Vocab

Question 1

Great Plains

Answer 1

a semiarid territory, populated by Native Americans, perfect for faming and agriculture

Question 2

Transcontinental Railroad

Answer 2

gateway to the West

Question 3

Treaty of Fort Laramie

Answer 3

confined tribes on the northern plains to designated areas in an attempt to keep white settlers from invading their land, white miners did not keep this agreement

Question 4

Treaty of Medicine Lodge

Answer 4

provided reservation lands for the Comanche, Kiowa Apache, and Southern Arapaho to settle, white hunters invaded this territory

Question 5

Battle of the Little BigHorn

Answer 5

876 Indians beat American troops in Montana as they waged a merciless war of annihilation against the Indians

Question 6

Buffalo soldiers

Answer 6

represented a cross section of the postwar black population looking for new opportunities that were now available after their emancipation, battled the Indians

Question 6

Dawes Act

Answer 6

1887, ended tribal rule and divided Indian lands into 160-acre parcels, eventually indians would receive american citizenship and have to abandon their religious and cultural rites and practices

Question 7

Ghost Dance

Answer 7

Dance performed by thousands of Lakota Sioux in the northern plains hoping of renewed Indian resistance, influenced the massacre at Wounded Knee

Question 8

Comstock Lode

Answer 8

Sierra Nevada, where miners extracted around $350 million worth of silver

Question 9

Long Drive

Answer 9

along the Chisholm Trail, cowboys move cattle from ranches in Texas through Oklahoma to rail depots in Kansas towns, cattle then shipped by train eastward to slaughterhouses in chicago

Question 10

Homestead Act

Answer 10

an incentive for western migration, established procedures for distributing 160 acre lots to western settlers on condition that they develop and farm their land

Question 11

Mormons

Answer 11

sought refuge in the West for religious reasons, attracted more than 85,000 settlers in Utah

Question 12

Californios

Answer 12

Mexicans and Spaniards in California that established themselves as farmers and ranchers - lost that land after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican American War

Question 13

Chinese Exclusion Act

Answer 13

1882, banned Chinese immigration into the United States and prohibited those Chinese already in the country from becoming naturalized American citizens

Question 14

New South

Answer 14

term popularized by newspaper editor Henry Grady in the 1880s. Grady believed that industrial development would lead to the emergence of a New South.

Question 15

Convict lease

Answer 15

the system used by southern governments to furnish mainly African American prison labor to plantation owners and industrialists and to raise revenue for the states. In practice, convict labor replaced slavery as the means of providing a forced labor supply.

Question 16

Vertical Integration

Answer 16

The control of all elements in a supply chain by a single firm. For example, Andrew Carnegie, a vertically integrated steel producer, sought to own suppliers of all the raw materials used in steel production

Question 17

Horizontal integration

Answer 17

The ownership of as many firms as possible in a given industry by a single owner. John D. Rockefeller pursued a strategy of horizontal integration when he bought up rival oil refineries.

Question 18

Corporation

Answer 18

A form of business ownership in which the liability of shareholders in a company is limited to their individual investments. The formation of corporations in the late nineteenth century greatly stimulated investment in industry.

Question 19

Trust

Answer 19

Business monopolies formed through combining of two large companies and combing of many little companies into 1 that inhibited competition and controlled the market

Question 20

Sherman antitrust act

Answer 20

1890 act that outlawed monopolies that prevented free competition in interstate commerce.

Question 21

Laissez-faire

Answer 21

French for “let things alone.” Advocates of laissez-faire believed that the marketplace should be left to regulate itself, allowing individuals to pursue their own self-interest without any government restraint or interference.

Question 22

Social darwinism

Answer 22

The belief that drew upon some of the ideas of Charles Darwin. Stressing individual competition and the survival of the fittest, used to justify economic inequality, racism, imperialism, and hostility to federal government regulation.

Question 23

The gospel of wealth

Answer 23

1889 essay by Andrew Carnegie in which he argued that the rich should act as stewards of the wealth they earned, using their surplus income for the benefit of the community.

Question 24

Gilded age

Answer 24

Term coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner to describe the late nineteenth century. The term referred to the opulent and often ostentatious lifestyles of the era’s superrich.

Question 25

Jim Crow

Answer 25

late-nineteenth-century statutes that established legally defined racial segregation in the South. Jim Crow legislation helped ensure the social and economic subordination of southern blacks

Question 26

Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer 26

1896 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the legality of Jim Crow legislation. The Court ruled that as long as states provided “equal but separate” facilities for whites and blacks, Jim Crow laws did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

Question 27

Billion Dollar Congress

Answer 27

The Republican-controlled Congress of 1890 that spent huge sums of money to promote business and other interests

Question 28

unskilled workers

Answer 28

Workers with little or no specific expertise. Unskilled workers, many of whom were immigrants, made up the vast majority of the late-nineteenth-century industrial workforce

Question 29

skilled workers

Answer 29

Workers with particular training and skills. Skilled workers were paid more and were more difficult for owners to replace than unskilled workers

Question 30

unions

Answer 30

Groups of workers seeking rights and benefits from their employers through their collective efforts

Question 31

collective bargaining

Answer 31

The process of negotiation between labor unions and employers.

Question 32

Noble Order of the Knights of Labor

Answer 32

Labor organization founded in 1869 by Uriah Stephens. The Knights sought to include all workers in one giant union

Question 33

Haymarket Square

Answer 33

1886 rally and violence in Chicago. In the aftermath of the events in Haymarket Square, the union movement in the United States went into temporary decline.

Question 34

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

Answer 34

Trade union federation founded in 1886. Led by its first president, Samuel Gompers, the AFL sought to organize skilled workers into trade-specific unions.

Question 35

Homestead strike

Answer 35

1892 strike by steelworkers at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead steel factory. The strike collapsed after a failed assassination attempt on Carnegie’s plant manager, Henry Clay Fric

Question 36

Pullman strike

Answer 36

1894 strike by workers against the Pullman railcar company. When the strike disrupted rail service nationwide, threatening the delivery of the mail, President Grover Cleveland ordered federal troops to get the railroads moving again.

Question 37

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

Answer 37

Organization that grew out of the activities of the Western Federation of Miners in the 1890s and formed by Eugene V. Debs. Known as Wobblies, the IWW attempted to unite all skilled and unskilled workers in an effort to overthrow capitalism

Question 38

Grangers Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

Answer 38

Members of an organization founded in 1867 to meet the social and cultural needs of farmers. Grangers took an active role in the promotion of the economic and political interests of farmers.

Question 39

Farmers’ Alliances

Answer 39

Regional organizations formed in the late nineteenth century to advance the interests of farmers. The most prominent of these organizations were the Northwestern Farmers’ Alliance, the Southern Farmers’ Alliance, and the Colored Farmers’ Alliance.

Question 40

subtreasury system

Answer 40

A proposal by the Farmers’ Alliances in the 1880s for the federal government to extend loans to farmers and store their crops in warehouses until prices rose and they could buy back and sell their crops to repay their debts

Question 41

Populists

Answer 41

the People’s Party of America, formed in 1892. The Populists sought to appeal to both farmers and industrial workers.

Question 42

depression of 1893

Answer 42

Severe economic downturn triggered by railroad and bank failures. The severity of the depression, combined with the failure of the federal government to offer an adequate response, led to the realignment of American politics

Question 43

Coxey’s army

Answer 43

1894 protest movement led by Jacob Coxey. Coxey and five hundred supporters marched from Ohio to Washington, D.C., to protest the lack of government response to the depression of 1893

Question 44

Chinese Exclusion Act

Answer 44

1882 act that banned Chinese immigration into the United States and prohibited those Chinese already in the country from becoming naturalized American citizens.

Question 45

Ghettos

Answer 45

Neighborhoods dominated by a single ethnic, racial, or class group

Question 46

mutual aid Societies

Answer 46

Voluntary associations that provide a variety of economic and social benefits to their members.

Question 47

nativism

Answer 47

The belief that foreigners pose a serious danger to a nation’s society and culture. Nativist sentiment rose in the United States as the size and diversity of the immigrant population grew.

Question 48

eugenics

Answer 48

The pseudoscience of producing genetic improvement in the human population through selective breeding. Proponents of eugenics often saw ethnic and racial minorities as genetically “undesirable” and inferior

Question 49

melting pot

Answer 49

Popular metaphor for immigrant assimilation into American society. According to this ideal, all immigrants underwent a process of Americanization that produced a homogeneous society

Question 50

skyscrapers

Answer 50

Buildings more than ten stories high that first appeared in U.S. cities in the late nineteenth century. Urban crowding and high prices for land stimulated the drive to construct taller buildings

Question 51

tenements

Answer 51

Multifamily apartment buildings that housed many poor urban dwellers at the turn of the twentieth century. Tenements were crowded, uncomfortable, and dangerous.

Question 52

sweatshops

Answer 52

Small factories or shops in which workers toiled under adverse conditions. Business owners, particularly in the garment industry, turned tenement apartments into sweatshops

Question 53

Triangle Shirtwaist Company

Answer 53

Site of an infamous industrial fire in New York City in 1911. Inadequate fire safety provisions in the factory led to the deaths of 146 workers.

Question 54

political machine

Answer 54

Urban political organizations that dominated many late-nineteenth-century cities. Machines provided needed services to the urban poor, but they also fostered corruption, crime, and inefficiency.

Question 55

Boss

Answer 55

Leader of a political machine. Men like “Boss” George Washington Plunkitt of New York’s Tammany Hall wielded enormous power over city life

Question 56

Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act

Answer 56

1883 act that required federal jobs to be awarded on the basis of merit through competitive exams rather than through political connections

Question 57

settlement houses

Answer 57

Community centers established by urban reformers in the late nineteenth century. Settlement house organizers resided in the institutions they created and were often female, middle-class, and college educated

Question 58

13th amendment

Answer 58

forever abolished slavery as an institution in all U.S. states and territories.

Question 59

14th amendment

Answer 59

granted citizenship to all persons “born or naturalized in the United States,” including formerly enslaved people, and provided all citizens with “equal protection under the laws,”

Question 60

15th amendment

Answer 60

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Question 61

Themes of this time period

Answer 61

1. What does democracy and freedom both mean in america?
2. What is the importance of land in america?
3. What’s the relationship between economic power and political power?
4. Labors and Business owners and unions