APUSH Chapter 17

Post Civil War national economic state

- Most large-scale industrial development took place in the Northeast and Midwest
- South and West supplied raw materials and consumed northern manufactured goods

Where did Americans start to settle after the Civil War?

Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Western Plateau

Why were these western lands known as the "Great American Desert"?

- Lack of trees and rainfall for supporting agriculture
- Winter blizzards and hot dry summers
- Open grasslands with millions of bison or buffalo (source of food, clothing, shelter, and tools for indigenous peoples)

How did settlement of the Great Plains change the landscape and eliminate the frontier?

- By 1800, the great buffalo herds were wiped out
- Lands fenced in by homesteads and ranches
- Abundance of railroads
- Modernized with new towns

10 new states were created from the last frontier, but which areas remained territories?

Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma

Consequences of westward expansion

- Rush for western natural resources led to the near extermination of the buffalo and damaged the environment
- Conflicts with indigenous people
- Settlement of miners, ranchers, and farmers

Importance of gold and silver mining

- Discovery of gold in CA in 1848 led to the CA Gold Rush
- Marked the beginning of an American quest for gold and silver
- Series of gold and silver strikes occurred in present-day Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, South Dakota
- Led steady flow of settlers

Pike's Peak, CO (1859)

- Gold rush
- Brought 100,000 miners to the area

Comstock Lode (1859)

- First major U.S. discovery of silver ore in Nevada, causing mining camps to spring up and become bustling centers as prospectors rushed for profits
- Helped Nevada join the Union (ID and MT received early statehood due to mining booms)

Patterns of gold rushes

- Individual prospectors looked for traces of gold in mountain streams via placer mining
- Used simple tools of shovels and washing pans
- Once traces were discovered, deep-shaft mining was required using expensive equipment and wealthy corporate investors

Boomtowns

- Communities that grew suddenly when silver or gold was discovered
- Infamous for saloons, dance-hall girls, and vigilante justice
- When gold and silver ran out, they became ghost towns

Virginia City, NV

- Began as boomtown from the Comstock Lode, but developed into a city
- Theaters, churches, newspapers, schools, libraries, railroads, police
- Mark Twain began his career her as a young journalist

(San Francisco, Sacramento, and Denver were mining towns that become prosperous cities)

Racial composition of miners

- Once mines developed, mining companies employed experienced miners from Europe, Latin America, and China
- Half of the population was foreign-born
- ⅓ of western miners in 1860s were Chinese immigrants, which caused the resentment from native-born Americans

Miner's Tax

- CA legislation that taxed foreign-born miners $20 a month
- Rooted in nativist sentiments

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

- Passed in Congress due to western pressure
- Prohibited further immigration to the US by Chinese laborers
- Chinese immigration severely restricted until 1965
- First major law to restrict immigration on the basis of race and nationality

How did mining reshape the economics and politics of the nation?

- Vast increase in the supply of silver created a crisis over the relative of gold and silver-backed currency (political issue in 1880s/90s)
- Environmental implications

Vaqueros

- Early Mexican cowboys that raised and rounded up cattle in Texas on a small scale
- Tradition of the cattle business was borrowed from the Mexicans
- Texas cattle business was easy to get into because the cattle and the grass on which they roamed were free

How did railroads affect the TX cattle business?

- Joseph G. McCoy built the first stockyards in the region (Abilene, KS) to hold cattle destined for Chicago
- Cattle sold for $30 to $50 per head
- Cow towns, e.g. Dodge City, sprain up along the railroads to handle the millions of cattle driven up trails (e.g. Chisholm, Goodnight-Loving, etc.)
- Cowboys (predominantly African American or Mexican) received a dollar a day for their dangerous work

Why did long cattle drives end in the 1880s?

- Overgrazing destroyed the grass
- Winter blizzard and drought of 1885-86 killed off 90% of cattle
- Arrival of homesteaders who used barbed wire fencing to cut off access to the formerly open lands

Development of large ranches

- Wealthy cattle owners turned to developing huge ranches and using scientific ranching techniques
- Raised new breeds of cattle (more tender beef) by feeding them hay and grains
- American eat habits changed from pork to beef

Homestead Act of 1862

Offered 160 acres of public land free to any family that settled on it for a period of five years

Why did families follow the Homestead Act?

- Promise of free land combined with the promotions of railroads and land speculators compelled native-born people and immigrants to attempt to farm the Great Plains (1870-1900)
- 500,000 families took advantage of Homestead Act
- More families needed to purchase land because the best public lands were taken by railroad companies and speculators

Sodbusters

Name given to Great Plains farmers because they had to break through so much thick soil, called sod, in order to farm

What challenges did homesteaders face?

- Pioneer families challenged by extreme weather, plagues of grasshoppers, and isolation
- Lack of water and wood for fences
- Many Homesteaders learned that 160 acres was not enough to farm the Great Plains
- ⅔ failed due to severe weather, falling crop prices, and cost of new machinery

How did some homesteaders succeed?

- Invention of barbed wire fence (1874) by Joseph Glidden, which helped farmers to fence in their lands without trees
- Water provided by mail-order windmills to dig deep wells
- Dry farming and deep-plowing techniques to find available moisture: hardy strains of Russian wheat
- Built dams and irrigation systems to alter the cultural landscape

Settlement of Oklahoma

- Oklahoma Territory (formerly set aside for indigenous people) was opened for settlement in 1889
- Thousands of homesteaders ran into OK

What did the US Census Bureau declare in 1890?

The entire frontier had been settled

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

- Written by Frederick Jackson Turner
- Argued that 300 years of frontier experience had shaped American culture by promoting independence and individualism
- Frontier was a powerful social leveler, breaking down class divisions, fostering social and political democracy
- Challenges of frontier life caused Americans to be inventive and practical (yet also wasteful in regards to natural resources)

Safety Valve Theory

- Turner viewed the availability of free land on the frontier as a safety valve for Americans unhappy in society
- Frontier provided promise of fresh start
- Potential to return to the class divisions common in Europe

Why did the 1890s have the largest movement of Americans to cities and industrialized areas?

- Era of the western frontier ending
- Dominance of rural America declining

The Hopi and Zuni peoples

- Pueblo groups in NM and AZ
- Lived in permanent settlements as farmers raising corn and livestock

The Navajo and Apache peoples

- Lived in the Southwest
- Nomadic hunter-gatherers who adopted a more settled lifestyle by raising crops/livestock and creating arts/crafts

The Chinook and Shasta peoples

- Pacific Northwest
- Communities based on abundant fish and game

Indigenous groups in the Great Plains

- Nomadic tribes, e.g. the Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, and Comanche, gave up farming in colonial times after the introduction of the horse by the Spanish
- Became skilled horse riders dependent on buffalo hunting
- Lived in smaller bands of 300-500 members within larger "tribes"
- Conflicts with the US govt. rooted in the Americans' lack of understanding about the loose tribal organizations and nomadic ways of the indigenous groups

Indian Removal Strategy of Andrew Jackson's

- Policy of removing eastern indigenous Americans to the West was based on the belief that lands west of the MS River would permanently remain under indigenous control
- Soon proved false as American expansion ramped up: wagon trains moved along the Oregon Trail + plans for transcontinental railroad

Fort Laramie and Fort Atkinson (1851)

- Negotiations between indigenous nations and the federal govt.
- Creation of indigenous reservations (tracts of land) with definite boundaries
- Most Plains groups refused to restrict their movements and continued to follow the migration of buffalo

Violence in the Great Plains

- By late 19th century, the settlement of miners, ranchers, and homesteaders along the frontier led to violence due to theft of indigenous land
- Brutal fighting between the US Army and the Plains people
- 1866 (Sioux War), Sioux warriors destroyed an army column led by Captain William Fetterman
- After many wars, more treaties tried to isolate the Plains people to smaller reservations promised with govt. support

Why did Americans continue to steal indigenous reservations?

- Gold miners refused to stay off reservations if gold was found in them (e.g. Dakotas' Black Hills)
- Resulted in minor chiefs and young warriors trying to return to ancestral lands

Indian Appropriation Act of 1871

- Ended recognition of tribes as independent nations by the federal govt.
- Nullified previous treaties made with indigenous groups

Red River War

- Fought against the Comanche in the southern plains
- Goal to was forcibly relocate peoples to reservations in Indian Territory

Second Sioux War

- Led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in the northern plains
- Before being defeated, the Sioux ambushed and destroyed Colonel George Custer's command at Little Big Horn (1876)
- Chief Joseph led a band of the Nez Percé into Canada that ended in defeat and surrender in 1877

Ghost Dance Movement (1890)

- Resistance to US govt. control
- Leaders believed the movement would return their prosperity
- Govt. led a campaign to end the movement- killed Sitting Bull during his arrest

Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

US troops slaughtered 200 indigenous men, women, and children on a reservation in the Dakotas for practicing the Ghost Dance

Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor (1881)

- Highlighted the injustices done to indigenous people
- Created sympathy for indigenous people
- Helped the assimilation movement (i.e. the erasure of indigenous culture)

Assimilationists

- Advocated formal education, job training, and conversion to Christianity
- Created boarding schools (e.g. Carlisle School in PA) to segregate indigenous children from their people and teach them American culture, farming, and industrial skills
- Prohibited indigenous practices

Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

- Designed to dismantle tribal organizations, which many Americans believed kept indigenous people from becoming "civilized" and law-abiding citizens
- Divided the trivial lands into plots of up to 160 acres, depending on family size
- U.S. citizenship was granted to those who stayed on the land for 25 years and "adopted the habits of civilized life"

Why was the Dawes Act a failure?

- Govt. distributed 47 million acres of land to indigenous people; however, 90 million acres of former reservation land (better quality) was sold to white settlers by the govt. or speculators
- Disease and poverty reduced the indigenous population to 200,000 persons

What happened in 1924 in regards to indigenous people?

- US govt. granted citizenship to all indigenous Americans regardless of whether they complied with the Dawes Act
- Acknowledgement that the policy of assimilation had failed

Indian Reorganization Act (1934)

- Part of FDR's New Deal in the 1930s
- Promoted the establishment of tribal organization and culture

Latino Southwest

- After Mexican War ended in 1848, Spanish-speaking landowners in CA and the SW were guaranteed property rights and granted citizenship
- Legal proceedings led to the sale or loss of lands to new Anglo arrivals
- Hispanic culture preserved in dominant Spanish-speaking areas, e.g. NM territories, border towns, the barrios of CA
- Mexican Americans moved to find work, e.g. sugar beet fields, CO mines, railroads

Mexican-American Border

- Before 1917, border with Mexico was open and few records kept for seasonal workers/permanent settlers
- Mexicans attracted to the explosive economic development of the region

Art in the Conservation Movement

Paintings and photographs of western landscapes used to persuade Congress to preserve western icons:
- Yosemite Valley became CA state park (1864), then national park (1890)
- Yellowstone became first national park (1872)

Politics in the Conservation Movement

- Sec. of the Interior (1880s) Carl Schurz advocated creation of forest serves and a federal forest service to protect federal lands from exploitation
- Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland reserved 33 million acres of national timber

Forest Reserve Act of 1891 / Forest Management Act of 1897

Legislation that withdrew federal timberlands from development and regulated their use

Conservationists vs. Preservationists

Most conservationists believed in scientific management and regulated use of natural resources; however, preservationists aimed to preserve natural areas from human interference (e.g. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club est. 1892)

Education in the Conservation Movement

Education efforts led by Arbor Day, Audubon Society, and the Sierra Club

The New South

- South was recovering from the Civil War
- Some southerners promoted a new vision for a self-sufficient economy built on modern capitalist values, industrial growth, and improved transportation
- e.g. Henry Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, spread the gospel of the New South with editorials that argued for economic diversity and laissez-faire capitalism
- To attract businesses, local govts. offered tax exemptions to investors and the promise of low-wage labor

Growth of cities, the textual industry, and improved railroads in the New South

- Birmingham, AB developed into one of the nation's leading steel producers
- Memphis, TN prospered as a center for the South's growing lumber industry
- Richmond, VA became the capital of the tobacco industry
- GA, NC, SC overtook the New England states as the chief producers of textiles

How did the South integrate into the national network?

- Southern railroad companies converted to the standard-gauge rails of the North and West
- South's rate of postwar growth from 1865 to 1900 equaled or surpassed that of the rest of the country in population, industry, and railroads

Why did the South remain agrarian and poor?

- North was more financially dominant than before the war; profits from new industries went to northern banks and financiers
- Northern investors controlled ¾ of the southern railroads
- Northern investors gained control of the southern steel industry
- Industrial workers in the South (94% white) earned half of the national wage average and worked longer hours
- Farmers and sharecroppers barely made enough money to live

Main factors for Southern poverty

- Late southern start for industrialization
- Poorly educated workforce
- Small number of southerners had the technological skills required for industrial development
- South failed to invest in technical and engineering schools
- Political leadership did not prioritize education access for the impoverished or POC

The South's economy x cotton

- 1870-1900, cotton acres doubled
- Increased productivity put too much cotton on world markets, resulting in prices to decline significantly in the 1890s
- Per capita income in the South declined as farmers lost their jobs

Crop Lien System

Shortage of credit forced farmers to borrow supplies from local merchants with a mortgage on their crops to be paid at harvest

Virtual serfdom in the South

- Combination of sharecropping and crop liens forced poor farmers to remain tenants
- 1900, over 50% of white farmers and 75% of Black farmers were tenants or sharecroppers
- Forced to make a living from 15 to 20 acre plots of land

George Washington Carver

- Black scientists at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
- Promoted the growing of peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans
- Advocated biodiversity among crops

Racial divisions prevented class solidarity

- Farmers' Southern Alliance had over one million members by 1890
- Colored Farmers' National Alliance had 250,000 members

Redeemers

Southern Democratic politicians who came to power in the South and dismantled the efforts of Reconstruction

Which two groups supported the Redeemers?

Business community and white supremacists:
- Favored policies of segregating public facilities in order to dehumanize Black people
- Exerted political power by playing on the racial fears of white people

Civil Rights Cases of 1883

SCOTUS ruled that Congress could not legislate against the racial discrimination practiced by private citizens, which included railroads, hotels, and other businesses used by the public

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

- SCOTUS upheld a LA law requiring separate but equal accommodations for white and Black people on railroads
- Ruled that segregation laws did not violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause

Jim Crow Laws

- Restricted the civil rights of African Americans
- Enforced racial segregation

What political and legal devices were used in the South to bar Black people from voting?

- Literacy tests (upheld by SCOTUS in 1898 case)
- Poll taxes
- Political party primaries for white people only

Grandfather clauses

- Permitted a man to vote if his grandfather cast ballots in elections prior to Reconstruction
- Loophole method to prevent Black votes

Other means of anti-Black discrimination

- Black people barred from serving on juries
- Harsher punishments for crimes (sometimes not even given the formality of a court-ordered sentence)
- Lynch mobs, in which white murderers had virtual impunity due to broken judicial system

Economic discrimination of Black people in the South

- Poor white people and immigrants learned industrial skills to give them potential for mobility into middle class
- Black Americans restricted to farming and domestic services

Ida B. Wells

- Editor of the Memphis Free Speech, a Black newspaper, created a campaign against lynching and the Jim Crow laws
- Forced to carry out her work from the North due to death threats and the destruction of her printing press

Bishop Henry Turner

- Formed the International Migration Society (est. 1894) to help Black people migrate to Africa
- Many Black people moved to KS and OK

Booker T. Washington

- Formerly enslaved man who graduated from the Hampton Institute in VA
- 1881, Established an industrial and agricultural trade school for Black people in Tuskegee, AB, in which Black students learned skilled trades
- Washington preached the virtues of hard work, moderation, and economic self-help
- Argued that earning money was like a "little green ballot" to empower Black people
- 1900, he organized the National Negro Business League (created 23 chapters nationwide to support Black businesses)

Why did Andrew Carnegie and President Theodore Roosevelt praise Booker T. Washington?

They supported his emphasis on racial harmony and economic cooperation

W. E. B. Du Bois

- Demanded an end to segregation and the granting of equal rights to all Americans
- Founded the NAACP

Concentration of farmers in America

- By the end of 19th century, farmers were a minority in American society
- Number of farms increased, but population of farmers decreased

What changes occurred in agriculture?

- In late 1800s, farming became more commercialized and specialized
- Northern and Western farmers focused on raising single cash crops, e.g. corn or wheat, for both national and international markets
- As consumers, farmers began to procure their food from the stores in town and their manufactured goods from the mail-order catalogs sent to them by Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck
- Small farms were driven out of business due to lack of access to new machinery

On which machinery did farmers become dependent?

- Steam engines
- Seeders
- Reaper-thresher combines

Falling crop prices

- Increased American production paired with increased production in Argentina, Russia, and Canada drove prices down for wheat, cotton, and other crops
- Since money supply was not growing as fast as the economy, each dollar became worth more
- Put downward pressure on prices / deflation

Effects of falling prices

- As prices fell, farmers with mortgages faced both high interest rates and the need to grow more crops to pay off old debts
- Increased production contributed more to the lowering of prices
- Cycle of debts, foreclosures by banks, and more independent farmers forced to become tenants or sharecroppers

Why were farmers dissatisfied with the larger national economy?

- Industrial corporations kept prices high on manufactured goods by forming monopolistic trusts
- Wholesalers and retailers (middlemen) took their cut before selling to farmers
- Railroads, warehouses, and elevators took what little profit remained by charging high or discriminatory rates for the shipment and storage of grain

How did railroads exploit farmers?

Railroads tended to charge more for short hauls on lines with no competition than for long hauls on lines with competition

Why did taxes and tariffs seem unfair to farmers?

- Local and state govts. taxed property and land heavily but did not tax income from stocks and bonds
- Tariffs protecting various industries were viewed as an unfair tax paid by farmers and consumers for the benefit of industrialists

What prevented farmers initially from taking collective action?

History of independence and individualism

The National Grange of Patrons of Husbandry (est. 1868)

- Organized in 1868 by Oliver H. Kelley primarily as a social and educational organization for farmers and their families
- Granges existed in the majority of states (mostly Midwestern)
- Became active in economies and politics to defend members from middlemen, trusts, and railroads
- e.g. Grangers created cooperatives, businesses owned and run by farmers, to save the costs charged by middlemen

Granger Laws

- IL, IW, MN, WS, the Grangers (with local aid) lobbied state legislatures to pass laws regulating the rates charged by railroads and elevators
- Some laws made it illegal for railroads to fix prices by means of pools and to give rebates to privileged customers

Munn v. Illinois (1877)

SCOTUS upheld the right of a state to regulate businesses of a public nature, e.g. railroads

Why did state laws regulating railroads run into legal issues?

- States could only regulate local or short-haul rates and railroads often crossed state lines
- Interstate commerce was under federal control
- Railroad companies adapted to the Granger Laws by raising their long-haul (interstate) rates

Wabash v. Illinois (1886)

- SCOTUS ruled that individual states could not regulate interstate commerce
- Nullified many of the state regulations achieved by the Grangers

Interstate Commerce Act (1886)

- Congress' response to the outcry of farmers and shippers
- Required railroad rates to be "reasonable and just"
- Created the first federal regulatory agency (Interstate Commerce Commission or ICC), which had the power to investigate and prosecute pools, rebates, and other discriminatory practices (ICC helped railroads more than farmers; lost most of its 19th century cases)

Farmers' Alliances

- Formed state and regional groups/alliances
- Taught about scientific farming methods
- Goals of economic and political action
- Members included poor white and Black farmers
- Potential for an independent national political party

National Alliance

- National organization of farmers who met in Ocala, Florida to discuss the problems of rural America
- Criticized both political parties for being subservient to Wall Street bankers and big business

Ocala Platform

National Alliance supported:
- Direct election of US senators
- Lower tariff rates
- Graduated income tax
- New banking system regulated by the federal govt.

Other key components of the Ocala Platform

- Demanded that Treasury notes and silver be used to increase the amount of money in circulation, which farmers hoped would create inflation and raise crop prices
- Proposed storage for farmers' crops and federal loans in order to free farmers from dependency on middlemen and creditors

What did the Grange Movement and farmers' alliances inspire?

The Populist Movement (1890s)