Apush unit 6 vocab

transcontinental railroads

transcontinental railroads

These were built across North America in the 1860s, linking the railway network of the Eastern United States with California on the Pacific coast; made communication and trade throughout the country easier; opened west to miners and open range ranching; Irish and Chinese workers played role in construction; led to the near extinction of buffalo

Great American Desert

Region between the Mississippi River and the Western Plateau. Vast domain became accessible to Americans wishing to settle there. This region was called the "Great American Desert" in atlases published between 1820 and 1850, and many people were convinced this land was a Sahara habitable only to Indians. The phrase had been coined by Major Long during his exploration of the middle portion of the Louisiana Purchase region.

barbed wire

Type of fencing that homesteaders used to cut off access to formerly open range, a factor that helped to close down the cattle frontier

Homestead Act

1862- encouraged farming on the Great Plains by offering 160 acres of public land free to any family that settled on it for a period of 5 years. The promise of free land combined with the promotions of railroads and land speculators induced hundreds of thousands of native-born and immigrant families to attempt to farm the Great Plains between 1870 and 1900. About 500,000 families took advantage of this act.

National Grange Movement

Organized by Oliver H. Kelley primarily as a social and educational organization for farmers and their families. By the 1870s however, the Grange organized economic ventures and took political action to defend members against the middlemen, trusts, and railroads.

Granger laws

made it illegal for railroads to fix prices by means of pools and to give rebates to privileged customers

Munn v. Illinois

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

Frederick Jackson Turner

United States historian who stressed the role of the western frontier in American history, author of "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and developed the Frontier Thesis

"The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893)

Turner's provocative, influential essay that presented the settling of the frontier as an evolutionary process of building civilization

Little Big Horn

General Custer and his men were wiped out by a coalition of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse

Ghost Dance movement

Native American movement that called for a return to traditional ways of life and challenged white dominance in society. Leaders believed it could return prosperity to the Natives, government suppressed movement + Sitting Bull killed

Helen Hunt Jackson

An author who wrote A Century of Dishonor which chronicled the government's actions against the Indians. Her writing helped inspire sympathy towards the Indians, though it also increased support for ending Indian culture through assimilation

Dawes Act of 1887

Act designed to break up tribal organizations, which many felt kept Indians from becoming "civilized" and law-abiding citizens. Divided tribal lands into plots of up to 160 acres, depending on family size. Granted US citizenship to those who stayed on the land for 25 years and "adopted the habits of civilized life."

Indian Reorganization Act

Part of FDR"s New Deal in the 1930s, promoted the reestablishment of tribal organization and culture

Santa Fe Trail

1000 mile overland route that linked Independence, Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico...opened up the Spanish speaking SW to economic development and settlement.

Forest Reserve Act of 1891

First national forest conservation policy, authorized the president to set aside areas of land for national forests.

Forest Management Act of 1897

This act withdrew federal timberland from development and regulated their use.

John Muir

A preservationist who led the Sierra Club, aimed to preserve natural areas from human interference

Sierra Club

American environmental organization. Helped promote the protection of the environment and nature.

"New South"

After the Civil War, some southerners promoted a vision for this, with a self sufficient economy built on modern capitalist values, industrial growth, modernized transportation, and improved race relations.

George Washington Carver

African American scientist at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama who promoted the growth of crops such as sweet potatoes, peanuts, and soybeans. His work played an important role in shifting Southern agriculture toward a more diversified base.

Tuskegee Institute

a vocational college for African Americans in Alabama, founded by Booker T. Washington

White supremacists

This group favored separating (segregating) public facilities, as a means of treating African American as social inferiors.

Civil Rights Cases of 1883

SCOTUS ruled that Congress could not ban racial discrimination practiced by private citizens and businesses, including railroads and hotels, used by the public

Plessy v. Ferguson

SCOTUS upheld a Louisiana law requiring "separate but equal accommodations" for white and Black railroad passengers. The Court ruled that the law did not violate the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws"--- "separate but equal" doctrine

Jim Crow laws

A wave of segregation laws that Southern states adopted beginning in the 1870s. These laws required segregated washrooms, drinking fountains, park benches, and other facilities in virtually all public places. Only the use of streets and most stores was not restricted according to a person's race.

literacy tests

Method used to deny African-Americans the vote in the South that tested a person's ability to read and write - they were done very unfairly so even though most African-Americans could read and write by the 1950's they still failed.

poll taxes

Small taxes levied on the right to vote that often fell due at a time of year when poor African-American sharecroppers had the least cash on hand. This method was used by most Southern states to exclude African Americans from voting. Poll taxes were declared void by the Twenty-fourth Amendment in 1964.

grandfather clauses

Allowed a man to vote if his grandfather had voted in elections before Reconstruction.

Ida B. Wells

Editor of the Memphis Free speech, a Black newspaper, campaigned against lynching and the Jim Crow Laws.

International Migration Society

Bishop Henry Turner formed this in 1894 to help Black people emigrate to Africa.

Booker T. Washington

African American who advocated for the accomodation of oppression. He was born enslaved and graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia. In 1881, he est an industrial and agricultural school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama. There, African Americans learned skilled trades while Washington preached the virtues of hard work, moderation, and economic self-help. Earning money, he said, was like having "a little green ballot" that would empower African Americans more effectively than a political ballot.

W. E. B. Du Bois

fought for African American rights. Helped to found Niagra Movement in 1905 to fight for and establish equal rights. This movement later led to the establishment of the NAACP

Atlanta Compromise

A belief supported by Booker T Washington that Black and white southerners shared a responsibility for making their region prosper.

transatlantic cable

Cyrus W Field's invention in 1866 that suddenly made it possible to send messages across the sea in minutes.

Alexander Graham Bell

Invented the telephone

Henry Bessemer

Englishman who discovered that blasting air through molten iron produced high-quality steel.

Thomas Edison

American inventor best known for inventing the electric light bulb, phonograph, the dynamo for generating electric power, the mimeograph machine, and the motion picture camera. Established a research laboratory in Menlo Park, the world's first modern research lab that introduced the concept of mechanics and engineers working on a project as a team rather than independently.

George Westinghouse

Inventor who held more than 400 patents and was responsible for developing an air brake for railroads and a transformer for producing high-voltage alternating current (AC). The latter invention made possible the lighting of cities and the operation of electric streetcars, subways, and electrically powered machinery and appliances.

American Railroad Association

In 1883, this organization divided the country into four different time zones, which would become the standard time for all Americans.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

Used his millions earned from a steamboat business to merge local railroads into the New York Central Railroad in 1867.

Jay Gould

speculator who entered the railroad business for quick profits and made millions by selling assets and watering stock (inflating the value of a corporation's assets and profits before selling its stock to the public).

J. Pierpont Morgan

When a financial panic in 1893 forced one quarter of all railroads into bankruptcy, bankers led by HIM quickly moved in to take control of bankrupt railroads and consolidate them. With competition eliminated, they could stabilize rates and reduce debts.

Andrew Carnegie

A Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the Carnegie Steel Company in 1892. By 1901, his company dominated the American steel industry.

United States Steel

Steel company that became the first billion dollar company, created by Carnegie and sold to Morgan, largest enterprise in the world

John D. Rockefeller

Founded the Standard Oil Company, which would quickly eliminate its competition and take control of most of the nation's oil refineries

monopoly

A company that dominates a market so much that it faces little or no competition from other companies

Standard Oil

John D. Rockefeller's company that gained a monopoly over the world petroleum market with the practice of trusts and swift elimination of competition. Profits soared and so did Rockefeller's fortune.

trust

An organization or board that manages the assets of other companies. Under Rockefeller, Standard Oil became a trust in which one board of trustees managed a combination of once-competing oil companies.

horizontal integration

A process through which one company takes control of all of its former competitors in a specific industry, such as oil refining or coal mining

Vertical Integration

A process through which one company takes control of all stages of making a product. For example, Carnegie Steel controlled coal mines, the ore ships, steel mills, and distribution systems for the steel company to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and increase profits.

holding company

a company created to own and control diverse companies. Banker J Pierpont Morgan managed a holding company that orchestrated the management of the companies it had acquired in various industries, such as banking, rail transportation, and steel

laissez-faire

Idea that government should play as small a role as possible in economic affairs.. from French "let it be"

Social Darwinism

The belief that the ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest should be applied to the marketplace.

Survival of the fittest

Process by which individuals that are better suited to their environment survive and reproduce most successfully; also called natural selection... applied to the marketplace through social Darwinism

Protestant work ethic

Idea that material success was a sign of God's favor and a just reward to hard work

concentration of wealth

Richest 10 percent of US in 1890s controlled 90 percent of nation's wealth

Collective Bargaining

the ability of workers to negotiate as a group with an employer over wages and working conditions

railroad strike of 1877

One of the worst outbreaks of labor violence erupted in 1877, during economic depression, when railroad companies cut wages in order to reduce costs. It shut down 2/3 of country's rail trackage. Strike quickly becoming national in scale. For the first time since 1830s federal troops used to end labor violence. More then 100 people killed.

National Labor Union

The first attempt to organize all workers nationwide. Founded in 1866, its goals included better working conditions, higher wages, an eight-hour workday, and equal rights for women and African Americans (but also the exclusion of Chinese-Americans). Members included skilled and unskilled workers as well as farmers; these groups had different, sometimes incompatible, needs. The Panic of 1873 contributed to its decline, as did the failure of Great Railroad Strike of 1877. See: Knights of Labor.

Knights of Labor

The second national labor organization, organized in 1869 under the leadership of Terence V Powderly. as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. Powderly advocated for forming worker cooperatives, abolishing child labor, abolishing trusts and monopolies, and settling labor disputes by arbitration rather than strikes. This group was 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 the their participation in violent strikes and discord between skilled and unskilled members.

Haymarket bombing

in response to the May day movement calling for a general strike to achieve an eight- hour work day, labor violence broke out at Chicago's McCormick Harvester plant; workers held a public meeting, police attempted to break it up, someone threw a bomb killing 7 police officers

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

Concentrated on "bread and butter unionism," attaining narrower economic goals. Founded in 1886 as an association of 25 craft unions of skilled workers and led by Samuel Gompers until 1924, this group focused on just higher wages and improved working conditions. BY 1901, this was by far the nation's largest labor organization, with 1 million members.

Samuel Gompers

Leader of the American Federation of Labor, he directed his local unions to walk out until the employer agreed to negotiate a new contract through collective bargaining.

Homestead strike

Henry Clay Frick, the manager of Andrew Carnegie's Homestead Steel plant near Pittsburgh, precipitated a strike in 1892 by cutting wages nearly 20%. Frick used the weapons of the lockout, private guards, and strikebreakers to defeat the steelworkers' walkout after 5 months. 16 people, mostly steelworkers, died in the conflict. The failure of this strike set back the labor union movement in the steel industry until the New Deal in the 1930s.

Pullman strike

The Pullman Palace Car Company manufactured widely used railroad sleeping cars. In 1894, Pullman announced a general cut in wages and fired the leaders of the workers delegation who came to bargain with him. The workers at Pullman laid down their tools and appealed for help from the American Railroad Association. The union's boycott tied up rail transportation across the country.

Eugene V. Debs

Leader of the American Railroad Union, he directed railroad workers not to handle trains with Pullman cars. He ended up being arrested and jailed, effectively ending the strike. After serving a 6 month sentence, he concluded that more radical solutions were needed to cure labor's problems. He turned to socialism and the American Socialist Party, which he helped to found in 1900.