DE History II - Gilded Age Vocab

Fourteenth Amendment

Fourteenth Amendment

Constitutional amendment that extended civil rights to freedmen and prohibited states from taking away such rights without due process

Reconstruction Act

Passed by the newly elected Republican Congress, it divided the South into five military districts, disenfranchised former confederates, and required that Southern states both ratify the Fourtheenth Amendment and write state constitutions guaranteeing freedmen the franchise before gaining readmission to the Union

Fifteenth Amendment

Prohibited states from denying citizens the franchise on account of race. It disappointed feminists who wanted the Amendment to include guarantees for women’s suffrage; ratified in 1870

Tenure of Office Act

Required the President to seek approval from the Senate before removing appointees. When Andrew Johnson removed his secretary of war in violation of the act, he was impeached by the house but remained in office when the Senate fell one vote short of removing him

Seward’s Folly

Popular term for Secretary of State William Seward’s purchase of Alaska from Russia. The derisive term reflected the anti-expansionist sentiments of most Americans immediately after the Civil War

Gilded Age

A term given to the period 1865-1896 by Mark Twain, indicating both the fabulous wealth and the widespread corruption of the era

Patronage

Practice of rewarding political support with special favors, often in the form of public office. Upon assuming office, Thomas Jefferson dismissed few Federalist employees, leaving scant openings to fill with political appointees.

Credit Mobilier Scandal

A construction company was formed by owners of the Union Pacific Railroad for the purpose of receiving government contracts to build the railroad at highly inflated prices —and profits. In 1872 a scandal erupted when journalists discovered that the Crédit Mobilier Company had bribed congressmen and even the Vice President in order to allow the ruse to continue

Rutherford B Hayes & Compromise of 1877

The agreement that finally resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction. In exchange for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, winning the presidency, Hayes agreed to withdraw the last of the federal troops from the former Confederate states. This deal effectively completed the southern return to white-only, Democratic-dominated electoral politics.

Jim Crow

System of radical segregation in the American South from the end of Reconstruction until the mid-twentieth century. Based on the concept of “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites, it sought to prevent racial mixing in public, including restaurants, movie theaters, and public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation

Plessy v Ferguson

An 1896 Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of segregation laws, saying that as long as blacks were provided with “separated but equal” facilities, these laws did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision provided legal justification for the Jim Crow system until the 1950s.

Pendleton Act

Congressional legislation that established the Civil Service Commission, which granted federal government jobs on the basis of examinations instead of political patronage, thus reigning in spoils system.

James Garfield

20th president of the US; elected in 1881, only to be assassinated a few months after by a man named Charles Guiteau; he claimed he shot the pres because he “didn’t offer him a patronage job”; he was thought to be mentally ill, since the pres was openly against patronage in his election campaign

Chester Arthur

Successor to James Garfield after he was assassinated; during his presidency the Pendleton Civil Service Act was passed, which creates the Civil Service Commission, to make sure qualified people get gov. jobs

Grover Cleveland

22nd and 24th president (had non-consecutive terms); wanted to lower tariffs run the gov. with a surplus —> this caused him to lose the 23rd election; during his second term, economic depression hit and he took a loan from JP Morgan to “sell out” and keep the gov. running for another 2 years

William Jennings Bryan

Democrat candidate of the 1896 election; lost even though he had Populist support as well as Democrat support (*shakes head* sir come on )

Interstate Commerce Act

Congressional legislation that established the Interstate Commerce Commission, compelled railroads to publish standard rates, and prohibited rebates and pools. Railroads quickly became adept at using the Act to achieve their own ends, but the Act gave the government an important means to regulate big business.

Vertical Integration

The practice perfected by Andrew Carnegie of controlling every step of the industrial production process in order to increase efficiency and limit competition.

Horizontal integration

The practice perfected by John D Rockefeller of dominating a particular phase of the production process in order to monopolize a market, often by forming trusts and alliances with competitors.

Trust

A mechanism by which one company grants control over its operations, through ownership of its stock, to another company. The Standard Oil Company became known for this practice in the 1870s as it eliminated its competition by taking control of smaller oil companies.

Standard Oil Company

John D Rockefeller’s company, formed in 1870, which came to symbolize the trusts and monopolies of the Gilded Age. By 1877 it controlled 95% of the oil refineries in the US. It was also one of the first multinational corporations, and at times distributed more than half of the company’s kerosene production outside the US. By the turn of the century it had become a target for trust-busting reformers, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered it to break up into several dozen smaller companies.

John Rockefeller

a man who was started out with little money, but became a successful businessman at 19; in 1870 organized the Standard Oil Company of Ohio; soon had an oil monopoly; said that a beautiful rose only grew up to be beautiful “by sacrificing the early buds that grew up around it”; despite being ruthless, he still had low prices, still respecting the social class he came from

Andrew Carnegie

a Scottish immigrant who quickly worked his way up by working extra hard in his jobs; after accumulating some money, he entered the steel business; although tough-fisted, he despised monopolies; by 1900 he was producing ¼ the nation’s supply of steel; after retiring and selling his business, he gave a lot of his extra money back to his community

Social Darwinists

Believers in the idea, popular in the late nineteenth century, that people gained wealth by “survival of the fittest.” therefore, the wealthy had simply won a natural competition and owed nothing to the poor, and indeed service to the poor would interfere with this organic process.

National Labor Union

This first national labor organization in US history was founded in 1866 and gained 600,000 members from many parts of the workforce, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks. The organization devoted much of its energy to fighting for an eight-hour workday before it dissolved in 1872.

Knights of Labor

the second national labor organization, organized in 1869 as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. They were known for their efforts to organize all workers, regardless of skill level, gender, or race. After the mid-1880s their membership declined for a variety of reasons, including their participation in violent strikes and discord between skilled and unskilled members.

Haymarket Square

A May Day rally that turned violent when someone threw a bomb into the middle of the meeting, killing several dozen people. Eight anarchists were arrested for conspiracy contributing to the disorder, although evidence linking them to the bombing was thin. Four were executed, one committed suicide, and three were pardoned in 1893.

American Federation of Labor

A national federation of trade unions that included only skilled workers, founded in 1886. Led by Samuel Gompers for nearly four decades, it sought to negotiate with employers for a better kind of capitalism that rewarded workers fairly with better wages, hours, and conditions. Its membership was almost entirely white and male until the middle of the 20th century.

Closed shop

A union-organizing term that refers to the practice of allowing only unionized employees to work for a particular company. The AFL became known for negotiating agreements including this with employers, in which the employer would agree not to hire non-union members.

Samuel Gompers

Jewish immigrant who founded the Federation of labor and served as its president for nearly forty years; a major goal of his was the “trade agreement” authorizing the closed shop; his favs were the walkout and boycott w/ “we don’t patronize” signs

New Immigrants

Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who formed a recognizable wave of immigration from the 1880s until 1924, in contrast to the immigrants from western Europe who had come before them. These new immigrants congregated in ethnic urban neighborhoods, where they worried many native-born Americans, some of whom responded with nativist anti-immigrant campaigns and others of whom introduced urban reforms to help the immigrants assimilate.

Settlement houses

mostly run by middle-class native-born women, these in immigrant neighborhoods provided housing, food, education, child care, cultural activities, and social connections for new arrivals to the US; many women, both native-born and immigrant, developed life-long passions for social activism in them; Jane Addam’s Hull House in Chicago and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York City were two of the most prominent

Jane Addams

Middle-class woman who was part of the first generation of college-educated women; she acquired Hull mansion in Chicago and established one of the first (and most famous) settlement houses

Charles Darwin

English naturalist and biologist who is famous for his notable contributions to evolutionary biology; he created Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, which is still used today; many religious folks did not like his hypotheses for evolution, as they felt it went against their teachings

Land-grant colleges

colleges and universities created from allocations of public land through the Morrell Act of 1862 and the Hatch Act of 1887. These helped fuel the boom in higher education in the late nineteenth century, and many of today’s public universities derive from these grants.

World’s Columbian Expositon

Held in Chicago, Americans saw this World’s Fair as their opportunity to claim a place among the world’s most “civilized” societies, by which they meant the countries of western Europe. The fair honored art, architecture, and science, and its promoters built a mini-city in which to host the fair that reflected all the ideals of city planning popular at the time. For many, this was the high point of the “City Beautiful” movement

William Randolf Hearst

a man who got expelled from Harvard for a crude prank; he used his father’s mining millions to build a powerful chain of newspapers beginning with the San Francisco Examiner in 1887; although he championed for many worthy causes, he “prostituted” the press in their struggle for increased circulation (Pageant said that not me)

Mark Twain

american writer who referred to the three decade long period after the Civil war the “Gilded Age”; it means “covered in gold leaf” and was referring to the large population of southern families who tried to hide the fact that the civil war left them bankrupt

John Dewey

Founded the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago in 1896; experimented with an educational philosophy rooted in “learning by doing”; later promoted an ethical vision of American society by linking arms with progressive reformers in the 1910s

Reservation system

The system that allotted land with designated boundaries to Native American tribes in the West, beginning in the 1850s and ending with the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Within these, most land was used communally, rather than owned individually. The US government encouraged and sometimes violently coerced Native Americans to stay on them at all times.

Battle of Little Bighorn

A particularly violent example of the warfare between whites and Native Americans in the late nineteeth century, also known as “Custer’s Last Stand.” In two days, June 25 and 26, 1876, the combined forces of over 2,000 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho natives defeated and killed more than 250 US soldiers, including Colonel George Custer. The battle came as the US gov. tried to compel Native Americans to remain on the reservations and Native Americans tried to defend territory from white gold-seekers. This Native advantage did not last long, however, as the union of these Native fighters proved tenuous and the United States Army soon exacted retributions.

Battle of Wounded Knee

A battle between the US Army & the Dakota Sioux in which several hundred Native Americans and 29 US soldiers died. Tensions erupted violently over two major issues: the Sioux practice of the “Ghost Dance,” which the US government had outlawed, and the dispute over whether Sioux reservation land would be broken up because of the Dawes Act.

Dawes Severalty Act

An act that broke up Native American reservations and distributed land to individual households. Leftover land was sold for money to fund US gov. efforts to “civilize” Native Americans. Of 130 million acres held in Native American reservations before the Act, 90 million were sold to non-Native buyers.

Homestead Act

A federal law that gave settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by, for instance, building a house on it. The act helped make land accessible to hundreds of thousands of westward-moving settlers, but man people also found disappointment when their land was infertile or they saw speculators grabbing up the best land.

Populists

Officially known as the People’s party, they represented Westerners and Southerners who believed that US economic policy inappropriately favored Eastern businessmen instead of the nation’s farmers. Their proposals included nationalizing the railroads, creating a graduated income tax, and most significantly the unlimited coinage of solver.