Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) abolitionists, in U.S. history, particularly in the three decades before the Civil War, members of the movement that agitated for the compulsory emancipation of the slaves. Abolitionists are distingui...

(Encyclopedia) American Revolution, 1775–83, struggle by which the Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic seaboard of North America won independence from Great Britain and became the United States. It is also called th...

(Encyclopedia) New Orleans ôrˈlēənz –lənz, ôrlēnzˈ [key], city (2006 pop. 187,525), coextensive with Orleans parish, SE La., between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, 107 mi (172 km) by water f...

(Encyclopedia) State, United States Department of, executive department of the federal government responsible, under the President's direction, for the making and execution of American foreign policy. Before and ...

(Encyclopedia) Constitutional Convention, in U.S. history, the 1787 meeting in which the Constitution of the United States was drawn up. The convention at Philadelphia drew up one of the most influential document...

(Encyclopedia) South, the, region of the United States embracing the southeastern and south-central parts of the country. Traditionally, all states S of the Mason-Dixon Line and the Ohio River (except West Virginia)...

(Encyclopedia) Enlightenment, term applied to the mainstream of thought of 18th-century Europe and America. Centered in Paris, the movement gained international character at cosmopolitan salons. Masonic lodges pla...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Colorado kŏlərădˈə, –rădˈō, –räˈdō [key], state, W central United States, one of the Rocky Mt. states. It is bordered by Wyoming (N), Nebraska (N, E), Kansas (E), Oklahoma and Ne...

(Encyclopedia) Communist party, in the United States, political party that espoused the Marxist-Leninist principles of communism. In 1945, Browder's policy was attacked as being one of the “right deviationism,�...

(Encyclopedia) biography, reconstruction in print or on film, of the lives of real men and women. Together with autobiography—an individual's interpretation of his own life—it shares a venerable tradition, meeti...