APUSH Chapter 16 IDs

Farmers' Southern Alliance

most small farmers in the South remained in the cycle of debt and poverty. As in the North and the West, the hard times produced a harvest of discontent. By 1890, the Farmers' Southern Alliance claimed more than 1 million members. The organizations rallied behind political reforms to solve the farmers' economic problems

National Alliance

the potential of the farmers' alliances became reality in 1890 when a national organization of farmers met in Ocala, Florida, to address the problems of rural America,.

Farmers' alliances

Alliances formed in different states and regions to serve farmers' needs for education in the latest scientific methods as well as for organized economic and political action.

National Negro Business League

In 1900, Booker T. Washington organized the National Negro Business League, which established 320 chapters across the country to support businesses owned and operated by African Americans.

Wabash vs. Illinois

A case in which the Supreme Court ruled that individual states could not regulate interstate commerce. In effect, the Court's decision nullified many of the state regulations achieved by the Grangers.

Ocala Platform

A platform that would have significant impact in later years: They supported 1) direct election of US senators, 2) lower tariff rates, 3) a graduated income tax, and 4) a new banking system regulated by the federal govt.

Colored Farmers' National Alliance

An organization for coloured farmers who rallied behind political reforms to solve the farmers' economic problems.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

As the mines developed, mining companies employed experienced miners from Europe, Latin America, and China. It was not unusual for half the population of a mining town to be foreign-born. About one-third of the western miners in the 1860s were Chinese immigrants. Native-born Americans resented the competition. In California, hostility to foreigners took the form of a Miner's Tax of $20 a month on all foreign-born miners. Political pressure from western states moved Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which prohibited further immigration to the United States by Chinese laborers. Renewed ten years later, this law was the first major act of Congress to restrict immigration on the basis of race and nationality.

Commercial Farming

As time went on, farmers began to depend on large, expensive machinery, and stores for goods. Many small farms were unable to afford the equipment, thus causing them to be driven out of business.

George Custer; Little Big Horn

Before the Sioux went down to defeat, they ambushed and destroyed Colonel George Custer's command at Little Big Horn in 1876

Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph's courageous effort to lead a band of the Nez Perce´ into Canada ended in defeat and surrender in 1877. The constant pressure of the U.S. Army forced tribe after tribe to comply with Washington's terms

cattle drives

During the Civil War, after the Union army cut off Texas from the rest of the Confederacy, wild herds of about 5 million head of cattle roamed freely over the Texas grasslands. When the war ended, the Texas cattle business was easy to get into because both the cattle and the grass were free. The construction of railroads into Kansas after the war opened up eastern markets for the Texas cattle. The cowboys, many of whom were blacks and Mexicans, received about a dollar a day for their dangerous work. The long cattle drives began to come to an end in the 1880s when overgrazing destroyed the grass and a winter blizzard and drought killed off 90 percent of the cattle. Wealthy cattlemen turned to developing huge ranches and using scientific ranching techniques to raise more tender breeds of cattle by feeding them hay and grains

cowboys; vaqueros

Earlier, cattle had been raised and rounded up in Texas on a smaller scale by Mexican cowboys, or vaqueros. The traditions and techniques of the cattle business in the late 1800s were borrowed from the Mexicans, just as the cattle themselves, the hardy "Texas" longhorns, came originally from Mexico

New South

Even before Reconstruction ended in 1877, some southerners promoted a new vision for a self-sufficient southern economy built on modern capitalist values, industrial growth, and improved transportation. Chief among them was Henry Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Grady spread the gospel of the New South with editorials that argued for economic diversity and laissez-faire capitalism. Local governments helped spur growth by offering tax exemptions to attract investors to start new industries. Cheap (low-wage) labor was another incentive for businesses to locate in the New South

Indian Reorganization Act (1934)

In 1924, in partial recognition of the failure of its policy of forced assimilation, the federal government granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans, whether or not they had complied with the Dawes Act. As part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s, Congress adopted the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), which promoted the reestablishment of tribal organization and culture. Today, over 1.8 million Native Americans, living both on and off reservations, belong to 116 tribes within the United States, each consisting of 1,000 or more members

Munn vs. Illinois

In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the right of a state to regulate businesses of a public nature, such as railroads.

Crop-Price Deflation

Increased American production as well as global competition from farms in Argentina, Russia, and Canada drove prices down for wheat, cotton, and other crops.

Segregation Laws

Laws created by the "Redeemers" in order to treating African Americans as social inferiors by separating them from whites in public facilities.

Granger laws

Laws that regulated the rates charges by railroads and elevators; they also made it illegal for railroads to fix prices by means of pools and to give rebates to privileged customers.

National Grange Movement

Organized by Oliver H. Kelley primarily as a social and educational organization for farmers and their families. By the 1870s however, the Grange organized economic ventures and took political action to defend members against the middlemen, trusts, and railroads.

Reservations

President Andrew Jackson's policy of removing eastern Native Americans to the West was based on the belief that lands west of the Mississippi would permanently remain "Indian country." This expectation soon proved false, as wagon trains rolled westward on the Oregon Trail, and plans were made for building a transcontinental railroad. In 1851, in councils (negotiations) at Fort Laramie and Fort Atkinson, the federal government began to assign the plains tribes large tracts of land—or reservations—with definite boundaries. Most Plains tribes, however, refused to restrict their movements to the reservations and continued to follow the migrating buffalo wherever they roamed

Interstate Commerce Act (1886)

Required railroad rates to be "reasonable and just." It also set up the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, or the ICC, which had the power to investigate and prosecute pools, rebates, and other discriminatory practices.

George Washington Carver

Some southern farmers sought to diversify their farming to escape the trap of depending entirely on cotton. George Washington Carver, an African- American scientist at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, promoted the growing of such crops as peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans. His work played an important role in shifting southern agriculture toward a more diversified base

Indian Wars

Sporadic outbursts of fighting between U.S. troops and Plains people were characterized by brutal episodes. Following these wars, another round of treaties attempted to isolate the Native Americans of the Plains on smaller reservations with promises of government support to be provided by federal agents. However, gold miners refused to stay off Native Americans' lands if gold was to be found on them, as indeed it was in the Dakota's Black Hills. Soon, minor chiefs not involved in the treaty-making and younger warriors denounced the treaties and tried to return to ancestral lands

Civil Rights Cases of 1883

Starting in the late 1870s, however, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one Reconstruction act after another applying to civil rights. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Court ruled that Congress could not legislate against the racial discrimination practiced by private citizens, which included railroads, hotels, and other businesses used by the public.

Sitting Bull; Crazy Horse

The 1870s witnessed a new round of conflicts in the West. There was the Red River War against the Comanche and a second Sioux War led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse

farming frontier

The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged farming on the Great Plains by offering 160 acres of public land free to any family that settled on it for a period of 5 years. This induced native-born and immigrant families to attempt to farm the Great Plains. The first "sodbusters" on the dry and treeless plains often built their homes of sod bricks. Extremes of hot and cold weather, scarce water supply, plagues of grasshoppers, and the lonesome life on the plains challenged even the most resourceful of the pioneer families. Ultimately, dams and irrigation saved many western farmers, as humans reshaped the rivers and physical environment of the West to provide water for agriculture

Oklahoma Territory

The Oklahoma Territory, once set aside for the use of Native Americans, was thrown open for settlement in 1889, and hundreds of prospective homesteaders took part in the last great land rush in the West. The next year, 1890, the U.S. Census Bureau declared that the entire frontier—except for a few isolated pockets—had been settled

mining frontier

The discovery of gold in California caused the first flood of newcomers to the West. A series of gold strikes and silver strikes in what became the states of Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and South Dakota kept a steady flow of hopeful young prospectors pushing into the western mountains. Many mining towns became lonely ghost towns within a few years after the gold and silver ran out. Other towns that served the mines, such as San Francisco became important commercial centers. Mining not only stimulated the settlement of the West but also had an impact on the economics of the nation. A vast increase in the supply of silver created a crisis over the relative value of gold- and silverbacked currency.

Comstock Lode

The discovery of the fabulous Comstock Lode (which produced over $340 million in gold and silver by 1890) was responsible for Nevada entering the Union in 1864. Nevada's Virginia City (created by the Comstock Lode), added theaters, churches, newspapers, schools, libraries, railroads, and organized law enforcement. Mark Twain started his career as a writer working on a Virginia City newspaper in the early 1860s

Helen Hunt Jackson/A Century of Dishonor

The injustices done to Native Americans were chronicled in a best-selling book by Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (1881). Although this book created sympathy for Native Americans, especially in the eastern part of the United States, most of those motivated to help Native Americans proposed assimilation as the solution

barbed wire

The invention of barbed wire by Joseph Glidden in 1874 helped farmers to fence in their lands on the lumber-scarce plains. This was another factor that closed down the cattle frontier was the arrival of homesteaders, who used barbed wire fencing to cut off access to the formerly open range.

Ghost Dance Movement

The last effort of Native Americans to resist U.S. domination and drive whites from their ancestral lands came through a religious movement known as the Ghost Dance. In the government's campaign to suppress the movement, the famous Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull was killed during his arrest

Wounded Knee

Then in December 1890, over 200 Native American men, women, and children were gunned down by the U.S. Army in the "battle" (massacre) of Wounded Knee in the Dakotas. This final tragedy marked the end of the Indian Wars on the crimsoned prairie

Assimilationists

These humanitarians emphasized formal education and training and conversion to Christianity. Boarding schools such as the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania were set up to segregate Native American children from their people and teach them white culture and farming and industrial skills

grandfather clause; poll tax; literacy test

Various political and legal devices were invented to prevent southern blacks from voting. Among the most common obstacles were literacy tests, poll taxes, and political party primaries for whites only. Many southern states adopted so-called grandfather clauses, which allowed a man to vote only if his grandfather had cast ballots in elections before Reconstruction. The Supreme Court again gave its sanction to such laws in a case of 1898, in which it upheld a state's right to use literacy tests to determine citizens' qualifications for voting

Booker T. Washington

a former slave who had graduated from Hampton Institute. In 1881, Washington established an industrial and agricultural school at Tuskegee, Alabama, which he built into the largest and bestknown industrial school in the nation. Washington's mission became to teach southern African Americans skilled trades, the virtues of hard work, moderation, and economic self-help. Earning money, he said, was like having "a little green ballot" that would empower African Americans more effectively than a political ballot. Speaking at an exposition in Atlanta in 1895, Washington argued that "the agitation of the questions of social equality is the extremest folly." In a later era, many civil rights leaders would consider Booker T. Washington's approach (especially his Atlanta speech) to be a sellout to segregation and discrimination

Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

designed to break up tribal organizations, which many felt kept Native Americans from becoming "civilized" and law-abiding citizens. The Dawes Act divided the tribal lands into plots of 160 acres or less, depending on family size. U.S. citizenship was granted to those who stayed on the land for 25 years and "adopted the habits of civilized life." What reformers did not anticipate, however, was that 90 million acres of former reservation land—often the best land—would be sold over the years to white settlers by the government, speculators, or Native Americans themselves. The new policy proved a failure