Reconstruction and Gilded Age Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, industrialization, business models, monopolies, and early government regulations based on lecture notes.

Reconstruction

The period of post-war rebuilding in the American South following the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson

Southern Democrat President who constantly vetoed Radical Republicans, owned slaves until after the Civil War, agreed with Lincoln as his vice president, and was impeached by the House of Representatives.

Radical Republicans

Faction in Congress (House and Senate) that stood for rebuilding the South by remaking it like the North.

Jim Crow Laws

Laws made by Southerners that blocked African American men from voting or having any social rights given to them by the 14th and 15th amendments, using measures like literacy tests and poll taxes.

Nativism

Thought or belief that people who have inhabited a place for a long time are by right the only people who should inhabit it.

Americanization/Anglicization

The process in which immigrants adapt to American or English customs.

The Gilded Age

The golden age period from 1865 to 1914 marked by rapid industrial growth and high consumption of natural resources.

Bessemer Process

An industrial innovation that purified iron ore into steel.

Laissez-faire system

An economic system that allowed businesses to keep their earnings by paying a minimum in taxes with little to no government oversight.

Patents

Legal protections created by the government to provide a way for inventors to gain exclusive rights to their inventions.

Thomas Edison

Inventor granted 1,093 patents, including those for the lightbulb, motion picture camera, and phonograph.

Corporation

A linked system of business created by pooling resources; established by law with the same rights as individuals, such as buying and selling property or suing in court.

J.P. Morgan

Investor and financier who controlled much of Wall Street in the late 1800s and early 1900s, successfully grew corporations such as US Steel and General Electric, and had an estimated net worth today close to 2 billion dollars.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

A shipping and businessman who owned the New York Central Railroad, restructured the US transportation infrastructure through rail, and had an estimated net worth today close to 200 billion dollars.

Monopoly

Complete control of a product or how a product is delivered.

Cartel

An association where corporations agree to work together to keep prices high and limit production.

Horizontal Integration

A business strategy of organizing multiple firms under one business to give customers the illusion of choice.

Trust

A legal structure created by lawyers where a board runs the stocks of multiple companies and combines them in separate organizations.

Vertical Integration

A business strategy where a parent company owns every step of manufacturing and all levels of the business trade.

John D. Rockefeller

Shrewd businessman who founded Standard Oil, used horizontal and vertical integration, became the first billionaire in US history with an estimated net worth today close to 420 billion dollars, and lived to age 95.

Social Darwinism

The belief that laissez-faire economics and American capitalism bring about a survival of the fittest mentality where only strong businesses survive.

William Graham Sumner

Yale professor who advocated the idea of Social Darwinism in the cutthroat marketplace of the US.

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

Enacted by the Senate in 1887 to oversee the rail business; the first federal commission ever set up to monitor and regulate American businesses.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Act passed by the Senate in 1890 that outlawed trusts operating 'in restraint' of trade among states.