Chapter 25 and 26 quiz
Comstock Lode
"Fifty-niners" also poured feverishly into Nevada in 1859, after the fabulous Comstock Lode had been uncovered. A fantastic amount of gold and silver, worth more than $340 million, was mined by the "Kings of the Comstock" from 1860 to 1890. The scantily populated state of Nevada, "child of the Comstock Lode," was prematurely railroaded into the Union in 1864, partly to provide three electoral votes for President Lincoln.
What did many writers in the late 1800's have in common?
A new type of novel was becoming popular,"in novel writing the romantic sentimentality of a youthful era was giving way to a rugged realism that reflected more faithfully the materialism of an industrial society. "The writers consistently shocked with their views that questioned respectable society principles and many of these writers became crusaders for female rights. Satire books that were wrote to amuse became popular, Mark Twain was well-known for books like this.
Columbian exposition
A revival of classical architectural forms—and a setback for realism—came with the great Columbian Exposition. Held in Chicago in 1893, it honored the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's first voyage. This so-called dream of loveliness, which was visited by 27 million people, did much to raise American artistic standards and promote city planning, although many of the spectators were attracted primarily by the contortions of a hootchy-kootchy dancer, "Little Egypt.''
Explain the statement, "The amazing mechanization of agriculture in the postwar years was almost as striking as the mechanization of industry."
Agriculture was starting to use more machines, thus mechanization was taking place. These industrial machines were a big help to farmers. This is because farms are now producing a lot more, thus making a bigger profit for them.
Walking Cities
Americans were also becoming commuters, carted daily between home and job on the mass- transit lines that radiated out from central cities to surrounding suburbs. Electric trolleys, powered by wagging antennae from overhead wires, propelled city limits explosively outward. The compact and communal "walking city,'' its boundaries fixed by the limits of leg-power, gave way to the immense and impersonal megalopolis, carved into distinctly different districts for business, industry, and residential neighborhoods—which were in turn segregated by race, ethnicity, and social class.
Alger
An even more popular writer was Horatio ("Holy Horatio'') Alger, a Puritan, who in 1866 forsook the pulpit for the pen. Deeply interested in New York newsboys, he wrote more than a hundred volumes of juvenile fiction that sold over 100 million copies. His stock formula was that virtue, honesty, and industry are rewarded by success, wealth, and honor—a kind of survival of the purest, especially nonsmokers, nondrinkers, nonswearers, and nonliars. Although Alger's own bachelor life was criticized, he implanted morality and the conviction that there is always room at the top (especially if one is lucky enough to save the life of the boss's daughter and marry her).
Louis Sullivan
An opinionated Chicago architect, Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), contributed formidably to the further development of the skyscraper with his famous principle that "form follows function.'' Nesting loftily above city streets in the new steel-skeleton high-rises that Sullivan helped to make popular, many Americans were becoming modern cliff dwellers.
Henry George
Another journalist-author, Henry George, was an original thinker who left an enduring mark. Poor in formal schooling, he was rich in idealism and in the milk of human kindness. After seeing poverty at its worst in India and land-grabbing at its greediest. in California, he took pen in hand. His classic treatise Progress and Poverty undertook to solve "the great enigma of our times''—"the association of progress with poverty.'' According to George, the pressure of growing population on a fixed supply of land unjustifiably pushed up property values, showering unearned profits on owners of land. A single 100 percent tax on those windfall profits would eliminate unfair inequalities and stimulate economic growth. George soon became a most controversial figure. His single-tax ideas were so horrifying to the propertied classes that his manuscript was rejected by numerous publishers. Finally brought out in 1879, the book gradually broke into the best-seller lists and ultimately sold some 3 million copies. George also lectured widely in America, where he influenced thinking about the maldistribution of wealth, and in Britain, where he left an indelible mark on English Fabian socialism.
American Protective Association
Antiforeign organizations, reminiscent of the "Know-Nothings'' of antebellum days, were now revived in a different guise. Notorious among them was the American Protective Association (APA), which was created in 1887 and soon claimed a million members. In pursuing its nativist goals, the APA urged voting against Roman Catholic candidates for office and sponsored the publication of lustful fantasies about runaway nuns.
Nativist
Antiforeignism, or "nativism,'' earlier touched off by the Irish and German arrivals in the 1840s and 1850s, bared its ugly face in the 1880s with fresh ferocity. The New Immigrants had come for much the same reasons as the Old—to escape the poverty and squalor of Europe and to seek new opportunities in America. But "nativists'' viewed the eastern and southern Europeans as culturally and religiously exotic hordes and often gave them a rude reception. The newest newcomers aroused widespread alarm. Their high birthrate, common among people with a low standard of living and sufficient youth and vigor to pull up stakes, raised worries that the original Anglo-Saxon stock would soon be outbred and outvoted. Still more horrifying was the prospect that it would be mongrelized by a mixture of "inferior'' southern European blood and that the fairer Anglo-Saxon types would disappear.
Dime novels
As literacy increased, so did book reading. Post-Civil War Americans devoured millions of "dime novels,''usually depicting the wilds of the woolly West. Paint-bedaubed Indians and quick-triggered gunmen like "Deadwood Dick'' shot off vast quantities of powder, and virtue invariably triumphed. These lurid "paperbacks'' were frowned upon by parents, but goggle-eyed youths read them in haylofts or in schools behind the broad covers of geography books. The king of dime novelists was Harlan F. Halsey, who made a fortune by dashing off about 650 novels, often one in a day.
Explain the differences in belief between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Booker Washington supported education for black people. He became a to head the black normal and industrial school at Tuskegee, Alabama and it made it a good school. It managed to produce some very intellectual people, for example,George Washington Carver. Du Bois was the first of his race to go and get a phd from harvard and pushed for social and economic equality.
Anti-saloon league
But rum was now on the run. The potent Anti- Saloon League was formed in 1893, with its mem- bers singing "The Saloon Must Go'' and "Vote for Cold Water, Boys.'' Female supporters sang "The Lips That Touch Liquor Must Never Touch Mine.'' Statewide prohibition, which had made surprising gains in Maine and elsewhere before the Civil War, was sweeping new states into the "dry'' column. The great triumph—but only a temporary one—came in 1919, when the national prohibition amendment (Eighteenth) was attached to the Constitution.
Salvation army
By 1890 the variety-loving Americans could choose from 150 religious denominations, 2 of them newcomers. One was the band-playing Salvation Army, whose soldiers without swords invaded America from England in 1879 and established a beachhead on the street corners. Appealing frankly to the down-and-outers, the boldly named Salvation Army did much practical good, especially with free soup.
Helen Hunt Jackson
By the 1880s the national conscience began to stir uneasily over the plight of the Indians. Helen Hunt Jackson, a Massachusetts writer of children's literature, pricked the moral sense of Americans in 1881, when she published A Century of Dishonor. The book chronicled the sorry record of government ruthlessness and chicanery in dealing with the Indians. Her later novel Ramona (1884), a love story of injustice to the California Indians, sold some 600,000 copies and further inspired sympathy for the Indians.
Why was cattle ranching so profitable in the 1870's?
Cattle ranching was becoming so profitable in the 1870's, this was due to better and new infrastructure railroad. Before, it was impossible to market due to transportation. before transcontinental railroad.
Department Stores
Cavernous department stores such as Macy's in New York and Marshall Field's in Chicago attracted urban middle-class shoppers and provided urban working-class jobs, many of them for women. The bustling emporiums also heralded a dawning era of consumerism and accentuated widening class divisions. When Carrie Meeber, novelist Theodore Dreiser's fictional heroine in Sister Carrie (1900), escapes from rural boredom to Chicago just before the turn of the century, it is the spectacle of the city's dazzling department stores that awakens her fateful yearning for a richer, more elegant way of life—for entry into the privileged urban middle class, whose existence she had scarcely imagined in the rustic countryside.
Battle of Little Big Horn
Chief Joseph finally surrendered his breakaway band of some seven hundred Indians after a tortuous, seventeen-hundred-mile, three- month trek across the Continental Divide toward Canada. There Joseph hoped to rendezvous with Sitting Bull, who had taken refuge north of the border after the Battle of Little Bighorn. Betrayed into believing they would be returned to their ancestral lands in Idaho, the Nez Percés instead were sent to a dusty reservation in Kansas, where 40 percent of them perished from disease. The survivors were eventually allowed to return to Idaho.
What did the government do to try to assimilate Native Americans?
Civil rights for Native Americans was growing traction in the late nineteenth century. The societies moral conscience was growing about the terrible treatment of Native Indian Americans. Literature raised awareness about Native Indian Americans terrible treatment, for example"Helen Hunt Jackson, a Massachusetts writer of children's literature, pricked the moral sense of Americans in 1881, when she published A Century of Dishonor. The book chronicled the sorry record of government ruthlessness and chicanery in dealing with the Indians."
What factors allowed the number of college students to dramatically increase?
Colleges and universities were also increasing. College education was becoming more popular and a attractive idea, but what really allowed the number of college students to dramatically increase was due to women going to college and african americans. There were also,"provided a generous grant of the public lands to the states for support of education." Private philanthropy also helped.
In 1886, what was ironic about the words inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty?
Due to massive foreign immigration, many Americans had anti-foreign feelings, also known as,"nativism." They were not welcomed and caused alarm, due to,"their high birthrate, common among people with a low standard of living and sufficient youth and vigor to pull up stakes, raised worries that the original Anglo-Saxon stock would soon be outbred and outvoted." They were worried about the blood of these immigrants mixing with their anglo-saxon blood.
Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy, a quiet Massachusetts Yankee, was another journalist-reformer of remarkable power. In 1888 he published a socialistic novel, Looking Backward, in which the hero, falling into a hypnotic sleep, awakens in the year 2000. He "looks backward'' and finds that the social and economic injustices of 1887 have melted away under an idyllic government, which has nationalized big business to serve the public interest. To a nation already alarmed by the trust evil, the book had a magnetic appeal and sold over a million copies. Scores of Bellamy Clubs sprang up to discuss this mild utopian socialism, and they heavily influenced American reform movements near the end of the century.
Eugene Debs
Elsewhere, violent flare-ups accompanied labor protests, notably in Chicago. Most dramatic was the crippling Pullman strike of 1894. Eugene V. Debs, a charismatic labor leader, had helped organize the American Railway Union of about 150,000 members. The Pullman Palace Car Company, which maintained a model town near Chicago for its employees, was hit hard by the depression and cut wages by about one-third, while holding the line on rent for the company houses. The workers finally struck—in some places overturning Pullman cars— and paralyzed railway traffic from Chicago to the Pacific coast. The American Federation of Labor conspicuously declined to support the Pullman strikers, thus enhancing the AF of L's reputation for "respectability" even while weakening labor's cause by driving a large wedge into the workers' ranks.
Greenback-Labor Party
Farmers' grievances likewise found a vent in the Greenback Labor party, which combined the inflationary appeal of the earlier Greenbackers with a program for improving the lot of labor. In 1878, the high-water mark of the movement, the Greenback Laborites polled over a million votes and elected fourteen members of Congress. In the presidential election of 1880, the Greenbackers ran General James B. Weaver, an old Granger who was a favorite of the Civil War veterans and who possessed a remarkable voice and bearing. He spoke to perhaps a half-million citizens in a hundred or so speeches but polled only 3 percent of the total popular vote.
Walt Whitman
In poetry Walt Whitman was one of the few luminaries of yesteryear who remained active. Although shattered in health by service as a Civil War nurse, he brought out successive—and purified—revisions of his hardy perennial, Leaves of Grass. The assassination of Lincoln inspired him to write two of the most moving poems in American literature, "O Captain! My Captain!'' and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.''
Reservations
In the 1860s the federal government intensified this policy and herded the Indians into still smaller confines, principally the "Great Sioux reservation" in Dakota Territory, and Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, into which dozens of southern Plains tribes were forced. The Indians surrendered their ancestral lands only when they had received solemn promises from Washington that they would be left alone and provided with food, clothing, and other supplies. Regrettably, the federal Indian agents were often corrupt. They palmed off moth-eaten blankets, spoiled beef, and other defective provisions on the friendless Indians. One of these cheating officials, on an annual salary of $1,500, returned home after four years with an estimated "savings" of $50,000. For more than a decade after the Civil War, fierce warfare between Indians and the U.S. Army raged in various parts of the West. Army troops, many of them recent immigrants who had, ironically, fled Europe to avoid military service, met formidable adversaries in the Plains Indians, whose superb horsemanship gave them baffling mobility. Fully one-fifth of all U.S. Army personnel on the One disheartened Indian complained to the white Sioux Commission created by Congress, "Tell your people that since the Great Father promised that we should never be removed we have been moved five times. . . . I think you had better put the Indians on wheels and you can run them about wherever you wish." Frontier were African-American—dubbed "Buffalo Soldiers" by the Indians, supposedly because of the resemblance of their hair to the bison's furry coat.
Dwight Lyman Moody
Into this spreading moral vacuum stepped a new generation of urban revivalists. Most conspicuous was a former Chicago shoe salesman, Dwight Lyman Moody. Like many of those to whom he preached, Moody was a country boy who had made good in the big city. Proclaiming a gospel of kindness and forgiveness, Moody was a modern urban circuit rider who took his message to countless American cities in the 1870s and 1880s. Clad in a dark business suit, the bearded and rotund Moody held huge audiences spellbound. When he preached in Brooklyn, special trolley tracks had to be laid to carry the crowds who wanted to hear him. Moody contributed powerfully to adapting the old-time religion to the facts of city life. The Moody Bible Institute founded in Chicago in 1889 continued to carry on his work after his death in 1899.
Godkin
Judgment.'' Launched in 1865 by the Irish-born Edwin L. Godkin, a merciless critic, it crusaded militantly for civil-service reform, honesty in government, and a moderate tariff. The Nation attained only a modest circulation—about 10,000 in the nineteenth century—but Godkin believed that if he could reach the right 10,000 leaders, his ideas through them might reach the 10 millions.
Settlement Houses
Located in a poor immigrant neighborhood of Greeks, Italians, Russians, and Germans, Hull House offered instruction in English, counseling to help newcomers cope with American big-city life, childcare services for working mothers, and cultural activities for neighborhood residents. Following Jane Addams's lead, women founded settlement houses in other cities as well. Conspicuous among the houses was Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement in New York, which opened its doors in 1893.
John Wesley Powell
Lured by higher wheat prices resulting from crop failures elsewhere in the world, settlers in the 1870s rashly pushed still farther west, onto the poor, marginal lands beyond the 100th meridian. That imaginary line, running north to south from the Dakotas through west Texas, separated two climatological regions—a well-watered area to the east, and a semiarid area to the west. Bewhiskered and one- armed geologist John Wesley Powell, explorer of the Colorado River's Grand Canyon and director of the U.S. Geological Survey, warned in 1874 that beyond the 100th meridian so little rain fell that agriculture was impossible without massive irrigation. Ignoring Powell's advice, farmers heedlessly chewed up the crusty earth in western Kansas, eastern Colorado, and Montana. They quickly went broke as a six-year drought in the 1880s further desccated the already dusty region. Western Kansas lost half its population between 1888 and 1892. "There is no God west of Salina," one hapless homesteader declared.
Describe the effect of westward expansion on Native Americans.
Manifest destiny was practiced throughout the nineteenth century. There was massive westward expansion and had mainly negative effect on Native Americans. Unfortunately, the Native Americans were,"Indians stood in the path of the advancing White people," thus causing predictable conflict. Even before the conflict it was harming Native Americans, the expansion, due to the fact that they spread diseases,"cholera, typhoid, and smallpox among the native peoples of the plains, with devastating results," as well as harming the Native American lifestyle"further pressure on the steadily shrinking bison population by hunting and by grazing their own livestock on the prairie grasses." They were than coerced on terrible federal preservation that had terrible conditions.
How was the cu1lture of the Plains Indians shaped by white people?
Native Americans were coerced by the white people to implement the culture of white people into their lives. Before, Native Americans liked to roam on the lands, however they were than forced on tiny reservations,"But then the Wasichus [white people] came, and they made little islands for us . . . and always these islands are becoming smaller for around them surges the gnawing flood of Wasichus."
Why did the new immigrants come to America in such large numbers?
New immigrants came to America in such large numbers, because,"in part they left their native countries because Europe seemed to have no room for them." There was a abundance of supplies in U.S.A,"abundant supplies of fish and grain from America and to the widespread cultivation in Europe of that humble New World transplant, the potato." Europe had a high unemployment and America had a good name. It was seen as a opportunity. People would come for freedom, to escape religious persecution, or military conscription for example.
Jane Addams
One middle-class woman who was deeply dedi- cated to uplifting the urban masses was Jane Addams (1860-1935). Born into a prosperous Illinois family, Addams was one of the first generation of college-educated women. Upon her graduation she sought other outlets for her large talents than could be found in teaching or charitable volunteer work, then the only permissible occupations for a young woman of her social class. Inspired by a visit to England, in 1889 she acquired the decaying Hull mansion in Chicago. There she established Hull House, the most prominent (though not the first) American settlement house. Soft-spoken but tenacious, Jane Addams became a kind of urban American saint in the eyes of many admirers. The philosopher William James told her, "You utter instinctively the truth we others vainly seek.'' She was a broad-gauge reformer who courageously condemned war as well as poverty, and she eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. But her pacifism also earned her the enmity of some Americans, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, who choked on her antiwar views and expelled her from membership in their august organization.
Joseph F. Glidden
Other adaptations to the western environment were more successful. Tough strains of wheat, resistant to cold and drought, were imported from Russia and blossomed into billowing yellow carpets. Wise farmers abandoned corn in favor of sorghum and other drought-resistant grains. Barbed wire, perfected by Joseph F. Glidden in 1874, solved the problem of how to build fences on the treeless prairies.
NAACP
Other black leaders, notably Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, assailed Booker T. Washington as an "Uncle Tom'' who was condemning their race to manual labor and perpetual inferiority. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois was a mixture of African, French, Dutch, and Indian blood ("Thank God, no Anglo-Saxon,'' he would add). After a determined struggle, he earned a Ph.D. at Harvard, the first of his race to achieve this goal. ("The honor, I assure you, was Harvard's,'' he said.) He demanded complete equality for blacks, social as well as economic, and helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. Rejecting Washington's gradualism and separatism, he demanded that the "talented tenth'' of the black community be given full and immediate access to the mainstream of American life. An exceptionally skilled historian, sociologist, and poet, he died as a self-exile in Africa in 1963, at the age of ninety-five.
What advances took place in education in the years following the Civil War?
Public education was getting better and better. This is because elementary schools that were paid by taxes was gaining nationwide support. States were making it compulsory for students to attend elementary school, which caused a decrease in child labor. Free textbooks were also getting provided other necessary resources.
Chautauqua
Public schools, though showering benefits on children, excluded millions of adults. This deficiency was partially remedied by the Chautauqua movement, a successor to the lyceums, which was launched in 1874 on the shores of Lake Chautauqua, in New York. The organizers achieved gratifying success through nationwide public lectures, often held in tents and featuring well-known speakers, including the witty Mark Twain. In addition, there were extensive Chautauqua courses of home study, for which 100,000 people enrolled in 1892 alone.
Anthony Comstock
Pure-minded Americans sternly resisted these affronts to their moral principles. Their foremost champion was a portly crusader, Anthony Comstock, who made lifelong war on the "immoral.'' Armed after 1873 with a federal statute—the notorious "Comstock Law''—this self-appointed defender of sexual purity boasted that he had confiscated no fewer than 202,679 "obscene pictures and photos''; 4,185 "boxes of pills, powders, etc., used by abortionists''; and 26 "obscene pictures, framed on walls of saloons.'' His proud claim was that he had driven at least fifteen people to suicide.
Howard
Reconstruction had blossomed into a crop of southern black colleges. Howard University in Washington, D.C., Hampton Institute in Virginia, Atlanta University, and numerous others nurtured higher education for blacks until the civil rights movement of the 1960s made attendance at white institutions possible.
What forms of recreation became popular from 1870 to 1900?
Recreation became popular from 1870 to 1900. Pleasures was being sought. Recreations that became popular were the circus and,"colorful "Wild West'' shows." In the South, minstrel shows became popular. Sports were becoming more popular; baseball was emerging as the national pastime and a professional baseball league was getting set up.
What role did religion play in helping the urban poor?
Religion started helping out the poor more, trying to assist the labor movement. Religious charities were set up to help. Organizations were set up. Religion started helping out the poor more, trying to assist the labor movement. Religious charities were set up to help. Organizations were set up.
Great American Desert
Shattering the myth of the Great American Desert opened the gateways to the agricultural West even wider. The windswept prairies were for the most part treeless, and the tough sod had been pounded solid by millions of buffalo hooves. Pioneer explorers and trappers had assumed that the soil must be sterile, simply because it was not heavily watered and did not support immense forests. But once the prairie sod was broken with heavy iron plows pulled by four yokes of oxen—the "plow that broke the plains"—the earth proved astonishingly fruitful. "Sodbusters" poured onto the prairies. Lacking trees for lumber and fuel, they built homes from the very sod they dug from the ground, and burned corncobs for warmth.
Cardinal Gibbons
Simultaneously, the Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths were gaining enormous strength from the New Immigration. By 1900 the Roman Catholics had increased their lead as the largest single denomination, numbering nearly 9 million communicants. Roman Catholic and Jewish groups kept the common touch better than many of the leading Protestant churches. Cardinal Gibbons (1834-1921), an urban Catholic leader devoted to American unity, was immensely popular with Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. Acquainted with every president from Johnson to Harding, he employed his liberal sympathies to assist the American labor movement.
What social causes were women (and many men) involved in the late 1800's?
Social causes people were getting involved in the late 1800's was the prohibition of alcohol. The national prohibition party was set up in 1869 and was attracting voters. The women's rights movement became associated with temperance. The women were organizing,"militant women entered the alcoholic arena, notably when the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was organized in 1874.
How did Italian immigrants live their lives in America?
Southern Italians moved due to the poverty suffered in Italy. This is to Southern Italy being poor, due to lack of modernization of industry. Mainly young men went to America, only for the aim to stay a few months and get enough money to give back home.
Political Bosses
Taking care of the immigrants was big business, indeed. Trading jobs and services for votes, a powerful boss might claim the loyalty of thousands of followers. In return for their support at the polls, the boss provided jobs on the city's payroll, found housing for new arrivals, tided over the needy with gifts of food and clothing, patched up minor scrapes with the law, and helped get schools, parks, and hospitals built in immigrant neighborhoods. Reformers gagged at this cynical exploitation of the immigrant vote, but the political boss gave valuable assistance that was forthcoming from no other source.
Normal Schools and Kindegarten
Teacher-training schools, then called "normal schools,'' experienced a striking expansion after the Civil War. In 1860 there were only twelve of them, in 1910 over three hundred. Kindergartens, earlier borrowed from Germany, also began to gain strong support. The New Immigration in the 1880s and 1890s brought vast new strength to the private Catholic parochial schools, which were fast becoming a major pillar of the nation's educational structure.
Dawes act
The Dawes Act struck directly at tribal organization and tried to make rugged individualists out of the Indians. This legislation ignored the inherent reliance of traditional Indian culture on tribally held land, literally pulling the land out from under them. By 1900 Indians had lost 50 percent of the 156 million acres they had held just two decades earlier. The forced-assimilation doctrine of the Dawes Act remained the cornerstone of the government's official Indian policy for nearly half a century, until the Indian Reorganization Act (the "Indian New Deal") of 1934 partially reversed the individualistic approach and belatedly tried to restore the tribal basis of Indian life
Boomers
The Great West experienced a fantastic growth in population from the 1870s to the 1890s. A parade of new western states proudly joined the Union. Boomtown Colorado, offspring of the Pike's Peak gold rush, was greeted in 1876 as "the Centennial State." In 1889-1890 a Republican Congress, eagerly seeking more Republican electoral and congressional votes, admitted in a wholesale lot six new states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming. The Mormon Church formally and belatedly banned polygamy in 1890, but not until 1896 was Utah deemed worthy of admission. Only Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona remained to be lifted into statehood from contiguous territory on the mainland of North America. In a last gaudy fling, the federal government made available to settlers vast stretches of fertile plains formerly occupied by the Indians in the district of Oklahoma ("the Beautiful Land"). Scores of overeager and well-armed "sooners," illegally jumping the gun, had entered Oklahoma Territory. They had to be evicted repeatedly by federal troops, who on occasion would shoot the intruders' horses. On April 22, 1889, all was in readiness for the legal opening, and some 50,000 "boomers" were poised expectantly on the boundary line. At high noon the bugle shrilled, and a horde of "eighty-niners" poured in on lathered horses or careening vehicles. That night a lonely spot on the prairie had mushroomed into the tent city of Guthrie, with over 10,000 people. By the end of the year, Oklahoma boasted 60,000 inhabitants, and Congress made it a territory. In 1907 it became the "Sooner State."
The Grange
The National Grange of the Patrons of Hus- bandry—better known as the Grange—was organ- ized in 1867. Its leading spirit was Oliver H. Kelley, a shrewd and energetic Minnesota farmer then working as a clerk in Washington. Kelley's first objective was to enhance the lives of isolated farmers through social, educational, and fraternal activities. Farm men and women, cursed with loneliness in widely separated farmhouses, found the Grange's picnics, concerts, and lectures a godsend. Kelley, a Mason, even found farmers receptive to his mumbo-jumbo of passwords and secret rituals, as well as his hierarchy, ranging (for men) from Laborer to Husbandman and (for women) from Maid to Agrarian Unrest 611 Matron. The Grange spread like an old-time prairie fire and by 1875 claimed 800,000 members, chiefly in the Midwest and South. Buzzing with gossip, these calicoed and calloused folk often met in red schoolhouses around potbellied stoves. The Grangers gradually raised their goals from individual self-improvement to improvement of the farmers' collective plight. In a determined effort to escape the clutches of the trusts, they established cooperatively owned stores for consumers and cooperatively owned grain elevators and ware- houses for producers. Their most ambitious experiment was an attempt to manufacture harvesting machinery, but this venture, partly as a result of mismanagement, ended in financial disaster. Embattled Grangers also went into politics, enjoying their most gratifying success in the grain-growing regions of the upper Mississippi Valley, chiefly in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. There, through state legislation, they strove to regulate railway rates and the storage fees charged by railroads and by the operators of warehouses and grain elevators. Many of the state courts, notably in Illinois, were disposed to recognize the principle of public control of private business for the general welfare. A number of the so-called Granger Laws, however, were badly drawn, and they were bitterly fought through the high courts by the well-paid lawyers of the "interests." Following judicial reverses, most severely at the hands of the Supreme Court in the famous Wabash decision of 1886, the Grangers' influence faded. But their organization has lived on as a vocal champion of farm interests, while brightening rural life with social activities.
Why did President Cleveland send in federal troops during the Pullman Strike?
The President Cleveland sent federal troops during the Pullman Strike. This is because the labor protests caused violence. Thus, the federal troops were needed to end violence.
Silver senators
The amassing of precious metals helped finance the Civil War, facilitated the building of railroads, and intensified the already bitter conflict between whites and Indians. The outpouring of silver and gold enabled the Treasury to resume specie payments in 1879 and injected the silver issue into American politics. "Silver Senators," representing the thinly peopled "acreage states" of the West, used their disproportionate influence to promote the interests of the silver miners. Finally, the mining frontier added to American folklore and literature, as the writings of Bret Harte and Mark Twain so colorfully attest.
Pike's Peak
The conquest of the Indians and the coming of the railroad were life-giving boons to the mining frontier. The golden gravel of California continued to yield "pay dirt," and in 1858 an electrifying discovery convulsed Colorado. Avid "fifty-niners" or "Pike's Peakers" rushed west to rip at the ramparts of the Rockies. But there were more miners than minerals; and many gold-grubbers, with "Pike's Peak or Bust" inscribed on the canvas of their covered wagons, creaked wearily back with the added inscription, "Busted, by Gosh." Yet countless bearded fortune seekers stayed on, some to strip away the silver deposits, others to extract nonmetallic wealth from the earth in the form of golden grain.
Emily Dickinson
The curious figure of Emily Dickinson, one of America's most gifted lyric poets, did not emerge until 1886, when she died and her poems were discovered. A Massachusetts recluse, she wrote over a thousand short lyrics on scraps of paper.
How did the discovery of precious metals affect the American West?
The discovery of precious metals affect the American West, because it caused an abundance of people to move West to look for precious metals and try to get rich. This is despite the majority of people not making any rich, however a few lucky people got rich.
What effects has the frontier had on the development of the United States?
The effects of the frontier had a development of the United States. This is because the frontier was fading, and was announced that there was no need to one, as all unsettled areas were broken into by settlement. U.S.A came to the realization that the land wasn't inexhaustible and set up national parks to preserve the land, for example Yellowstone Park.
How did the Grange attempt to help farmers?
The farmers unrest was helped by Grange, this is because they united farmers. They were united by activities and thus helped them get through the bad times.
What steps did the Farmers' Alliance believe would help farmers?
The farmers' alliance believed they would help the farmers. The steps that they would believe help farmers alliance would to unite to become stronger and fight against the manufacturing industry.
How did political bosses help immigrants?
The federal government stayed out of helping these immigrants assimilating and integrating; the state government also didn't help. The city governments were overwhelmed and didn't have the resources. Thus, presenting itself as an opportunity for the business leaders, which resulted in mass corruption. This is because,"taking care of the immigrants was big business, indeed. Trading jobs and services for votes, a powerful boss might claim the loyalty of thousands of followers. In return for their support at the polls, the boss provided jobs on the city's payroll, found housing for new arrivals, tided over the needy with gifts of food and clothing, patched up minor scrapes with the law, and helped get schools, parks, and hospitals built in immigrant neighborhoods. Reformers gagged at this cynical exploitation of the immigrant vote, but the political boss gave valuable assistance that was forthcoming from no other source."
What factors led to the growth of cities in the second half of the 1800's?
The growth of the cities in America are exponential. It was incredible how the population radically grew, as,"in 1860 no city in the United States could boast a million inhabitants; by 1890 New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia had vaulted past the million mark. By 1900 New York, with some 3.5 million people, was the second largest city in the world, outranked only by London." Skyscrapers were used, as it meant more people and more workplaces could be packed onto a parcel of land. Factors that led to the growth of cities in the second half of the 1800's, by it was a new way of life and attractive.
How did the ability to produce newspapers inexpensively change their content?
The invention of the linotype in 1885, meant it was easier to cheap and produce newspapers. However, it caused more responsibility not wanting to risk losing advertisements,"bare-knuckle editorials were, to an increasing degree, being supplanted by feature articles and noncontroversial syndicated material."
Coexy army
The most famous marcher was "General" Jacob S. Coxey, a wealthy Ohio quarry owner. He set out for Washington in 1894 with a few score of supporters and a swarm of newspaper reporters. His platform included a demand that the government relieve unemployment by an inflationary public works program, supported by some $500 million in legal tender notes to be issued by the Treasury. Coxey himself rode in a carriage with his wife and infant son, appropriately named Legal Tender Coxey, while his tiny "army" tramped along behind. The "Commonweal Army" of Coxeyites finally straggled into the nation's capital, but the invasion took on the aspects of a comic opera when "General" Coxey and his "lieutenants" were arrested for walking on the grass.
Social gospel
The nation's social conscience, slumbering since the antislavery crusade, gradually awakened to the plight of the cities, and especially their immigrant masses. Prominent in this awakening were several Protestant clergymen, who sought to apply the lessons of Christianity to the slums and factories. Noteworthy among them was Walter Rauschenbusch, who in 1886 became pastor of a German Baptist church in New York City. Also conspicuous was Washington Gladden, who took over a Congregational church in Columbus, Ohio, in 1882. Preaching the "social gospel,'' they both insisted that the churches tackle the burning social issues of the day. The Sermon on the Mount, they declared, was the science of society, and many social gospelers predicted that socialism would be the logical outcome of Christianity. These "Christian socialists'' did much to prick calloused middle-class consciences, thus preparing the path for the progressive reform movement after the turn of the century.
Charles Darwin
The old-time religion received many blows from modern trends, including a booming sale of books on comparative religion and on historical criticism as applied to the Bible. Most unsettling of all was On the Origin of Species, a highly controversial volume published in 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, by the English naturalist Charles Darwin. He set forth in lucid form the sensational theory that humans had slowly evolved from lower forms of life—a theory that was soon summarized to mean "the survival of the fittest.'' Evolution cast serious doubt on a literal interpretation of the Bible, which relates how God created the heaven and the earth in six days. The Conservatives, or "Fundamentalists,'' stood firmly on the Scripture as the inspired and infallible Word of God, and they condemned what they thought was the "bestial hypothesis'' of the Darwinians. The "Modernists'' parted company with the "Fundamentalists'' and flatly refused to accept the Bible in its entirety as either history or science. This furious battle over Darwinism created rifts in the churches and colleges of the post-Civil War era. "Modernist'' clergymen were removed from their pulpits; teachers of biology who embraced evolution were dismissed from their chairs. But as time wore on, an increasing number of liberal thinkers were able to reconcile Darwinism with Christianity. They heralded the revolutionary theory as a newer and grander revelation of the ways of the Almighty. But Darwinism undoubtedly did much to loosen religious moorings and to promote unbelief among the gospel-glutted. The most bitterly denounced skeptic of the era was a golden-tongued orator, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, who lectured widely on "Some Mistakes of Moses'' and "Why I Am an Agnostic.'' He might have gone far in public life if he had stuck to politics and refrained from attacking orthodox religion by "giving hell hell,'' as he put it.
Mary Baker Eddy
The other important new faith was the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, after she had suffered much ill health. Preaching that the true practice of Christianity heals sickness, she set forth her views in a book entitled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875), which sold an amazing 400,000 copies before her death. A fertile field for converts was found in America's hurried, nerve-racked, and urbanized civilization, to which Eddy held out the hope of relief from discords and diseases through prayer as taught by Christian Science. By the time she died in 1910, she had founded an influential church that embraced several hundred thousand devoted worshipers.
Why is this section titled "artistic triumphs?"
The section talks about artistic triumphs, this is because America had struggled behind Europe to produce art and artistic triumphs. Thus, the majority of american artists moved abroad. For example,"America's finest painters made their living abroad. James Whistler (1834-1903) did much of his work, including the celebrated portrait of his mother, in England."Art was flourishing. All kinds from sculpting to music. Music was especially changing and jazz was getting limelight. It was promoting civil reform and helping its movement.
What effect did the theory of evolution have on Christian churches?
The theory of evolution by Charles Darwin caused great conflict for churches. This theory was extremely controversial, this caused great doubt on the truth of the bible. This split the church, between the fundamentalists, who said the bible was the word of the god, and believed creationism, compared to modernists who believed they were moral stories.
Acts
The truly phenomenal growth of higher educa- tion owed much to the Morrill Act of 1862. This enlightened law, passed after the South had seceded, provided a generous grant of the public lands to the states for support of education. "Land-grant colleges,'' most of which became state universities, in turn bound themselves to provide certain services, such as military training. The Hatch Act of 1887, extending the Morrill Act, provided federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with the land-grant colleges.
How were the new immigrants different from the old immigrants?
The urban magnet of Americans was pulling more immigrants to U.S.A searching for new opportunities. The old immigrants came from British Isles and western Europe, this was contrast to new immigrants who came from Southern and Eastern Europe. The old immigrants were mainly protestants, while new immigrants were,"many of them worshiped in orthodox churches or synagogues." The old immigrants were very well-educated and literate compared to the new immigrants who were mainly illiterate.
How did writers in the 1870's and 1880's try to address the problems of their time?
The writers advocated civil service reform. Things that this could address, for example,"honesty in government, and a moderate tariff." Henry George for example, tried to solve abject poverty, with his book selling over three million books, giving influence on people.
Describe some of the intellectual achievements of the late 1800's.
There were an abundance of intellectual achievements of the late 1800's, there were amazing scientific gains causing people to become increasingly healthy, life expectancy increased. People were delving into philosophy and religion, for example William James.
What were some milestones in the "closing" of the West?
There were milestones in the closing of the west. After, having a radical surge in population in the late eighteenth century, there were new Western states produced. In Oklahoma, the Federal Government opened the land and over fifty thousand settlers came. It would have 60,000 by 1907. Utah got admitted in 1894, after banning polygamy in 1890.
How were the Buffalo reduced from 15 million to less than a thousand?
There were over fifteen million of Buffalos right after the civil war. However, this was set to radically decline, due to the fact that people started relying on Buffalo as a food source. People would also kill the Buffalo for,"the creatures were slain for their hides, for their tongues or a few other choice cuts, or for sheer amusement. "Sportsmen" on lurching railroad trains would lean out the windows and blaze away at the animals to satisfy their lust for slaughter or excitement." This would cause less than a few thousand buffalo by 1885.
What evidence demonstrated a battle raging over sexual morality?
This period of time questioned conventional morality. This shocked many americans, who resisted these changes and felt it was a attack on their moral principles. It causing a battle raging over sexual morality.
Pulitzer and Hearst
Two new journalistic tycoons emerged. Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian-born and near-blind, was a leader in the techniques of sensationalism in St. Louis and especially with the New York World. His use of the colored comic supplements, featuring the "Yellow Kid,'' gave the name yellow journalism to his lurid sheets. A close and ruthless competitor was youthful William Randolph Hearst, who had been expelled from Harvard College for a crude prank. Able to draw on his California father's mining millions, he ultimately built up a powerful chain of newspapers, beginning with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887.
What changes were occurring in the women's rights movement?
Urban environment became hard on families,"the new urban environment was hard on families. Paradoxically, the crowded cities were emotionally isolating places." It was also changing, in the fact that children were working as well as women,"urban life also dictated changes in work habits and even in family size. Not only fathers but mothers and even children as young as ten years old often worked, and usually in widely scattered locations. Urban also made suffrage for females more likely, as momentum was growing.
YMCA
Urbanites also participated in a new kind of religious-affiliated organization, the Young Men's and Women's Christian Associations. The YMCA and the YWCA, established in the United States before the Civil War, grew by leaps and bounds. Combining physical and other kinds of education with religious instruction, the "Y's" appeared in virtually every major American city by the end of the nineteenth century.
Victoria Woodhull
Victoria Woodhull, who was real flesh and blood, also shook the pillars of conventional morality when she publicly proclaimed her belief in free love in 1871. Woodhull was a beautiful and eloquent divorcée, sometime stockbroker, and tireless feminist propagandist. Together with her sister, Tennessee Claflin, she published a far-out periodical, Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. The sisters again shocked "respectable'' society in 1872 when their journal struck a blow for the new morality by charging that Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous preacher of his day, had for years been carrying on an adulterous affair.
Did the Homestead Act live up to its purpose of giving small farmers a descent life on the plains?
Western farmers were given an opportunity with the homestead act. This is because the homestead act gave settlers an abundance of land,"the new law allowed a settler to acquire as much as 160 acres of land (a quarter-section) by living on it for five years, improving it, and paying a nominal fee of about $30." This was a change of policy, because previously the Government sold the public land for profit, but now it was to fill up the space.
Ghost Dance
When the "Ghost Dance" cult later spread to the Dakota Sioux, the army bloodily stamped it out in 1890 at the so-called Battle of Wounded Knee. In the fighting thus provoked, an estimated two hundred Indian men, women, and children were killed, as well as twenty-nine invading soldiers.
How did nature, government, and business all harm farmers?
When the nature also did terrible to the farmers, this hurt the farmers even more. Manufacturing on the contrast was doing great. The farmers were forced to sell their machines. They were then angered by government reaction.
What problems faced farmers in the closing decades of the 19th century?
When the prices lower, it was terrible for the farmer it caused a lot of bankruptcies. This caused farmers competing against each other to survive. This meant they weren't masters of their own destinies. Lower prices and deflation caused even more bankruptcy.
Was William McKinley a strong presidential candidate? Explain.
William McKinley a strong presidential candidate in one sense. This was because he was Civil War hero, passed successful tariff bill. Negatives were his voting record on currency.
Vassar
Women's colleges such as Vassar were gaining ground, and universities open to both genders were blossoming, notably in the Midwest.
Did the trends in writing after the Civil War make it a good period for literature? Explain.
Yes, because they had an increasing freedom to write on things that previously would be unable to talk about. More and more people were reading books and it was more likely to make people rich and famous. For example, General Lewis Wallace book," Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880). A phenomenal success, the book sold an estimated 2 million copies in many languages, including Arabic and Chinese, and later appeared on stage and screen."
