AP U.S. History Period 6: Gilded Age and Westward Expansion Vocabulary

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards reviewing key terms, events, legislation, and figures from AP U.S. History Period 6 (1865-1898).

Homestead Act

Federal land grant legislation that provided cheap land to encourage western settlement, but often took land from Native Americans and opened it to white settlers.

Exodusters

African Americans who migrated from the South to the West after the Civil War to escape racism, violence, and economic discrimination.

Frontier Thesis

Frederick Jackson Turner's argument that the frontier experience shaped American democracy, independence, and individualism, though it overlooked Native Americans, women, and other groups.

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

The first significant federal law restricting immigration into the United States, driven by anti-Chinese attitudes and accusations of economic competition and wage lowering.

Reservation System

A federal policy designed to confine Native Americans to specific designated lands in order to open up remaining territory for white settlers.

Dawes Act

Legislation that broke up tribal reservations into individual plots of land to encourage Native Americans to assimilate into white American farming and culture, leading to the loss of millions of tribal acres.

Carlisle Indian School

A boarding school designed to assimilate Native American children into white American culture by replacing their native languages, customs, and traditions.

Battle of the Little Bighorn

A major engagement in the Indian Wars where Native American forces defeated George Custer and the U.S. Army, marking one of the largest Indigenous victories against the military.

Ghost Dance

A spiritual movement founded by Wovoka that offered Native Americans hope that their ancestral lands and traditions would return and their suffering would end.

Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

The killing of numerous Lakota people by U.S. soldiers, which became a lasting symbol of the end of armed Native American resistance.

Compromise of 1877

A political settlement that ended Reconstruction by removing federal troops from the South, allowing white Southern Democrats to regain control and roll back African American rights.

Tenant Farming

An agricultural arrangement where farmers rented land by paying cash or crops to the landowner, often owning their own supplies and tools.

Sharecropping

An agricultural system in which farmers gave a portion of their crop yield to the landowner as payment, often borrowing supplies and becoming trapped in perpetual debt.

New South

A vision to rebuild the post-Civil War Southern economy by shifting from plantation dependence toward industrialization, factories, and railroads, despite remaining largely agricultural and segregated.

Jim Crow Segregation

A system of laws and customs that enforced the legal separation and inferior status of Black Americans across schools, transit, voting, and public facilities.

Booker T. Washington's Philosophy

An approach advocating that African Americans focus on vocational education, job skills, and economic independence before fighting directly for immediate civil and political equality.

W.E.B. Du Bois's Philosophy

An approach demanding immediate civil rights, equal voting rights, and higher academic education for African Americans, led by educated Black leaders.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A landmark Supreme Court decision that upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of 'separate but equal' following Homer Plessy's challenge to Louisiana railcar laws.

Bessemer Process

An industrial method that made steel production cheaper and stronger, facilitating the construction of railroads, bridges, and skyscrapers.

Laissez-faire

An economic doctrine holding that the government should not interfere in the marketplace, minimizing regulations and allowing companies to maximize profits.

Vertical Integration

A business strategy where a company controls all successive stages of production and distribution, such as Andrew Carnegie's control of iron mines, transport, and steel mills.

Horizontal Integration

A business strategy where a corporation buys out or merges with competing companies in the same industry, exemplified by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil.

Trust

An organizational combination where multiple independent companies are managed under a single board of trustees to reduce competition and control prices.

McKinley Tariff (1890)

Federal legislation that raised taxes on foreign imports to protect domestic manufacturers from overseas competition, which often increased consumer prices.

Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

A law establishing the Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee and regulate railroad pricing and practices, representing early federal economic regulation.

Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

A federal law prohibiting contracts or conspiracies that restrained trade, initially enforced weakly against monopolies and occasionally turned against labor unions.

Company Town

A settlement where a single business owned worker housing, grocery stores, and services, often keeping employees financially dependent on the company.

Craft Union

A labor union organizing workers who share a particular skilled trade or specialized craft, such as those affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.

Industrial Union

A labor union that organizes all workers across an entire industry regardless of their individual skill level or trade.

Knights of Labor

A broad labor union open to skilled, unskilled, women, Black, and immigrant workers that championed the eight-hour workday and a cooperative commonwealth.

Haymarket Affair (1886)

A violent confrontation during a labor rally in Chicago that inflamed public anti-union sentiment and contributed to the decline of the Knights of Labor.

Homestead Strike (1892)

A labor conflict at Carnegie's steel plant over wage cuts that collapsed after the Pennsylvania state militia intervened to protect the company.

Pullman Strike

A nationwide railway walkout sparked by wage cuts without rent decreases in company housing, crushed when President Cleveland deployed federal troops citing mail disruption.

New Immigrants

Migrants arriving in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe, including Italy, Poland, and Russia.

Tenement Housing

Narrow, multi-family urban apartment buildings characterized by cramped rooms, poor ventilation, and minimal plumbing where working-class city dwellers lived.

Americanization

An organized effort to assimilate immigrants into American society by teaching them the English language, civic values, and cultural customs.

The Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's 1889 essay asserting that wealthy individuals hold money in trust for society and have a moral duty to distribute their surplus wealth for public improvement.

Looking Backward (2000-1887)

Edward Bellamy's 1888 utopian novel describing a future socialist society in the year 2000 that eliminated private business, class conflict, and poverty through an 'industrial army.'

Single Tax

Henry George's proposed reform in 'Progress and Poverty' (1879) advocating a 100% tax on the unimproved value of land to end land monopolies and eradicate poverty.

Social Gospel

A Protestant reform movement championed by Walter Rauschenbusch that applied Christian teachings to societal issues, advocating for labor rights, abolition of child labor, and poverty relief.

American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)

A suffrage organization led by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe that endorsed the 15th Amendment and focused primarily on state-by-state voting campaigns.

National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)

A suffrage association founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony that opposed the 15th Amendment for excluding women and pushed for a federal amendment.

Gibson Girl

A popular 1890s visual image depicting an athletic, educated, and self-possessed 'New Woman' who modernized women's public image while maintaining social respectability.

Social Darwinism

A socioeconomic ideology applying biological 'survival of the fittest' concepts to society, arguing that human wealth and poverty reflected natural hierarchy.

Populist Party

An agrarian political party of the 1890s that called for the free coinage of silver, government regulation of railroads, an income tax, and direct election of senators.

Settlement Houses

Urban community centers, notably Jane Addams's Hull House (1889), that offered social services, childcare, and classes to assist working-class immigrant families.