Exam 1 - Ch. 14, 15, and 16

What changes did industrialization bring to American culture and what were the varying responses to them?

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Analyze the influence of the president and Congress on Reconstruction policy and evaluate the successes and shortcomings of the policies they enacted.

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Describe some of the ways that Indian peoples responded to federal policies. Which response do you think offered their greatest chance for survival?

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Describe the role of the mining and lumber industries in the economic and social development of the West.

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Discuss the challenges newly freed African Americans faced and how they respond to them.

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Evaluate the changes that took place in the society and economy of the South during Reconstruction.

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Explain how and why Reconstruction came to an end by the mid-1870s.

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Explain the determination of Americans to settle inland west of the Mississippi River despite the challengers the region presented.

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Explain the motives and incentives that led to settling of the trans-Mississippi West and the technological developments that encouraged it.

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Explain the strategies used by the US govt. to control the lives of Native Americans in the West and Indians' reactions to these efforts.

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How and why did federal Indian policy change during the nineteenth century?

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How and why did the nature of mining in the West change during the second half of the nineteenth century?

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How did freedpeople define freedom? What steps did they take to make freedom real for themselves and their children?

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How did industrialization change the way American businessmen thought about their companies and the people who worked for them?

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How did industrialization contribute to heightened anxieties about gender roles and race?

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How did market forces contribute to the boom and bust of the cattle ranching industry and commercial farming?

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How did southern whites fight back against Reconstruction? What role did terrorism and political violence play in this effort?

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How did the business community view the role of government in the economy at the end of the nineteenth century?

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How did the mining and lumber industries reshape the frontier landscape?

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How did women homesteaders on the Great Plains in the late nineteenth century respond to frontier challenges?

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How would you explain the high rates of voter turnout and political participation in an era of uninspiring politicians and governmental inaction?

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Identify factors that led to the ride of commercial ranching and contrast the image of life in the West for ranchers and farmers with the reality.

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In the late nineteenth century, how did many Americans explain individual economic success and failure?

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What accounted for the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the federal government in the late nineteenth century?

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What characterized congressional Reconstruction? What priorities were reflected in congressional Reconstruction legislation?

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What common values and beliefs among white Americans were reflected in the compromise on 1877?

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What is the image of US in Industrial Age?

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What role did black people play in remaking southern society during Reconstruction?

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What role did consumption play in the society and culture of the Gilded Age?

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What role did the federal government play in opening the West to settlement and economic exploitation?

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What was President Johnson's plan for reconstruction? How were his views out of step with those of most Republicans?

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What were freedpeople's highest priorities in the years immediately following the Civil War? Why?

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What were the key factors behind the acceleration of industrial development in the late-nineteenth-century America?

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Why did northern interest in Reconstruction wane in the 1870s?

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What was the role of the federal government in the expansion of the West?

- Rugged Individualism ~a belief that individuals can succeed with minimal governmental aide. It is generally considered a belief of the Republican party in the 1920's - federal govt. gave incentives ~subsidies of land to RR companies ~Homestead Act

What is the image of the late-19th/early 20th century "American West"?

- lots of change is occurring - Manifest Destiny ~belief that US expansions throughout the American continent was justified and inevitable ~cause - LA purchase, gold fever, trail of tears ~effects - loss of natives land, created roads and railroads - pioneers - cowboys and Indians - women's era - Industrial Age - Gilded Age ~the time of economic growth, the second industrial revolution, urbanization, immigration, and political / economic corruption - Progressive Era

Primary Sources

A document, or record, of past events created by someone who was present during the events or the time period in which they occurred. Caution: Primary sources do not tell the whole story. They also have biases and reflect the period in which they were written. Sources will often conflict or contradict one another. Examples: Autobiography Declaration of Independence Photograph

Secondary Sources

A document, record, of past events created by someone who was not present during the events or the time period in which they occurred. Examples: Biography (sometimes autobiography) Monograph or Textbook - (monograph is a scholarly text written about one topic) Reference Book or Encyclopedia

Vertical Integration

A major organizational technique for reducing costs and underselling the competition was vertical integration. "Captions of industry," as their admirers called them, did not just build a business; they created a system - a network of firms, each contributing to the final product.

What Amendment was passed by the Radical Republicans? 13th 14th 15th None All

All

New South

Although the largely rural South lagged behind the North and the Midwest in manufacturing, industrial expansion did not bypass the region. Well aware of global economic trends and eager for the South to achieve its economic potential, southern business leaders and newspaper editors saw industrial development as the key to the creation of a New South. Attributing the Confederate defeat in the Civil War to the North's superior manufacturing output and railroad supply lines, New South proponents hoped to modernize their economy in a similar fashion.

Buffalo Soldiers

Among the troops that battled the Indians were African Americans. Known as buffalo soldiers, they represented a cross section of the postwar black population looking for new opportunities that were now available after their emancipation. Some blacks enlisted to learn how to read and write; others sought to avoid unpleasant situations back home.

Californios

As with the nation's other frontiers, migrants to the West Coast did not find uninhabited territory. Besides Indians, the largest group that lived in California consisted of Spaniards and Mexicans. Since the eighteenth century, these Californios had established themselves as farmers and ranchers. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, supposedly guaranteed the property rights of Californios and granted them US citizenship, but reality proved different. Mexican American miners had to pay a "foreign miners tax," and Californio landowners list their holdings to squatters, settlers, and local officials. By the end of the nineteenth century, about two-thirds of all land originally owned by Spanish-speaking residents had fallen into the hands of Euro-American settlers. By this time, many of these once wealthy Californios had been forced into poverty influence of the labor force. The loss of land was match by a diminished role in the region's government, as economic decline, ethnic bias, and the continuing influx of white migrant combined to greatly reduce the political influence of the Californio population.

Carpetbaggers

At the same time, Northerners came south to support Republican Reconstruction. They had varied reasons for making the journey, but most considered the South a new frontier to be conquered culturally, politically, and economically. Some - white and black - had served in the Union army during the war, liked what they saw of the region, and decided to settle there. Some of both races came to provide education and assist the freedpeople in adjusting to their new lives. Souther Democrats denounced such northern interlopers, particularly whites, as carpetbaggers, suggesting that they invaded the region with all their possessions in a satchel, seeking to plunder it and then leave. This characterization applied to some, but it did not accurately describe the motivations of most transplanted Northerners.

Convict Lease

Blacks contributed greatly to the construction of railroads in the New South, but they did not do so as free men. Convicts, most of whom were African American, performed the exhausting work of laying tracks through hills and swamps. Southern states used the convict lease system, in which blacks, usually imprisoned for minor offenses, were hired out to private companies to serve their time or pay off their fine. The convict lease system brought additional income to the state and supplied cheap labor to the railroads and planters, but it African American convict laborers impoverished and virtually enslaved.

Horizontal Integration

Businessmen also employed another type of integration - horizontal integration. This approach focused on gaining greater control over the market by acquiring firms that sold that same products.

Trust

Capitalists devised new corporate structures to gain greater control over their industries. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company led the wat by creating the trust, a monopoly formed by a small group of leading stockholders from several firms who manage the consolidated enterprise.

Tenure of Office Act

Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act which prevented Johnson from firing cabinet officers sympathetic to congressional Reconstruction. This measure barred the chief executive from removing from office any appointee that the Senate had ratified previously without returning to the Senate for approval. Johnson later in 1868 fired Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, without Senate approval, leading him to be impeached.

Contingency

Contingency is how history has been affected by previous events.

Long Drive

Cowpunchers worked for paltry monthly wages, put in long days herding cattle, and spent part of the night guarding them on the open range. Their major task was to make the 1,500 mill Long Drive along the Chisholm Trail.

Freedmen's Bureau

Created by Congress in 1865 and signed into law by President Lincoln, the bureau provided ex-slaves with economic and legal resources. It also aided many former slaves in achieving one of their primary goals: obtaining land. The slaves felt they could not truly be free without land of their own. The federal government distributed 400,000 acres of abandoned land, and they made hundreds of thousands of additional acres available to recently emancipated slaves.

"The Gospel of Wealth"

Denying that the government should help the poor, they proclaimed that men of wealth had a duty to furnish some assistance. In his famous essay "The Gospel of Wealth" (1889), Carnegie argued that the rich should act as stewards of the wealth they earned.

Scalawags

During the first years of congressional Reconstruction, two groups of whites occupied the majority of elective offices in the South. A significant number of native-born Southerners joined Republicans in forging postwar constitutions and governments. Before the war, some had belonged to the Whig Party and opposed secession from the Union. Small merchants and farmers who detested large plantation owners also threw in their lot with the Republicans. Even a few ex-Confederates, such as General James A. Longstreet, decided that the South must change and allied with the Republicans. The majority of whites who continued to support the Democratic Party viewed these whites as traitors. They showed their distaste by calling them scalawags, an unflattering term meaning "scoundrels."

Exodusters

Economic hardship and racial bigotry drove many blacks to leave the South. In 1879 former slaves, known as Exodusters, pooled their resources to create land companies and purchase property in Kansas on which to settle. They encouraged an exodus of some 25,000 African Americans from the South.

What migrant groups were attracted to the far West? What drew them there?

Explain the rising hostility to the Chinese and other minority groups in the late-nineteenth century far West.

True or False: Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to bolster his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.

False

True or False: The Emancipation Proclamation ended bondage for all enslaved persons across the South.

False

Black Codes

Far from providing freedpeople with basic civil rights, the southern states passed a variety of black codes intended to reduce African Americans to a condition as close to slavery as possible. Some laws prohibited blacks from bearing arms; others outlawed intermarriage and excluded blacks from serving on juries. The codes also made it difficult for blacks to leave plantations unless they provided they could support themselves. Laws like this were designed to ensure that white landowners had a supply of cheap black labor despite slavery's abolition.

What did freedom mean to the formerly enslaved people?

Formerly enslaved people had a vision of freedom that involved securing their families, economic independence, education, freedom of worship, political participation, and legal protections. Former Slaves Wanted: - The same opportunities as northern workers - To find their loved ones - To own land - Political freedom and suffrage Former Slaveholders Wanted: - Blacks to not have the same equal civil rights - To keep blacks in their place / where they belonged ie. poor and working on the plantations

HER PRESENTATION QUESTIONS

HER PRESENTATION QUESTIONS

HER SAMPLE QUESTIONS

HER SAMPLE QUESTIONS

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

In 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, General Nathan Bedford Forrest organized Confederate veterans into a social club called the Knights of the Ki Klux Klan (KKK). Spreading throughout the South, its followers donned robes and masks to hide their identities and terrify their victims. Gun-wielding Ku Kluxers rode on horseback to the homes and churches of black and white Republicans to keep them from voting. When threats did not work, they beat and murdered their victims.

Ghost Dance

In 1888 the prophet Wovoka, a member of the Paiute tribe Nevada, had a vision that Indians would one day regain control of the world and that whites would disappear. He believed that the Creator had provided him with a Ghost Dance that would make this happen. The dance spread to thousands of Lakota Sioux in the northern plains. Seeing the Ghost Dance as a sign of renewed Indian resistance, the army attempted to put a stop to the revival. On December 29, 1890, the Seventh Calvary chased three hundred ghost dancers to Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in present-day South Dakota. In a confrontation with the Lakota leader Big Foot, a gunshot accidentally rang out during a struggle with one of his followers. The cavalry then turned the full force of their weaponry on the Indians, killing 250 Native Americans, many of them women and children.

Sherman Antitrust Act

In 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed monopolies that prevented free competition in interstate commerce. The bill passed easily with bipartisan support because it merely codified legal principles that already existed.

Plessy v. Ferguson

In 1896 the Supreme Court sanctioned Jim Crow, constructing rationale for legally keeping the races apart. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the high court ruled that a Louisiana law providing for "equal by separate" accommodations for "whites" and "coloreds" on railroad cars did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

In December 1863, President Lincoln issued this, which declared that defeated states would have to accept the abolition of slavery, but then new governments could be formed when 10 percent of those eligible to vote in 1860 (which in practice meant white southern men but not blacks) swore an oath of allegiance to the United States. It granted amnesty to all but the highest-ranking Confederate officials, and restored voters in each state would elect members to a constitutional convention and representatives to take their seats in Congress.

Fifteenth Amendment

In February 1868, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to protect black male suffrage, which had initially been guaranteed by the Military Reconstruction Acts. A compromise between moderate and Radical Republicans, the amendment prohibited voting discrimination based on race, but it did not deny states the power to impose qualifications based on literacy, payment of taxes, moral character, or any other standard that did not directly relate to race. Subsequently, the wording of the amendment provided loopholes for white leaders to disfranchise African Americans. The amendment did, however, cover the entire nation, including the North, where states like Connecticut, Kansas, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin still excluded blacks from voting.

Fourteenth Amendment

In June, lawmakers adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, which incorporated many of the provisions of the Civil Rights Act, and submitted it to the states for ratification. The Fourteenth Amendment defined citizenship to include African Americans, thereby nullifying the ruling in the Dred Scott case of 1857, which declared that blacks were not citizens. It extended equal protection and due process to law to all persons, not only citizens. The amendment repudiated Confederate debts, which some state governments had refused to do, and it barred Confederate officeholders from holding elective office unless Congress removed this provision by a two-thirds vote. Rather than granting the right to vote to black males at least twenty-one years of age, the Fourteenth Amendment gave the states the option of excluding blacks and accepting a reduction in congressional representation if they did so.

Jim Crow

In the 1890s, white southerners also imposed legally sanctioned racial segregation on the region's black citizens. Commonly known as Jim Crow laws (named for a character in a minstrel show, where whites performed in blackface), these new statues denied AFrican Americans equal access to public facilities and ensured that blacks lived apart from whites. In 1883, when the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act, it gave southern states the freedom to adopt measures confining blacks to separate schools, public accomodations, seats on transportation, beds in hospitals, and section sof graveyards.

Great Plains

In the mid-nineteenth century, the western frontier lay in the Great Plains. Prospects for sedentary farmers in this dry region did not appear promising. Lack of rainfall, he argued, would make it difficult or even impossible for homesteaders to support themselves on family farms of 160 acres. Instead, he recommended that for the plains to prove economically sustainable, settlers would have to work much larger stretched of land, around 2,560 acres (4 square miles). This would provide ample room to raise livestock under dry conditions.

Why did industrialization accelerate in the late-nineteenth century US?

Industrialization transformed society from agricultural to industrial. New energy sources made production faster and more effective (kerosene). The population also grew rapidly, tripling the workforce and immigrants.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

This Amendment protected Confederate generals from prosecution in federal court? 13th 14th 15th None All

None

What Amendment ended poverty for freedpeople? 13th 14th 15th None All

None (or maybe 14 idk)

PRESENTATION

PRESENTATION

Dawes Act

Passed in 1887, the Dawes Act ended tribal rule and divided Indian lands into 160 acre parcels. The act allocated one parcel to each family head. The government held the lands in trust for the Indians for 25 years; at the end of this period, the Indians would receive American citizenship. In return, the Indians had to abandon their religious and cultural rites and practices, including storytelling and the use of medicine men. Whatever lands remained after this reallocation - and the amount was considerable - would be sold on the open market, and the profits from the sales would be placed in an educational fund for Indians.

Who were the people who settled in the West and how do their stories complicate our popular narratives of the region?

People moving west: - immigrants - asian americans and african americans - exodusters ~people who moved west to escape the South - some Confederates, poor whites, SCANDINAVIANS AND NORWAY

How did industrialization reshape the relationships between businessmen, their employees, and the federal govt.?

People work by the clock, not by the sun. Women were allowed to work (typewriter and telephone). Most went from farming to being wage earners; from skilled artisans to simple, repetitive, unskilled manufacturing. Industrialists cared little for worker welfare.

Periodization

Periodization refers to the way historians divide history up into eras.

Chinese Exclusion Act

Pressured by anti-Chinese sentiment on the West Coast, the US government enacted drastic legislation to prevent any further influx of Chinese. The Chiense Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese immigration into the United States and prohibited those Chinese already in the country from becoming naturalized American citizens. The exclusion act, however, did not stop anti-Chinese assaults. In the mid-1880s, white mobs drove Chinese out of Eureka, California; Seattle and Tacoma, Washington; and Rock Springs, Wyoming. These attacks were often organized. In 1885, the Tacoma mayor and police led a mob that rounded up 700 Chinese residents and forced them to leave the city on a train bound for Portland.

What was the role of big business in the West in the late 19th century?

Robber Baron - refers to the Industrialists or big business owners who gained huge profits by paying their employees extremely low wages; they also drove their competitors out of business by selling their products cheaper than it cost to produce it; then, when they controlled the market, they hiked prices high above original prices Government backed big business on all decisions during Gilded Age

Battle of the Little Big Horn

Some Indians refused to relocate to reservations, so the military fought against these Indians. In November 1868, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer took Sherman at his word and assaulted a Cheyenne village, killing more than one hundred Indians. Nearly a decade later, in 1876m the Indians, this time Lakota Sioux, exacted revenge by killing Custer and his troops at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana. Yet this proved to be the final victory for the Lakota nation, as the army mounted an extensive and fierce offensive against them that shattered their resistance.

Historiography

The "history of history" History changes depending on the viewpoint of the time, called periodization. Essentially, how historians' viewpoints have changed over time.

Billion Dollar Congress

The 1890 Congress stands out as an example of fiscal irresponsibility. Known as the Billion Dollar Congress, the same Republican legislative majority that passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act adopted the highest tariff in US history.

Redeemers

The Democrats who replaced Republicans trumpeted their victories as bringing "redemption" to the South. Of course, these so-called Redeemers were referring to the white South. For black Republicans and their white allies, redemption meant defeat. Democratic victories came at the ballot boxes, but violence, intimidation, and fraud paved the way.

American Equal Rights Association

The Fifteenth Amendment sparked serious conflicts not only within the South but also among old abolitionist allies. The American Anti-Slavery Society disbanded with emancipation, but many members believed that important work remained to be done to guarantee the rights of freedpeople. They formed the American Equal Rights Association immediately following the war, but members divided over the Fifteenth Amendment.

Treaty of Fort Laramie

The US government started out by treating western Indians as autonomous nations, thereby recognizing their stewardship over the land they occupied. In 1851 the Treaty of Fort Laramie confined tribes on the northern plains to designated areas in an attempt to keep white settlers from encroaching on their land. A treaty two years later applied these terms to tribes on the southern plains. Indians kept their part of the agreement, but white miners racing to strike it rich did not. They roamed through Indian hunting grounds in search of ore and faced little government enforcement of the existing treaties.

Treaty of Medicine Lodge

The US military attacked the Indians, despite a white flag of surrender, and brutally killed some 270 Indians, mainly women and children. Although there was considerable public outcry over the incident, the government did nothing to increase enforcement of its treat obligations. In almost all disputes between white settlers and Indians, the government sided with the whites, regardless of the Indians' legal rights. In 1867, the government once again signed treaties with Indian tribes in the southern plains, with similarly devastating result. The Treaty of Medicine Lodge, provided reservation lands for the Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, and Southern Arapaho to settle. Despite this agreement, white hunters soon invaded this territory and decimated the buffalo herds.

Comstock Lode

The discovery of gold in California in 1848 had set this mining frenzy in motion. Over the next thirty years, successive waves of gold and silver strikes in Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas lured individual prospectors with shovels and wash pans. One of the biggest finds came with the Comstock Lode in the Sierra Nevada. All told miners extracted $350 million worth of silver from this source. Most people who flocked to the Comstock Lode and other mining frontiers were men. Nearly half were foreign-born, many of them coming from Mexico or China. Using pans and shovels, prospectors could find only the ore that lay near the surface of the earth and water. Once these initial discoveries were played out, individual prospectors could not afford to buy the equipment needed to dig out the vast deposits of gold and silver buried deep in the earth. As a result, western mining operations became big businesses run by men with the financial resources necessary to purchase industrial mining equipment.

What contributed to the demise of Reconstruction by the mid-1870s?

The end of Reconstruction was caused by redemption which is the southern democratic term for the return of white southern Democratic rule to the South. Redeemers were largely former slave owners who were the bitterest opponents of the Republican program in the South. Staged a major counterrevolution to "redeem" the South by taking back southern state governments. Their foundation rested on the idea of racism and white supremacy. Redeemer governments waged and aggressive assault on African Americans.

Homestead Act

The federal government played a major role in opening up the Great Plains to farmers, who eventually clashed with cattlemen. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln has opposed the expansion of slavery in order to promote the virtues of free soil and free labor for white men and their families. During the Civil War, preoccupation with battlefield losses did nots stop the Republican-controlled Congress from passing the Homestead Act. As an incentive for western migration, the act established procedures for distributing 160-acre lots to western settlers, on condition that they develop and farm their land. What most would-be settlers did not know, however, was that lots of 160 acres were not viable in the harsh, dry climate of the Great Plains.

What was Reconstruction and how did competing visions of the nation shape it?

The goal of Reconstruction was to end slavery and provide economic independence for the South. A source of the visions was the desire to read the Bible, to prepare for the economic marketplace, and to create opportunities. President Lincoln's Plan - 10% Plan, Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction - wanted to replace the majority rule with "loyal rule" in the South - Lincoln did not consult Congress - pardoned all high ranking military and civilian Confederate officers - once 10% of the voting population in the 1860 election had taken an oath of loyalty and established a government, the state would be recognized - LA, TN, and AR agreed to the plan and were named the "Lincoln Governments" Wade-Davis Bill - required 50% of the number of 1860 voters to take an "iron clad" oath of allegiance (swearing they had never voluntarily aided the rebellion) - required a state constitutional convention before the election of state officials - enacted specific safeguards of freedmen's liberties - the plan was vetoed by Lincoln President Johnson's Plan - offered amnesty upon simple oath to all except Confederate civil and military officers and those with property over $20,000 - they must accept minimum conditions repudiating slavery, secession, and state debts - named provisional governors in Confederate states and called them to oversee elections for constitutional conventions Effects: - disenfranchised certain leading Confederates - pardoned planter aristocrats and brought them back to political power to control state organizations - Republicans were outraged that planter elite were back in power in the south

Transcontinental Railroad

The transcontinental railroad became the gateway to the West. In 1862 the Republican-led Congress appropriated cast areas of land that railroad companies could use to lay their tracks or sell to raise funds for construction. The Central Pacific Company built from west to east, starting in Sacramento, California. The construction project attracted thousands of Chinese Pacific and Union Pacific crews met at Promontory Point, Utah. For many Americans recovering from four years of civil war and still embroiled in southern reconstruction, the completion of the transcontinental railroad renewed their faith in the nation's ingenuity and destiny. The railroad allowed both people and goods to move faster and in greater numbers than before.

Force Acts

To combat the terror unleashed by the Klan and its allies, Congress passed three Force Acts in 1870 and 1871. These measures empowered the president to dispatch officials into the South to supervise elections and prevent voting interference. Directed specifically at the KKK, one law barred secret organizations from using force to violate equal protection of the laws. In 1872 Congress established a joint committee to probe Klan tactics, and its investigations produced thirteen volumes of gripping testimony about the horrors perpetrated by the Klan. Elias Hill testified that they "broke open the door and attacked his wife, and I heard her screaming and mourning (moaning)... At last I heard them have (rape) her in the yard." When the Klansmen discovered Elias Hill, they dragged him out of his house and beat, whipped, and threatened to kill him. On the basis of such testimony, the federal government prosecuted some 3,000 Klansmen. Only 600 were convicted, however, As the Klan disbanded in the wake of federal prosecutions, other vigilante organizations arose to take its place.

True or False: The Emancipation Proclamation helped make the Civil War a war about freedom.

True

Mormons

Unlike miners, cowboys, and farmers, Mormons sought refuge in the West for religious reasons. By 1870 the migration of Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) into the Utah Territory had attracted more than 85,000 settlers, most notably in Salt Lake City. Mormons had come under attack from opponents of their religion and the federal government for several reasons. Most important, Mormons believed in polygamy, the practice of having more than one wife at a time. Far from seeing the practice as immoral, Mormon doctrine held polygamy as a blessing that would guarantee both husbands and wives an exalted place in the afterlife. In reality, only a small minority of Mormon men had multiple wives, and most of these polygamists had only two wives.

What was the big deal about letting African American soldiers fight in the Civil War?

Whites believed blacks: - should not be allowed to fight the very end of the war - would be childish / not good fighters / animalistic - not disciplined enough / would be violent Blacks wanted to fight: - for freedom - to protect their families - get on the good side of their master

Corporation

With economic consolidation came the expansion of corporations. Before the age of large-scale enterprise, the predominant form of business ownership was the partnership. Unlike a partnership, a corporation provided investors with "limited liability." This meant that if the corporation went bankrupt, shareholders could not lost more than they had invested. Limited liability encourage investment by keeping the shareholders' investment in the corporation separate from their other assests. In addition, corporations provided "perpetual life." Partnerships dissolved on the death of a partner, whereas corporations continued to function despite the death of any single owner. This form of ownership brought stability and order to financing, building, and perpetuating what was otherwise a highly volatile and complex business endeavor.

Compromise of 1877

With the March 4, 1877, date for the presidential inauguration creeping perilously close and no winner officially declared, behind-the-scenes negotiations finally settled the controversy. A series of meetings between Hayes supporters and southern Democrats led to a bargain. According to the agreement, Democrats would support Hayes in exchange for the president appointing a Southerner to his cabinet, withdrawing the last federal troops from the South, and endorsing construction of a transcontinental railroad through the South. This compromise of 1877 averted a crisis over presidential succession, underscored increased southern Democratic influence within Congress, and marked the end of strong protections for African Americans in the South.

Laissez-faire

the ideas of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), had gained popularity during the American Revolution. Advocating laissez-faire ("let things alone"), Smith contended that an "Invisible Hand," guided by natural law, guaranteed the greatest economic success if the government let individuals pursue their own self-interest unhindered by outside and artificial influences.