Gilded Age Labor, Social Movements, and Western Expansion

Vocabulary flashcards covering Gilded Age industrialization, labor movements, social reform dynamics, key figures, and military conflicts with Native Americans based on the lecture.

Pinkertons

Private security forces hired by business owners during the Gilded Age to beat up strikers, break up labor unions, and suppress labor uprisings.

Molly Maguires

A group of Irish immigrant coal miners convicted and executed as terrorist conspirators following the 1877 Shamokin uprising in Pennsylvania.

Pullman Strike

An 1893 strike at a Chicago luxury railway car factory where President Grover Cleveland deployed federal troops under the justification of protecting US mail delivery.

Jay Gould

A railroad tycoon of the Gilded Age who famously claimed he could hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

Knights of Labor

An all-inclusive 19th-century labor union that campaigned for an eight-hour workday and an end to child labor, welcoming both skilled and unskilled workers.

Haymarket Affair

An 1886 labor demonstration in Chicago where a thrown bomb killed a policeman, triggering police fire into the crowd and widespread public backlash against the Knights of Labor.

American Federation of Labor (AFL)

A conservative labor organization founded by Samuel Gompers that admitted only skilled laborers and focused on narrow, practical goals such as the eight-hour workday.

Samuel Gompers

The labor leader who established the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and restricted its membership strictly to skilled workers to avoid radicalism.

Social Darwinism

A socio-economic theory applying biological evolution and survival of the fittest to human society to justify extreme wealth inequality and business dominance.

Progress and Poverty

An 1879 best-selling book by Henry George arguing that poverty stems from land monopolization and that dominant industrial monopolies inhibit progress and innovation.

Edward Bellamy

Author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward, which envisioned a year 2000 future where the federal government distributes equal shares of public wealth to every working citizen.

Gibson Girl

The late 19th-century feminine ideal representing the modern woman who was educated, active in social causes, independent, and dressed in shorter sleeves and lower necklines.

Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

An organization founded in Ohio in 1873 that grew into a massive global movement advocating for the prohibition of alcohol, tobacco restrictions, and female education.

Comstock Act

An 1873 federal law promoted by Anthony Comstock that banned the mailing of obscene literature, specifically targeting birth control and sex education.

Horatio Storer

A Boston OBGYN who established the Gynecological Society of Boston and led an American Medical Association campaign to ban birth control and abortion.

Susan B. Anthony

A prominent Quaker suffragist arrested in 1872 for illegally casting a ballot for Ulysses S. Grant, asserting that the 14th and 15th Amendments guaranteed citizens the right to vote.

Santee Sioux Uprising

An 1862 Minnesota conflict driven by reservation confinement and starvation that ended in the execution of 38 Native American leaders, the largest mass execution in US history.

Philip Sheridan

A Union Civil War general who commanded military campaigns against Native Americans out west and famously remarked that the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

Mangus Coloradas

An Apache chief who was tied to a tree and beaten to death by white gold miners after protesting encroachment in the Santa Rita Mountains.

Geronimo

A famous Apache war leader who evaded US cavalry forces for decades before surrendering in 1886 and eventually being held as a prisoner at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Medicine Lodge Treaty

An 1867 treaty establishing a reservation for the Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho, which broke down when promised federal food provisions failed to arrive.

Ghost Dance

A spiritual ritual and movement among Plains tribes whose followers believed it protected them from white encroachment and conferred invulnerability to bullets.

Sitting Bull

The Lakota Sioux leader victorious at Little Bighorn who was shot and killed by police in 1890 during an attempt to arrest him amidst authorities' fear of the Ghost Dance.