 1945, Acheson served until 1947, helping to shape U.S. policies in the early *Cold War, including the *Truman Doctrine and the *Marshall Plan. Appointed secretary of state in 1949 by President Harry S. *Truman, Acheson proved the key builder of political, economic, and military structures to contain the Soviet Union—a Cold War strategy codified in *National Security Council Document 68 in 1950. The *North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the decision to build the hydrogen bomb, the American military response to North Korean aggression, the substantial defense build-up, and the incorporation of West Germany and Japan into the western alliance all bear his strong imprint. Despite his anticommunist policies and convictions, Acheson was mercilessly criticized by the right wing of the *Republican party, especially Senator Joseph *McCarthy. A man of great self-assurance and caustic wit, he dismissed such assailants as "primitives."

    Acheson returned to his law practice in 1953 but remained involved in foreign policy issues and vigorously defended the *containment strategy and policies he had helped to fashion. When presidents John F. *Kennedy and Lyndon B. *Johnson sought his advice, he consistently counseled a tough line until 1968, when he abruptly urged U.S. disengagement from the *Vietnam War. His aptly titled memoir Present at the Creation won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970.

    [See also Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of State; Korean War; New Deal Era, The; World War II.]


· Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953-1971, 1992. James Chace, Acheson: The Secretary' of State Who Created the American World, 1998.

—Wilson D. Miscamble


ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS), a *disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In 1981, medical reports first described unusual infections and *cancer previously seen only in severely immunosuppressed patients, such as those undergoing organ transplants. By mid-1982, epidemiological evidence indicated that the disease was probably caused by a virus transmissible via sexual intercourse, transfusion of contaminated blood or blood products, and intravenous drug injections. Later, it was also determined that AIDS could be passed from mother to baby during delivery or in breast milk.

    Homosexual males, including many affluent urban professionals, were the largest initial group affected by the disease in the United States and in other developed countries. After some initial resistance to lifestyle changes recommended by public-health officials, this group mounted an aggressive response to AIDS, organizing to provide medical care, disseminating information about prevention, raising money, and becoming politically active. In developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia where it has taken a very heavy toll, AIDS afflicts men and women equally and is transmitted primarily by heterosexual intercourse.

    In 1984, researchers in Robert C. Gallo's laboratory at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the U.S. *National Institutes of Health published papers demonstrating causation by a retrovirus described the previous year by scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Laboratory tests were quickly developed to confirm individual diagnoses and to screen blood donations for contamination. Subsequent research showing the rapid mutation of the causative microorganism dimmed hope for speedy development of a preventive vaccine.

    In 1986, a drug known as azidothymidine (AZT) was identified by NCI researchers as inhibiting HIV activity in laboratory studies. Clinical trials by the drug's manufacturer, Burroughs Wellcome, Inc., proved encouraging, and in record time the Food and Drug Administration approved AZT for AIDS treatment. For nearly a decade, with a few other similar drugs, AZT stood as the only antiviral therapy available. During this time, however, treatment of the opportunistic infections and cancers that characterized AIDS advanced significantly. By 1996, a decade of medical research on AIDS began to produce new therapies that raised hopes that AIDS need not lead inexorably to death.

    Because AIDS can be transmitted by sexual contact or intravenous drug use and because of its association with the homosexual community, some conservative religious and political groups in American society stigmatized the disease as shameful or as retribution for sin. During the presidency of Ronald *Reagan, these groups blocked federal action to promote the use of condoms for safe sex. They also opposed the creation of needle-exchange programs to protect intravenous drug abusers. Widespread fear of the disease prompted some parents to insist that infected children be denied entry tutu public schools. On occasion, health-care, police, and fire-department personnel refused to respond to emergencies that involved infected people. A few insurance companies canceled health policies for persons diagnosed with AIDS, and some employers fired infected employees. In the worst cases, infected people experienced violence against themselves or their property. By contrast, C. Everett Koop, surgeon general of the United States Public Health Service in the Reagan administration, spoke out forcefully about safe sex to prevent AIDS and, in October 1986, mailed a brochure about AIDS written in lay language to every U.S. household.

    By 1986, leadership at a national level, knowledge that AIDS could not be casually transmitted, and public statements by prominent people infected with HIV were helping to mitigate societal fears. Tennis professional Arthur Ashe, basketball star Magic Johnson, and AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser were among celebrities infected with AIDS who spoke publicly about the disease. Actress Elizabeth Taylor led the theater and film communities in efforts to raise money to combat AIDS. Playwrights and filmmakers addressed the social issues raised by AIDS. The Names Project encouraged the friends and families of AIDS victims to create a national quilt in memory of those who had died.

    By 2000, AIDS deaths in the United States had surpassed 420,000, and an estimated 650,000-900,000 were living with HIV/AIDS. Along with its direct human cost, the epidemic also forced a reassessment of the sexual revolution that had advocated a variety of sexual practices without fear of disease. Furthermore it illustrated how social attitudes such as homophobia can have important public-health implications.

    [See also Public Health.]


· Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 1987. Mirko D. Grmek, History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic, trans. Russell C. Maulitz and Jacalyn Duffin, 1990. National Research Council, Committee on AIDS Research and the Behavioral, Social, and Statistical Sciences, AIDS: The Second Decade, eds. Heather G. Miller, Charles F. Turner, and Lincoln E. Moses, 1990. Virginia Berridge and Philip Strong, AIDS and Contemporary History, 1993. National Research Council, Committee on AIDS Research and the Behavioral, Social, and Statistical Sciences, Panel on Monitoring the Social Impact of the AIDS Epidemic, The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States, eds. Albert R. Jonsen and Jeff Stryker, 1993. Caroline Hannaway, Victoria A. Harden, and John Parascandola, eds., AIDS and the Public Debate: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, 1995.

—Victoria A. Harden


ADAMS, ABIGAIL (1744-1818), wife of John *Adams, the second president of the United States; mother of John Quincy *Adams, the sixth president; correspondent. Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, to Congregational minister William Smith and his wife Elizabeth Quincy Smith, Abigail received no formal schooling yet educated herself in literature, history, and French. Abigail and John Adams, within a decade of their marriage in 1764, had five children, of whom four (Abigail, John Quincy, Charles, and Thomas Boylston) survived childhood. During the *Revolutionary War Era, when John served as delegate to the *Continental Congress and diplomat in Europe, Abigail managed the family farm, purchasing land and livestock and negotiating with laborers and tenants. Even after she was reunited with her husband in Europe in 1784, as well as during his terms as vice president and president, Abigail took primary responsibility for the family's business. She also served as John's confidante and adviser in public affairs.

    Abigail Adams is best known for her copious, perspicacious correspondence, in which she discussed politics as well as domestic concerns. She expressed opinions on a wide variety of issues, including her renowned advice to John in 1776 that Congress revise the Anglo-American laws subordinating married women to their husbands. In private letters, Abigail Adams hailed women's actions to support American independence, heralded the strength of female patriotism, and called for improved female education. Nevertheless, throughout her life, she conformed to the roles expected of a high public official's wife in the late eighteenth century. Only her correspondents, and later generations who have read her letters, could appreciate Adams's advanced thinking on women's rights.

    [See also Colonial Era; Women's Rights Movements.]


· L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., Adams Family Correspondence, vols. 1-6, 1963-1993. Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams, 1992.

—Jean R. Soderlund


ADAMS, HENRY (1838-1918), historian, social critic, man of letters. Born in *Boston, the son of Charles Francis Adams, a U.S. congressman and diplomat, and Abigail Brooks Adams, he was also the great-grandson and grandson of two presidents, John *Adams and John Quincy *Adams. Henry grew up in Boston, summering at the Adams homestead in nearby Quincy. Following graduation from Harvard College in 1858 he embarked on an extensive European tour, returning to the United States late in 1860. When President Abraham *Lincoln appointed Charles Francis Adams the U.S. minister to Great Britain in 1861, Henry accompanied his father to London where he served as private secretary.

    Adams wrote his first serious articles on history and politics while in Great Britain during the *Civil War. Upon his return to the United States in 1868 he set himself up as a freelance journalist in *Washington, D.C., writing blistering attacks on postwar political corruption. Chapters of Erie and Other Essays (1871), written with his brother Charles Francis Adams Jr., deals with fraud and bribery in the railroad industry. In 1870 he accepted an offer to teach history at Harvard and concurrently to edit the prestigious North American Review. While teaching, editing, and writing more articles on current American politics, Adams also worked on his Life of Albert Gallatin (1879). He married Marian "Clover" Hooper in 1872.

    Adams resigned his teaching position in 1877 and returned to Washington, D.C. Soon thereafter he commenced his nine-volume History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1889-1891), as he and his wife presided over a celebrated salon from their home on Lafayette Square, across from the White House. Here they entertained a select group of friends including the statesman John Hay, the geologist Clarence King, and the artist John LaFarge. His anonymous novel Democracy (1880) summed up his disgust with *Gilded Age Washington politics. Marian Adams's suicide in 1885 deepened Adam's already pessimistic and negative outlook on many aspects of modern life.

    In 1890-1892, Adams took a round-the-world voyage with LaFarge. Breaking his trip in Paris, he began a custom of spending part of each year in the French capital. While in France Adams became fascinated with the Middle Ages and wrote his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1905, 1913). Contrasting the unity of medieval culture with the seeming multiplicity of the early twentieth century, he proposed to use his own life story to portray what he liked to call the acceleration of history and the breakdown of philosophical and moral certainty. The result was his Education of Henry Adams (1904, 1918), a brilliant but often distorted autobiography written in the third person.

    Adams's eloquent and often biting criticisms of American life have made him one of the nation's most important observers. He was also a pathbreaker in historical scholarship, offering the country's first graduate seminar in history while teaching at Harvard. His own historical writings were exhaustively researched. After more than a century, they remain of value, though later historians found him somewhat biased against Thomas *Jefferson and the whole Jeffersonian program.

    [See also Historiography, American.]


· David R. Contosta, Henry Adams and the American Experiment, 1980. Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams, 1989.

—David R. Contosta


ADAMS, JOHN (1735-1826), second president of the United States. As a young man in pre-Revolutionary *Boston, John Adams summed up his hopes: a modest fortune, and officer's rank in the militia, and election to the upper house of the Massachusetts assembly. He never grew wealthy or soldiered, but he succeeded in public life beyond his wildest expectations.

    Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, to parents of modest means, Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755, studied law, and in 1758 opened a legal practice in Boston. He had only one client during his first year and did not win a case before a jury for three years. In 1764, Adams married Abigail Smith of nearby Weymouth, a formidable figure in her own right. Four of their five children survived to adulthood, including the future president John Quincy *Adams.

    In 1770, representing the British soldiers charged in the *Boston Massacre, Adams won significant legal victories for his clients and himself. At first he remained in the background of the protest movement against British imperial policies, writing anonymous essays and covert propaganda. After 1773, however, now convinced of a British conspiracy to suppress colonial liberties, he played an open and active role in the protest campaign, and emerged as a leader in the *Continental Congress. He not only chaired the Board of War and Ordnance, but served on more than sixty other committees, including one that prepared guidelines for America's first diplomats and another that drafted the *Declaration of Independence. Thomas *Jefferson called him "our colossus" in the independence struggle.

    Adams also gained a reputation as an expert on political theory. His pamphlets Novanglus (1774) and Thoughts on Government (1776) furthered the independence cause and influenced the earliest state constitutions. As U.S. Commissioner to France during the *Revolutionary War, Adams battled tenaciously to induce France to make greater military contributions to the American cause, while also securing recognition and an urgently needed loan from Holland. As a member of the U.S. delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Paris ending the war, Adams was instrumental in gaining boundary and fishing-rights concessions from the British.

    After serving as U.S. minister to Great Britain (1785-1788) and as vice president under George *Washington, Adams defeated Jefferson in the 1796 presidential election. His presidency was consumed with the so-called *Quasi-War with France, an undeclared naval war involving violations of U.S. shipping rights arising from the general European conflict spawned by the French Revolution. Fearing that war would be disastrous for the fragile American union, Adams pursued peace with honor, a policy that rankled many bellicose members of his own *Federalist party. Although Adams was grudgingly respected even by his political enemies for his integrity and stubborn honesty, his identification with the Federalists, and with the *Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (repressive measures about which he had personal reservations), stirred growing animosity among Thomas Jefferson's followers.

    Adams's peace initiatives, plus his long-standing feud with Alexander *Hamilton, so divided the Federalist party that Jefferson defeated Adams in 1800. Yet his policies kept the peace, leading him to characterize his presidential diplomacy as the "most splendid diamond in my crown."

    Retiring to his farm in Braintree, Adams wrote his memoirs and essays on his wartime diplomacy and conducted a voluminous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson and others on political theory and the American Revolution. Like Jefferson, he died on the fiftieth anniversary of Independence, 4 July 1826.

    [See also Adams, Abigail; Early Republic, Era of the; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Revolution and Constitution, Era of.]


· John Ferling, John Adams: A Life, 1992. Joseph J. Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, 1993.

—John Ferling


ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY (1767-1848), sixth president of the United States. Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the son of John *Adams and Abigail *Adams, John Quincy Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1787. Apart from a brief interlude practicing law in Massachusetts, he spent almost his entire adult life in public service and politics. Beginning at age fourteen as the secretary to the U.S. minister to Russia, Francis Dana, he subsequently held overseas posts in England, the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, Ghent, and again in England before becoming President James *Monroe's secretary of state in 1817. A tough, belligerent negotiator, he seemed like "a bulldog among spaniels," according to one English diplomat.

    As secretary of state, Adams was an aggressive advocate of *expansionism. He not only supported Andrew *Jackson's invasion of Spanish Florida in 1819, but used it to bully Spain into negotiating a transcontinental settlement, the *Adams-Onís Treaty (1819), which gave Florida to the United States and ended Spanish claims to the Pacific Northwest. In 1823, when the British foreign secretary suggested a joint Anglo-American manifesto against further European intervention in Latin America, Adams successfully urged President Monroe to issue such a pronouncement unilaterally and wrote much of what became known as the *Monroe Doctrine.

    In the four-way presidential race of 1824, Adams finished second in both the popular vote and in the *electoral college. Since none of the candidates received a majority of the electoral votes, the election went to the House of Representatives where Henry *Clay threw his support to Adams over the front runner Andrew Jackson. When President Adams subsequently made Clay secretary of state, Jackson denounced the appointment as a "corrupt bargain," resigned his Senate seat, and began organizing for the next election. Adams, never popular in the slave states, made Jackson's task easier by laying out a program of national planning that infuriated Thomas *Jefferson's strict constructionist followers, violated the concept of *states' rights, and thus drove virtually the entire *South into Jackson's camp. With most of his nationalistic proposals mocked by the opposition and rejected by Congress, Adams was denied a second term in 1828—the same ignominy his father had experienced in 1800. Jackson defeated him handily, winning 92 percent of the electoral vote in the slave states, 49 percent in the free states.

    In 1830, Adams won election to the House of Representatives from the Plymouth district of Massachusetts. Serving until his death in 1848, he led the long (1836-1844) fight against the "gag rule," a House rule that automatically tabled *antislavery petitions and barred Congress from discussing the sensitive *slavery issue. He also led the battle against the annexation of Texas (1836) and against the *Mexican War (1846-1848). His sharp tongue and tactical dexterity made him a powerful figure in Congress and a folk hero to much of the North, earning him the sobriquet "Old Man Eloquent."

    [See also Amistad Case; Early Republic, Era of the; Expansionism; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of State; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: House of Representatives; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Texas Republic and Annexation.]


· Mary W. M. Hargreaves, The Presidency of John Quincy Adams, 1985. Leonard L. Richards, Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams, 1986. —Leonard L. Richards


ADAMS, SAMUEL (1722-1803), radical patriot and political agitator, described by Thomas *Jefferson as "truly the Man of the revolution." A *Boston native and Harvard graduate (1740), Adams, after several business failures and an interlude as a tax collector, gained prominence as a brilliant polemicist and popular leader in opposition to the *Stamp Act (1765-1766) and the Townshend Duties (1767-1770). He was elected a member (1765-1774) and then clerk (1766-1780) of the Massachusetts legislature. Instrumental in drafting the Circular Letter of 1768, Adams energized the revolutionary movement during the so-called years of quiet by helping form the *Committees of Correspondence (1772) and selectively publishing the incriminating correspondence of colonial officials including Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson. A planner of the *Boston Tea Party in 1773, Adams led the opposition to the Coercive Acts and supported the radical Suffolk Resolves endorsed by the Second *Continental Congress in 1774. Acknowledging his central role, General Thomas Gage, the military governor of Boston, excluded him from the general amnesty he issued in 1774.

    A member of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1781, Adams signed the *Declaration of Independence. His influence diminished thereafter, although he served in the convention that drafted the Massachusetts state constitution in 1779-1780, and was lieutenant governor (1789-1794) and then governor of Massachusetts (1794-1797). His neglect among the pantheon of revolutionary heroes might be explained by his prominence in state rather than national politics. More agitator than statesman, Samuel Adams was nevertheless a preeminent early leader in the independence movement. He gained posthumous celebrity in the late twentieth century when a popular Boston beer bore his name.

    [See also Revolution and Constitution, Era of.]


· John C. Miller, Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda, 1936. Pauline Maier, The Old Revolutionaries: Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams, 1980.

—Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy


ADAMS-ONÍS TREATY (1819), also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, established the United States' first transcontinental boundary and acquired Florida. The treaty arose from a long-standing territorial dispute between the United States and Spain over the precise boundaries of the *Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Spanish officials, citing a prior agreement with France, first contested the legitimacy of Napoleon's sale of the Louisiana territory and then attempted to define its boundaries as the eastern bank of the *Mississippi River (effectively nullifying the purchase) and excluding the province of West Florida, claimed by the United States. The Napoleonic Wars delayed negotiations until 1817, when they quickly became deadlocked.

    Andrew *Jackson's invasion of Florida during the First *Seminole War of 1817-1818 broke the deadlock. Spain's minister to the United States and chief negotiator Don Luis de Onís, confronted by the prospect of losing Florida to American conquest, agreed to Secretary of State John Quincy *Adams's proposed treaty, which ceded both East and West Florida to the United States and established a transcontinental boundary extending to the Oregon coast. In exchange, Adams gave up a dubious claim to Texas and assumed five million dollars in American citizens' claims against the Spanish government.

    By resolving the dispute with Spain, the Adams-Onís Treaty finalized the Louisiana Purchase. By conceding the claim to Texas, the agreement contributed to later agitation for the "reannexation of Texas," which proslavery expansionists alleged had been wrongly given away. The western boundary established by the treaty acknowledged *California and the *Southwest as Mexican territory, setting the stage for the conquest of those lands by the United States in 1848.

    [See also Early Republic, Era of the; Expansionism; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Texas Republic and Annexation.]


· Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 1949. William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire, 1992.

—William Earl Weeks


ADDAMS, JANE (1860-1935), settlement-house leader. Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois. Her mother died when she was three; her father, a Quaker businessman and state legislator, subsequently remarried. Graduating from Rockford (Illinois) Female Seminary in 1881, Addams entered the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania but dropped out because of illness. Eight years of foreign travel, vocational uncertainty, and unfocused anxiety ended when Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr purchased Hull House in 1889 as a "settlement house," or neighborhood social center on *Chicago's Halsted Street.

    Supported by wealthy Chicagoans, especially Addams's longtime partner Mary Rozet Smith, Hull House offered its working-class immigrant neighborhood educational and cultural programs as well as practical help and even material aid. It also became a political and intellectual center for a group of women intellectuals excluded from university and governmental careers. Florence *Kelley began her reform career at Hull House. Pursuing the agendas of Progressivism, Addams and her colleagues fought prostitution and saloons and lobbied for sweatshop regulation, health and housing codes, and worker-protection laws, especially for women. Addams encouraged women social experts and helped bring into politics the influence of organized women, whom she viewed as "social housekeepers" with different political priorities from men.

    Addams was notably successful in shaping her own image. Her two memoirs, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910) and Second Twenty Years (1930), created a benevolent, all-knowing persona. Although remembered as a social worker, Addams was primarily a public intellectual who lectured widely and published extensively on reform issues. Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) offers the most comprehensive statement of her social thought. She was active in the *woman suffrage movement, and in 1912 backed Theodore *Roosevelt's *Progressive party candidacy. John *Dewey often visited Hull House during his years at the University of Chicago.

    A lifelong pacifist, Addams broke with Dewey and other * Progressive Era reformers to oppose America's entry into *World War I. During the war she lectured for Herbert *Hoover's Food Administration, which supplied food to war refugees. She described her wartime experiences in Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922). From 1919 to her death she was president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In the 1920s, Addams's *pacifism and her support for the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 (providing federally funded health care for mothers and children) made her a target of Redbaiters. But by 1931, when she won the Nobel Peace Prize, her reputation had recovered. While scholars have noted the race and class limitations of the settlement movement, Addams is widely recognized as an advocate for social citizenship and leader in the Progressive Era reform movement.

    [See also Immigration; Prostitution and Antiprostitution; Settlement Houses; Society of Friends; Twenties, The.]


· Allen F. Davis, American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams, 1973. Ruth Crocker, Social Work and Social Order: The Settlement Movement in Two Industrial Cities, 1992.

—Ruth Crocker


ADKINS v. CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL (1923). During the early twentieth century, Progressives sought to ameliorate the consequences of *industrialization by enacting minimum wage laws. Conservatives and business groups challenged these laws in the courts. In Adkins, the U.S. *Supreme Court, by a vote of five to three, struck down a 1918 congressional statute setting a minimum wage for women in the District of Columbia. The 1918 law, the Court held, violated the liberty of contract protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Writing for the Court, Justice George Sutherland emphasized that under the *Constitution, freedom of contract was the general rule and restraint the exception. Minimum wage laws, he argued, foisted on employers a welfare function that properly belonged to society as a whole. Moreover, Sutherland insisted, in light of the *Nineteenth Amendment, women could not be more restricted in the exercise of contractual freedom than men.

    Chief Justice William Howard *Taft and Justice Oliver Wendell *Holmes Jr. wrote dissenting opinions. Taft maintained that legislators could regulate the hours of work or minimum wages of women under the government's police powers. Holmes expressed doubt about the constitutional basis for the liberty-of-contract doctrine.

    The Adkins decision stands as a classic expression of the Court's commitment to contractual freedom. It made clear the Court's determination to keep wages and prices free of regulatory interference. During the *New Deal Era of the 1930s, however, the Supreme Court moderated its long-standing commitment to economic liberty and freedom of contract. Adkins was overruled in *West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish (1937), in which the justices, on a five-four vote, sustained a Washington State minimum wage law.

    [See also Bill of Rights; Progressive Era. ]


· Hadley Arkes, The Return of George Sutherland: Restoring a Jurisprudence of Natural Rights, 1994. James W. Ely Jr., The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, 2d ed., 1998.

—James W. Ely Jr.


ADOLESCENCE. See Life Stages.


ADOPTION. See Childbirth; Child Rearing; Family.


ADVERTISING. From its origins in colonial handbills, signboards, and newspaper announcements, American advertising by the late twentieth century had grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. Its transformations reflect both the course of American *business and the shifting patterns of American culture. For most of its history, observers have seen advertising as a central feature of the American social landscape and have considered the United States the "promised land" of advertising. For example, historian David Potter (People of Plenty, 1954) treated advertising as emblematic of American abundance and a pervasive means of democratic social control.

    In the *Colonial Era, where production for market was constrained, currency in short supply, and goods rarely identified with their producers, advertising remained small scale and intermittent. Yet by the eighteenth century a network of shopkeepers and craftsmen sought customers among the growing number of colonists who could afford manufactured amenities and luxuries such as pottery, books, furniture, and musical instruments. Sellers trumpeted the wide range of choices available and portrayed their goods as appropriate for refined and fashionable men and women. Benjamin *Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette introduced innovations such as headlines, illustrations, and advertising notices placed next to news items. At times, more than half of the newspaper was devoted to advertising. While it may be an exaggeration to speak of an eighteenth-century Anglo-American "consumer revolution," the spread of advertising impressed observers on both sides of the Atlantic.

    Nevertheless, down to the *Civil War, advertising developed slowly. Steam-powered presses and cheap newsprint allowed the emergence of a "penny press" in the 1830s, but most of these innovations limited attractive displays and confined advertisements within column rules. Display advertising became common only in the 1870s. *Magazines generally segregated advertisements in the back pages and barred eye-catching display. "Announcement" remained a near-synonym for "advertisement."

    There were exceptions. P. T. *Barnum's promotions usually involved finding free publicity, but he wrote accurately in his autobiography, "I thoroughly understood the art of advertising." Jay Cooke's marketing of Union bonds during the Civil War entailed vivid advertisements in papers across the North. The pioneers of persuasive advertising copy, however, were usually medicine makers. Employing a range of media, these "Toadstool Millionaires" (the title of a 1961 book by James Harvey Young) won customers for their nostrums with emotional appeals to fear and faith.

The appearance of mass retailers, in particular downtown *department stores, and the rise of mass-produced, brandnamed consumer goods after 1880 gave advertising much of its modern form. Volney Palmer, generally considered the nation's first advertising agent, and his successors solicited advertisers to fill space in the newspapers and magazines they represented. By the 1890s, advertising agencies were taking over the preparation of advertising copy and design, and being compensated through a discount for the space they purchased from publisher. Freelance copywriters gave way to a new generation of agency employees. In the early 1900s, agencies increasingly boasted of their broad competence as sales and marketing professionals. The 1912 introduction of Procter & Gamble's shortening, Crisco, involved a multifaceted marketing campaign. Meanwhile, new general-interest magazines provided a medium for advertising to a professional and managerial middleclass market. By *World War I, the institutional triad of advertisers, agencies, and media had assumed roles that largely endure today. Meanwhile, the industry developed voluntary associations to tighten standards and win popular respect. The leading trade journal, Printer's Ink, and the Associated Advertising Clubs of America launched an energetic, if self-serving, "Truth in Advertising" movement to upgrade ethical standards.

    Although President Calvin *Coolidge in 1926 proclaimed advertising "part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind," advertising experts thought of themselves in less exalted terms. They hoped to entice ill-informed and manipulable consumers into acceptance of modern, corporate-dominated society. In the 1930s, Depression Era advertising turned shrill, playing upon Americans' economic worries and matching the industry's combative response to *New Deal Era consumer-protection proposals. As they had in 1917-1918, advertising leaders in *World War II sought legitimation through contributions to the war effort. The War Advertising Council, founded in 1942, lived on after 1945 as the Advertising Council, usually promoting uncontroversial causes like forest fire prevention. The subtexts consistently touted advertising's social benefits and the industry's service to the nation.

    Advertising in the postwar era both facilitated and reflected economic prosperity and a culture of consumption. Expenditures grew from under $3 billion in 1945 to about $187 billion in 1997. *Television advertising accounted for approximately one-quarter of this. TV's combination of visual appeals, motion, and sound gave advertisements new dimensions and greater power. Although postwar advertising generally emphasized conformity through consumption of standardized products, by the 1960s segmentation was becoming a dominant marketing strategy. Product distinctions proliferated, mass media gave way to specialized ones, and advertisements "positioned" products for targeted "niche markets." Advertising agencies diversified as well. A younger generation of men and women, often from ethnic minorities, undertook what they liked to call a creative revolution: elements of fantasy, humor, irony, and even self-mockery assumed a larger place in the repertoire of persuasion. However, advertising remained a business; agencies knew that clients' sales constituted the bottom line. Geographic expansion also characterized late twentieth-century advertising. While New York's Madison Avenue still symbolized the industry, large firms were increasingly multinational, and agencies from Richmond, Virginia, to Poland, Oregon, gained industry acclaim.

    As it became more ubiquitous, advertising attracted scholarly and critical attention. While some scholars pointed out the uncertainties and limits of its sway, a host of cultural critics including Vance Packard (The Hidden Persuaders, 1957) warned of its persuasive powers and of the materialism and consumerism it was said to promote. Yet despite the attacks, at the end of the century, advertising remained central to the nation's economy and culture. With its ever-changing forms and styles,. its omnipresence seemed assured for the foreseeable future.

    [See also Consumer Culture; Consumer Movement; Fifties, The; Gilded Age; Journalism; Mass Marketing; Post-Cold War Era.]


· Otis A. Pease, The Responsibilities of American Advertising, 1958. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness, 1976. Daniel Pope, The Making of Modern Advertising, 1983. Stephen R. Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 1984. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 1985. Richard S. Tedlow, New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America, 1990. T. J. Jackson Lears. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America, 1994.

—Daniel A. Pope


AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. The term "affirmative action" first appeared in a legislative context in the 1935 *National Labor Relations Act and was later written into state laws prohibiting racial discrimination in employment. But the phrase, implying simply that government agencies should try to prevent discrimination against *African Americans, initially attracted little notice. Prior to the 1960s, virtually no one saw affirmative action as a way of giving minorities preferential treatment in hiring, promotions, and admissions.

    More than anything else, the *civil rights movement helped change the meaning of affirmative action. In 1964, after years of black protest, Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act, which among other things created new agencies run by officials eager to bring minorities into the mainstream of American life. By 1965, with the passage of the Voting Bights Act, the legal barriers to integration began to crumble and government and civil rights leaders began to confront a new, more difficult issue: how to give underprivileged minorities a fair shot at economic and social equality.

    One answer was affirmative action. In 1965 President Lyndon B. *Johnson issued an executive order establishing the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, which, along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, began requiring companies for the first time to set numerical racial hiring goals. The trend toward quotas, goals, and timetables continued into the late sixties, as the Richard M. *Nixon administration supported this new, more radical interpretation of affirmative action.

    The nation's major institutions, under pressure from consumers, employees, students, and federal bureaucrats, and aware of recent U.S. *Supreme Court decisions supporting race and gender preferences, quickly began devising their own affirmative action programs. By 1978, when the Supreme Court ruled in Bakke v. University of California that universities could use race as a plus factor in admissions, affirmative action had become deeply entrenched in American society.

    By the late twentieth century, affirmative action had become a source of great controversy. Opponents tended to see racial preferences as unjust—an unfair government program that exacerbated an already large racial divide, harming whites while stigmatizing blacks as needing preferential treatment. Opponents also contended that affirmative action mainly aided more privileged African Americans and did little to help poor blacks.

    In the 1990s, *Republican party politicians and activists lobbied hard against affirmative action, helping pass Proposition 209, a 1996 California initiative to abolish racial and gender preferences, and backing the Regents of the University of California who in 1995 voted to end affirmative action in hiring and admissions. That same year, President Bill *Clinton tried to stake out a middle ground on the issue, arguing that affirmative action was a flawed though necessary response to centuries of discrimination against women, blacks, and other groups.

    Many in the civil rights community went further in their defense of affirmative action, arguing that white males still held a disproportionate number of powerful positions in society, and that laws and programs mandating preferences were one way to combat that imbalance. These supporters also argued that *racism and sexism were still rampant, and that affirmative action was a small but just part of national social policy. As the twentieth century ended, the debate over affirmative action appeared unlikely to end anytime soon.

    [See also Civil Rights Legislation; Post-Cold War Era; Sixties, The.]


· Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972, 1990. Steven M. Cahn, ed., The Affirmative Action Debate, 1995.

—Matthew Dallek


AFFLUENT SOCIETY, THE (1958). In response to *World War II, the *Cold War, and the global economic preeminence of the United States during the 1940s and 1950s, many intellectuals reassessed the benefits of American democracy and *capitalism. John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society emerged as one of the most influential texts of this genre. A Harvard economist and *Democratic party political adviser, the Canadian-born Galbraith questioned the efficacy of Americans' support for Keynesian economic practices in an age of material abundance. Tax and fiscal policies aimed at promoting constant economic growth had made sense during a time of deprivation (as in the Great Depression of the 1930s), but in the booming postwar years, Galbraith argued, a policy of economic liberalism would ultimately lead to financial and moral instability.

    Specifically, Galbraith criticized the United States's focus on economic production. Corporations committed to growth deliberately manufactured consumer demand for products the public neither needed nor wanted. Such a system, Galbraith predicted, would create debt, inflation, and overproduction, and thus ultimately lead to economic depression. He further contended that consumer spending had created a horrible social imbalance. As Americans feverishly invested in cars, televisions, and a multitude of other consumer goods, public services and public resources such as parks and other facilities serving the common good were neglected and impoverished. To redress this imbalance, Galbraith proposed a program to reduce private spending and increase government investment in social programs. Although few followed Galbraith's prescription for change, The Affluent Society represented an important voice of dissent at a time when most intellectuals and policy makers uncritically celebrated American capitalism.

    [See also Consumer Culture; Depressions, Economic; Economics; Fifties, The; Keynesianism.]


· Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s, 2d ed., 1989.

—Jennifer L. Kalish

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