Period 6: Westward Expansion Flashcards
The railway line completed on May 10, 1869, connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines, enabling goods to move by railway from the eastern United States all the way to California.
transcontinental railroad
A tax or duty on foreign producers of goods coming into or imported into the United States; gave U.S. manufacturers a competitive advantage in the late 1800s.
protective tariff
An 1868 treaty that guaranteed the rights of U.S. missionaries in China and set official terms for the emigration of Chinese laborers to work in the United States.
Burlingame Treaty
An 1877 Supreme Court case that affirmed that states could regulate key businesses, such as railroads and grain elevators, if those businesses were “clothed in the public interest.”
Munn v. Illinois
The practice of backing a country’s currency with its reserves of gold. In 1873 the United States, following Great Britain and other European nations, began converting to the gold standard.
gold standard
A term used by those critical of an 1873 law directing the U.S. Treasury to cease minting silver dollars, retire Civil War-era greenbacks, and replace them with notes backed by the gold standard from an expanded system of national banks.
“Crime of 1873”
The 1862 act that gave 160 acres of free western land to any applicant who occupied and improved the land; led to the rapid development of the American West after the Civil War; facing arid conditions in the West, however, many homesteaders found themselves unable to live on their land.
Homestead Act
Authorized by the Morrill Act of 1862, federal lands were given to states for the creation of public universities to broaden educational opportunities and foster technical and scientific expertise.
land-grant colleges
A vein of silver ore discovered in Nevada in 1859, leading to one of the West’s most important mining booms. The lode was so rich that a Confederate expedition tried unsuccessfully to capture it during the Civil War; its output significantly altered the ratio of silver in circulation, leading to changes in monetary policy.
Comstock Lode
African Americans who walked or rode out of the Deep South following the Civil War, many settling on farms in Kansas and Colorado in hopes of finding peace and prosperity.
Exodusters
Established in 1872 by Congress; the United States’s first national park.
Yellowstone
The November 29, 1864 massacre of more than a hundred peaceful Cheyennes, largely women and children, by John M. Chivington’s Colorado militia.
Sand Creek massacre
A massacre in December 1866 in which 1,500 Sioux warriors lured Captain William Fetterman and 80 soldiers from a Wyoming fort and attacked them.
Fetterman massacre
A 1903 Supreme Court ruling that Congress could make whatever Indian policies it chose, ignoring all existing treaties.
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
The 1887 law that gave Native Americans severalty (individual ownership of land) by dividing reservations into homesteads. The law was a disaster for Native peoples, resulting over several decades in the loss of 66 percent of lands held by Indians at the time of the law’s passage.
Dawes Severalty Act
