American History Lecture Flashcards: Civil War to the New Deal

These vocabulary flashcards cover essential terms, legislative acts, and key figures discussed in the lecture notes, spanning the Civil War, industrialization, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal.

40 acres and a mule

The term associated with Special Field Order 15, which provided land to freedmen following the Civil War.

Freedmen’s Bureau

An agency established in March 1865 to create a working free labor system in the post-Civil War South.

Sharecropping

A system of trade where individuals who did not own land worked on a farm and shared the resulting crops with the landowner.

Crop-Lien System

A credit system where farmers borrowed money to obtain land and used their future crops as collateral, often described as a 'rent to own' arrangement.

Black Codes

Laws passed in the South during Presidential Reconstruction that restricted the rights of Black citizens, such as forbidding them from serving on juries or testifying against whites.

Tenure of Office Act

A law passed by Radical Republicans requiring the president to obtain Senate consent before firing administration members, specifically aimed at protecting Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

Bargain of 1877

The resolution to the constitutional crisis of the 1876 election that effectively ended the Reconstruction era.

Bessemer Process (1856)

An innovation that reduced steel production time from several days to mere minutes, causing steel prices to drop by $70 \%$.

Vertical Integration

A business strategy employed by Andrew Carnegie where a single company controls every phase of production, from raw material mines to finished goods.

Horizontal Integration

A strategy used by John D. Rockefeller to buy out rival refining companies, eventually controlling around $90 \%$ of the oil industry.

Dawes Act (1887)

Legislation proposed by Senator Henry Dawes that confiscated communal Native American lands and divided them into individual parcels for families, requiring assimilation.

Ghost Dance

A religious revitalization ceremony practiced by Native Americans to preserve their culture in the face of the Dawes Act.

Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

An event resulting in the deaths of approximately $150$ to $200$ Native Americans after U.S. forces misinterpreted the Ghost Dance as a preparation for war.

Pendleton Act (1883)

Federal legislation that replaced the 'spoils system' of political appointments with a merit-based system using civil service examinations.

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

The first federal regulatory agency, established in $1887$ to monitor railroad rates and protect farmers from exorbitant shipping costs.

The Grange

A grassroots farmers' association that engaged in collective political action to secure fair transportation rates and lower storage costs for grain.

Haymarket Affair (1886)

A labor rally in Chicago for the eight-hour workday that turned violent after a bomb exploded, leading to the decline of the Knights of Labor.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A Supreme Court case that upheld state segregation laws under the legal doctrine of 'separate but equal.'

Yellow Press

A style of reporting used by mass-circulation newspapers that focused on sensationalism and scandals to shape public opinion and War mobilization.

Platt Amendment (1901)

An amendment that granted the United States the right to intervene militarily in Cuban affairs and secured a permanent naval lease at Guantanamo Bay.

Fordism

An economic system named after Henry Ford that combined mass-production innovations, like the assembly line, with high-volume consumerism.

Muckraking

The use of investigative journalism, such as Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle', to expose corruption and social ills within big business and government.

Hull House

A settlement house founded by Jane Addams in Chicago to provide community services, education, and health clinics to the immigrant poor.

Square Deal

The domestic program of Theodore Roosevelt that focused on consumer protection, labor rights, and the regulation of 'bad' corporations.

Committee on Public Information (CPI)

A federal agency created in $1917$ to generate patriotic support for World War I through propaganda, directed by George Creel.

Glass-Steagall Act

A New Deal reform that separated commercial banking from investment banking to prevent risky stock market speculation with consumer deposits.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

A New Deal agency that restores public confidence in banks by insuring deposits up to a specific amount, currently $250,000$.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

A relief program that employed young men in national forest and park conservation projects, paying them a wage of $\$30/month$.

Keynesian Economics

A theory by John Maynard Keynes stating that governments should increase spending during economic downturns, even if it causes a budget deficit, to stimulate demand.

Social Security Act (1935)

The centerpiece of the Second New Deal, creating a federal system of old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid for the disabled.