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greenback

(Encyclopedia)greenback, in U.S. history, legal tender notes unsecured by specie (coin). In 1862, under the exigencies of the Civil War, the U.S. government first issued legal tender notes (popularly called greenba...

rock carvings and paintings

(Encyclopedia)rock carvings and paintings, designs inscribed on rock surfaces and huge stone monuments in many parts of the world by prehistoric or preindustrial peoples. They have been found on every continent and...

Beauregard, Pierre Gustave Toutant

(Encyclopedia)Beauregard, Pierre Gustave Toutant bōˈrĭgärd [key], 1818–93, Confederate general, b. St. Bernard parish, La., grad. West Point, 1838. As engineer on the staff of Winfield Scott in the Mexican Wa...

Schurz, Carl

(Encyclopedia)Schurz, Carl sho͝orts [key], 1829–1906, American political leader, b. Germany. He studied at the Univ. of Bonn and participated in the revolutionary uprisings of 1848–49 in Germany. Compelled to ...

Baldwin, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Baldwin, Robert, 1804–58, Canadian statesman, leader of the movement for representative government in Canada, b. York (now Toronto), Ont. His father, William Warren Baldwin (1775–1844), was a lead...

Reconstruction

(Encyclopedia)Reconstruction, 1865–77, in U.S. history, the period of readjustment following the Civil War. At the end of the Civil War, the defeated South was a ruined land. The physical destruction wrought by t...

damages

(Encyclopedia)damages, money award that the judgment of a court requires the defendant in a suit to pay to the plaintiff as compensation for the loss or injury inflicted. Damages are the form of legal redress most ...

Chinese exclusion

(Encyclopedia)Chinese exclusion, policy of prohibiting immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States; initiated in 1882. From the time of the U.S. acquisition of California (1848) there had been a large infl...

mausoleum

(Encyclopedia)mausoleum môsəlēˈəm [key], a sepulchral structure or tomb, especially one of some size and architectural pretension, so called from the sepulcher of that name at Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, erecte...

photographic processing

(Encyclopedia)photographic processing, set of procedures by which the latent, or invisible, image produced when a photographic film is exposed to light is made into a permanent visible image. The negative may b...