My APUSH Periods 5, 6, 7, 8
The Slaughterhouse Case
A Supreme Court decision in 1873 that rejected the claim by butchers that their right to equality before the law had been violated. In this case, the Justices rules that the 14th Amendment had not altered traditional federalism, thus whittling away at the guarantees of black rights adopted by Congress during Radical Reconstruction.
Proslavery
A belief held by Southerners that supported slavery morally, politically, socially, and economically
Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899
A book by a Norwegian-American economist and social historian that offered a devastating critique of the upper class culture focused on "conspicuous consumption"--that is, spending money not on needed or even desired goods, but simply to demonstrate the possession of wealth.
Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives (1890)
A book that offered a shocking account of living conditions among the urban poor, complete with photographs of apartments in dark, airless, overcrowded tenement houses.
Free Labor ideology
A comprehensive worldview that glorified the North as the home of progress and freedom; the defining quality of Northern society--as opposed to the South--was the opportunity it offered each laborer to move up to the status of landowning farmer or independent craftsman, thus achieving economic independence essential to freedom. In terms of the question of slavery in the West, the free labor position and the free soil position were synonymous: slavery can remain in the South but it should not be allowed to expand into the West. This was a position held by most northerners who feared that the expansion of slavery would block their economic opportunities in the West.
Sea Island Experiment
A famous "rehearsal for Reconstruction" in which groups of northerners attempted to successfully transition the island's black population to freedom after the Union navy occupied the islands off the coast of South Carolina in 1861.
Civil Rights Act of 1875
A final piece of reconstruction legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation like hotels and theaters.
Urbanization
A large shift of the American population from rural to urban areas during the Second Industrial Revolution. Between 1870 and 1920, almost 11 million Americans moved from farm to city.
The Slave Power
A name given to the South's proslavery political leadership by the Republicans; this group supposedly posed a threat to Northerners' liberties and aspirations more so than "popery" and immigration.
Manifest Destiny
A phrase popularizing a widely-held belief in the 1840s that the U.S. has a divinely appointed mission, so obvious as to be beyond dispute, to occupy all of North America. The belief was based on assumptions of white supremacy and the superiority of U.S. cultural, political, and economic institutions. It was a mid-19th century version of American Exceptionalism.
Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan
A plan enacted by President Abraham Lincoln in Union-controlled Louisiana in 1863 that offered an amnesty and full restoration of rights, including property except for slaves, to nearly all white southerners who took an oath affirming loyalty to the Union and support for emancipation; when 10 percent of the voters of 1860 had taken the oath, they could elect a new state government, which would be required to abolish slavery
The Second Industrial Revolution
A rapid and profound economic revolution lastly roughly from the end of the Civil War into the early twentieth century. The period was characterized by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, increasing reliance on fossil fuels, and enormous economic productivity and output. It had numerous causes, including abundant natural resources, a growing supply of labor, an expanding market for manufactured goods, the availability of capital for investment, and a federal government that actively promoted economic and agricultural development ("pro-big business laissez faire").
The Ghost Dance
A religious revitalization campaign reminiscent of the pan-Indian movements lead by earlier prophets; leaders foretold a day when whites would disappear, the buffalo would return, and Indians could once again practice their ancestral customs; this movement was attacked and destroyed militarily by the government.
The Confederate States of America (CSA)
A self-proclaimed nation from 1861-1865 of eleven slave-holding and seceding states (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia).
"Waving the bloody shirt"
A tactic of Republicans after the Civil War whereby they identified their opponents (Democrats) with secession and treason.
The "Gilded Age"
A title of a Mark Twain novel from the 1870s, this derogatory term has been adopted by historians as a name for the last few decades of the 19th century. As opposed to a "golden age", "Gilded" means covered with a layer of gold. The name suggests that beneath the impressive economic growth and innovation of the Second Industrial Revolution, there is also corruption and oppressive treatment of those left behind in the scramble for wealth.
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 1848
A treaty signed between Mexico and the U.S. in 1848 that ended the Mexican-American war, confirmed the annexation of Texas, and ceded California, present-day New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah to the U.S. in exchange for $15 million.
Contrabands
African Americans who had been enslaved but fled to, or were captured by, the Union Army, which accepted the useful fiction that they were "property" of military value subject to confiscation.
Annexation of Texas
After gaining its independence from Mexico in 1836, this state asked to be annexed to the U.S. But it was too controversial because Northerners feared the addition of a slave state would increase the power of slavery and the South. Nine years later, after James Polk's election in 1844, Congress finally declared it a part of the U.S. in 1845; Confirmed by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.
National Banking System
After the Civil War broke out, both sides were found unprepared as they lacked a national banking system. In the North, Congress established a system of nationally chartered banks, which were required to purchase government bonds and were given the right to issue bank notes as currency. A heavy tax drove money issued by state banks out of existence. Thus, the United States, whose money supply before the war was a chaotic mixture of paper notes issued by state and local banks, now had essentially two kinds of national paper currency--greenback printed directly by the federal government, and notes issued by the new national banks.
Black soldiers and sailors
After the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union army became an agent of emancipation.
Freedmen's Bureau
An agency established by Congress in March 1865 to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and blacks, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courts.
The Subjugation of the Plains Indians
As white settlers flooded onto the Great Plains in the Gilded Age, they came into conflict with the native populations. A series of dramatic battles and massacres occurred (including the Sand Creek Massacre in 1964, the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, and the Nez Perce War in 1877), often between Native peoples trying to continue their traditional ways of life and U.S. soldiers with orders to remove them onto reservation lands.
James Polk and expansion
Assuming the presidency in 1845 with a clearly defined set of goals: to reduce the tariff, reestablish the independent Treasury system, settle the dispute over ownership of Oregon, and bring California into the Union. During his Presidency, he accomplished all of them. He oversaw the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and the entire Mexican cession during his presidency.
Emancipation Proclamation
Because its legality derived from the president's authority as military commander-in-chief to combat the South's rebellion, when President Lincoln issued this order on January 1st, 1863, it exempted areas firmly under Union Control (where the war, in effect, had already ended), nor did it apply to the loyal border slave states that had never seceded nor to areas of the Confederacy occupied by union soldiers. However, it did declare that the vast majority of slaves "henceforth shall be free," which in effect transformed the Civil War from a war to save the Union into a war to end slavery.
Abraham Lincoln
Born in Kentucky, served as a Whig in the Illinois state legislature and later in Congress (1847-49); this politician re-entered politics after the Kansas-Nebraska Act; Despite later being known as the Great Emancipator, he held the Free Labor/Soil ideology and became a Republican; in 1858, he accepted his party's Illinois Senate nomination and carved a name for himself as he battled against Stephen Douglas, ultimately losing in '58; in 1860, he went on to win both the electoral and the popular vote to become the 14th U.S. president; he dedicated his presidency to keeping the Union intact and eventually winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery
Compromise of 1850
Complex compromise devised by Senator Henry Clay that: Admitted California as a free state Included a stronger fugitive slave law Applied popular sovereignty in the new territories of New Mexico and Utah Abolished the slave trade (not slavery) in D.C
Wade-Davis Bill
Congressional bill proposed by Republicans in response to Southern Secession; Congress's authority to admit states into the Union Required a majority of white male southerners (not 10%) to pledge support for the Union before Reconstruction could begin in any state The new state constitutions would have to abolish slavery (ratify the 13th amendment that said slavery is not allowed) and disfranchise (take away the power to vote) Confederate civil and military leaders Guaranteed blacks equality before the law, but did not guarantee black voting rights or land redistribution Lincoln pocket-vetoed this bill, so it never became a law.
Redeemers
Conservative white Democrats, many of them planters or businessmen, who reclaimed control of the South following the end of Reconstruction.
Mexican American War, 1846-48
Controversial war with Mexico for control of California and New Mexico, 1846-1848. The first American War to be fought primarily on foreign soil and the first in which American troops occupied a foreign capital.
Missouri Compromise of 1820
Deal proposed by Kentucky senator Henry Clay in 1820 to resolve the slave/free imbalance in Congress that would result from Missouri's admission as a slave state; Maine's admission as a free state offset Missouri, and slavery was prohibited in the remainder of the Louisiana Territory north of the southern border of Missouri (36' 30'' line).
Thirteenth Amendment
Declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States, this Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified during the period of Presidential Reconstruction by the states on December 6, 1865.
Carpetbaggers
Derisive term used by Southern whites for northern emigrants who participated in the Republican governments of the Reconstruction South.
Scalawags
Derisive terms used by Southern whites for other southern white Republicans who supported Reconstruction governments.
Dred Scott Decision (1857) (Dred Scott v. Sandford)
Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri who, for a period of several years, accompanied his owner into Illinois (where slavery was illegal). When he returned to Missouri, he sued his owner for his freedom because he thought residence in a free state (Illinois) should make him free. In the infamous Dred Scott Decision of 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that 1) no black people could be citizens of the U.S., 2) Dred Scott's residence in Illinois had not made him free, and 3) perhaps most shockingly, Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. This third part seemed to imply that the Missouri Compromise Line had been unconstitutional and that the Republican Party's free-labor ideology would be obsolete.
The Reconstruction Acts of 1867
Established temporary military governments in ten Confederate states—excepting Tennessee—and required that the states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and permit freedmen to vote.
Destruction of the Buffalo
For the past several hundred years, Indians on the Great Plains had developed a whole cultural, spiritual, and economic way of life that was centered on the enormous buffalo herds that used to graze on the Great Plans. As railroad and wagon trains brought settlers onto the Plains, hunters seeking buffalo hides brought the vast herds to the brink of extinction. The wars of the late 19th century on the Great Plains were often fought by starving Indians.
Free Soil Party
Formed in 1848 to oppose slavery in the territory acquired in the Mexican War; nominated Martin Van Buren for president in 1848. By 1854 most of the party's members had joined the Republican Party. They were not opposed to the continuation of slavery in the South where it already existed; they simply wanted to prevent any expansion of slavery into the West.
Radical Republicans
Group within the Republican Party in the 1850s and 1860s that advocated strong resistance to the expansion of slavery, opposition to compromise with the South in the secession crisis of 1860-1861, emancipation and arming of black soldiers during the Civil War, and equal civil and political rights for blacks during Reconstruction.
Fourteenth Amendment
Guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words similar to those of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. More specifically, it established the first Constitutional definition of citizenship ("All persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States"), outlawed the black codes ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizen of the United States") and guaranteed equal treatment for all freedmen in the South ("Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
"Bleeding Kansas"
In 1856, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act had gone into effect, there was large voter fraud and the outbreak of violence between pro- and antislavery settlers in the Kansas Territory. The violence in Kansas largely discredited the idea that popular sovereignty could settle the questions over the future of slavery in the West.
New York Draft Riots
In July, 1863, the introduction of the draft provoked four days of rioting in New York City. The mob, composed largely of Irish immigrants, assaulted symbols of the new order created by the war--draft offices, the mansions of wealthy Republicans, industrial establishments, and the city's black population, many of whom fled to New Jersey or took refuge in Central Park. Only the arrival of Union troops quelled the uprising, but not before more than 100 persons had died.
Election and Bargain of 1877
In the aftermath of a close presidential election, an Electoral Commission declared Rutherford B. Hayes president contingent a variety of compromises and agreements upon his taking office. The Democrats agreed to acknowledge that Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes had won the election in exchange for the Republican promise to abandon efforts at southern reconstruction.
Indian Reservation system
In the late 1800s, the federal government set aside areas of land in the West and forced Indian nations to relocate to them or face the U.S. military. These reservations tended to be on lands that were the least desirable to white settlers (usually unsuitable for farming or resource extraction). The reservations represent only a tiny fraction of Western land that Indian nations controlled a century prior.
Andrew Carnegie
In the quintessential "rags to riches" story, this Scottish Immigrant came to the U.S. as a boy and worked his way up to become one of the richest men in the world. He built a Steel Company in his name through "vertical integration"--that is, controlling every phase of the business from raw materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution. His steel factories at Homestead (the site of a major labor battle during the Gilded Age) were the most technologically advanced in the world. He opposed unionization for his employees but promoted philanthropy with his "Gospel of Wealth."
The Dawes Act, 1887
Law passed in 1887 meant to encourage adoption of white norms among Indians; broke up tribal holdings (reservations) into small farms for Indian families, with the remainder sold to white purchasers. The policy proved to be a disaster, leading to the loss of much tribal land and the erosion of Indian cultural traditions.
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
Law sponsored by Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas to allow settlers in newly organized territories north of the Missouri border (KA and NB Territories) to decide the slavery issue for themselves; fury over the resulting repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 led to violence in Kansas and to the formation of the Republican Party.
Frederick Douglass
Leading 19th century African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.
Ex Parte Milligan (1866)
Lincoln had restricted civil liberties during the Civil War by suspending the writ of habeas corpus in order to arrest and detain outspoken opponents of the war in the North. However, after the war, in 1866, in the case, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to bring accused persons before military tribunals where civil courts were operating. The Constitution, declared Justice David Davis, is not suspended in wartime--it remains "a law for rulers and people, equally in time of war and peace."
The Draft
Mandatory military service for all men of a certain age. During the Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy allowed men who were drafted to hire substitutes; this lead to class resentments and charges of a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
Crop-lien System
Merchants extended credit to tenants based on their future crops, but high interest rates and the uncertainties of farming often led to inescapable debts.
Know-Nothing Party
Nativist, anti-Catholic third party organized in 1854 in reaction to large-scale German and Irish immigration. They feared Catholics would be loyal to the Pope, rather than to the United States. The party's only presidential candidate was Millard Fillmore in 1856. Officially called "the American Party," it was secret organization, and when asked about the party by non-members, members were supposed to say, "I know nothing."
"Filibustering" expeditions
Nineteenth century, invasions of Central American countries launched privately by groups of Americans seeking to establish personal rule and spread slavery.
Southern vs. Northern War Aims
Northern: Restore the shattered Union, which meant it had to invade and conquer an area larger than Western Europe. Union soldiers had to be motivated to fight, and possibly die, to defend relatively abstract concepts like union and freedom. Southern: Win independence, which meant it had to not surrender to the Northern Army. Confederate soldiers were motivated to defend their own families, homes, and property, in addition to more abstract concepts like liberty.
Carlisle Indian School
One of the boarding schools established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs where Indian children were taken to be stripped of the "negative" influence of their parents and tribes, dressed in non-Indian clothes, given new names, and educated in white ways.
"captains of industry" or "robber barons"
Opposing viewpoints that industrial leaders were either beneficial for the economy or wielded power without any accountability in an unregulated market.
Republican Party
Organized in 1854 by the antislavery Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; nominated John C. Frémont for president in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln in 1860; also the name of the party formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the 1790s.
Ku Klux Klan
Organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction; a revived organization in the 1910s and 1920s stressed white, Anglo-Saxon, fundamentalist Protestant supremacy; they revived a third time to fight the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the South.
Annexation ("Reoccupation") of Oregon
Part of Polk's and the Democratic Party's campaign strategy to capture northern Democrats; Polk promised to annex Texas while reoccupying the British controlled Oregon. This way, the balance of power in the Senate between representatives from free states and slave states would not be upset. After his election, Polk oversaw a successful negotiation with Great Britain that brought in most of the Oregon Territory.
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Part of the Compromise of 1850, the passing of this aroused strong opposition in the North because it allowed special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of a jury trial or even testimony by the accused individual. It prohibited local authorities from interfering with the capture of fugitives and required individual citizens to assist in the capture when called upon by federal authorities. It also revealed that the South was willing to accept the expansion of federal authority over states rights as long as it strengthened the institution of slavery.
Civil Rights Bill of 1866
Passed by Radical Republicans, over President Johnson's veto, in response to the black codes, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (along with the Fourteenth Amendment) guaranteed the rights of citizenship to former slaves.
Fifteenth Amendment
Prohibited states from denying citizens the right to vote because of race.
Transcontinental Railroad
Refers to the first railroad line across the continent from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, established in 1869 with the linkage of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory, Utah
Wilmot Proviso
Reflecting free-labor ideology, this was a PA Congressman's proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican-American War. Every northern Congressman supported it, but Southern Congressmen, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, defeated the measure repeatedly.
Lincoln-Douglas debates
Series of senatorial campaign debates in 1858 focusing on the issue of slavery in the territories; held in Illinois between Republican Abraham Lincoln, who made a national reputation for himself, and incumbent Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, who managed to hold onto his seat.
Abolitionism
Social movement of the pre-Civil War era (predominantly in the North) that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens.
"Fire-eaters"
Southern nationalists hoping to split up the Democratic party and form an independent Southern Confederacy.
Freedmen
Term that referred to free citizens who were formerly slaves before the Civil War.
The First Modern War
The American Civil War; the first time armies confronted each other with weapons created by the industrial revolution. In a modern war like the Civil War, the effectiveness of political leadership, the ability to mobilize economic resources, and a society's willingness to keep up the fight despite setbacks are as crucial to the outcome as success or failure on individual battlefields. The casualties dwarfed anything in the American experience War was transformed from army vs. army to society vs. society. First time that the railroad transported troops and supplies and the first to see railroad junctions become major military objectives. First demonstration of the superiority of ironclad ships, revolutionizing naval warfare. Telegraph was used for military communication and the introduction of observation balloons to view enemy lines. The musket was replaced with the more accurate rifle, which changed the nature of combat. Propaganda was used to motivate both sides of the war.
Southern and Northern resource advantages/disadvantages
The North: Population= 22 million in 1860 In manufacturing, railroad mileage and financial resources outstripped the South Mostly had farm boys, shopkeepers, artisans and urban workers South: Population: 9 million w/ 3.5 million slaves Less manufacturing than the North However, southern armies could lose most of the battles and still win the war if their opponent tired of the struggle Non-slaveholding small farmers with slave-owners dominating the officer corps
Popular sovereignty
The belief that settlers in western territories should have the right to decide the slavery issue for themselves (rather than having Congress decide it for them); program most closely associated with Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Election of 1860
The candidates were Lincoln (Republican), Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), Bell (Constitutional Union [wanted to preserve the Constitution as it was, with slavery]), Douglas (Northern Democrat). Despite not even appearing on the ballot in most southern states, Lincoln won both the electoral and the popular vote; a clear example of the sweeping sectionalism dividing the nation. Breckinridge carried most of the slave states and Lincoln took the large majority of the North; Douglas was the only candidate to have significant support across the nation. Lincoln's victory triggered the secessionist movement.
Navajo's Long Walk
The forced migration of 8,000 Navajo people in the Southwest to a reservation set aside by the government.
John D. Rockefeller
The leading figure in the U.S. oil industry and one of the richest people in the world, he used "horizontal integration" (buying up all his competitors) and later "vertical integration" (controlling the drilling, refining, storage, and distribution of oil) to build his company, Standard Oil, which controlled ninety percent of the nation's oil industry. Like Carnegie, he fought unionization but gave much of his fortune away, establishing foundations to promote education and medical research.
Gold Rush
The mania for gold incited by its discovery in January of 1848; drastically increased the number of settlers who migrated to California.
Crédit Mobilier Scandal, 1867
The most notorious example of corruption in federal politics during the Gilded Age in which lawmakers supported bills aiding companies in which they had invested money or from which they received stock or salaries. This scandal is named after a construction company that charged the (government-assisted) Union-Pacific Railroad exorbitant rates to build the eastern half of the first transcontinental railroad line, then they paid the lawmakers to look the other way.
Sectionalism
The regional divide becoming apparent in American politics leading up to and even after the Civil War; the North and South were clearly divided by multiple political, economic, and cultural factors, yet each distinct region had little political variance. By 1860, the two major parties--the Republicans and the Democrats--were strongly associated with the North and the South, respectively.
Texas Revolt (1836)
The revolt in 1836 of Americans legally settled in Texas (a Mexican territory) when Mexico feared losing power and annulled land contracts and barred future emigration and slavery; Stephen Austin led the rebels to demand greater autonomy, resulting in Texan independence in 1836. The war included the infamous battle of "The Alamo" (187 killed)/ "Remember the Alamo." Today, Texas is called "The Lone Star State" because of the nine year period of its independence from both Mexico and the U.S.
Congressional Reconstruction
The second phase of Reconstruction, which lasted roughly from the impeachment of Andrew Johnson until the Redeemers overthrew reconstruction efforts in the South. This phase of reconstruction was lead by the Radical Republicans in Congress and was much more interested in protecting the rights and equality of the freedmen than Presidential Reconstruction.
Harper's Ferry, Virginia
The site of abolitionist John Brown's failed raid on the federal arsenal, in 1859, that heightened sectional tensions; Brown intended to liberate and arm the slaves with weapons from the arsenal and then start a liberation movement that he hoped would sweep south throughout the region. The plan failed. Brown was captured and hung. Brown was celebrated as a martyr by many Northerners, which alarmed many Southerners.
Second American Revolution
The transformation of American government and society brought about by the Civil War. Major elements of the revolution include: the abolition of slavery, the consolidation of Lincoln's vision of the nation united by the ideals of political democracy and human liberty, the increasing power and activity of the federal government (punishing dissent, the Homestead Act, the Transcontinental Railroad, increased tariff, income tax, a system of nationally chartered banks.)
Monopolies
These developed often during the Second Industrial Revolution, often through cutthroat competition, when one company came to dominate an entire industry, which resulted in limited competition and higher prices for consumers.
Black Codes
These were laws passed by southern states during Presidential Reconstruction in order to restrict the rights of former slaves. To nullify the codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.
Trusts
These were legal devices whereby the affairs of several rival companies were managed by a single director in order to limit competition between them. They developed during the Second Industrial Revolution as companies tried to bring order to the chaotic marketplace.
Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis"
This (University of Wisconsin) historian's 1893 essay argued that the western frontier process had forged the distinctive qualities of American character (individualism) and government (political democracy). Turner portrayed the West as an empty space ("free land") before the coming of white settlers, for this reason and others, his argument has been widely rejected by modern historians.
Homestead Act, 1862
This Civil War era law authorized Congress to grant 160 acres of public land to a western settler, who had to live on the land for five years to establish title. It reflected the Republican Party's Free-Labor ideology ("free soil for free labor'). By the 1930s, more than 400,000 families had acquired farms under its provisions. In addition, the Land Grant College Act assisted the states in establishing "agricultural and mechanic colleges" across the nation.
New York's "Boss" Tweed Ring
This corrupt urban political machine reached into every New York City neighborhood and won support from the city's immigrant poor by fashioning a kind of private welfare system that provided food, fuel, and jobs in hard times while also plundering the city of tens of millions of dollars.
Pro-big business laissez faire
This is the term historians use to describe the role of the national government in the economy during Gilded Age. The government was actively involved in the economy in ways that promoted big business (subsidizing railroads, canals, roads; subsidizing mail; maintaining protective tariffs; subsidizing research and development; forcing Native Americans onto reservations, putting down labor strikes, surveying Western lands and giving it to settlers; pursuing an imperialistic foreign policy for natural resources and markets, establishing protective tariffs, attracting immigrant labor, etc.). But the government was very limited, or "hands-off," in its efforts to protect the interests of workers, consumers, or the environment.
Civic Religion
This term refers to the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals (like saying the pledge, or singing the anthem), texts (like the Declaration of Independence), public symbols (such as the national flag), and public ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields, or national cemeteries).
The national railroad system
This transportation system made the Second Industrial Revolution possible. It was spurred by private investment and massive grants of land and money by federal, state, and local governments, and the miles of track in the U.S. exploded between the Civil War and 1920, opening up vast new areas for commercial farming and creating a national market for manufactured goods. This transportation system reorganized time itself; in 1883, the major companies divided the nation into four time zones still in use today.
Presidential Reconstruction
This was the first phase of Reconstruction overseen first by Lincoln and then by Johnson, resting on the premise that the South had not actually succeeded, but rather they had launched an insurrection and thus the President had the authority to execute the law in this situation. This first phase of Reconstruction was mainly aimed at quelling the insurrection quickly with little disruption.
Enforcement Acts
Three acts passed between 1870-1871 outlawing terrorist societies and allowing the president to use the army against them.
Sharecropping
Type of farm tenancy that developed after the Civil War in which landless workers‚ often former slaves, farmed land in exchange for farm supplies and a share of the crop. It offered severely limited economic opportunity.
Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890
U.S. soldiers opened fire on Ghost Dancers at this locations in South Dakota, killing between 150 and 200 Indians, mostly women and children. This horrific event marked the end of four centuries of armed conflict between the continent's native population and European settlers and their descendents. Estimated to be well over several million on the eve of contact, the Indian population within the United States had fallen to 250,000 by the 1900 census.
John C. Calhoun
Vice President under Andrew Jackson; leading Southern politician; began his political career as a nationalist and an advocate of protective tariffs, later he becomes an advocate of free trade, states' rights, pro-slavery, limited government, and nullification; in 1844, Calhoun wrote a letter that linked the annexation of Texas to strengthening slavery in the US.
The western cowboy mythology
While these were real people, they have become a symbol of the independence and rugged individualism in the old American West. However, it's also true that the development of the West depended in large part of the assistance of the federal government for the construction of railroads, the destruction of Indian Nations, the financing of irrigation systems and dams. And while large numbers of family farms dominated the West in the Gilded Age, corporate Bonanza farms also emerged that covered thousands of acres and employed large numbers of agricultural wage workers.
Southern Unionists
White southerners living in the Confederacy who opposed secession and organized a peace movement against the Civil War.
Thomas Edison, "The Wizard of Menlo Park"
Widely considered the greatest inventor of the Second Industrial Revolution, this person and his team of researchers at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey developed inventions that transformed private life, public entertainment, and economic activity, including the phonograph, light bulb, motion picture, and a system for generating electric power.
Women and Civil War Work
Women took advantage of the wartime labor shortage to move into jobs in factories and into certain largely male professions, particularly nursing.
Mountain Meadows Massacre, 1857
An attack by a group of Mormons on a wagon train of non-Morman settlers, killing over 100 adults and older children. The event came out of a period of tension between the federal government and the Mormans, who had been led by Brigham Young to the Great Salt Lake Valley of Utah in the 1840s, and whose practice of polygamy and close connection between church and state, put them at odds with the political and cultural practices of the United States.