Untitled Flashcard Set
Indian Removal Act (1830)
Authorized the forced exchange of Eastern Native American homelands for territory west of the Mississippi, nominally 'voluntary' but enforced through fraud, bribery, and military coercion.
It enabled the Trail of Tears and the destruction of the Five Civilized Tribes' homelands.
Trail of Tears (1838-1839)
About 16,000 Cherokee were forcibly marched westward by the U.S. Army in all weather conditions, with roughly 4,000 dying from disease, starvation, and exposure.
The name captures the scale of the suffering and makes it one of the most notorious episodes in American history.
Forced Assimilation, Removal, Reservation
Assimilation was the early policy of 'civilizing' Native Americans through Christianity and private property. Removal was Jackson's policy of relocating eastern tribes west of the Mississippi. Reservation was the post-Civil War policy of confining tribes to specific land parcels.
This sequence shows how U.S. policy toward Native Americans became progressively more coercive over time.
Kitchen Cabinet and Spoils System
The Kitchen Cabinet was Jackson's informal group of political allies and newspaper editors who gave him more trusted advice than his official Cabinet. The Spoils System replaced federal officeholders with loyal Democratic Party supporters.
Jackson justified both as democratizing government, but both entrenched corruption and party loyalty over merit.
CHAPTERS 13-14: American Society in the Antebellum Era
>> Inventors
Samuel Slater
Brought the design for the first American textile mill from Britain in 1793 and established the factory system at Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
He is called the Father of the American Industrial Revolution.
Eli Whitney
Invented the cotton gin in 1793 (which made cotton hugely profitable but massively expanded slavery) and also pioneered interchangeable parts in gun manufacturing.
The cotton gin had the unintended consequence of making slavery far more entrenched rather than making it obsolete.
Elias Howe and Isaac Singer
Howe invented the sewing machine in 1846, revolutionizing garment manufacturing. Singer improved and marketed it commercially and pioneered installment payment plans.
Together they created the ready-made clothing industry.
Samuel F.B. Morse
Invented the telegraph in 1837 and developed Morse Code, creating the first system for near-instantaneous long-distance communication.
This revolutionized business, journalism, and military communication.
John Deere
Invented the steel plow in 1837 that could cut through the thick prairie sod of the Midwest, making large-scale farming of the Great Plains possible.
Without it, the agricultural settlement of the American heartland would have been far slower.
Cyrus McCormick
Invented the mechanical reaper in 1831 for harvesting grain, dramatically reducing the labor needed on farms.
It enabled commercial-scale agriculture across the Midwest.
Robert Fulton
Built the first commercially successful steamboat, the Clermont, in 1807, which meant goods and people could finally travel upstream on rivers quickly.
This revolutionized river transportation and opened up the interior of the country to commerce.
Cyrus Field
Laid the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866, connecting North America and Europe with near-instantaneous communication for the first time.
Benjamin Silliman
Yale scientist who founded the American Journal of Science in 1818 and established chemistry and geology as legitimate academic disciplines in American universities.
>> Transportation
Lancaster Turnpike and Cumberland Road
The Lancaster Turnpike (1794) was the first major improved road in the United States, running 62 paved miles from Philadelphia to Lancaster. The Cumberland Road (1811) was the first federally funded road, running from Cumberland, Maryland to Wheeling, Virginia.
Together they began the internal improvements era and opened westward movement.
Erie Canal (1825)
A 363-mile waterway connecting the Hudson River to Lake Erie, built by New York State, that reduced freight costs by roughly 95 percent.
It made New York City the commercial capital of America and triggered a canal-building boom across the country.
Clippers and Steamboats
Clipper ships were fast sailing vessels dominating trans-oceanic trade in the 1840s and 1850s. Steamboats dominated river and coastal trade after Robert Fulton's Clermont (1807).
Together they made America's rivers and coastlines a unified commercial network.
Railroads
The first American railroad was the Baltimore and Ohio (1828); by 1860, over 30,000 miles of track existed, mostly in the North and Midwest.
Railroads were faster, cheaper, and more flexible than canals, and their concentration in the North gave the Union a decisive logistical advantage in the Civil War.
>> Religious Movements
Second Great Awakening
A Protestant religious revival from the 1790s through the 1840s emphasizing personal conversion, emotional preaching, and free will, spreading through camp meetings and circuit riders.
It was the engine of antebellum reform, driving abolitionism, temperance, women's rights, and prison reform through the moral energy of religious conviction.
Deism
An Enlightenment belief that God created the universe but does not intervene in human affairs, with reason and nature as the paths to understanding rather than scripture.
Many Founding Fathers held Deist views, and this influenced the separation of church and state in the new government.
Charles Grandison Finney and Perfectionism
The most prominent revivalist of the Second Great Awakening, Finney preached in the Burned-Over District of western New York and promoted Perfectionism, the idea that humans can achieve moral perfection through will and conversion.
His revivals fed directly into the abolitionist movement.
Burned-Over District
The region of western New York so repeatedly swept by religious revivals that it was said to be burned over with no unconverted left.
It was the birthplace of Mormonism, Adventism, Spiritualism, and numerous reform movements.
Seventh-Day Adventists and Millerites
William Miller predicted Christ would return in 1844; when the date passed (the Great Disappointment), many followers reorganized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
It shows how apocalyptic religious enthusiasm shaped antebellum American religion.
Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Mormonism
Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830 based on the Book of Mormon; the practice of polygamy led to his murder by a mob in 1844. Brigham Young then led roughly 16,000 Mormons to Utah, founding Salt Lake City.
Mormonism is one of the few distinctly American religious movements, and Utah's theocratic community eventually came into conflict with federal authority.
>> Books and Writers
Timothy Shay Arthur: Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There (1854)
A temperance novel showing the destruction alcohol causes in a family and community; one of the best-selling books of the 19th century.
It fueled the temperance movement and showed how literature could drive social reform.
Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America (1835-40)
A French political scientist analyzed American democracy, individualism, equality, and what he called the 'tyranny of the majority' after traveling the United States in 1831.
Still the most insightful foreign analysis of American society ever written; he also coined the modern sense of the word 'individualism.'
Knickerbocker Group and American Literature
Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, becoming the first American writer to gain international fame. James Fenimore Cooper romanticized the frontier in The Last of the Mohicans.
These writers helped establish a distinctly American literary tradition separate from British models.
Transcendentalist Writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Self-Reliance and Nature, arguing truth comes from individual intuition. Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden and Civil Disobedience. Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass.
Thoreau's Civil Disobedience directly influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Other American Renaissance Writers
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote popular narrative poems. Edgar Allan Poe pioneered Gothic fiction and detective stories. Nathaniel Hawthorne explored Puritan guilt in The Scarlet Letter. Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick.
These writers made the 1840s-1850s one of the richest periods in American literary history.
John James Audubon and George Bancroft
Audubon's Birds of America (1827-38) was a massive illustrated ornithological work considered one of the greatest art books ever made. George Bancroft wrote the first major nationalistic History of the United States.
Audubon inspired the conservation movement; the Audubon Society is named after him.
>> Women's Movements
Republican Motherhood
The ideology that women's civic role was to raise virtuous, patriotic sons who would sustain the republic, keeping women's influence in the home rather than public life.
It was a double-edged position: it justified women's education while still confining their civic role to domesticity.
Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
The first women's rights convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, produced the Declaration of Sentiments declaring 'all men and women are created equal' and demanding suffrage and equal education.
It launched the organized women's suffrage movement; it took 72 years and the 19th Amendment to achieve the convention's central demand.
Cult of Domesticity
The dominant ideology defining middle-class women's role as the moral guardian of the home, with purity, piety, submissiveness, and domesticity as the four cardinal virtues.
This was the ideology women reformers were directly fighting against, and Seneca Falls was a direct rejection of it.
Lucretia Mott
Quaker minister and abolitionist who co-organized the Seneca Falls Convention with Elizabeth Cady Stanton after both had been barred from an antislavery conference in London because they were women.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Primary author of the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls; lifelong advocate for women's suffrage and legal equality who worked closely with Susan B. Anthony for decades.
Susan B. Anthony
Organized the women's suffrage movement for decades, was arrested and tried for illegally voting in 1872, and died in 1906 before the 19th Amendment passed.
The 19th Amendment is sometimes called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.
Angelina and Sarah Grimke
South Carolina sisters who became abolitionist speakers and early feminists; their willingness to speak publicly to audiences of both men and women was itself controversial.
They connected the causes of abolition and women's rights directly.
Lucy Stone
First Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree; abolitionist and women's rights pioneer who kept her own name after marriage, inspiring the term 'Lucy Stoners.'
Amelia Bloomer
Temperance activist who promoted women's dress reform, advocating looser trousers under a short skirt (called 'bloomers') instead of restrictive corsets and long skirts.
Margaret Fuller
Transcendentalist writer and feminist who edited The Dial and wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), arguing women deserved full intellectual and civic equality.
Dorothea Dix
Reformer who documented horrific conditions for the mentally ill in prisons and almshouses, lobbying state legislatures so effectively that over 30 mental hospitals were built in response.
Catharine Beecher
Harriet Beecher Stowe's sister who advocated for women's education in domestic science and professional teacher training within the framework of the domestic sphere.
Elizabeth Blackwell
The first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States (Geneva Medical College, 1849), who later founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
Louisa May Alcott
Author of Little Women (1868-69), a Civil War nurse, and an abolitionist whose fiction explored women's lives and ambitions within domestic constraints.
>> Education
Horace Mann
Massachusetts Secretary of Education who transformed American public schooling by lengthening school years, training teachers, standardizing curriculum, and advocating for free public schools for all children.
He is called the Father of American public education.
Noah Webster
Created the American Dictionary (1828) and spelling books that standardized American English as distinct from British English.
His work promoted a distinctly American cultural identity separate from Britain.
William H. McGuffey
Created the McGuffey Readers starting in 1836, a series of graded school readers that dominated American elementary education for a century, combining reading lessons with moral and religious instruction.
Emma Willard
Founded the Troy Female Seminary in 1821, the first institution providing women a college-level education, arguing women could learn the same subjects as men.
Mary Lyon
Founded Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837, the first college specifically designed for women with a rigorous academic curriculum.
Oberlin College
The first American college to admit both women and Black students (1833); it became a center of abolitionist activism.
Its integrated, co-educational model was radical for the era.
Lyceums
Lecture circuits that brought educational speakers including scientists, writers, and reformers to communities across the country, with Emerson as the most famous lyceum speaker.
They democratized access to education and ideas beyond formal institutions.
>> Utopian Societies
New Harmony
Robert Owen's secular socialist commune in Indiana (1825) that failed within two years, showing the difficulty of building a perfect community on rational principles alone.
Brook Farm
A Transcendentalist community in Massachusetts where Hawthorne briefly lived; it attempted to combine intellectual life with manual labor.
Oneida Community
John Humphrey Noyes's community in New York that practiced 'complex marriage' (all members married to all others) and communal child-rearing. Its silverware company (Oneida Ltd.) outlasted the community itself.
Shakers and Amana Community
The Shakers were celibate communities known for beautiful, simple furniture and crafts. The Amana Community was a German pietist communal settlement in Iowa that still partially operates today.
>> Immigration, Labor, and Other Key Terms
NINA, German, and Irish Immigration
NINA ('No Irish Need Apply') signs reflected intense anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice. Irish immigrants (roughly 1.5 million from 1845-52 fleeing the Great Famine) were mostly poor, Catholic, and settled in Northern cities.
German immigrants (the '48ers), who fled the failed democratic revolutions of 1848, were generally more educated and politically liberal.
Molly Maguires
A secret Irish miners' organization in Pennsylvania's coal fields that used violence and intimidation against mine owners and supervisors in the 1870s.
Nineteen members were hanged after an infiltration operation.
Nativism and the Know-Nothing Party
Anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic sentiment produced the 'American Party,' whose members said 'I know nothing' about the secret organization when asked.
The party elected mayors and governors in the mid-1850s but collapsed over the slavery question.
Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842)
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that labor unions were not inherently criminal conspiracies and that workers had the right to organize and strike.
This overturned the English common law tradition treating collective labor action as criminal conspiracy.
Lowell and Waltham System
New England textile mills hired young farm women, housed them in supervised dormitories, and paid them cash, making industrial labor respectable for the first time.
The Lowell Mill Girls were America's first industrial workforce and organized early labor actions in the 1830s when wages were cut.
American Temperance Society and Neal S. Dow
The American Temperance Society (founded 1826) sought to curb alcohol through voluntary abstinence, eventually pushing toward legal prohibition. Neal Dow pushed through the Maine Law (1851), the first state prohibition law.
This movement eventually led to the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) in 1919.
John Jacob Astor
America's first multimillionaire, who built his fortune through the fur trade and Manhattan real estate.
He became a symbol of self-made wealth in early America.
Pony Express
A mail relay service running from April 1860 to October 1861 that carried mail 1,966 miles from Missouri to California in 10 days, made obsolete almost immediately by the transcontinental telegraph.
Benjamin Silliman
Yale scientist who founded the American Journal of Science in 1818 and established chemistry and geology as legitimate academic disciplines in American universities.
Transcendentalism
A philosophical and literary movement arguing that truth comes from individual intuition and nature rather than organized religion or social convention. Key figures were Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman.
Thoreau's Civil Disobedience directly influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
CHAPTERS 15-16: Pre-Civil War America
>> The South and Slavery
The South: Border, Middle, and Lower States
Border States (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri) were slave states that did not secede and were crucial to Lincoln's strategy. The Middle South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas) seceded only after Fort Sumter.
The Lower South or Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas) seceded first and was most dependent on plantation slavery.
Slavery: Effects, Importance, Justification
Cotton made up over 60 percent of U.S. exports and required enslaved labor on large plantations, making some planters enormously wealthy. Poor white Southerners generally identified with the planter class rather than with enslaved people.
Southern justifications for slavery included biblical arguments (curse of Ham), paternalism (claiming masters cared for childlike slaves), scientific racism, and political arguments that slavery was necessary for white democracy.
Free Blacks in the North and South
In the South, roughly 250,000 free Black people in 1860 faced severe restrictions: they could not vote, testify against whites, or own guns, and were required to carry freedom papers. In the North, roughly 225,000 free Black people were nominally free but faced discrimination in housing, employment, and education.
This demonstrates that racism was national, not just Southern.
Cotton Gin and Cotton Is King
Eli Whitney's cotton gin (1793) mechanically separated cotton fibers from seeds, making short-staple cotton hugely profitable and dramatically expanding slavery's reach. Senator James Henry Hammond's 1858 argument that 'Cotton is King' claimed Southern cotton was so economically vital that neither Britain nor the North would dare oppose secession.
The cotton gin made slavery more entrenched, not less, and Hammond's claim proved dangerously wrong when Britain found alternative sources.
Manifest Destiny
The belief, popularized by journalist John O'Sullivan in 1845, that the United States was divinely destined to expand across the continent to the Pacific.
It provided ideological cover for expansion at enormous cost to Native Americans and Mexicans, and it reignited the slavery-expansion crisis every time new territory was acquired.
Gag Rule (1836-1844)
A congressional rule automatically setting aside all antislavery petitions without discussion, championed by Southern congressmen to prevent abolitionist petitions from being debated.
John Quincy Adams fought the gag rule for years as a violation of the right to petition, and its existence angered Northern moderates who saw it as suppressing free speech.
Underground Railroad
A network of secret routes, safe houses, and abolitionists helping enslaved people escape to the North and Canada, with estimates of 30,000 to 100,000 people aided over decades.
Its existence infuriated Southerners and fueled their demand for a stronger Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.
American Colonization Society
Founded in 1816, this organization proposed sending free Black Americans to West Africa, creating the nation of Liberia.
It was supported by slaveholders who wanted to remove free Black people from American society and was opposed by most Black Americans and radical abolitionists who saw it as racist.
>> Abolitionists
William Lloyd Garrison
Founded The Liberator (1831) and the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833), demanding immediate unconditional abolition and calling the Constitution a covenant with death.
His radicalism made Lincoln seem moderate by comparison and moved the political center of gravity on slavery.
Theodore Dwight Weld
Wrote American Slavery As It Is (1839), the most influential antislavery document before Uncle Tom's Cabin, compiled from slaveholder testimony documenting slavery's brutality.
Harriet Beecher Stowe used his book as a primary source for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Grimke Sisters (Angelina and Sarah)
South Carolina sisters who became abolitionist speakers and early feminists; their willingness to speak publicly to audiences of both men and women was itself controversial at the time.
They directly connected the cause of abolition with the cause of women's rights.
Wendell Phillips
Boston lawyer called the 'golden trumpet' of abolitionism and the most brilliant orator of the movement.
Elijah Lovejoy
Illinois abolitionist newspaper editor murdered by a pro-slavery mob in 1837 while defending his printing press.
His murder turned many Northern moderates toward abolitionism and became a martyr moment for both free press and antislavery.
David Walker
Free Black Bostonian who published Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), calling on Black Americans to resist slavery by any means including violence.
It terrified Southern slaveholders and was one of the most radical antislavery documents in American history.
Sojourner Truth
Formerly enslaved woman from New York who became a powerful abolitionist and women's rights speaker, famous for her 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech in 1851.
She embodied the intersection of race and gender in the antebellum reform movement.
Frederick Douglass
Escaped enslaved man who became the most prominent African American of the 19th century; his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) was a bestseller and he founded The North Star newspaper.
His life and writings were the most powerful refutation of claims that enslaved people were intellectually inferior.
Harriet Tubman
Escaped enslavement and returned 13 or more times to lead roughly 70 people to freedom via the Underground Railroad; she was called 'Moses.' She also served as a Union spy during the Civil War.
She never lost a single 'passenger' on the Underground Railroad.
>> Abolitionist Literature
Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (Walker, 1829)
Called on Black Americans to resist slavery by any means necessary; written for Black readers. It terrified Southern slaveholders, who had it banned from the mail.
The Liberator (Garrison, 1831-1865)
Garrison's abolitionist newspaper demanding immediate emancipation that ran for 34 years, alienating moderates but radicalizing the movement.
American Slavery As It Is (Weld, 1839)
Compiled testimony from Southern newspapers and slaveholders themselves to document slavery's brutality; one of the most influential antislavery documents ever written.
Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
Douglass's autobiographical account of his enslavement and escape, an international bestseller that proved Black intellectual capability and refuted proslavery claims.
>> Political Parties and Slave Revolts
Liberty Party
The first explicitly antislavery political party (1840), which ran James Birney for president.
It helped establish that antislavery politics could be organized and competitive.
Free-Soil Party
Opposed the extension of slavery into western territories (not abolitionist); ran on the platform 'Free soil, free speech, free labor, free men.'
Martin Van Buren ran on the Free-Soil ticket in 1848, getting 10 percent of the vote.
American (Know-Nothing) Party
Anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic party that avoided taking a clear position on slavery and collapsed when it could no longer avoid the issue.
Republican Party
Founded in 1854 specifically to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act; opposed slavery's expansion into western territories; dominated the North by 1856.
Its rise to national dominance led directly to Southern secession.
Whig Party and the Slavery Divide
The Whig Party split over slavery in the 1850s, with Northern Whigs moving to the Republican Party and Southern Whigs moving to the Democrats.
The collapse of the Whigs over slavery is the most dramatic example of how the issue destroyed every political coalition it touched.
Stono Rebellion (1739)
The largest slave revolt in colonial America; roughly 100 enslaved people marched toward Spanish Florida hoping for freedom, were crushed by militia, with about 25 whites and 35-50 Black people killed.
South Carolina responded by passing harsh new slave codes.
Gabriel Prosser (1800)
A blacksmith who organized a detailed plan for a Richmond revolt but was betrayed before it began; 26 people were hanged.
The planned scale of the revolt terrified Virginia's slaveholding class.
Denmark Vesey (1822)
A free Black carpenter who planned a massive Charleston revolt; also betrayed before it happened, with 35 people hanged.
Nat Turner (1831)
An enslaved Virginia preacher who led a revolt killing 55 to 65 whites in the bloodiest slave uprising in U.S. history; over 200 Black people were killed in reprisals, and Turner was hanged.
Turner's Rebellion ended Southern debate about gradual emancipation; the South thereafter defended slavery as a 'positive good.'
>> Other Key Terms for Ch. 15-16
Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842)
Settled the disputed Maine-New Brunswick border between the United States and Britain, with each getting roughly what it wanted.
It also included provisions for cooperation in suppressing the Atlantic slave trade.
Creole and Caroline Incidents
The Caroline Incident (1837): British troops burned an American ship supplying Canadian rebels on U.S. soil. The Creole Incident (1841): enslaved people aboard the American ship Creole revolted, sailed to the Bahamas, and received freedom under British law.
The Creole case infuriated Southern slaveholders who demanded the formerly enslaved people be returned.
Oregon Treaty (1846) and '54-40 or Fight'
'54-40 or Fight' was the Democratic slogan demanding the U.S. claim all of Oregon up to 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude. The Oregon Treaty (1846) settled the border at the 49th parallel instead.
Polk compromised with Britain on Oregon while going to war with Mexico over Texas, revealing his sectional priorities.
CHAPTERS 17-20: Causes of the Civil War and The War Between the States
>> Texas and Manifest Destiny
Texas: Austin, Colonization Law, Mexico, Annexation
Stephen F. Austin led American colonization of Mexican Texas under the 1825 Colonization Law; by 1835, roughly 30,000 Americans lived there vs. 7,000 Mexicans. Texas won independence in 1836 ('Remember the Alamo!') and became the Lone Star Republic.
Tyler and Polk annexed Texas in 1845 by joint resolution (a simple majority, not a two-thirds treaty vote), which Mexico considered an act of war.
James K. Polk and the Election of 1844
Polk was the first dark-horse presidential candidate, not even considered for the nomination until the 9th ballot. He ran on Manifest Destiny and made four promises: acquire California, settle Oregon, lower the tariff, and re-establish the Independent Treasury.
He fulfilled all four promises in one term, making him one of the most effective single-term presidents in history.
Horace Greeley
Editor of the New York Tribune, the most widely read newspaper editor in America, famous for the phrase 'Go West, young man.'
He later became a liberal Republican and ran against Grant in 1872.
>> Mexican-American War (1846-1848)
Mexican-American War: Overview
Polk sent troops to the disputed Rio Grande zone; after Mexican forces crossed and killed Americans, Polk told Congress 'American blood has been shed on American soil.' Lincoln's Spot Resolutions challenged Polk to identify the exact spot where blood was shed.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) gave the United States California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado in exchange for $15 million.
Slidell Mission and Wilmot Proviso
The Slidell Mission: Polk sent John Slidell to buy California and New Mexico from Mexico; Mexico refused to even meet with him. The Wilmot Proviso would have banned slavery from any territory acquired from Mexico; it passed the House repeatedly but failed in the Senate.
The Wilmot Proviso debate set the trajectory of every sectional crisis through the Civil War.
>> Key Literature
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
A novel depicting slavery's brutality that sold 300,000 copies in its first year, turning millions of Northerners into antislavery sympathizers.
Lincoln reportedly called Stowe 'the little woman who started this great war.'
The Impending Crisis of the South (Hinton Helper, 1857)
A North Carolina non-slaveholder argued that slavery hurt poor white Southerners economically; the book was banned in the South.
It showed that class-based antislavery arguments could come from within the South itself.
>> Compromises
Compromise of 1850
Five parts: California admitted as a free state; New Mexico and Utah organized with popular sovereignty; the slave trade (not slavery) abolished in Washington D.C.; Texas ceded disputed land for $10 million; and a stronger Fugitive Slave Act.
Daniel Webster's '7th of March Speech' supporting it destroyed his political future in the North, while William Seward argued there was a 'higher law' than the Constitution that forbade slavery.
Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
Required Northern citizens and federal officials to assist in capturing and returning escaped enslaved people, denied fugitives jury trials, and paid commissioners more for returning than releasing.
This was the single act most responsible for radicalizing Northern opinion against slavery, because it forced Northerners to actively participate in slavery's enforcement.
Personal Liberty Laws
Laws passed by Northern states refusing to cooperate with the Fugitive Slave Act, a direct nullification of federal law by Northern states.
Southern slaveholders were furious at Northern nullification of a law they had fought hard to pass.
>> Key Elections and Kansas-Nebraska
Elections of 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856
1848: Lewis Cass proposed popular sovereignty; Zachary Taylor (Whig) won; Free-Soil Party got 10 percent. 1852: Franklin Pierce won on a compromise platform; Winfield Scott lost; the Whig Party effectively died.
1856: James Buchanan (Democrat) won; John C. Fremont (Republican) ran on 'Free soil, free men, Fremont,' showing Republicans could compete nationally.
Gadsden Purchase (1853)
The United States bought a strip of land from Mexico in what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico, intended as a southern route for a transcontinental railroad.
Ostend Manifesto (1854)
A secret Pierce administration plan to buy or seize Cuba from Spain; when it was leaked, Northern outrage was immediate because Cuba would be another slave territory.
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
Stephen Douglas's bill organized Kansas and Nebraska territories with popular sovereignty, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise's ban on slavery north of 36 degrees 30 minutes.
Douglas needed Southern support for a Chicago-routed transcontinental railroad; this act destroyed the Whig Party, created the Republican Party, and made civil war nearly inevitable.
Bleeding Kansas
Pro-slavery and antislavery settlers flooded into Kansas to vote; fraudulent elections produced two rival governments. John Brown's Pottawatomie Massacre killed five pro-slavery settlers with broadswords in 1856.
The fraudulent Lecompton Constitution (pro-slavery) was opposed even by Douglas; Kansas was finally admitted as a free state in 1861.
New England Emigrant Aid Society
A Massachusetts organization that sent antislavery settlers to Kansas to try to ensure a free-state majority.
Pro-slavery forces responded by sending 'border ruffians' from Missouri, turning Kansas into a rehearsal for the Civil War's violence.
>> Road to War
Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)
Seven debates for the Illinois Senate seat; in the Freeport Doctrine, Douglas said territories could effectively exclude slavery through local police regulations even after Dred Scott.
Lincoln lost the Senate seat but became nationally famous; Douglas won the debate but lost the South for 1860 by contradicting proslavery Democrats.
Lincoln's House Divided Speech
'A house divided against itself cannot stand; this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.'
This defined Lincoln's position clearly: he did not believe the conflict could be indefinitely postponed.
Dred Scott Case (1857)
Chief Justice Taney ruled that Dred Scott was not a citizen and had no standing to sue, that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in any territory (the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional), and that enslaved people are property protected by the 5th Amendment.
This was the most politically explosive Supreme Court decision in American history, making all slavery restriction unconstitutional.
John Brown and Harper's Ferry (1859)
Radical abolitionist John Brown led 21 men to seize the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, hoping to trigger a mass slave revolt; he was captured by Robert E. Lee, tried for treason, and hanged.
Abolitionists mourned him as a martyr; Southerners saw him as proof that the North intended to destroy slavery through violence.
Election of 1860
Four candidates: Lincoln (Republican, no slavery expansion), Douglas (Northern Democrat, popular sovereignty), Breckinridge (Southern Democrat, federal slave code for territories), and Bell (Constitutional Union).
Lincoln won without a single Southern electoral vote; seven Deep South states seceded before his inauguration.
Secession and Fort Sumter
Seven Deep South states formed the Confederate States of America before Lincoln's inauguration. When Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, four more states seceded.
Lincoln kept the border states (Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware) in the Union through a combination of tact, incentives, and occasional martial law.
>> Civil War Key People
Jefferson Davis
President of the Confederate States of America; West Point graduate and former Secretary of War whose states' rights philosophy undermined Confederate military coordination.
Andrew Johnson
Tennessee Democrat chosen as Lincoln's running mate in 1864 to attract border-state votes; succeeded Lincoln after the assassination and became the first impeached president.
William Seward
Lincoln's Secretary of State who managed foreign policy brilliantly, keeping Britain and France neutral; he survived the assassination night attack on him.
Franklin Pierce
14th president whose pro-Southern positions and support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act accelerated the sectional crisis.
Clara Barton and Louisa May Alcott
Clara Barton organized medical care on the battlefield and later founded the American Red Cross (1881). Louisa May Alcott served as a Civil War nurse and later wrote Little Women.
William Lloyd Garrison
Abolitionist founder of The Liberator who demanded immediate emancipation throughout the war and celebrated Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as a turning point.
Frederick Douglass
The most prominent African American of the era, who advised Lincoln, advocated for Black enlistment in the Union Army, and pushed for the Emancipation Proclamation.
George McClellan
Union general notorious for his extreme caution (Lincoln called it 'the slows'); fired twice by Lincoln and ran against Lincoln in 1864 on a peace platform.
Ulysses S. Grant
Union general who finally gave Lincoln an aggressive commander in chief; won Vicksburg (1863), commanded the Overland Campaign, and accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox (1865).
Nat Turner (Civil War Context)
Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion remained a psychological reference point for Southern slaveholders throughout the antebellum period, feeding fears of servile insurrection that events like John Brown's raid intensified.
>> Civil War Diplomacy
England and Civil War Diplomacy
Britain needed Southern cotton for its textile mills but opposed slavery; its working class and the emancipation question kept it from recognizing the Confederacy.
The Emancipation Proclamation made it politically impossible for Britain to support the slaveholding Confederacy.
Trent Affair
A Union Navy captain seized Confederate diplomats from the British mail ship Trent; Lincoln released them with the line 'One war at a time.'
This avoided a potentially catastrophic British alliance with the Confederacy.
Alabama Incident and Commerce Raiders
The British-built Confederate raider Alabama sank 65 Union merchant ships before being destroyed; the United States demanded $15.5 million in damages (the Alabama Claims).
Britain paid in 1872, acknowledging it had violated neutrality.
Charles Francis Adams
U.S. minister to Britain during the Civil War who successfully kept Britain from recognizing the Confederacy.
His son of John Quincy Adams, he conducted the most important American diplomacy since the founding era.
>> Civil War: Draft, Law, and Finance
Northern Draft Law: Congressional Conscription Act
The 1863 Conscription Act allowed men to avoid the draft by paying a $300 commutation fee or hiring a substitute, leading to the phrase 'rich man's war, poor man's fight.'
The fee triggered the deadly New York Draft Riots of July 1863, in which roughly 100 people were killed.
Southern Draft Law: 20 Negro Law
The Confederate Conscription Act (1862) exempted men who supervised 20 or more enslaved people, which was deeply resented by poor white Southerners.
This fueled class resentment and undermined support for the Confederate war effort.
Ex Parte Merriman (1861)
Chief Justice Taney ruled Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus for a Confederate sympathizer in Maryland was unconstitutional; Lincoln ignored the ruling.
This showed how wartime emergency can lead presidents to override civil liberties and judicial authority.
Ex Parte Milligan (1866)
The Supreme Court ruled after the war that military tribunals cannot try civilians when civilian courts are functioning.
This established an important peacetime limit on military justice, though it had no practical effect during the war itself.
Suspension of Habeas Corpus and Censorship
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland to prevent pro-Confederate legislators from voting for secession; hundreds of political prisoners were held without trial. Military censorship of newspapers suppressed anti-war reporting.
These showed how wartime emergency was used to justify dramatic civil liberties violations.
Posse Comitatus Act (1878)
Prohibited the use of federal military forces for civilian law enforcement, a direct response to federal troops being used in Reconstruction.
It remains the primary law restricting military involvement in domestic policing.
Civil War Finance: North
The North raised revenue through the Morrill Tariff Act (high tariffs), issued legal tender 'greenback' paper money, introduced the first federal income tax in U.S. history, and used Jay Cooke and Co. to sell war bonds to ordinary citizens.
The North's superior financial capacity was as decisive as its military strength.
Civil War Finance: South (Tredegar Iron Works)
The Confederate government printed money causing massive inflation, relied on cotton diplomacy that ultimately failed, and depended heavily on the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond as its main arsenal.
The South never developed the financial infrastructure needed to sustain a long war.
>> Election of 1864
Election of 1864
Lincoln ran as the 'National Union Party' candidate with Democrat Andrew Johnson as VP; George McClellan ran for the Democrats on a peace platform calling the war a failure.
Lincoln expected to lose until Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864; military victory saved his reelection.
War Democrats, Peace Democrats, and Copperheads
War Democrats supported fighting; Peace Democrats wanted immediate negotiations; Copperheads actively opposed the war. Clement Vallandigham was the Copperhead leader, exiled to the Confederacy.
The existence of significant Northern war opposition was real, and Lincoln managed it through political skill and military victories.
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Lincoln declared all enslaved people in Confederate states forever free as of January 1, 1863, as a war measure under his commander-in-chief authority.
It did not apply to border states or Union-controlled areas, but it transformed the war's purpose and made it politically impossible for Britain to recognize the Confederacy.
CHAPTER 21: Reconstruction (1865-1877)
>> Reconstruction Plans
10% Plan vs. Wade-Davis Bill
Lincoln's 10% Plan allowed Southern states to rejoin once 10% of 1860 voters swore loyalty and accepted emancipation, a deliberately lenient approach to restore the Union quickly. The Wade-Davis Bill (1864) required 50% loyalty oaths and barred Confederate officials; Lincoln pocket-vetoed it.
This established the central Reconstruction debate: should reunion prioritize speed and leniency or transformation and protection of freed people?
Congressional Elections of 1866
Radical Republicans won overwhelming majorities in Congress, enough to override Johnson's vetoes and take control of Reconstruction policy.
Johnson's veto of the Civil Rights Bill and his opposition to the 14th Amendment drove moderate Republicans into the Radical camp.
Military Reconstruction Act (1867)
Divided the South into five military districts under Army generals and required Southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment and grant Black male suffrage before readmission.
Passed over Johnson's veto, it temporarily enabled Black political participation.
Charles Sumner
Massachusetts Senator and idealistic Radical Reconstruction leader who had been beaten nearly to death on the Senate floor in 1856 by Congressman Preston Brooks for his antislavery speech.
His beating became a symbol of Southern violence and radicalized Northern opinion.
Thaddeus Stevens
Pennsylvania congressman and fiery Radical who genuinely wanted Black equality; he demanded land redistribution, arguing freed people needed 'forty acres and a mule' to achieve real independence.
Hiram Revels
Mississippi Senator in 1870 who became the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate, filling Jefferson Davis's old seat.
Blanche K. Bruce
Mississippi Senator from 1875 to 1881 who became the second Black senator and the first to serve a full term.
Their service represents the brief window of Black political power quickly closed by the end of Reconstruction.
Andrew Johnson and the Veto
Johnson repeatedly vetoed Reconstruction measures including the Civil Rights Bill and the Military Reconstruction Act; Congress overrode his vetoes.
His obstruction demonstrated how much a president could undermine congressional intent.
>> Reconstruction Legislation
13th Amendment (1865)
Abolished slavery throughout the United States.
This was the first of the three Reconstruction amendments and ended an institution that had existed on American soil since 1619.
14th Amendment (1868)
Defined national citizenship, guaranteed equal protection and due process, and overturned the Dred Scott decision.
It is the most legally significant amendment in the Constitution after the original Bill of Rights.
15th Amendment (1870)
Prohibited denial of voting rights based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
All three Reconstruction amendments were required for Southern states to be readmitted to the Union, and all three were largely unenforced after 1877.
Freedmen's Bureau (1865-1872)
A federal agency providing food, medical care, legal assistance, and education to formerly enslaved people and impoverished white Southerners, establishing hundreds of schools.
Chronically underfunded and dismantled by Johnson, it was nevertheless the federal government's most ambitious social program before the New Deal.
Tenure of Office Act and Johnson's Impeachment
Congress required Senate approval to remove Cabinet members; Johnson fired Secretary of War Stanton in defiance. The House impeached Johnson on 11 counts.
The Senate acquitted Johnson by a single vote, establishing the principle that presidents cannot be impeached for policy disagreements alone.
Enforcement Acts (1870-1871)
Gave the federal government power to prosecute KKK terrorism, allowed federal election supervision, and authorized army use to protect Black voters.
Grant used them effectively for several years and substantially broke up the original KKK.
>> Reconstruction's Aftermath
Black Codes
Laws passed by Southern states in 1865-66 that required annual labor contracts (with vagrancy arrest for the unemployed), banned some land ownership, and restricted movement and assembly.
They effectively recreated servitude without the legal name 'slavery' and triggered the Military Reconstruction Act.
KKK and Lynching
The KKK was founded in 1865 in Tennessee and used murder, arson, and intimidation to suppress Black political participation and restore white supremacy. Roughly 4,000 documented lynchings of Black men occurred in the South between 1877 and 1950.
These facts show that Reconstruction's failure was not just political but physical: Black Americans were terrorized into submission.
Sharecropping and the Crop Lien System
Sharecropping had formerly enslaved people farming white-owned land for a share of the crop, usually half. The Crop Lien System required farmers to pledge future crops as collateral for seeds and tools, keeping them perpetually in debt.
This replaced chattel slavery with debt peonage, a different form of economic unfreedom.
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags
Carpetbaggers were Northern whites who moved to the South during Reconstruction; Scalawags were Southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party. Both terms were used dismissively by Southern Democrats.
In reality, many were idealistic reformers, though some were opportunists.
Exodusters
About 40,000 Black Americans who migrated from the post-Reconstruction South to Kansas in 1879-80 to escape violence and economic exploitation.
This foreshadowed the Great Migration of the 20th century.
Compromise of 1877 and End of Reconstruction
A backroom deal resolved the disputed Hayes-Tilden election: Hayes received the presidency, and Democrats received the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
Federal troops left, Republican Reconstruction governments collapsed, and the Jim Crow era began.
CHAPTERS 22-24, 26: The Gilded Age
>> Industries and Leading Industrialists
Andrew Carnegie
Scottish immigrant who built U.S. Steel through vertical integration, owning every stage of production from iron ore to finished rails.
He wrote 'The Gospel of Wealth' arguing the wealthy have a duty to give their fortunes away and built 2,500-plus public libraries.
John D. Rockefeller
Built Standard Oil into a monopoly controlling roughly 90 percent of U.S. oil refining through horizontal integration and secret railroad rebates.
He created the trust legal structure and became the wealthiest American in history; Standard Oil's court-ordered breakup in 1911 shaped modern antitrust law.
J.P. Morgan
Investment banker who reorganized railroads and financed the creation of U.S. Steel (the first billion-dollar corporation); personally stopped the Panic of 1907 by organizing private banking relief.
His personal role in 1907 showed the absurdity of relying on one wealthy banker to stabilize the entire economy.
James B. Duke
Built the American Tobacco Company into a monopoly before it was broken up in 1911; donated to Trinity College, which became Duke University.
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Built a railroad empire centered on the New York Central and accumulated one of the largest fortunes in American history.
Armour, Morris, and Swift
Gustavus Swift and Philip Armour dominated meatpacking through the disassembly line and refrigerated railroad cars, making Chicago the meatpacking capital of the world.
Conditions in their plants were later exposed in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Big Business
Advantages included economies of scale, lower consumer prices, technological innovation, and capital for large infrastructure projects.
Disadvantages included suppressed competition, exploitation of workers, corruption of politicians, dangerous monopolies, and extreme wealth inequality.
Inventors of the Late 1800s
Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, incandescent lightbulb, and motion pictures. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876.
Nikola Tesla developed the alternating current electricity system that powers homes today, while George Westinghouse developed air brakes for railroad cars.
>> Grant Administration Scandals
Black Friday (1869)
Jay Gould and Jim Fisk tried to corner the gold market; Grant released government gold to break their scheme, but small investors were ruined.
Credit Mobilier (1872)
Railroad construction company insiders bribed congressmen with stock; the scandal was exposed during the 1872 election.
Salary Grab Act (1873)
Congress voted itself a 50 percent pay raise retroactively; public outrage forced repeal.
Whiskey Ring (1875)
Treasury officials conspired with whiskey distillers to defraud the government of millions in tax revenue; Grant protected his personal secretary who was involved.
Belknap Bribery (1876)
Secretary of War William Belknap accepted bribes for trading post appointments; he resigned before impeachment proceedings could begin.
Together, these scandals made 'Grantism' a synonym for political corruption and eventually drove civil service reform.
>> End of Reconstruction and Gilded Age Politics
Election of 1876 and Compromise of 1877
Hayes (Republican) vs. Tilden (Democrat); disputed electoral votes in three Southern states; a special electoral commission gave Hayes all disputed votes.
Democrats accepted the result in exchange for withdrawal of federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.
Jim Crow Laws
State and local laws across the South mandating racial segregation in all public facilities, upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) under 'separate but equal.'
They remained in place until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Solid South
Democratic dominance of the former Confederate states that lasted from the end of Reconstruction until the 1960s, based on white supremacy, disfranchisement of Black voters, and resentment of the Republican Party.
This gave Southern Democrats disproportionate power in Congress for nearly a century.
Stalwarts, Half-Breeds, and Mugwumps
Stalwarts (led by Roscoe Conkling) defended the spoils system. Half-Breeds (led by James G. Blaine) favored civil service reform. Mugwumps were Republicans who crossed party lines in 1884 to support Democrat Grover Cleveland over the corrupt Blaine.
These factions show the Republican Party's internal divisions over corruption and reform.
Garfield's Assassination (1881)
President James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed office-seeker who expected a patronage appointment.
His assassination directly drove passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883.
Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883)
Created the Civil Service Commission and required competitive examinations for roughly 10 percent of federal positions, gradually extended over time.
It ended the spoils system as the dominant mode of federal employment and is the foundation of the modern professional federal bureaucracy.
Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall
William 'Boss' Tweed led the Tammany Hall Democratic machine in New York City and defrauded the city of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cartoonist Thomas Nast's devastating caricatures in Harper's Weekly exposed Tweed and helped bring him down.
Thomas Nast
Harper's Weekly cartoonist whose caricatures exposed Boss Tweed and who also created the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey as party symbols.
He showed that political cartoons could be as powerful as any written article.
>> Business Concepts
Horizontal vs. Vertical Integration
Horizontal integration means buying out all competitors in the same industry (Rockefeller and Standard Oil). Vertical integration means owning every stage of production (Carnegie and steel).
Both methods created monopolies; both became targets of antitrust legislation.
Pools and Trusts
Pools were informal price-fixing agreements between companies that were easily broken. Trusts had shareholders of competing companies surrender stock to a central board of trustees, consolidating control while appearing to be separate companies.
The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) made both illegal, though it was rarely enforced against corporations until Theodore Roosevelt.
Bessemer Process
A technique for converting pig iron into cheap, strong steel by blasting air through molten iron to burn off impurities.
Mass production of cheap steel was the technological prerequisite for railroads, skyscrapers, and industrial machinery.
Social Darwinism
The application of Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' to human society, arguing that poverty is natural, inequality inevitable, and government assistance harmful. William Graham Sumner was its leading American advocate.
This provided a pseudo-scientific justification for laissez-faire economics and opposition to labor regulation.
Gospel of Wealth (Carnegie)
Carnegie's 1889 essay arguing that the wealthy accumulate capital more efficiently than governments or churches and have a moral duty to redistribute it through public libraries, universities, and parks.
It justified massive wealth accumulation as socially beneficial while positioning wealthy industrialists as philanthropists.
Laissez-Faire
The economic policy of minimal government intervention in the market; the dominant economic philosophy of the Gilded Age.
Progressives directly challenged this philosophy, and it defines one side of the recurring American debate about government's role in the economy.
Yellow Dog Contracts and Iron Clad Oaths
Yellow dog contracts required workers to sign a promise not to join a union as a condition of employment. Iron clad oaths were similar agreements forbidding union membership.
Both were standard Gilded Age employer practices to suppress union organizing; both were declared illegal by the Norris-LaGuardia Act in 1932.
>> Immigrants and Cities
Old vs. New Immigrants
Old immigrants (before 1880) came primarily from Northern and Western Europe (British, German, Irish, Scandinavian) and were seen as more 'assimilable.' New immigrants (after 1880) came primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe (Italians, Poles, Jews, Greeks) and faced intense discrimination.
This distinction drove the nativist movement and ultimately the quota immigration acts of the 1920s.
Birds of Passage and Sojourners
Immigrants who came to the United States temporarily to earn money and return home; Italian immigrants were particularly common in this pattern.
This challenges the narrative that all immigrants were seeking permanent American citizenship.
Ellis Island and Angel Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the entry point for roughly 12 million European immigrants with relatively quick processing. Angel Island in San Francisco Bay was the entry point primarily for Asian immigrants and operated with far harsher conditions and detentions lasting weeks or months.
The contrast between the two illustrates racial discrimination in American immigration policy.
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
The first U.S. law restricting immigration based on race or nationality, banning Chinese laborers from entering the United States.
Not repealed until 1943, it was the precedent for later immigration restriction.
Dumbbell Tenement
Urban apartment buildings shaped to provide minimal airshafts, packed with immigrant families in tiny, poorly ventilated rooms.
Jacob Riis documented conditions in these buildings in How the Other Half Lives (1890).
Joseph Glidden
Invented barbed wire in 1874, which enabled cheap fencing of vast Great Plains areas and ended the open range and cattle drive era.
It was essential to the agricultural settlement of the Plains.
Eugene V. Debs
Founded the American Railway Union, led the Pullman Strike (1894), was imprisoned, became a socialist, and ran for president five times.
He received 3.4 percent of the vote while running from prison in 1920.
>> Labor Unions and Unrest
National Labor Union (1866)
The first major post-Civil War labor federation; pushed for the 8-hour workday; won the 8-hour day for federal workers in 1868 but not in private industry; collapsed after the Panic of 1873.
Knights of Labor
Founded in 1869, radically inclusive of all workers regardless of race, gender, or skill level; demanded an 8-hour day and the end of child labor; led by Terence Powderly.
It peaked at 700,000 members but collapsed after being blamed for the Haymarket Square bombing in 1886.
American Federation of Labor (AFL)
Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886; organized skilled craft workers only; focused narrowly on wages, hours, and conditions through collective bargaining.
More durable than the Knights because of its narrow, pragmatic focus; it dominated American labor for 50 years.
Great Railroad Strike (1877)
The first major national labor strike, with over 100,000 workers participating; federal troops were used against workers for the first time since the Civil War.
It showed the scale of working-class discontent and established the federal government's willingness to side with capital over labor.
Haymarket Square Bombing (1886)
Someone threw a bomb at police during a Chicago labor rally demanding an 8-hour day; eight officers died and four anarchist leaders were hanged with little evidence against them.
The bombing devastated the Knights of Labor by associating all organized labor with violence and anarchism.
Homestead Strike (1892)
Carnegie Steel workers struck against wage cuts; Henry Clay Frick hired 300 Pinkerton detectives, an armed battle killed 10 people, and the National Guard was brought in to break the strike.
This showed corporations would use private armies and state power against labor.
Pullman Strike (1894)
Workers at Pullman's model company town struck against wage cuts; Eugene Debs's American Railway Union boycotted Pullman cars; a federal injunction was obtained; Debs was arrested.
This established the precedent of using federal injunctions against strikes and radicalized Debs toward socialism.
Molly Maguires
A secret Irish miners' organization in Pennsylvania's coal fields that used violence and intimidation against mine owners in the 1870s; 19 members were hanged after an infiltration operation.
>> Native American Conflicts
Sand Creek Massacre (1864)
Colonel John Chivington's Colorado militia attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village, killing roughly 150-200 people, mostly women and children.
Congress condemned it, and it became a symbol of U.S. brutality toward Native Americans.
Battle of Little Big Horn (1876)
Lt. Colonel George Custer attacked a massive Sioux and Cheyenne encampment; Custer and all 268 of his men were killed.
The U.S. Army's intensified campaign afterward effectively destroyed Sioux resistance.
Battle of Wounded Knee (1890)
U.S. soldiers massacred roughly 250 Sioux men, women, and children in the Black Hills during the Ghost Dance movement crisis.
This was the final major armed conflict between the U.S. Army and Native Americans.
Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
Broke up tribal land into individual allotments (160 acres per household); surplus land was sold to whites; by 1900, Native Americans had lost 90 of 138 million acres they held in 1887.
The policy destroyed tribal culture and governance without successfully integrating Native Americans into American society.
A Century of Dishonor (Helen Hunt Jackson, 1881)
Documented U.S. government violations of treaties with Native American nations and the brutal treatment that followed; sent a copy to every member of Congress.
It prompted the Dawes Act, though ironically that law caused further harm rather than genuine reform.
>> Other Key Gilded Age Terms
Panic of 1873
Financial collapse triggered by railroad over-speculation and the bankruptcy of Jay Cooke and Co.; produced a five-year depression.
It was the worst economic crisis in American history to that point and hardened workers' and farmers' attitudes toward laissez-faire capitalism.
Panic and Depression of 1893
Triggered by railroad overbuilding, agricultural depression, and gold reserve depletion; 500 banks failed and unemployment hit 20 percent.
It fueled the Populist movement and set the stage for the Bryan-McKinley election of 1896.
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
The Supreme Court ruled the 14th Amendment protected national but not state citizenship rights, meaning states could still regulate most civil rights.
This dramatically narrowed the 14th Amendment's reach and allowed Jim Crow to develop legally.
Civil Rights Cases (1883)
The Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ruling Congress cannot prohibit private racial discrimination, only state-sponsored discrimination.
Together with the Slaughterhouse Cases, this gutted the 14th Amendment as a civil rights tool for 80 years.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Upheld Louisiana's separate railroad car law under the 'separate but equal' doctrine; Justice Harlan's lone dissent stated 'Our Constitution is color-blind.'
This was the legal foundation of Jim Crow segregation for 58 years until Brown v. Board of Education.
Munn v. Illinois (1877)
Upheld state regulation of grain storage rates as constitutional; validated the Granger Laws.
This was the first major case upholding government regulation of private business.
Wabash Case (1886)
The Supreme Court ruled states cannot regulate railroad rates on interstate routes; only Congress can.
This directly triggered the Interstate Commerce Act the following year.
Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
Created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads and ban price discrimination; initially had little enforcement power.
It was the first federal regulatory commission and the precedent for later powerful agencies like the FDA.
Gerrymandering and Grandfather Clauses
Gerrymandering means drawing district lines to favor one party. Grandfather clauses exempted men from literacy tests if their grandfathers had voted, which exempted poor whites while excluding Black men whose grandfathers could not legally vote.
These were key legal mechanisms for disfranchising Black voters after the 15th Amendment.
Booker T. Washington and Atlanta Compromise
Washington (Tuskegee Institute) advocated vocational education and economic self-reliance, accepting temporary social inequality in exchange for economic opportunity.
His 'Atlanta Compromise' speech (1895) was the defining statement of accommodationism or gradualism.
W.E.B. Du Bois
Founded the NAACP (1909) and the Niagara Movement (1905); demanded immediate civil and political equality; developed the 'Talented Tenth' concept of an educated Black elite who would lead all Black Americans.
His confrontationist, interracialist approach ultimately prevailed and shaped 20th-century civil rights strategy.
Frederick Jackson Turner and Frontier Thesis (1893)
Turner argued the frontier shaped American democracy, individualism, and national character, and that the 1890 census's declaration of a closed frontier raised urgent questions about what would replace it.
His thesis was hugely influential and was later used to justify overseas imperialism as a new frontier.
Posse Comitatus Act (1878)
Prohibited the use of federal military forces for civilian law enforcement, directly responding to the use of federal troops in Reconstruction.
It remains the primary law restricting military involvement in domestic policing.
Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
The first federal anti-monopoly law, declaring illegal 'every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade.'
It was rarely used against corporations but was frequently used against labor unions as a 'restraint of trade' until the Clayton Act.