Ch 11 Westward Expansion

Question 1

homestead Act

Answer 1

-encouraged farmers to move west by offering 160 acres of land for cheap price
-offered to american citizens and immigrants becoming citizens
-$10 registration fee
-had to improve land somehow
-had to farm for at least 6 month
-had to be head of family or 21
-homesteaders flooded land wanting to get out of city
-immigrants were on tenant farms and wanted to be farmers again
-gave 610 plots 85 million acres

Question 2

Merrill Land Grant Act

Answer 2

-wants to help with education in the states
-federal governments gave money to the state governments to sell the land and use the money to build schools
-50 cents an acre

Question 3

transcontinental railroad

Answer 3

-federal government supports many acts to pay for it
-Central Pacific and Union Pacific pitted against each other
-whoever finishes first reaps more benefits through contracts with gov
-company will get 10 square miles on either side of the railroad to sell to people to make money
-encourages them to make more stopping point cities

Question 3

challenges of westward farmers

Answer 3

-yaoman farmers celebrated since jefferson
-idea of being self sufficient and independent tested on great plains
-extreme weather- blistering summer freezing winter
-no trees or railroads to get supplies for houses- house made of sod
-had to drill for water- water had typhoid
-sand storms
-hordes of locusts eat crops

Question 4

currier and Ives

Answer 4

-printing company that made postcards and pictures
-romanticised homestead life
-pictures had trees and wooden houses with wagons
-west didn’t actually have that

Question 5

collaboration on Plains

Answer 5

-in order to survive on the plains had to corporate
-rugged individualism- when neighbors got together to help each other build houses and fencing
-women did chores with other women to avoid isolation depression
-women that worked alone went mad

Question 6

agricultural innovations

Answer 6

-First US department of agriculture founded to give farmers info on new updated farming techniques
-better technology- drills, plows, etc

Question 7

bonanza farmers

Answer 7

-large farms that specialized in one or two cash crops
-started agrobusiness- producing enough to sell on foregin markets
-had the money to pay for latest technologies
-sent many small farmers back to the cities
-60% went down to 35% bc people weren’t needed anymore
-overproduction of grain made the price go down
-couldn’t pay off loans

Question 8

Women on the Frontier

Answer 8

-men were out on farms laboring, diaries and lettters showed that women were lonely
-Giants in the Earth OE Rolvaag- talks about life on praire- women gets lonely, goes mad, and kills herself
-O pioneers - Willa Cather- immigrant family goes to Nebraska and female character gets them there
-Role women played in west is reason west gave women the right to vote first
-Wyoming first to let women vote

Question 9

African Americans on the Frontier

Answer 9

-moved west to escape oppression
-very few are successful
-limited access to financial resources
-discrimination- most farmers came from south
-exodusters- group of AA men that got together and moved west
-fewer than 20% found success farming

Question 9

Mining and Lumbar

Answer 9

-gold and silver being found in places like pikes peak in NV
-caused gold rush
-chinese laborers getting away from railroads came and set up shops
-known as boomtowns because set up quickly made profit then abandoned
-Porcelain and performers came to boomtowns that were extravagant and lawless- wild west
-most didn’t find anything and sold their claims
-Anaconda Copper Company came and mines tin and copper instead of gold and silver

Question 9

Timber and Stone Act

Answer 9

-buy up goverment land that wasn’t suitable for farming for a cheap price
-provided lumbar to a growing nation for housing