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Alexander Hamilton
The outspoken leader of the Federalists and one of the authors of The Federalist Papers. Hamilton supported the formation of the Constitution and later, as secretary of treasury under Washington, spearheaded the government’s Federalist initiatives, most notably through the creation of the Bank of the United States.
Warren G. Harding
President from 1921 until his death in 1923. Harding ushered in a decade of Republican dominance in the U.S. He accommodated the needs of big business and scaled back government involvement in social programs. After his death, Harding’s administration was found to be rife with corruption.
Harlem Renaissance
The flowering of black culture in New York’s Harlem neighborhood during the 1920s. Black writers and artists produced plays, poetry, and novels that often reflected the unique African American experience in America and in Northern cities in particular.
Harpers Ferry
1859 raid on a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, led by John Brown. Twenty-one men seized a federal arsenal in a failed attempt to incite a slave rebellion. Brown was caught and hanged.
Hartford Convention
A meeting of Federalists near the end of the War of 1812, in which the New England-based party enumerated its complaints against the ruling Republican Party. The Federalists, already losing power steadily, hoped that antiwar sentiment would lead the nation to support their cause and return them to power. Perceived victory in the war, however, turned many against the Federalists, whose actions in Hartford were labeled traitorous and antagonistic to the unity and cooperation of the Union.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Early American fiction writer. His most famous work, The Scarlet Letter (1850), explored the moral dilemmas of adultery in a Puritan community.
Hayes-Tilden Compromise
Resolved the conflict arising from the election of 1876, in which Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote but Republican leaders contested some states’ election returns, thereby ensuring Republican Rutherford B. Hayes’s victory. To minimize protest from the Democratic Party, Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction by removing federal troops from the last two occupied states in the South.

Haymarket riot
1886 rally in Chicago to protest police brutality against striking workers. The rally became violent after someone threw a bomb, killing seven policemen and prompting a police backlash. After the riot, leaders of the Knights of Labor were arrested and imprisoned, and public support for the union cause plunged.
William Randolph Hearst
A prominant publisher who bought the New York Journal in the late 1890s. His paper, along with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, engaged in yellow journalism, printing sensational reports of Spanish activities in Cuba in order to win a circulation war between the two newspapers.
Helsinki Accords
Signed in 1975 by Gerald Ford, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, and the leaders of thirty-one other states in a promise to solidify European boundaries, respect human rights, and permit freedom of travel.
Ernest Hemingway
One of the best-known writers of the 1920s’ “l(fā)ost generation.” An expatriate, Hemingway produced a number of famous works during the 1920s, including The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929). A member of the Popular Front, Hemingway fought in the Spanish Civil War, depicted in his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. His work, like that of many of his contemporaries, reflects the disillusionment and despair of the time.
Hiroshima
A Japanese city that was site of the first-ever atomic bomb attack. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 70,000 of its citizens instantaneously and injuring another 70,000, many of whom later died of radiation poisoning.
Alger Hiss
Longtime government employee who, in 1948, was accused by Time editor Whitaker Chambers of spying for the USSR. After a series of highly publicized hearings and trials, Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 and sentenced to five years imprisonment, emboldening conservatives to redouble their efforts to root out subversives within the government.
Adolph Hitler
Became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Hitler led the nation to economic recovery by mobilizing industry for the purposes of war. His fascist Nazi regime attempted to secure global hegemony for Germany, undertaking measures of mass genocide and ushering Europe into World War II.
Holocaust
The Nazis’ systematic persecution and extermination of European Jews from 1933 until 1945. More than 6 million Jews died in concentration camps throughout Germany and Nazi-occupied territory.
Homestead Act
Passed in 1862. The Homestead Act encouraged settlement of the West by offering 160 acres of land to anyone who would pay $10, live on the land for five years, and cultivate and improve it.
Homestead strike
1892 Pittsburgh steel workers’ strike against the Carnegie Steel Company to protest a pay cut and 70-hour workweek. Ten workers were killed in a riot that began when 300 “scabs” from New York (Pinkerton detectives) arrived to break the strike. Federal troops were called in to suppress the violence.
Herbert Hoover
President from 1929 to 1933, during the stock market collapse and the height of the Great Depression. A conservative, Hoover made only limited efforts to control the economic and social problems of the nation—efforts that were generally considered to be too little, too late. He did, however, set the stage for many future New Deal measures.
J. Edgar Hoover
Head of the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972. He aggressively investigated suspected subversives during the Cold War.
Hooverville
Communities of destitute Americans living in shanties and makeshift shacks. Hoovervilles sprung up around most major U.S. cities in the early 1930s, providing a stark reminder of Herbert Hoover’s failure to alleviate the poverty of the Great Depression.
House of Burgesses
Established in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The House of Burgesses is considered to be the New World’s first representative government. It consisted of 22 representatives from 11 districts of colonists.
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
During McCarthyism, provided the congressional forum in which many hearings about suspected communists in the government took place.
Henry Hudson
An English explorer sponsored by the Dutch East India Company. In 1609, Hudson sailed up the river than now bears his name, nearly reaching present-day Albany. His explorations gave the Dutch territorial claims to the Hudson Bay region.
Hull House
An early settlement house founded in Chicago in 1889 by Jane Addams. Hull House provided education, health care, and employment aid to poor families.
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein was the leader of Iraq. In August 1990, he led an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, sparking the Gulf War.
Anne Hutchinson
A dissenter in the Massachusetts Bay Colony who caused a schism in the Puritan community. Hutchinson’s faction lost out in a power struggle for the governorship and she was expelled from the colony in 1637. She traveled southward with a number of her followers, establishing the settlement of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.