Albert Bierstadt
German born U.S Painter known for his large landscape portraits of the 19th century west
Associated with Luminism
Part of the Hudson River School
Andrew Carnegie
- A Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist who founded the _______ Steel Company in 1892. By 1901, his company dominated the American steel industry.
Brigham young
United States religious leader of the Mormon Church after the assassination of Joseph Smith
Led the Mormons of Illinois to Utah, blazed the Mormon Trail to Salt Lake City
Cyrus McCormick
Irish-American inventor that developed Obed Hussey's mechanical reaper. - Reaper replaced scythes as the preferred method of cutting crops for harvest, and it was much more efficient and much quicker. The invention helped the agricultural growth of America.
___________ Harvesting Machine Company => International Harvester
Frederick Jackson Turner
Wrote "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"
______ Thesis: American culture is shaped and defined by the frontier
American historian who said that humanity would continue to progress as long as there was new land to move into. The frontier provided a place for homeless and solved social problems.
Taught at Wisconsin then Yale
Ida Tarbell
- A leading muckraker and magazine editor, she exposed the corruption of the oil industry with her 1904 work A History of Standard Oil.
John D. Rockafeller
Oil tycoon; owned standard oil company which became the largest refinery
Made products that he had previously purchased (vertical integration)
Had monopoly over oil industry
Philantropist
John Deere
American blacksmith that was responsible for inventing the steel plow. This new plow was much stronger than the old iron version; therefore, it made plowing farmland in the west easier, making expansion faster.
Started in Illinois
Joseph Glidden
Invented barbed wire
Allowed for large scale commercial agriculture on the Great Plains
Thomas Durant
An American financier and railroad promoter. - Vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) in 1869 when it met with the Central Pacific railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah Territory.
He created the financial structure which led to the Crédit Mobilier scandal.
Prime example of a robber baron
Louis Sullivan
- United States architect known for his steel framed skyscrapers and for coining the phrase \n 'form follows function' (1856-1924)
American Exceptionalism
- The idea that the American experience was different or unique from others, and therefore America had a unique or special role in the world, such as a "city upon a hill."
Barbed Wire
Strong wire with barbs at regular intervals used to prevent passage
Invented by Joseph Glidden
California Trail
An overland trail that led migrants to California during the Gold Rush
Route used by the 49ers
250K took the trail by 1869
Captains of Industry
- Owners and managers of large industrial enterprises who wielded extraordinary political and economic power
Celestials
- Term referring to Chinese Americans in the 1800s
Central Pacific
Company who constructed the Sacramento to Ogden transcontinental line
Owned by the Big Four
Worked on by Celestials
Chinese Exclusion Act
- 1882 law that prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers
Combine
A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field.
Hiram Moore invented this
Cyrus McCormick really made the design successful
Corporations and trusts
- A way that individuals own property for personal and family purposes just as corporations are a way that individuals own property for business purposes
Credit Mobilier
A joint-stock company organized in 1863 and reorganized in 1867 to build the Union Pacific Railroad.
Pioneered by Thomas Durant
Involved in a scandal in 1872 in which high government officials were accused of accepting bribes.
Dryland Farming
Farming that relies on rainfall instead of irrigation
Wheat
Common in Mid-West
Dumbbell tenements
New form of housing that was developed in the early 1900's it was designed as a dumbbell and had more apartments for more families and shared restrooms
Fire hazards, waste and disease
Farmers Alliance
A Farmers' organization founded in late 1870s; worked for lower railroad freight rates, lower interest rates, and a change in the governments tight money policy
Came after the Grange, collectivist group of farmers focused on solving local problems but expanded to a national platform that led to the fast-growing but short-lived People's Party
Lampasas Texas
Frontier Thesis
The argument by Frederick Jackson Turner that the frontier experience helped make American society more democratic
Emphasized cheap, unsettled land and the absence of a landed aristocracy.
Gilded Age
- A name for the late 1800s, coined by Mark Twain to describe the tremendous increase in wealth caused by the industrial age and the ostentatious lifestyles it allowed the very rich. The great industrial success of the U.S. and the fabulous lifestyles of the wealthy hid the many social problems of the time, including a high poverty rate, a high crime rate, and corruption in the government.
Great Northern American Railway
- Connected Saint Paul to Seattle
Great Plains
A mostly flat and grassy region of western North America
Cattle
Great Railway Strike of 1877
Railway workers in Virginia initiated a railway strike in 1877 to protest working conditions and wage cuts, lead to the "great labor uprising"
First major strike in an industry that propelled America's industrial revolution; briefly paralyzed the country's commerce and led governors in ten states to mobilize 60,000 militia members to reopen rail traffic
Hereford Cattle
- Hardy and thrifty breed; prone to eye cancer; polled and horned; red (deep cherry red to a light buckskin-orange color), white on face, withers, chest, bottom line, tail switch and feet
Hiram Moore
- This man's combine literally combined the harvesting & threshing process. Today, a single machine can clear a field in hours.
Homestead Act
1862 - Provided free land in the West to anyone willing to settle there and develop it. Encouraged westward migration.
Gave African Americans the opportunity to own land
Hudson River School
1825-1875
Group of American landscape painters
Parts of increasing American nationalism following the War of 1812
The influence of the European Romantic movement led many American artists to paint their homeland
Depicted important landscapes such as Niagara Falls, the Catskills, the Rocky Mountains, and the Hudson River Valley
Artists included Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Doughty, THomas Cole, George Inness, and S.F.B. Morse
Mo-Pac Expressway
- Missouri Pacific Railroad Line near Georgetown
Mormon Trail
In 1847, about 1,600 _______ followed part of the Oregon Trail to Utah.
They built a settlement by the Great Salt Lake.
Nativism
- A policy of favoring native-born individuals over foreign-born ones
Obed Hussey
- Invented the reaper
Oregon Trail
Trail from independence Missouri to ______ used by many pioneers during the 1840s
70K by 1869
Pendleton Act
- Saw the flaws of the spoils system---that is, way too many positions for new presidents to fill plus unfairness, identified limited number of federal jobs to be filled by competitive written examinations rather than by patronage
Philantropy
- Charitable donation to public causes
Pogroms
Government supported attacks against Jews in Russia
Really any violence against a certain ethnic group
Population Statistics
Population increased drastically
% of urban population increased by over 30%
Preemption Act
Validated the claims of squatters(people who had settled on unoccupied government land in territories without any legal claim to it.)
Squatters could purchase up to 160 acres of land as cheap as $1.25 an acre, as long as they had been there for 14 months
Gave way to the Homestead Act
Robber Barons
- Refers to the industrialists or big business owners who gained huge profits by paying their employees extremely low wages. They also drove their competitors out of business by selling their products cheaper than it cost to produce it. Then when they controlled the market, they hiked prices high above original price.
Southern Pacific
Owned by the Big Four who owned Central Pacific
Constructed a route from Los Angeles through the Gadsden Purchase to El Paso then linked up with the Texas and Pacific Railroad in Sierra Blanca TX
Standard Oil
- Established in 1870, it was a integrated multinational oil corporation lead by Rockefeller
Tenth Ward/Lower East Side
- Manhattan's _______ landscape was defined by tenements and public housing dominated by immigrants
Township and Range
- Land allotment system used to determine land grants for RRs and general land distribution (such as school sections, 16 and 36); the sections are numbered like a winded snake (7 under 6, 13 under 12) with the top right corner being 1 and bottom right being 36; range is said before township
Transcontinental Railroad
Railroad connecting the west and east coasts of the continental US
2 lines: Central Pacific and Union Pacific
Met at Promontory UT, North of Ogden Sacramento, California to the East Omaha, Nebraska to the West
Union Pacific
Company that built the Omaha to Ogden Line of the Transcontinental Railroad
Most difficult parts were constructed by Celestials
Thomas Durant was Vice-President
Vertical Integration
- Practice where a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution
Township
North/South from baseline, y-axis
Range
East/West from baseline, x-axis