Period 6.1-6.7

Question 1

Transcontinental Railroad

Answer 1

Railroad spanning from the East to West coast that was built jointly by the Union Pacific (started in the East) and the Central Pacific. This promoted settlement on the Great Plains and linked the West to the East.

Question 2

Homestead Act

Answer 2

Encouraged farming on the Great Plains by offering 160 acres of land free to any family that settled on it for a period of 5 years

Question 3

National Grange Movement

Answer 3

Organized by Oliver Kelley as a social and educational organization for farmers and their families, later becoming active in economics and politics by lobbying and establishing cooperatives.

Question 4

Dry Farming

Answer 4

Technique used on the Great Plains to make the most of the little moisture availible in the soil.

Question 5

Turner’s Frontier Thesis

Answer 5

Influential essay written by Jackson Turner that presented the settling of the frontier as an evolutionary process of civilization. First came hunters, then farmers, then towns and cities.

Question 6

Assimilation

Answer 6

The destruction of Native culture in favor of replacing it with a White one, in which reformers set up boarding schools to segregate Native children and teach them Farming and Industrial skills.

Question 7

Dawes Severalty Act

Answer 7

Designed to break up tribal organizations, it divided tribal lands into plots based on family size and granted US citizenship to those who stayed on the land for 25 years and “adopted the habits of civilized life”

Question 8

Little Big Horn

Answer 8

Ambush of U.S. troops serving under General George Custer by Sioux forces.

Question 9

Ghost Dance

Answer 9

Spiritual movement that White settlers interpreted as a call for war, the US army was sent to prevent the Natives from the practice

Question 10

Yosemite

Answer 10

State Park (later national) in California’s Yosemite Valley

Question 11

Yellowstone

Answer 11

First national Park, located in Yellowstone.

Question 12

Sharecropping

Answer 12

People who paid for the use of farmland with a share of the crop, this system kept many poor whites and recent freedmen in poverty

Question 13

Tuskegee Institute

Answer 13

Place in Alabama where African American scientist George Washington Carver promoted growing crops such as peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans. This shifted Southern Agriculture to a more diversified base.

Question 14

Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer 14

Case in which the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana Jim Crow law, spurring a wave of segregation laws in the South.

Question 15

Jim Crow laws

Answer 15

Segregationist laws requiring “separate but equal” accommodations for Black and White citizens.

Question 16

Literacy tests

Answer 16

Tests that required citizens to pass in order to vote, disproportionately affecting Black voters.

Question 17

Poll taxes

Answer 17

Fees that had to be paid in order to vote, disproportionately affecting Black voters.

Question 18

Grandfather clauses

Answer 18

Laws that gave a man the right to vote if his grandfather had voted in elections before Reconstruction, allowing poor, uneducated whites to circumnavigate Literacy tests and Poll taxes while disenfranchising freedmen.

Question 19

Lynch mobs

Answer 19

Mobs that would murder Black Americans, terrorizing or threatening them with the intent of preventing freedmen from voting or exercising other civil rights.

Question 20

Bessemer Process

Answer 20

Process developed by both Henry Bessemer in England and William Kelly in the US that created steel out of iron. The Great Lakes region had abundant coal reserves and access to iron ore, making it the center of steel production.

Question 21

Electric light

Answer 21

Invention by Thomas Edison’s laboratory that revolutionized people’s lives, especially in cities. Edison became a mythic figure.

Question 22

Consumer economy

Answer 22

Shift in America towards shopping and consumerism made possible by urbanization and advances in transportation and storage

Question 23

US Steel

Answer 23

Corporation sold by Carnegie to Morgan and was the first billion-dollar company. It became the largest enterprise in the world and controlled more than three fifths of the nation’s steel.

Question 24

Standard Oil

Answer 24

Trust company founded by John D. Rockefeller that controlled 90 percent of the oil refinery business and became a monopoly.

Question 25

Trust

Answer 25

An organization or board that manages the assets of other companies.

Question 26

Horizontal Integration

Answer 26

A process through which one company takes control of all of its former competitors in a specific industry, such as oil refining or coal mining.

Question 27

Vertical Integration

Answer 27

A process through which one company takes control of all stages of making a product in order to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase profits. (Carnegie Steel)

Question 28

Laissez-faire

Answer 28

The rejection of governmental regulation in business that grew in the 19th century.

Question 29

Social Darwinism

Answer 29

Modification of Darwin’s theory of natural selection by economic conservatives that believed in concentrating wealth in the hands of the “fit”.

Question 30

Iron Law of Wages

Answer 30

Philosophy of David Ricardo which argued that raising wages would increase the working population, and the availability of more workers would cause wages to fall, creating a cycle.

Question 31

Collective bargaining

Answer 31

The ability of workers to negotiate as a group with an employer over wages and working conditions

Question 32

Knights of Labor

Answer 32

National labor union operating in secret to avoid detection. Under Powderly, it went public and opened membership to all workers. The group advocated for an end to monopolies, trusts, and child labor, but lost support and slowly died after the violence of the Haymarket riot.

Question 33

American Federation of Labor

Answer 33

More moderate national labor union that solely focused on higher pay and better working conditions. Led by Samuel Gompers, who urged local unions to walk out.

Question 34

Homestead Strike

Answer 34

Instance in which Henry Clay Frick cut wages by 20 percent in one of Carnegie’s steel plants. He used a lockout, private guards, and strikebreakers to defeat the walkout after 5 months, majorly setting back the union movement.

Question 35

Pullman Strike

Answer 35

Railroad strike in which The American Railroad Union ordered workers not to handle any Pullman trains in response to wage cutting by the company. In response, Pullman’s cars were linked to mail trains, allowing the government to get involved and arrest the leaders of the union.