Unit 6

Question 1

Sand Creek Massacre

Answer 1

The near annihilation in 1864 of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne band by Colorado troops under Colonel John Chivington’s orders to “kill and scalp all, big and little.”

Question 2

Treaty of Fort Laramie

Answer 2

The treaty acknowledging U.S. defeat in the Great Sioux War in 1868 and supposedly guaranteeing the Sioux perpetual land and hunting rights in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.

Question 3

Edmunds-Tucker Act

Answer 3

1887 act which destroyed the temporal power of the Mormon Church by confiscating all assets over $50,000 and establishing a federal commission to oversee all elections in the Utah territory.

Question 4

Lynching

Answer 4

Execution, usually by a mob, without trial.

Question 5

Homestead Act of 1862

Answer 5

Law passed by Congress in May 1862 providing homesteads with 160 acres of free land in exchange for improving the land within five years of the grant.

Question 6

Morrill Act of 1862

Answer 6

Act by which “land-grant” colleges acquired space for campuses in return for promising to institute agricultural programs.

Question 7

Forest Management Act

Answer 7

1897 act which, along with the National Reclamation Act, set the federal government on the path of large-scale regulatory activities.

Question 8

Omaha Act of 1882

Answer 8

Act which allowed the establishment of individual title to tribal lands.

Question 9

Dawes Severalty Act

Answer 9

An 1887 law terminating tribal ownership of land and allotting some parcels of land to individual Indians with the remainder opened for white settlers.

Question 10

Vertical Integration

Answer 10

The consolidation of numerous production functions, from the extraction of the raw materials to the distribution and marketing of the finished products, under the direction of one firm.

Question 11

Horizontal Combination

Answer 11

The merger of competitors in the same industry.

Question 12

Gospel of Wealth

Answer 12

Thesis that hard work and perseverance lead to wealth, implying that poverty is a character flaw.

Question 13

Chinese Exclusion Act

Answer 13

Act that suspended Chinese immigration, limited the civil rights of resident Chinese, and forbade their naturalization.

Question 14

Knights of Labor

Answer 14

Labor union founded in 1869 that included skilled and unskilled workers irrespective of race or gender.

Question 15

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

Answer 15

Union formed in 1886 that organized skilled workers along craft lines and emphasized a few workplace issues rather than a broad social program.

Question 16

Tenements

Answer 16

Four- to six-story residential dwellings, once common in New York, built on tiny lots without regard to providing ventilation or light.

Question 17

Gilded Age

Answer 17

Term applied to late nineteenth-century America that refers to the shallow display and worship of wealth characteristic of that period.

Question 18

Women’s Educational and Industrial Union

Answer 18

Boston organization offering classes to wage-earning women.

Question 19

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

Answer 19

The 1887 law that expanded federal power over business by prohibiting pooling and discriminatory rates by railroads and establishing the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Question 20

Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act

Answer 20

A law of 1883 that reformed the spoils system by prohibiting government workers from making political contributions and creating the Civil Service Commission to oversee their appointment on the basis of merit rather than politics.

Question 21

Populist Movement

Answer 21

A major third party of the 1890s formed on the basis of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance and other reform organizations.

Question 22

Grange

Answer 22

The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, a national organization of farm owners formed after the Civil War.

Question 23

Farmers’ Alliance

Answer 23

A broad mass movement in the rural South and West during the late nineteenth century, encompassing several organizations and demanding economic and political reforms.

Question 24

Great Uprising

Answer 24

Unsuccessful railroad strike of 1877 to protest wage cuts and the use of federal troops against the strikers; the first nation-wide work stoppage in American history.

Question 25

Women’s Christian Temperance Movement

Answer 25

Women’s organization whose members visited schools to educate children about eh evils of alcohol, addressed prisoners, and blanketed men’s meetings with literature.

Question 26

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

Answer 26

The organization, formed in 1890, that coordinated the ultimately successful campaign to achieve women’s right to vote.

Question 27

Free silver

Answer 27

Philosophy that the government should expand the money supply by purchasing and coining all the silver offered to it.

Question 28

Sherman Silver Purchase Act

Answer 28

1890 act which directed the Treasury to increase the amount of currency coined from silver minded in the West and also permitted the U.S. government to print paper currency backed by the silver.

Question 29

Nativism

Answer 29

Favoring the interests and culture of native-born inhabitants over those of immigrants.

Question 30

Jim Crow laws

Answer 30

Segregation laws that became widespread in the South during the 1890s.

Question 31

Segregation

Answer 31

A system of racial control that separated the races, initially by custom but increasingly by law during and after Reconstruction.

Question 32

Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer 32

Supreme Court decision holding that Louisiana’s railroad segregation law did not violate the Constitution as long as the railroads or the state provided equal accommodations.

Question 33

Grandfather clauses

Answer 33

Rules that required potential voters to demonstrate that their grandfathers had been eligible to vote; used in some southern states after 1890 to limit the black electorate

Question 34

Poll taxes

Answer 34

Taxes imposed on voters as a requirement for voting.