period 6 apush

Transcontinental Railroad

The railway line completed on May 10, 1869, that connected the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines, enabling goods to move by railway from the eastern United States al the way to California.

Great Plains

A broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland.

Comostock Lode

Immense sliver ore deposit discovered in 1859 in Nevada that touched off a mining rush, brining a diverse population into the region and leading to the establishment of boomtowns.

Long Drive

Facilitated by the completion of the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1865, a system by which cowboys herded cattle hundreds of miles north from Texas to Dodge City and other cow towns of Kansas.

"Rain follows the plow"

An unfounded theory that settlement of the Great Plains caused an increase in rainfall.

Homestead Act

The 1862 act that gave 160 acres of free western land to any applicant who occupied and improved the property. This policy led to the rapid development of the American West after the Civil War; facing arid conditions in the West, however, many settlers found themselves unable to live on their land.

Joseph Glidden

Invented barbed wire in 1874.

Granger Laws

Legislation designed to regulate the rates charged by railroads and elevators. This legislation 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. Kelly in 1868 primarily as a social and education organization for framers and their families. Within five years, chapters existed in almost every state, with most in the Midwest.

Munn v. Illinois (1877)

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

Frederick Jackson Turner

An American historian who proclaimed the end of the frontier due to his review of the 1890 census data. The frontier experience, he argued, shaped Americans' national character. It left them a heritage of "coarseness and strength, combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness," as well as "restless, nervous energy."

Ft. Laramie Treaty

Signed on September 17, 1851 between United States treaty commissioners and representatives of the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations. This attempt to establish reservations and bring peace to the northern plains failed.

Sand Creek Massacre

The November 29, 1864, massacre of more than a hundred peaceful Cheyenne, largely women and children, by John M. Chivington's Colorado militia.

Battle of Little Bighorn

The 1876 battle begun when American cavalry under George Armstrong Custer attacked an encampment of Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne Indians who resisted removal to a reservation. Custer's force was annihilated, but with whites calling for U.S. soldiers to retaliate, the Native American military victory was short-lived.

assimilation

to give up your native culture and adopt the mainstream culture as your own

Chief Joseph

The peace chief of the Nez Perce. He led his people on a 1,100 mile journey in an attempt to flee to Canada. He eventually surrendered to the American government stating, "I will fight no more forever."

Sitting Bull

The leader of the powerful Lakota Sioux on the northern plains. He openly refused to go to a reservation. Along with Crazy Horse, he defeated General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

George Armstrong Custer

A brash self-promoter who had graduated last in his class at West Point. He led an expedition into South Dakota's Black Hills. He along with all of his men were killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Geronimo

The leader of the Apache in the Southwest. He took up arms in opposition to the reservation policy but surrendered in September 1886.

Ohiyesa (Dr. Charles Eastman)

The ideal example of Native American assimilation. He practiced traditional western medicine on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota.

Ghost Dance

Religion of that late 1880s and early 1890s that combined elements of Christianity and traditional Native American religion. It fostered Plains Indians' hope that they could, through sacred dances, resurrect the great bison herds and call up a storm to drive whites back across the Atlantic.

Wounded Knee

The 1890 massacre of Sioux Indians by American cavalry on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota. Sent to suppress the Ghost Dance, soldiers caught up with fleeing Lakota and killed as many as 300.

Helen Hunt Jackson

She chronicled the injustices done to American Indians in a best-selling book "A Century of Dishonor" in 1881.

Dawes Severalty Act

The 1887 law that gave Native Americans individual ownership of law by dividing reservations into homesteads. The law was a disaster for native peoples, resulting over several decades in the loss of 66 percent of lands held by Indians at the time of the law's passage.

Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock

A 1903 Supreme Court ruling that Congress could make whatever Indian policies it chose, ignoring all existing treaties.

Indian Reorganization Act

A 1934 law that promoted the reestablishment of tribal organization and culture.

Yellowstone National Park

Established in 1872 by Congress, it was the United States' first national park.

Conservationists

People who believed in scientific management and regulated use natural resources.

Preservationists

People who aimed to preserve natural areas from all human interference.

John Muir

The leader of the early American environmental and conservation movements. He founded the Sierra Club in 1892 which dedicated itself to preserving the and enjoying America's great mountains. He later had a profound influence on President Theodore Roosevelt.

"New South"

After the Civil War, some Southerners like Henry Grady promoted a self-sufficient economy, built on modern capitalist values, industrial growth, modernized transportation, and improved race relations.

Henry Grady

The editor of the Atlanta Constitution, he spread the gospel of the New South with editorials that argued for economic diversity and laissez-faire capitalism.

Sharecropping

The labor system by which landowners and impoverished southern farmworkers, particularly African Americans, divided the proceeds from crops harvested on the landowner's property. With local merchants providing supplies-in exchange for a lien on the crop-the system pushed farmers into cash-crop production and often trapped them in long-term debt.

George Washington Carver

An African American scientist at Tuskegee who promoted the growing of such crops as peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans. He played an important role in shifting southern agriculture toward a more diversified base.

Tuskegee Institute

A school founded in Alabama by Booker T. Washington due to his belief that "book education" for most "would be almost a waste of time." He focused on industrial education. Female students learned teaching and nursing while male students entered into industrial trades or farmed the latest scientific methods.

Plessy v. Ferguson

An 1896 Supreme Court case that ruled that racially segregated railroad cars and other public facilities, if they claimed to be "separate but equal," were permissible according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Jim Crow Laws

A legal system of racial segregation in the South that lasted a century, from after the Civil War until the 1960s.

literacy tests

Requirement that voters be able to read; Used throughout the Jim Crow South to disenfranchise African Americans.

Poll taxes

Requirement that citizens pay a tax in order to register. Used throughout the Jim Crow South to disenfranchise African Americans.

Grandfather clause

A loophole that allowed Southern whites to vote if they could not pass a literacy test and/or pay a poll tax.

Ida B. Wells

The editor of the "Memphis Free Speech," she campaigned against lynching and the Jim Crow laws. Death threats and the destruction of her printing press forced her to carry on her work from the North.

Booker T. Washington

A former slave and founder of the Tuskegee Institute. Encouraged blacks to keep to themselves and focus on the daily tasks of survival, rather than leading a grand uprising. Believed that building a strong economic base was more critical at that time than planning an uprising or fighting for equal rights. He served as important role models for later leaders of the civil rights movement.

Atlanta Compromise Speech

An 1895 address by Booker T. Washington that urged whites and African Americans to work together for the progress of all. Delivered at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, the speech was widely interpreted as approving racial segregation.

W.E.B. DuBois

A Harvard educated sociologist African American leader who called for a "talented tenth" of educated blacks to develop new strategies. He was highly critical of the Atlanta Compromise speech.

Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor of the telephone

Henry Bessemer

An Englishman who developed a a process of blasting air through molten iron to produce high-quality steel.

Thomas Edison

Possibly the greatest inventor of the 19th century. Out of his more than a thousand patented inventions, included the phonograph, the dynamo for generating electric power, the mimeograph machine and the motion picture camera. His improvements to the incandescent lamp/lightbulb was arguably the most significant.

George Westinghouse

He held more than 400 patents and was responsible for developing an air brake for railroads and a transformer for producing high-voltage alternating current. His inventions made possible the lighting of cities and the operation of electric streetcars, subways, and electrically powered machinery and appliances.

Sears, Roebuck, & Co.

A mail-order company that used improved rail systems to ship to rural customers everything from hats to houses that people ordered from the company's thick catalog.

Gustavus Swift

In the 1800s he enlarged fresh meat markets through branch slaughterhouses and refrigeration. He monopolized the meat industry.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

A former shipping industrialists who reinvested his assets to form a monopoly in the railroad industry.

Jay Gould

Along with his partner Jim Fisk, he manipulated stock prices on Wall Street and attempted to corner the market on gold. His reckless speculation helped bring on the Panic of 1873.

J.P. Morgan

The robber baron of American finance and Wall Street. He later purchased Carnegie Steel and renamed it U.S. Steel.

Andrew Carnegie

A Scottish-American industrialist, business magnate, and philanthropist. He was the robber baron of the steel industry. He also wrote "The Gospel of Wealth."

John D. Rockefeller

an American industrialist and philanthropist. He revolutionized the petroleum industry and formed the Standard Oil Corporation.

Trust

An organization or board that manages the assets of other companies.

Horizontal integration

A business concept invented in the late nineteenth century to pressure competitors and force rivals to merge their companies into a conglomerate. John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil pioneered this business model.

Vertical integration

A business model in which a corporation controlled all aspects of production from raw materials to packaged products. "Robber barons" or industrial innovators such as Gustavus Swift and Andrew Carnegie pioneered this business form at the end of the Civil War.

Laissez-faire

French for "let do" or "leave alone." A doctrine espoused by classical liberals that the less the government does, the better, particularly in reference to the economy.

Social Darwinism

An idea, actually formulated by British philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer, that human society advanced through ruthless competition and the "survival of the fittest."

Horatio Alger

Author of a number of dime novels which perpetuated the myth of the "self made man."

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

A nationwide strike of thousands of railroad workers and labor allies, who protested the growing power of railroad corporations and the steep wage cuts imposed by railroad managers amid a severe economic depression that bad begun in 1873.

Knights of Labor

The first mass labor organization created among America's working class. Founded in 1869 and peaking in strength in the mid-1880s, they attempted to bridge boundaries of ethnicity, gender, ideology, race, and occupation to build a "universal brotherhood" of all workers.

Terrance Powderly

Leader of the Knights of Labor

Haymarket Square

They May 1886, conflict in Chicago in which both workers and policemen were killed or wounded during a labor demonstration called by local anarchists. The incident created a backlash against all labor organizations, including the Knights of Labor.

American Federation of Labor

Organization created by Samuel Gompers in 1886 that coordinated the activities of craft unions and called for direct negotiation with employers in order to achieve benefits for skilled workers.

Samuel Gompers

The leader of the American Federation of Labor.

Homestead Strike

The 1892 lockout of workers at a steel mill after Andrew Carnegie refused to renew the union contract. Union supporters attacked the guards hired to close them out and protect strikebreakers who had been employed by the mill, but the National Guard soon suppressed this resistance and the plant became a non-union mill.

Henry Clay Frick

An American industrialists and chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company. He oversaw the lockout of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel workers at the Homestead Plant.

Pullman Strike

An 1894 railway workers' strike that began following a wage cut in a company town that manufactured railroad cars in Illinois. The Eugene V. Debs and the American Railway Union led a nationwide strike in support of the workers which paralyzed the nations' rail networks. President Grover Cleveland had Debs and union leaders arrested for interfering with the mail which ended the strike.

Eugene V. Debs

The leader of the American Railway Union who emerged as the leader of the American Socialist Party in 1900 and a presidential candidate in 1912.

"Old" immigrants

Immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. Ethnicities such as British, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Scandinavian, and German.

"New" immigrants

Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Ethnicities such as Italian, Greek, Polish, Hungarian Czechoslovakian, Russian and Eastern European Jews.

Chinese Exclusion Act

The 1882 law that barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States. It continued in effect until the 1940s.

Ellis Island

An immigration and naturalization processing center in New York City.

Tenements

A high-density, cheap, five-or six-story housing unit designed for working-class urban populations. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tenements became a symbol or urban immigrant poverty.

Political machine

A complex, hierarchical party organization such as New York's Tammany Hall, whose candidates remained in office on the strength of their political organization and their personal relationship with voters, especially working-class immigrants who had little alternative access to political power.

Tammany Hall

The main political machine of New York city. They provided basic social services to the immigrant population in exchange for votes. At the same time, they defrauded the city of New York out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

William Tweed

The most infamous political boss in American history. He was the leader of the Tammany Ring until he was brought down in 1871 by flagrant overpricing of contracts for a lavish city courthouse. He was partially exposed by the political cartoons of Thomas Nast.

Jane Addams

Known as the "mother" of social work, was a pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. She co-founded an early settlement house in the United States, Chicago's Hull House that would later become known as one of the most famous settlement houses in America.

Settlement Houses

Homes that were purchased and operated by social workers in immigrant neighborhoods in urban areas. Immigrants were taught language skills, job skills, and provided with maternal care and nutrition. Hull House in Chicago was the most famous example of one of these.

The Gospel of Wealth

A book written by Andrew Carnegie which argued that the wealthy had a moral responsibility as Christians to use their excess wealth for the common good.

"City Beautiful" movement

A turn-of-the-twentieth-century movement that advocated landscape beautification, playgrounds, and more and better urban parks.

Johns Hopkins University

Founded in Baltimore in 1876 as the first American institution to specialize in advanced graduate studies. Following the model of German universities, the institution emphasized research and free inquiry.

Joseph Pulitzer

His New York World newspaper exceeded a million in circulation around 1890. He filled his daily paper with both sensational stories of crimes and disasters and crusading feature stories about political and economic corruption.

William Randolph Hearst

The editor of the New York Journal. He pushed scandal and sensationalism to new heights. The arrival of Sunday color comics featuring the "Yellow Kid" gave such publications the name yellow journalism.

Jazz

Unique American musical form, developed in New Orleans and other parts of the South before World War I. Musicians developed an ensemble improvisational style.

Buffalo Bill Cody

One of the few employers of the plains Indians. He put on his famous Wild West shows. He insisted that they were an authentic representation of frontier experience.

Henry George

An American political economist and journalist. He wrote "Progress and Poverty" in 1879. His writing was immensely popular in the 19th century, and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. His writings also inspired the economic philosophy based on the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value derived from land (including natural resources) should belong equally to all members of society.

Edward Bellamy

An American author and socialist, most famous for his Utopian novel, "Looking Backward", a tale set in the distant future of the year 2000.

Social Gospel

A movement to renew religious faith through dedication to public welfare and social justice, reforming both society and the self through Christian service.

Walter Rauschenbusch

A Baptist minister from New York, he was the leader of the Social Gospel movement in the late 19th and early 20th century. He worked in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of New York City called Hell's Kitchen and wrote several books urging organized religions to take up the cause of social justice.

National American Woman Suffrage Association

A group headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony that stressed the need for women to lead organizations on their own behalf. The group focused exclusively on women's rights — sometimes denigrating men of color, in the process — and took up the battle for a federal women's suffrage amendment.

Woman's Christian Temperance Union

An organization advocating the prohibition of liquor that spread rapidly after 1879, when charismatic Frances Willard became its leader. Advocating suffrage and a host of reform activities, it launched tens of thousands of women into public life and was the first nationwide organization to identify and condemn domestic violence.

Frances Willard

Leader of the Women's Christian Temperance Union

Mark Twain

Also known as Samuel Clemens, he became the first great realist author. He wrote "The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn." He also coined the phrase "Gilded Age" to describe the late 19th century as a period that was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath.

Louis Sullivan

An American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism". He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright

An architectural follower of Louis Sullivan, he developed an "organic" style of architecture that was in harmony with its natural surroundings. He vision is exemplified in the long, horizontal lines of his prairie-style houses.

Frederick Law Olmsted

An American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture. He is the creator of Central Park in New York.

Credit Mobilier

A sham corporation set up by shareholders in the Union Pacific Railroad to secure government grants at an enormous profit. Organizers of the scheme protected it from investigation by providing gifts of its stock to powerful members of Congress.