HIS 131 Ole Miss Exam 1 Marcheil

Dawes Act

A federal law intended to turn Native Americans into farmers and landowners by providing cooperating families with 160 acres of reservation land for farming or 320 acres for grazing.

the war of 1898

After the explosion of the USS Maine in Cuba, the US declared war on Spain and quickly won. The US gained Cuba as a new colony

What ideas made many late 19th/early 20th-century Americans believe that expanding American power overseas was a good idea?

It was believed that national greatness could only be achieved through (male) strife, the strenuous life emphasized war. The White man's burden emphasized that civilizing nonwhite people was a noble sacrifice, emphasis on service over self interest.

assimilation (Native American)

Christianized American Indian policy. Much of the reservation system was handed over to Protestant churches, which were tasked with finding agents and missionaries to manage reservation life. Congress hoped that religiously-minded men might fare better at creating just assimilation policies and persuading Indians to accept them.

ethnic city

Immigrants from specific countries—and often even specific communities—often clustered together in ethnic neighborhoods. They formed vibrant organizations and societies, such as Italian workmen's clubs, Eastern European Jewish mutual-aid societies, and Polish Catholic Churches, to ease the transition to their new American home. Immigrant communities published newspapers in dozens of languages and purchased spaces to maintain their arts, languages, and traditions alive

What historical evidence challenges the myth that the late 19th-century West was a place of rugged individualism?

Earl Pomeroy, in an influential 1955 essay and in many other works, challenged Turner's notion of the West as a place of individualism, innovation, and democratic renewal. "Conservatism, inheritance, and continuity bulked at least as large," he claimed. "The westerner has been fundamentally imitator rather than innovator. . . . He was often the most ardent of conformists."

How would you characterize federal policy toward Native Americans starting around the 1880s? What ideas shaped federal policy? What specific policies reflected those ideas?

Federal policy began to assimilate Native Americans to white Christian culture. The idea of savagery vs civilization shaped the federal ideas, the idea that American civilization meant one lived in a house, wore civilized clothing, and was Christian. 1887 Dawes Act granted land to individual natives instead of collective ownership Boarding Schools began to take children from reservations 1884 government banned Dakota Sundance 1890 government banned death rituals.

Guano Islands

Guano—collected bird excrement—was a popular fertilizer integral to industrial farming. The Act authorized and encouraged Americans to venture into the seas and claim islands with guano deposits for the United States.

William Jennings Bryan

Nebraska congressman regarded as one of the greatest American political speakers of all time. Won the democratic presidential candidacy after his "Cross of Gold Speech" during the democratic national convention of 1896, advocated for "bimetallism".

Chief Joseph

Nez Perce native American, negotiated with the federal government to ensure his people could stay on their land in the Wallowa Valley. But in 1877, the government reversed its policy, and Army General Oliver Howard threatened to attack if the Wallowa band did not relocate to the Idaho Reservation with the other Nez Perce. Joseph reluctantly agreed. Before the outbreak of hostilities, General Howard held a council at Fort Lapwai to try to convince Joseph and his people to relocate. Joseph finished his address to the general, which focused on human equality, by expressing his "[disbelief that] the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do."

What were the key ideas that late 19th/early 20th century white Americans had about racial difference?

People believed that race was a fact, that a the skin color of a person said something specific to their personality.

How did industrialization change life for Americans at the bottom of the economic spectrum?

Poor Americans became wage workers during a time with few regulations. Many worked 60 hour weeks and wives and children had to work additionally to keep above the poverty line. Poor Americans lived in slums of cities, fires and disease were common.

The New South

Supported building a more diversified Southern economy; championed the expansion of Southern industry; supported return of White conservatives to power; withdrawal of federal troops and rise of KKK and lynching

Savagery vs Civilization

The notion that savage and civilized cultures co-existed in the same historical time. In this case it was assumed that the so-called savage would adopt the culture of the so-called civilized, or be crushed

What strategies did white southerners use to bolster white supremacy in the New South?

White southerners began lynching to "prevent black men from raping white women" enactment of Jim Crow laws segregating black and white Illegalization of biracial marriages preventing black voting by physical and economic threats, and literacy tests The Lost Cause myth, glorified slave owners as generous and slaves as willing, along with confederate soldiers fighting for honor rather than slavery

monopoly capitalism

a capitalistic system in which large companies dominate a market, great wealth in the hands of few. Anti competitive firms practiced horizontal and vertical integration.

dollar diplomacy

a less costly method of empire and avoided the troubles of military occupation. Washington worked with bankers to provide loans to Latin American nations in exchange for some level of control over their national fiscal affairs.

primary source

a person recounting a time they lived through

Ghost Dance

a religious ceremony introduced by the Paiute tribe in an area that is now present-day Nevada. The Ghost Dance ritual started in the 1870s, but grew in popularity after a Paiute religious man named Wovoka had a vision. Wovoka was a self-proclaimed prophet who believed he was sent to prepare all Native Americans for their salvation. He experienced a dream during a solar eclipse, on January 1, 1889, in which all Native Americans were taken into the sky. In the dream, the earth destroyed the whites to prepare for the return of the Native American way of life. There were a series of events necessary for this dream to take place.

Chinese Exclusion Act

accusing Chinese immigrants of racial inferiority and unfitness for American citizenship, opponents claimed that they were also economically and morally corrupting American society with cheap labor and immoral practices, such as prostitution. Immigration restriction was necessary for the "Caucasian race of California," as one anti-Chinese politician declared, and for European Americans to "preserve and maintain their homes, their business, and their high social and moral position." In 1875, the anti-Chinese crusade in California moved Congress to pass the Page Act, which banned the entry of convicted criminals, Asian laborers brought involuntarily, and women imported "for the purposes of prostitution," a stricture designed chiefly to exclude Chinese women. Then, in May 1882, Congress suspended the immigration of all Chinese laborers

Ida B Wells

an African American woman born in the last years of slavery and a pioneering anti-lynching advocate, lost three friends to a lynch mob in Memphis, Tennessee in 1892. That year, Wells published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, a groundbreaking work that documented the South's lynching culture and exposed the myth of the black rapist.

social darwinism

challenged the social, political, and religious beliefs of many Americans. One of Darwin's greatest popularizers, the British sociologist and biologist Herbert Spencer, applied Darwin's theories to society and popularized the phrase "survival of the fittest." The fittest, Spencer said, would demonstrate their superiority through economic success, while state welfare and private charity would lead to social degeneration-it would encourage the survival of the weak.

what does it mean to put people, events or ideas into historical context?

considering the social, religious, economic, and political conditions that existed during a certain time and place. It is what enables us to interpret and analyze works or events of the past, rather than merely judge them by contemporary standards. "People of the past are not just us with different clothes on"

lost cause myth

glorified the Confederacy and romanticized the Old South. White southerners looked forward while simultaneously hearkening back to an imagined past inhabited by contented and loyal slaves, benevolent and generous masters, chivalric and honorable men, and pure and faithful southern belles. Secession, they said, had little to do with the institution of slavery, and soldiers fought only for home and honor, not the continued ownership of human beings.

secondary source

historians gathering and presenting evidence on a past event

Andrew Carnegie

immigrated from Scotland and worked at a cotton factory, became a secretary for a railroad company and became its superintendent in 6 years. Later became had the largest steel monopoly in America.

taylorism

increased efficiency by subdividing tasks. Rather than having thirty mechanics individually making thirty machines, for instance, a manufacturer could assign thirty laborers to perform thirty distinct tasks. Such a shift would not only make workers as interchangeable as the parts they were using, it would also dramatically speed up the process of production. If managed by trained experts, specific tasks could be done quicker and more efficiently.

Jim Crow laws

legalized what custom had long dictated. Southern states and municipalities enforced racial segregation in public places and in private lives. Separate coach laws were some of the first such laws to appear, beginning in Tennessee in the 1880s. Soon, schools, stores, theaters, restaurants, bathrooms, and nearly every other part of public life were segregated. So too were social lives. The sin of racial mixing, critics said, had to be heavily guarded against. Marriage laws regulated against interracial couples and white men, ever anxious of relationships between black men and white women, passed miscegenation laws and justified lynching as an appropriate extra-legal tool to police the racial divide.

cheap amusements

low cost urban leisure activities, social freedom accompanied by wage work.

What made the "new immigration" during the turn of the century new? How did new immigrants shape American cities?

many immigrants began coming from places immigrants had not before due to "push and pull factors". Immigration from eastern Europe and Ireland began to make white Americans question what was "white". New immigrants began forming ethnic cities to keep cultural practices alive.

social equality

one of Henry Grady's ideas for reforming the South and molding it into an American asset

machine politics

political power used in cities to enrich themselves, public money went to private machine heads, traded votes for politicians for jobs. Tammany Hall in New York city

strenuous life

popularized by Teddy Roosevelt, the idea that men were "over civilized" men had become too dependent from office jobs and needed to embrace masculinity

Turner Thesis

said that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. The American frontier was a "safety valve".

Omaha Platform

sought to counter the scale and power of monopolistic capitalism with a strong, engaged, and modern federal government. The platform proposed an unprecedented expansion of federal power. It advocated nationalizing the country's railroad and telegraph systems to ensure that essential services would be run in the best interests of the people. In an attempt to deal with the lack of currency available to farmers, it advocated postal savings banks to protect depositors and extend credit. It called for the establishment of a network of federally-managed warehouses—called subtreasuries—which would extend government loans to farmers who stored crops in the warehouses as they awaited higher market prices. To save debtors it promoted an inflationary monetary policy by monetizing silver. Direct election of Senators and the secret ballot would ensure that this federal government would serve the interest of the people rather than entrenched partisan interests and a graduated income tax would protect Americans from the establishment of an American aristocracy

what does it mean to say race is a social construct

the concept of race was constructed by society to categorize people based on their skin color.

lynching

the extralegal murder of individuals by vigilantes—that washed across the South after Reconstruction.

separate spheres

the idea that men worked in the public sphere, and would provide for their families while women existed in the private sphere and embraced morality and the strength of a home. Became a backbone to America becoming an empire

the great railroad strike of 1877

workers strike from Baltimore to St. Louis. When local police forces were unwilling or incapable of suppressing the strikes, governors called out state militias to break them and restore rail service. Many strikers destroyed rail property rather than allow militias to reopen the rails. The protests approached a class war. The governor of Maryland deployed the state's militia. In Baltimore the militia fired into a crowd of striking workers, killing eleven and wounding many more. Strikes convulsed towns and cities across Pennsylvania. The head of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thomas Andrew Scott, suggested that, if workers were unhappy with their wages, they should be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread."1 Law enforcement in Pittsburgh refused to put down the protests, so the governor called out the state militia, who killed twenty strikers with bayonets and rifle fire. A month of chaos erupted. Strikers set fire to the city, destroying dozens of buildings, over a hundred engines, and over a thousand cars. In Reading, strikers destroyed rail property and an angry crowd bombarded militiamen with rocks and bottles. The militia fired into the crowd, killing ten. A general strike erupted in St. Louis, and strikers seized rail depots and declared for the eight-hour day and the abolition of child labor. Federal troops and vigilantes fought their way into the depot, killing eighteen and breaking the strike.