Untitled Flashcards Set

Reconstruction (Weeks 1-2)
People:
• Abraham Lincoln: U.S. President, 1861-65
• Andrew Johnson: U.S. President, 1865-69
• Ulysses S. Grant: U.S. President, 1869-77
• Rutherford B. Hayes: U.S. President, 1877-81 (mostly important for our purposes as the
Republican president who came to office after the so-called “Compromise of 1877” with
the Democrats)
• Hiram Revels: first African American U.S. senator (Mississippi, 1870-71)
Organizations:
• The Republican Party (the main force behind Reconstruction) and the Democratic Party
(the main opponent of Reconstruction)
• The Freedmen’s Bureau
• The Ku Klux Klan and the White League
Laws and constitutional amendments:
• Black Codes
• Reconstruction Amendments (13th-15th)
• Enforcement Acts
Events
• Johnson’s impeachment (1868)
• The “Compromise of 1877” and the end of Reconstruction
• Release of D.W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (1915) – many decades after the
events it depicted – giving a very negative view of Reconstruction and a positive,
romanticized view of the Ku Klux Klan (and leading to the Klan’s revival)
Concepts:
• Presidential Reconstruction and Congressional/Radical Reconstruction
• “40 acres and a mule” and Special Field Orders No. 15 – the mostly unfulfilled hope of
land redistribution
• The insulting terms “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags”

• U.S. Supreme Court rulings that weakened Reconstruction laws, including the
Enforcement Acts
• The “Redeemers” who reestablished Democratic control over the South
• Jim Crow segregation
• Sharecropping
• Lasting changes resulting from Reconstruction: changes in Black family life, Black
churches and schools, HBCUs, and the Reconstruction Amendments
Westward Expansion (Week 2)
Events
• Completion of the Transcontinental Railway (1869)
• The Kansas Exodus (1879)
• Wounded Knee (1890)
Laws and constitutional amendments:
• Dawes Act (1887)
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
Concepts:
• Manifest Destiny
• Forced cultural assimilation (“Americanization”) of Native Americans
• Native American exclusion from U.S. citizenship, or its full benefits
• Near-extermination of the bison
Note: There were major themes in the history of westward expansion – including homesteading,
the economic history of the West, the great cattle drives, and others – that we didn’t cover in
lecture on January 27 and 29, even though they were in the OpenStax reading. We’ll cover those
topics in class later. They won’t be on our first quiz.
The Gilded Age and U.S. Empire (Weeks 3-4)
People:
• Andrew Carnegie: steel tycoon and philanthropist
• Wong Kim Ark: won recognition of birthright citizenship, 1898
• James Garfield: U.S. president, 1881 (assassinated soon after taking office)
• William Jennings Bryan: Democratic and Populist presidential candidate, 1896
• William McKinley: U.S. president, 1896-1901
Organizations:
• Dominant corporations: Sears, Roebuck, & Co.; Standard Oil; Carnegie Steel; Anheuser-
Busch
• Knights of Labor

• American Federation of Labor (AFL)
• The Grange and the Farmers’ Alliance
• People’s Party / Populist Party
Laws and Supreme Court cases:
• 1883 Pendleton Act / Civil Service Reform Act
• Creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887
• 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act
• United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898): birthright citizenship
• Civil Rights Cases (1883): striking down the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act of
1875, which had required equal access by Black and White Americans to public
accommodations (hotels, public transportation, etc.)
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): “separate but equal” SCOTUS ruling
Events
• The railroads’ creation of time zones in 1883
• The federal government’s acquisition of massive public lands in the West
• Reversal of the Chicago River in 1900
• Great Railroad Strike of 1877
• 1886 Haymarket Affair
• 1892 Homestead steel strike
• 1896 presidential election
Concepts:
• Role of the railroad in creating a unified national market
• Rise of large landholdings in the West – giant ranches and “bonanza farms”
• Kansas City as a hub for railroads and the cattle trade
• Emergence of dominant corporations and monopolies / “trusts”
• Urban inequality – crowded tenement buildings vs. the giant homes of the rich
• “Robber barons” / “captains of industry”
• Social Darwinism
• The “spoils system” and civil service reform
• The limits of late 19th-century reforms (Pendleton Act, ICC, Sherman Antitrust Act),
compared to the more radical change demanded by labor, the Grange & Farmers’
Alliance, and the Populists
• The Gilded Age tariff debate – arguments for and against tariffs
• Democratic rule in the Jim Crow South, and its enforcement through grandfather clauses,
poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence (lynching)
Guest lecture by Aaron O’Connell, 2/12/25
• U.S. intervention in the Philippines, the Caribbean, and China during the early 20th
century

• The leading role played by the USMC in those interventions
U.S. Empire and the Progressive Era (Week 4 continued and Week 5)
People involved with the rise of U.S. imperialism:
• William McKinley: U.S. President, 1897-1901 (Republican, pro-imperialism,
assassinated after winning reelection in 1900)
• William Jennings Bryan: Democratic presidential candidate, 1896, 1900, 1908 (in favor
of “free silver” and against imperialism)
• Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt: hero of the Spanish-American War and subsequently U.S.
president, 1901-1909
Major developments in immigration and foreign relations:
• The “new immigration” (late 19th / early 20th century), with more immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe, including many Catholic and Jewish immigrants
• The resulting debate over immigration – including the formation of the Immigration
Restriction League
• The acquisition of a formal U.S. empire – including expansion into the Pacific (Alaska
and Hawaii), and taking territories from Spain in 1898 – followed by a fierce debate over
imperialism
Events
• Destruction of the USS Maine (1898)
• The Spanish-American War (1898) and U.S. acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam
• The U.S.-Philippine War (1899-1903), with the U.S. military fighting insurgents led by
Emilio Aguinaldo
People involved with the Progressive Era:
• Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt: U.S. President, 1901-09
• William Howard Taft: U.S. President, 1909-1913
• Woodrow Wilson: Woodrow Wilson, U.S. President, 1913-1921
• “Muckraker” journalists: Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell
• African American civil rights activists: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B.
Wells
Progressive Era laws and constitutional amendments:
• Stricter enforcement of antitrust law, including through the Clayton Act
• Creation of the U.S. Forest Service (1905)
• The Pure Food and Drug Act and the creation of the Food and Drug Administration
(1906)
• Creation of the Federal Reserve System (1913)
• 16th Amendment (1913): federal income tax
• 17th Amendment (1917): direct election of senators

Concepts
• Progressivism – an attempt to find the middle ground between radicalism and the status
quo; to find solutions to late 19th and early 20th century challenges like corporate
concentration, urbanization, the “new immigration,” etc.
o Progressive proposals to clean up American politics and reduce the political
influence of the great corporations (see, for example, the Roosevelt speech in the
readings for
o “Trust-busting” to break up some of the big monopolies
o A federal income tax to raise revenue and reduce inequality
o Direct election of senators to limit the opportunities for political corruption
o Reliance on educated experts
o Social reform efforts like Jane Addams’ “settlement house” movement
• The conservation movement – national parks, the U.S. Forest Service (but it’s not the
same as late 20th / early 21st-century environmentalism)
• Changing ideas of freedom – for example, in the primary sources for this week,
Roosevelt’s ideas about limiting inequality and Wilson’s concept of “freedom” as
requiring more active government policy, like in today’s liberal/progressive ideas
• Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” approach vs. W.E.B. Du Bois’ greater
focus on legal and political equality
Laws and constitutional amendments:
• Creation of the U.S. Forest Service (1905)
• The Pure Food and Drug Act and the creation of the Food and Drug Administration
(1906)
• 16th Amendment (1913): federal income tax
• 17th Amendment (1917): direct election of senators
Events
• “Atlanta Compromise” speech (1895)
• 1912 election, split of the GOP, Wilson and the Democrats win
Guest lecture by Adom Getachew, 2/24/25
• W.E.B. Du Bois and the NAACP
• Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
• 1917 massacre in East St. Louis
WWI (Week 6)
Outline of the war (1914-1918)
• Allies vs. Central Powers

• Features new weapons and types of fighting: trench warfare, aircraft, tanks, chemical
weapons, submarines
U.S. involvement
• The U.S. is initially neutral, with the American population divided on joining the war
• German U-boat attacks, most famously on the Lusitania (1915), along with the
Zimmerman Telegram (German offer of alliance with Mexico), lead the U.S. to declare
war in 1917
• U.S. troops miss most of the war and suffer many fewer casualties than the other major
combatants, but help turn the tide at the end in mid-to-late 1918
• Several hundred thousand African Americans serve, but in segregated units under white
officers
• Many women serve in non-combat support roles (nurses, radio/telephone operators, etc.)
The home front
• Fierce repression of dissent: Espionage Act (1917), Sedition Act (1918), persecution of
German Americans, jailing of radicals and antiwar leaders
• Many women and African Americans move into heavy industrial factory work for the
first time
• Devastating worldwide influenza outbreak in 1918, killing tens of millions and
generating the H1N1 strain of flu that’s still infecting people today
The 1920s (Week 7)
People:
• Warren G. Harding: U.S. President, 1921-1923
• Herbert Hoover: U.S. President, 1929-1933
• Eugene V. Debs: Socialist leader who ran for president from prison in 1920
• Al Smith: First Catholic to be a major party nominee for president (1928 Democratic
nominee)
• Alice Paul: Suffrage advocate, leader of the National Woman’s Party, and advocate of the
ERA
Laws and constitutional amendments
• 18th Amendment (1919): Prohibition
• 19th Amendment (1920): Women get the right to vote
• Equal Rights Amendment: Introduced in Congress in 1923 but never ratified
Concepts
• The woman suffrage movement
• Cultural shifts in the “Jazz Age” – the rise of the “flapper,” new styles of dress, music,
and dancing
• Prohibition – officially enforced but often ignored, especially in “speakeasies”

• The Harlem Renaissance – a flowering of African American culture
• The era of the second Ku Klux Klan – this time national, not just in the South, and
focused on new enemies like Jewish and Catholic people as well as African Americans
Events
• First Red Scare (1918-20) / Palmer Raids (1919-20)
• Johnson-Reed Act (1924) – massive restrictions on immigration, especially from
Southern & Eastern Europe and East Asia
• Scopes Trial (1925): can public schools teach evolution?
• 1928 presidential election: Hoover defeats Smith after a campaign featuring anti-Catholic
attacks on Smith