Chp. 17
Reform Darwinism
A type of induced social evolution to help adapt society to changes that happen over time. Some promoted the breeding of higher class peoples and tried to discourage breeding of misfits and interracial breeding.
Southern Violence
Many white southerners blamed their poverty on freed slaves and Yankees. White mobs attacked blacks in1866 in Memphis and New Orleans. That year, the Klu Klux Klan was formed as a social club; its members soon began to intimidate freedmen and white republicans. Despite government action, violence continued and even escalated in the south.
Growth of Mining
Mining lured settlers to largely uninhabited regions thereby hastening the creation of new territories and the admission of new states into the union. By the 1880's when mining became a big business employing large-scale equipment, its environmental impact could be seen in the blighted landscape.
End of Reconstruction
Most southern states had completed the requirements of reconstruction by 1876. The presidential election returns of that year were so close that a special commission was established to count contested electoral votes. A decision hammered out at a secret meeting gave the presidency to the republican Rutherford B. Hayes; in return, the democrats were promised that the last federal troops would be withdrawn from Louisiana and South Carolina, putting an end to the Radical Republican administration in the southern states.
Freed Slaves
Newly freed slaves suffered economically. Most did not have the resources to succeed in the aftermath of the war's devastation. There was no redistribution of land; former slaves were given their freedom but nothing else. The Freedmen's Bureau attempted to educate and aid freed slaves and reunite families. Many former slaves found comfort in their families and the independent churches they established. Some took part in state and local government under the last, radical phase of reconstruction.
scalawags
Southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, after the American Civil War.
carpetbaggers
a Northerner (Yankee) who moved to the South after the American Civil War, especially during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877), in order to profit from the instability and power vacuum that existed at this time.
greenbacks
a U.S. legal-tender note, printed in green on the back since the Civil War, originally issued against the credit of the country and not against gold or silver on deposit.
George A. Custer
a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Custer was called to serve with the Union Army.
Chinese Exclusion Act
a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. It was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in US history, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. The act followed revisions made in 1880 to the US-China Burlingame Treaty of 1868, revisions that allowed the US to suspend Chinese immigration.
John Wilkes Booth
a famous American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor.[1] He was also a Confederate sympathizer, vehement in his denunciation of Lincoln, and was strongly opposed to the abolition of slavery in the United States.[2]
Pullman Strike
a nationwide railroad strike in the United States in the summer of 1894. It pitted the American Railway Union against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland. The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan.
New South
a phrase that has been used intermittently since the American Civil War to describe the American South, after 1877. The term "New South" is used in contrast to the Old South and the slavery-based plantation system of the antebellum period.
Compromise of 1877
a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election, pulled federal troops out of state politics in the South, and ended the Reconstruction Era.
Sharecroppers
a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on the land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law.
Redeemers
a white political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War.
Great Sioux War
also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of battles and negotiations which occurred between 1876 and 1877 involving the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne against the United States.
John D Rockefeller
an American business magnate and philanthropist. He was a co-founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry, and along with other key contemporary industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded Standard Oil Company and actively ran it until he officially retired in 1897.
J. Pierpont Morgan
an American financier, banker, philanthropist and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892, Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric. After financing the creation of the Federal Steel Company, he merged it in 1901 with the Carnegie Steel Company and several other steel and iron businesses,
Standard Oil Company of Ohio
an American oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world.[7] Its controversial history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard was an illegal monopoly.
Samuel Gompers
an English-born American cigar maker who became a Georgist labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor, and served as the organization's president from 1886 to 1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924.
Freedmens Bureau
an agency of the War Department set up in 1865 to assist freed slaves in obtaining relief, land, jobs, fair treatment, and education.
Ellis Island
gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States as the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with land reclamation between 1892 and 1934.
Frederick Law Olmsted
is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing.
Frederick Jackson Turner
known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas formed the Frontier Thesis.
Black Codes
laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.
Andrew Carnegie
led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He built a leadership role as a philanthropist for America and the British Empire. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and it stimulated a wave of philanthropy.
Social Darwinism
modern name given to various theories of society that emerged in the United Kingdom, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, and which are claimed to have applied biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics. Social Darwinists generally argue that the strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease.
Eugene V. Debs
one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.
Bourbons
refer to a conservative or classical liberal member of the Democratic Party, especially one who supported Charles O'Conor in 1872, Samuel J. Tilden in 1876.
American Federation of Labor
the first federation of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in May 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers of the Cigar Makers' International Union was elected president of the Federation at its founding convention and was reelected every year except one until his death in 1924.
Knights of Labor
the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its most important leader was Terence V. Powderly. The Knights promoted the social and cultural uplift of the workingman, rejected Socialism and radicalism, demanded the eight-hour day, and promoted the producers ethic of republicanism.
Nativist
the political position of demanding a favored status for certain established inhabitants of a nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants.
Herbert Spencer
was "an enthusiastic exponent of evolution" and even "wrote about evolution before Darwin did." As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, biology, sociology, and psychology.
Ghost Dance movement
was a new religious movement incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems.
Reconstruction
Abraham Lincoln and his successor southerner Andrew Johnson wanted a lenient and quick plan for reconstruction. Lincolns assassination made many northerners favor the radical republicans who wanted to end the grasp of the old planter class on the south's society and economy. Congressional reconstruction included the stipulation that to reenter the union former confederate states had to ratify the 14th and 15th amendments. Congress also passed the military reconstruction act which attempted to protect the voting rights and civil rights of African Americans.
Rise of Cities
America's cities grew in all directions after the civil war. Electric elevators and new steel frame construction allowed architects to extend buildings upward. Mass transit enabled the middle class to retreat to suburbs. Crowded tenements bred disease and crime and created an opportunity for urban political bosses to accrue power in part bu distributing to the poor the only relief that existed.
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson became president as he was vice president at the time of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. A Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union ticket, Johnson came to office as the Civil War concluded. The new president favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. His plans did not give protection to the former slaves, and he came into conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives. The first American president to be impeached, he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.
New Immigration
By 1900 30 percent of Americans were foreign born with many immigrants coming from eastern and southern Europe rather than western and northern Europe like most immigrants of generations past. Thus their languages and culture were vastly different from those of native born Americans. They tended to be catholic, eastern orthodox, or Jewish rather than Protestant. Beginning in the 1880's nativists advocated immigration laws to exclude the Chinese and the poor and demanded that immigrants pass a literacy test. A federal immigration station on Ellis Island, In New York Harbor, opened in 1892 to process immigrants arriving by ship from across the Atlantic.
Indian Wars and Policies
By 1900 Native Americans in the west were no longer free to roam the plains. Disease and the influx of farmers and miners reduced their numbers and curtailed their way of life. Instances of resistance, such as the Great Sioux War, were crushed. Initially Indian tribes were forced to sign treaties and were confined to reservations. Beginning in 1887 the American governments Indian policy was aimed at forcing Indians to relinquish their traditional culture and adopt individual land ownership settled agriculture and Christianity.
Social Darwinism
Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" shocked people who believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible's account of creation. Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, who equated economic and social success with the "survival of the fittest" and advanced the idea that government should not interfere to promote equality, applied Darwin's scientific theory to human society and social institutions.
Mass Entertainment
Cities began to create urban parks like New York's central park as places for all citizens to stroll, ride bicycles, or play games such as tennis. Vaudeville shows emerged as a popular form of entertainment. Saloons served as local social and political clubs for men. It was in this era that football, baseball, and basketball emerged as spectator sports.
Credit Mobilier Scandal
Crédit Mobilier of America scandal The Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872 involved the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company in the building of the eastern portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
Grant administration
During Ulysses S. Grant's administration fiscal issues dominated politics. Paper money (greenbacks) was regarded as inflationary; and agrarian and debtor groups opposed its withdrawal from circulation. Many members of Grant's administration were corrupt; scandals involved an attempt to corner the golf market, construction of the intercontinental railroad, and the whiskey ring's plan to steal millions of dollars in tax revenue.
15th Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Rising Labor Unions
It was difficult for unskilled workers to organize effectively. Strikebreakers were plentiful because new immigrants were desperate for work. Business owners often had recourse to state and local militias, which would be mobilized against strikers in the face of perceived anarchy. Craft unions made up of only skilled workers became more successful at organizing as the American federation of labor focused on concrete economic gains and better working conditions and avoided involvement in politics.
Life in the west
Life in the west was harsh and violent but the promise of cheap land or wealth from mining drew settlers from the east. Most cowboys and miners did not acquire wealth however because raising cattle and mining became large scale enterprises that enriched only a few. Although most westerners were white protestant Americans or Northern European immigrants, Mexicans, African Americans, and Chinese contributed to the Wests diversity. As a consequence of the regions rugged isolation women achieved greater equality in everyday life than did most women elsewhere in the country.
Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania and one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party during the 1860s. A fierce opponent of slavery and discrimination against African-Americans, Stevens sought to secure their rights during Reconstruction, in opposition to President Andrew Johnson. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the American Civil War, he played a major part in the war's financing.
14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order for them to regain representation in Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade, regarding abortion, and Bush v. Gore, regarding the 2000 presidential election. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, including those acting on behalf of such an official.
The American Frontier
The historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed that the enduring presence of the frontier was responsible for making Americans individualistic, materialistic, practical, democratic, and energetic. In 1893 he declared that the closing of the frontier had ended the first stage of America's history.
Labor Conditions and Organization
The labor force was largely composed of unskilled workers including recent immigrants and growing numbers of women and children. Some children as young as eight years of age worked twelve hours a fay in coal mines and southern mills. In hard times business owners cute wages without discounting the rents they charged for company housing or the prices they charged in company stores.
Rising Big Business
The leading entrepreneurs were extraordinarily skilled at organizing and controlling industry. John D. Rockefeller eventually controlled nearly ever faced of the oil industry, consolidating that control through trusts and holding companies. Andrew Carnegie, who believed that competition benefited both society and business, came to dominate the steel industry by buying struggling companies. J. Pierpont Morgan, an investment banker, not only controlled most of the nations railroads but also bought carnegies steel interests in 1901 thereby creating the nations first billion dollar corporation.
Second Industrial Revolution
The postwar economy was characterized by large-scale industrial development and a burgeoning agriculture sector. The second industrial revolution was fueled by the creation of national transportation and communications systems, the use of electric power and the application of scientific research to industrial processes. The federal government encouraged growth by imposing high tariffs on imported products and granting the railroad companies public land.
Homestead steel strike
an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel Company. The final result was a major defeat for the union and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers.
Industrial Workers of the World
an international, radical labor union that was formed in 1905. The union combines general unionism with industrial unionism, being a general union itself whose members are further organized within the industry of their employment. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism," with ties to both socialist and anarchist labor movements.
Horace Greeley
editor of the New-York Tribune, among the great newspapers of its time. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York, and was the candidate of the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties in the 1872 presidential election. He was defeated by President Ulysses S. Grant, and died before the casting of the electoral vote.