Honors History Test 1

John D. Rockefeller (1860’s-1870’s)

• Founded standard oil company

• Used trust and horizontal integration

• created a monopoly in oil refining and bought the competition

• By 1890, standard oil company ruled 90 percent of oil business

Dawes Severalty Act

authorized the U.S. President to break up communal tribal lands into individual allotments (typically 160 acres) to force assimilation, encourage farming, and terminate tribal sovereignty

Nativists

individuals or groups who advocate for the interests of native-born inhabitants over immigrants

Tariffs

a tax imposed by a government on imported goods and services

Social Darwinism

The late 19th-century application of "survival of the fittest" to human societies (Race, Gender etc based)

• encouraged economic theory of laissez-faire

• justified inequality and against reform

Plessy v. Ferguson

the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana's segregation law, establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine, which legally justified racial segregation in public facilities for over half a century

Horizontal Integration

Control one step in production

Vertical Integration

controlled all the steps in production

Redeemers

wanted to revive old ways, against reform (fix white supremacy) → bring back slavery. Removing republican rule (after civil war)

Yellow Journalism

journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration

Booker T Washington ****

Wanted to push for reform but also keep white donors and build the schools for my African Americans

The Homestead Steel Strike (1892)

a violent labor dispute in Pennsylvania between Carnegie Steel and its workers. When manager Henry Clay Frick cut wages and tried to break the union, workers blocked the plant.

Queen Liliuokalani

was the last sovereign of Hawai'i. Many continue to admire Lili'uokalani for her resolute and peaceful resistance to the US businessmen who ended her reign and to the United States' annexation of Hawai'i during the 1890s.

Crop-Lien System

a post-Civil War credit system in the U.S. South where farmers, lacking cash, pledged future crops to local merchants for supplies, fertilizer, and food. It forced a reliance on cash crops like cotton, often trapping sharecroppers and tenant farmers in a cycle of debt and economic dependency. 

The Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's idea that the rich have a moral duty to use their fortunes for the public good, acting as trustees to distribute wealth responsibly during their lifetimes by funding libraries, schools, and hospitals, rather than leaving it to heirs, to uplift society and help the poor help themselves

Roosevelt Corollary

• Monroe Doctrinestating the U.S. would intervene in Latin American nations guilty of "chronic wrongdoing" or instability.

• Asserted a right for the U.S. to act as an international police power in the Western Hemisphere to prevent European intervention. 

American Federation of Labor

a crucial, enduring alliance of craft unions aimed at improving wages, hours, and working conditions through "bread and butter" unionism. (*****)

Pullman Strike

a major railroad labor dispute against the Pullman Palace Car Company in Illinois, sparked by deep wage cuts during the Panic of 1893 without corresponding rent reductions in the company town, leading to a nationwide boycott by the American Railway Union (ARU) and federal intervention that halted rail traffic and ultimately crushed the strike

William Jennings Bryan

was a dominant American political figure, who championed populism, rural interests, and progressive reforms like women's suffrage

• shifted the Democratic Party toward progressive policies, advocating for the free silver movement, direct election of senators, and income tax.

Panic of 1893

a severe U.S. economic depression triggered by railroad overexpansion, tight credit, gold reserve depletion, and speculative stock market failures (like the Reading Railroad), leading to massive bank failures.

New Immigration

Shifting from Northern/Western European origins to Southern/Eastern European (Italian, Polish, Russian, Jewish) and Asian arrivals. Driven by economic hardship and persecution, these immigrants faced increased federal scrutiny

Mississippi Plan

• was a strategy used by Southern white Democrats to overthrow the Republican-led Reconstruction government in Mississippi through organized violence, voter intimidation, and fraud.

• It focused on suppressing the Black vote to regain political control, setting a precedent for disenfranchisement across the South. 

Laissez-faire

a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering

Tenements

a run-down, overcrowded apartment building in a poor urban area, typically housing many families in small, basic units, but legally it also means any property (land, houses, rents) held by a tenant

WEB Dubois

Co-founding the NAACP, coining terms like "double-consciousness," advocating for the "talented tenth," and promoting Pan-Africanism, all while fiercely fighting racial injustice through prolific writings like The Souls of Black Folk.He was the first African American to earn a Harvard Ph.D.

Child Labor

• Roughly 1.5 million children under 15 working in industrial jobs by 1890, rising to 2 million by 1910

• Driven by industrial expansion and poverty, worked long hours in dangerous conditions—textile mills, coal mines, and factories—for low wages, rarely attending school. 

Dollar Diplomacy

aimed to secure U.S. commercial interests and promote stability in Latin America and East Asia by substituting financial investment for military force

Open Door Policy

was the United States diplomatic policy established in the late 19th and early 20th century that called for a system of equal trade and investment and to guarantee the territorial integrity of Qing China

Sand Creek Massacre

U.S. Army volunteers commanded by Colonel John Chivington brutally attacked a peaceful village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. Despite the flying of a U.S. flag and white flag of truce by Chief Black Kettle, approximately 70-600 people—mostly women, children, and elderly—were killed, marking a defining, horrific event in the U.S.-Indian Wars.

Eugene V. Debs

famously leading the Pullman Strike, founding the Socialist Party of America, and running for president while in prison for his anti-WWI activism. He was a charismatic orator who rose from railroad worker to national figure, advocating for the working class and inspiring millions, despite his radical views clashing with the U.S. government

Which sector, business or government, played a more significant role in the history of the United States from 1865 to 1910?

The business sector played a more significant, driving role in U.S. history, defining the Gilded Age through rapid industrialization, the expansion of railroads, and the creation of trusts. While government provided land grants and followed laissez-faire policies, business leaders dominated economic growth. 

Compare the expansion of the United States into the West with the Imperialism of the early 20th century. Who/what motivated these phenomena? Who benefitted and who lost out?

were driven by similar desires for land, resources, and ideological superiority, but they differed in scope and method. While Westward Expansion focused on settling the continental U.S. and incorporating new territories as states, early 20th-century imperialism saw the U.S. acting as a global power, acquiring overseas colonies and expanding economic influence

• Natives and other immigrant groups didn't benefit

Which would you rather have been – a homesteader in the West, a sharecropper in the South, or a steel worker in the North? What challenges would you face in your hypothetical life? What resources could you count on to support you?

Support your answer with references to the text.

Steel Worker in the North

Choose one of the Native American groups discussed at length in A Century of Dishonor and describe their interactions with The United States government. How did Jackson’s religious views shape her assessment of the US government? Native Americans?

The Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) people’s 19th-century interactions with the United States government were characterized by a consistent pattern of treaty-driven land cessions, forced relocations, and attempts to maintain cultural identity while under immense pressure from white settlers. Meanwhile, President Andrew Jackson’s assessment of Native Americans was shaped by maternalistic, expansionist, and, by some accounts, paternalistic, worldview that deemed them "savages" needing removal for their own survival. 

• They signed treaties in 1816, 1825, 1827, 1828, 1829, and 1832, losing most of their land to the U.S. government due to pressure from settlers and miners.

• After the 1837 treaty, many Winnebago refused to leave Wisconsin, creating a permanent split between those in Wisconsin and those relocated to Iowa.