History Ch. 15-19 Key Terms

Andrew Johnson

Democrat from Tennessee who served as Lincoln's vice president and, upon Lincoln assassination, became the seventeenth president; opposed Racial Republican policies on Reconstruction.

Atlanta Compromise

This term describes Booker T. Washington's philosophy, stated in an 1895 speech, that Blacks should forgo agitation for political rights and concentrate on self-improvement and preparation for equality.

Black Codes

State laws that developed after the Civil War in the former Confederate states to limit the political power and mobility of Black Americans.

Booker T. Washington

The chief spokesman for a commitment to Black education and the founder and president of Tuskegee University.

Carpetbagger

Slang term used by white Southern Democrats to describe white men from the North, many of them veterans, who settled in the South as hopeful planters, businessmen, and professionals and supported Republican policies.

Charles Sumner

United States senator from Massachusetts who was a leading voice against slavery and for Black liberties.

Compromise of 1877

Rutherford B. Hayes's promise to withdraw federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction, in exchange for the support of Southern delegates in the disputed election of 1876 presidential election.

Crop

Lien System - A credit system widely used in the South after the Civil War in which farmers promised a portion of their future crops in exchange for supplies from local merchants.

Enforcement Acts

Also known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts, these congressional acts in 1870 and 1871 prohibited states from discriminating against voters on the basis of race and gave the national government authority to prosecute crimes by individuals under federal law.

Fifteenth Amendment

Forbade the states and the federal government from denying suffrage to any male citizen on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 1870.

Fourteenth Amendment

Granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States and prohibited states from denying "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" or equal protection under the law. 1868.

Freedmen's Bureau

U.S. bureau established in 1858 that aimed to help former enslaved people forge independent lives.

Ida B. Wells

African American journalist whose reporting in the late nineteenth century on racial violence launched what became an international antilynching movement.

Impeachment

The process of charging a public official with misconduct, with the potential for punishment including loss of office.

Jim Crow Laws

A dense network of state and local statutes that institutionalized an elaborate system of racial hierarchy.

Ku Klux Klan

One of many secret societies that used terrorism and physical violence to intimidate those freed from slavery and undercut their constitutional rights, especially the right to vote.

Minstrel Show

Form of popular theater and entertainment from the early 1800s to the early 1900s that openly mocked and degraded African American culture.

New South

A term referring to the economic and modernization and industrialization of the South after Reconstruction.

Plessy V. Ferguson

An 1896 Supreme Court decision that ruled that separate accommodations for Blacks and whites were legal so long as they were equal.

Radical Republicans

A wing of the Republican Party in the mid-nineteenth century that aggressively opposed slavery and, after the Civil War, fought to expand and protect African American civil rights.

Reconstruction

The process by which the federal government, between 1865 and 1877, controlled the former Confederate states and set the conditions for their readmission to the Union.

Redeemers

Coalition of white southern landowners, business interests, and professionals who sought to "redeem" the South after the Civil War by limiting the influence of the Republican Party and violently overthrowing federal reconstruction policies and Black American citizenship rights.

Scalawag

Slang term referring to the Southern whites who supported the Republican Party and federal Reconstruction policies after the Civil War.

Sharecropping

A farming system in which large landowners rent their fields to farmers, usually families, in return for a share of crop's production.

Thaddeus Stevens

U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania who was an abolitionist and a leader of the Radical Republicans.

Ulysses S. Grant

Chief of the Union armies (at the beginning of 1864) and eighteenth president who supervised much of Reconstruction.

Wade

Davis Bill - The 1864 bill stipulating that all Confederate states seeking readmission to the Union have a majority of its voters take a loyalty oath to the federal government; it never passed because Lincoln refused to sign it.

William H. Seward

Secretary of state in both President Lincoln's and President Johnson's administrations who negotiated purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.

Californios

Hispanic residents of California.

Chief Joseph

Leader of the Nez Perce tribe in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1870s who fought efforts to force the tribe onto a reservation in the Idaho territory.

Chinese Exclusion Act

The federal law of 1882 that blocked Chinese immigration and prevented those Chinese already living in America from becoming citizens for 10 years.

Concentration Policy

U.S. government policy introduced in 1851 that forced Native American tribes to live in specific regions, thereby opening up new areas for settlement.

Dawes Severalty Act

Legislation that provided for the gradual elimination of most tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual owners.

Geronimo

Apache chief and medicine man who led the fight against resettlement efforts by Mexico and then the United States.

Homestead Act

Federal legislation permitting any citizen or perspective citizen, including those who had once been enslaved, to purchase 160 acres of public land in the western United States for a small fee after living on it for 5 years.

Little Bighorn

Site of 1876 battle in which Colonel George Custer and his men were surprised and killed by a large army of Sioux warriors.

Long Drive

A journey over grasslands that allowed western cattle ranchers to deliver their animals to railroad centers.

Mark Twain

Pen name of Samuel Langhrone, nineteenth-century American author and humorist who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).

Range Wars

Conflicts between sheepmen and cattlemen, ranches, and farmers.

Rocky Mountain School

Group of late-nineteenth-century painters known for large-scale depiction of western landscapes.

Turner Thesis

The theory articulated by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that westward expansion into the frontier had defined and continually renewed American ideas about democracy and individualism.

Wounded Knee

Located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, it was the site of a massacre of between 150 and 300 Sioux, including women and children, by the U.S. Army on December 29, 1890.

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

Union of skilled workers, formed in 1881 and led by Samuel Gompers, that used strikes to gain concessions from management.

American Socialist Party

Political party for economic reform created in 1901 that was closely aligned with organized labor.

Andrew Carnegie

Scottish immigrant who became a steel magnate and then philanthropist during the Gilded Age.

Edward Bellamy

Author of the utopian novel Looking Backward (1888) in which government monopolies created an equitable society.

Eugene V. Debs

Leader of the American Railway Union in the Pullman strike of 1894; presidential candidate for the Socialist Party.

Gospel of Wealth

Term popularized by Andrew Carnegie to argue that those with immense wealth carry a greater burden to use that wealth for social progress.

Haymarket Bombing

In a class between striking laborers and police in Chicago on May 1, 1886, an unknown person threw a bomb into a crowd killing 7 police and injuring nearly 70 others.

Henry Ford

Early leader of the automobile industry who stressed the standardization of parts and assembly lines.

Henry George

Author of Progress and Poverty (1879), which argued for tax reform on land as a way to break the power of monopolies.

Homestead Strike

A strike of the steel mill union in 1892 that led to armed conflict and the involvement of the state militia.

Horatio Alger

Author of Gilded Age books whose hard working heroes go from "rags to riches."

Horizontal Integration

A corporate combination where a group of businesses that do the same thing are consolidated.

John D. Rockefeller

Founder of Standard Oil, famous for horizontal and vertical integration, and the wealthiest man of the Gilded Age.

J.P Morgan

Banker and creator of U.S. Steel.

Knights of Labor

Short-lived early national labor union that championed 8 hour workdays and the end of child labor, open to almost all workers. (I think besides the rich people).

Lousia May Alcott

Author of the Little Women series about an ambitious girl who fought conventional society to become a writer.

Molly Maguires

A secret society of Irish-born coal miners willing to use violence to deal with management.

Monopoly

A business entity that controls an industry or market sector without competition.

Pullman Strike

An 1894 railroad strike that escalated to 27 states and territories, ultimately broken by federal troops and resulting in the management's victory.

Samuel Gompers

Union organizer under whose leadership in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) grew by combining similar skilled unions together.

Social Darwinism

The belief that societies are subject to the laws of natural selection and that some societies or peoples are innately superior to others.

Taylorism

Named for Frederick Winslow Taylor, an attempt to use scientific management to improve factory production.

Vertical Integration

The arrangement by which a company takes ownership of businesses in various stages of production and distribution within the same industry.

Wilbur and Orville Wright

Builders of the first self-powered airplane, successfully flown in 1903.

Armory Show

An event in New York City that displayed works of the French post impressionists and of some American modern artists; supported by the Ashcan artists.

Ashcan School

Art movement whose members produced work startling in its naturalism and stark in its portrayal of the social realities of the era.

City Beautiful Movement

Led by architect Daniel Burnham, the movement sought to impose order and symmetry on the disordered life of American cities.

Coney Island

The famous and popular amusement park located on a Brooklyn beach.

Consumerism

An increased focus on purchasing goods for personal use; the protection or promotion of consumer interests.

Darwinism

The argument that the human species had evolved from earlier forms of life through a process of "natural selection."

Jacob Riis

New York newspaper photographer who wrote How the Other Half Lives, which used photos and words to expose the harshness of tenement life.

Kate Chopin

A southern writer who explored the oppressive features of traditional marriage; known for her shocking novel The Awakening.

National Consumers League (NCL)

Formed in the 1890s under the leadership of Florence Kelley; the goal was to force retailers and manufacturers to improve wages and working conditions.

Public Health Service

Organization created in 1912; goal was to prevent occupational diseases and create common health standards.

Tammany Hall

Urban machine led by famously corrupt city boss William M. Tweed.

Tenements

By the late nineteenth century, this was a descriptor used for slum dwellings.

Vaudeville

A form of theater adapted from French models; the most popular urban entertainment into the first decades of the 20th century.

William James

Harvard psychologist and most prominent publicist of pragmatism.

William M. Tweed

The famously corrupt boss of New York's political machine Tammany Hall.

William Randolph Hearst

The most powerful U.S. newspaper chain owner; by 1914 he controlled 9 newspapers and 2 magazines.

Benjamin Harrison

Republican senator who was elected president in 1888 in one of the most corrupt elections in American history.

Boxer Rebellion

A revolt begun by Chinese nationalists against foreigners in China.

Chester A. Arthur

Became president when Garfield was assassinated.

Coxey's Army

A group of unemployed who marched on Washington, led by Ohio populist Jacob S. Coxey, to demand relief from the depression.

Farmers' Alliances

Began among southern farmers in 1875 but spread nationwide; formed cooperatives and other marketing mechanisms.

Free Silver

Economic philosophy that advocated for the coining of silver; farmers and others believed that expanding the money supply in this way would increase prices for their products and ease their debt payments.

Grangers

Founded in 1867, the first major farm organization in the country to mobilize against railroads and other special interests; predecessor to the farmers' alliance of the late nineteenth century.

Grover Cleveland

Reform governor of New York who was elected president in 1884 and again in 1892.

Half

Breeds - Political group within the Republican Party led by James G. Blaine of Maine, who favored reform.

Imperialism

The process whereby an empire or nation pursues military, political, or economic advantage by extending its rule over external territories and peoples.

Interstate Commerce Act

The first effective federal railroad regulation, passed in 1887; administered by a five-person agency.

James A. Garfield

Veteran Republican congressman from Ohio and a Half-Breed; won the presidency in the 1880 election; assassinated in 1881.

Jingoes

A term coined in the late nineteenth century to refer to advocates for expanded U.S. economic, political, and military power in the world.

Open Door

The metaphor Secretary of State John Hay used in 1898 to characterize the access to Chinese markets he desired for the United States; it was later expanded to refer to a policy of granting equal trade access to all countries.

Panic of 1893

The beginning of the most severe depression the United States had experienced at the time; triggered by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad bankruptcy.

Pendleton Act

First national civil service measure, passed in 1883, that tested applicants' qualifications for federal jobs rather than assigning them through patronage connections, among other reforms; largely symbolic at first but grew in reach over time.

Populism

A reform movement of the 1890s that promoted federal government politics to redistribute wealth and power from national elites to common people; more generally, refers to a political doctrine that supports the rights of the people over the elite.

Puerto Rico

Part of the Spanish Empire from 1508 until 1898, when it fell under the control of the United States; became an American territory in 1917.