US History 2

Beginning of total war post civil war

Total War - No battlefield, instead war destroys homes

  • 280,00 died (southerners)

  • South was devastated

  • White farmers in south had no money (their monetary system was gone)

  • 3.5 million slaves were freed but had nothing

White southerners

  • being able to control their own lives w/o north

  • All free slaves wanted to be independent of whites

  • Followed sherman on his march to the sea

400,000 acres were given in 40 acre plots to freed men

Freedmans Bearue

  • Established in 1865 by congress

  • Limited to one year but extended to 1870

  • Huge expansion of federal authority

Distributed food, established schools, provided clothing, medical care and helped black settlers own land

  • Divided abandoned and confiscated land

1865 Andrew Johnson ordered all unsold land in gov hands to return it to former owners

Plans for Reconstruction

  • Division among republicans

  • Conservatives wanted few conditions for readmission into union

  • radicals wanted a harsher approach (protect black rights, confiscate property of wealthy whites)

  • Moderates (rejected harsh republican demands, but did want some concessions on black rights)

Lincoln favored a more lenient policy

  • “Ten percent plan”

  • Any southern state could be readmitted into the union once 10% of eligible votes pledged loyalty to the goverment and accepted abolition of slavery

  • offered full forgivness to southerners

  • Proposed extending suffrage (the vote) to African Americans who were educated,owned property, or served in the union

Wade-Davis Bill (1864) - pushed by radicals in congress

  • Provided a presidential appointment of governor for each southern state

  • Readmittance to union would occur when 50% of eligible voters in state declared loyalty to union

  • Terms

  • Must ablolish slavery, disenfranchisse confederate civil and military leaders, repudiate debts accumulated by state gov during the war, bill passed by congress but lincoln vetoed it

The death of president lincoln

  • april 14 1865

The black codes

Could apprehend unemployed blacks and make them work on farm to pay “fine”

The abandonment of reconstruction 

 

  • The southern states were redeemed. 

  • By 1872 most whites regained the vote 

  • In states where blacks outnumbered whites, the KKK would intimidate the African Americans 

  • Organized in late 1865 in Tennessee.  

1868 Memphis chapter of kkk 

  • The south is unfit for the residence of white man and the KKK is a defensive organization. 

  • The Klan whipped beat and burnt community leaders throughout the south and usually weren’t punished because of their power. 

Economic Pressure 

  • Republican Planters were denied rending land. 

  • Employers refused to pay them equally. 

Response by republican congress to repression 

  • Enforcement acts of 1870 and 71 (Ku Klux Klan acts) 

  • Designed to impede by being able to prosecute kkk members under federal law. 

Congress created the Department of Justice 

  • Responsible for bringing cases against those men who used violence to enforce white supremacy. 

  • Initiated thousands of prosecutions and secured hundreds of convictions across the south 

  • Drove KKK underground. 

  • Did not eradicate violence. 

  • Klan members became an arm of the democratic party. 

In Louisiana other organizations formed – Knights of white camelia and the white league. 

  • 1873 – conservatives in Louisiana began turning legally elected officeholders out of office 

Warning northern commitment 

  • Occurred following passage of 15th amendment. 

  • Many white republicans moved to the republican party – republicans blamed for financial crisis. 

Grants Legacy 

  • Grant reduced use of military force as support for republican regimes declined. 

  • Established first national park (Yellowstone) in 1872 

  • Proponent of Civil Rights 

  • Grant appointed black ambassadors, custom collectors, IRS agents, postmasters.  

and clerks 

  •  

The Compromise of 1877 

  • Disputed election – republican Rutherford B. Hayes v. Democrat, Samuel J. Tilden 

  • Special Electoral Commission 

  • Numerous Compromises 

  • Democrats made deal that no federal troops in south in exchange for losing presidential race. 

  • States gain more power back. 

Legacy of Reconstruction 

  • Contributions 

  • Extension of civil rights beyond landholding white men 

  • Power of federal gov used to protect these rights. 

  • Redistribution of income and some land ownership to African Americans 

Limits 

  • U.S failed to resolve the problem of race. 

  • Goal of southern whites – violent protection of white supremacy 

  • Angered by civil rights gains made by African Americans 

  • Angered at federal government for passing and enforcing these rights. 

  • Suspicious of bipartisan politics of 1870’s  

The New South 

  • The redeemers 

  • Power returns to southern white democrats 

  • Similar behavior among ruling states 

  • Similar governing behavior to antebellum period 

  • Supported “home rule” social conservatism and economic development. 

  • Most lowered taxes reduced public spending, drastically reduced state services. 

Industrialization and the New South 

  • Growth of Textile, tobacco-processing and iron and steel industry 

  • Increased railroad development 

  • 1886 – South changed width of tracks to correspond with northern standards 

  • Need for large workforce. 

  • Exploitation of workers 

  • Many were women. 

  • Much of capital (money) to start industries came from the north. 

  • Some industries would not hire African Americans 

Convict Leasing 

  • Whites would pay fines, debts of convicted black men from local government. 

  • Convicts would be leased to plantation or my owners. 

  • Worked long hours under horrific convictions and were brutally punished for minor offenses. 

  • Brought money into state treasury and enriched those who owned leases. 

Tenants and Sharecroppers 

  • Impoverished agriculture 

  • Too reliant of cash crops 

  • Absentee of ownership of valuable farmlands 

African Americans and the new south 

  • Some advanced to middle class 

  • Booker T Washington (Tuskegee institute) 

  • Committed to education for blacks as means of self-improvement. 

  • Learns skills to establish themselves in agriculture and trades. 

Atlanta Compromise 

  • Proposed in Washington 

  • Blacks should emphasize self-improvement over fighting for political rights. 

  • Did not challenge segregation. 

The birth of Jim Crow 

  • Civil rights cases of 1883 

  • Court ruled that 14th amendment prohibited state governments from discriminating against people based on race but did not restrict Individuals from discriminating (business owners, schools, etc.) 

  • Plessy v. Ferguson 

  • Institutionalized separation of the races – separate but equal 

  • Cumming v. County board of education 

  • Communities could establish schools for whites only even if there were no comparable schools for blacks. 

Black disenfranchisement 

  • Devises used. 

  • Poll tax of property qualifications 

  • Literacy tests (they had to read and interpret parts of the constitution) 

  • Jim crow laws – state and local laws including those restricting franchise and segregating schools. 

  • Blacks had no access to many public parks, beaches, or picnic areas; could not be patients in many hospitals. 

Increase in violence against blacks. 

  • Lynching 

  • Black Journalists, Ida B Wells initiated international anti-lynching movement. 

The tragedy of reconstruction 

  • The tragedy was that there was no way for blacks to enjoy their rights without a prolonged military presence. 

Taos Indian Rebellion 

  • Feared new U.S government would confiscate land. 

  • U.S broke power of tribes – Navajo, Apache, etc. 

Established Railroad in Region (1880s-90s) 

  • Led to increased ranching, framing, and mining. 

  • New wave of Mexican immigrants 

Hispanic California and Texas 

  • U.S Takeover – disastrous for Hispanics 

  • Loss of power and land to Anglos 

  • Relegated to unskilled farm/industrial labor. 

The Chinese Migration 

  • Increasing Chinese immigration following 1848 gold rush 

  • Transcontinental Railroad 

  • Attracted thousands of hard-working Chinese 

  • Dangerous conditions, low wages led to rebellion in 1866. 

  • Demanded higher wages and shorter workday. 

  • Company starved them into submission. 

  • Chinese workers lost jobs after railroad was finished. 

Chinatowns 

  • Chinese communities established throughout the west.  

  • Many worked as common laborers, unskilled factory hands. 

  • Some established small business – laundries 

  • Most early women arrivals came because they were sold into prostitution. 

  • Anti-Chinese sentiments 

  • Resentment by White workers 

  • Chinese worked for low wages (less than union) 

  • Chinese exclusion act 

  • Banned Chinese immigration for 10 years. 

  • Naturalized citizenship denied existing residents.  

  • Law became permanent in 1902. 

  • 40% decline in population. In 40 years after passage 

Migration From the East 

  • Between 1870-1900 over 2 million foreign born  

  • Scandinavians, Germans, Irish, Russians, Czechs, etc. 

  • Attracted to the west – gold and silver deposits, short grass pasture for cattle and sheep, rich sod of the plains and meadowlands of the mountains. 

The Homestead Act of 1862 

  • Allowed settlers to buy 160-acre plots under the stipulation you could improve the land. 

New western states 

  • Nevada (1864), Nebraska, Colorado, North and South Dakotas, Montana, Washington, Wyoming and Idaho, Utah 

The romance of the west 

  • The western landscape and the cowboy 

  • Rocky mountain school 

  • Art inspired tourism 

Idealized the figure of a cowboy. 

  • Novels romanticized cowboys supposed freedom from traditional social constraints, his affinity for nature and propensity for violence. 

  • Cody’s Wild West 

  • Confirmed popular image of the west – romantic and glamorous. 

  • Annie Oakley; Reenactment of Indian battles 

The idea of the frontier 

  • Romantic Vision – last frontier 

  • The west viewed as last refuge from constraints of civilization. 

  • Frederick Jackson Turner 

  • The significance of frontier in American history (1893) 

  • Western expansion stimulated individualism, nationalism, democracy, and opportunities for advancement. 

  • Passing of the frontier 

  • General attitude that the closing of the frontier meant loss of opportunity. 

  • The turner thesis – widely accepted by contemporaries but challenged by later historians. 

The changing western economy 

  • Labor in the west 

  • Western working class – highly multi-racial 

  • Whites, African Americans, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Hispanics, Asians, Indians 

  • Highly stratified racially 

  • White worker occupied upper tiers of employment. 

  • West produced 3 main industries – mining, ranching, commercial farming. 

  • The arrival of miners 

  • Boom in 1860’s-1890’s. 

  • Result of California gold rush 

  • California gold rush – 1849 

  • Comstock Lode – Nevada  

The cattle kingdom 

  • Mexican roots 

  • Techniques and equipment employed by cattlemen were developed by Mexican rancher. 

  • Lariats, saddles, chaps, spurs, branding, roundups, roping. 

  • Transportation of Cattle 

  • Use of railroads caused too many losses. 

  • Led to long drives of cattle and pasturing cattle along the way. 

  • Early market Facility – Abilene, Kansas 

  • Made Difficult by growing agriculture development. 

Range Wars 

  • Conflicts between free ranging cattle businessman and sheep breeders and farmers 

  • Sheep competed for grass. 

  • Farmers fenced in the claims breaking up cattle drives. 

The dispersal of the Tribes 

  • White tribal policies 

  • Tribes regarded as independent nations. 

  • Viewed as wards of the president. 

  • Changed into the concentration policy. 

  • 1851 – tribes assigned to reservations through treaties often illimitably negotiated 

  • Divided tribes from one another for control 

  • Plains Indians moved into two large reservations. 

  • Oklahoma and Dakotas 

  • Slaughter of buffalo herds by whites post-civil war 

  • 1865 – 15 million buffalo 2 decades later – less than 1000 

  • Destroyed Indians way of life. 

  • Unable to resist white advance. 

Indian Wars 

  • Increased Indian resistance (1850’s-1880’s) 

  • Sand Creek Massacre 

  • Massacred 133 unsuspecting people: 105 women and children. 

  • Indian Hunting  

  • Some whites supported elimination of tribes. 

  • Believed Indians were inhumane and that whites could not coexist with them. 

  • Battle of little bighorn 0 1876 

  • Custer, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull 

Chief Joseph – Nez Perce 

  • With 200 warriors, 350 women, children, and old people – pursued and caught before entering Canada. 

  • Last organized Indian resistance – Chiricahua Apache 

  • Leader, Cochise, Died in 1874, successor Geronimo. 

  • Fought for over a decade in mountains of Arizona and Mexico. 

The Dawes Act – 1887 

  • Promoted assimilation. 

  • Elimination of most tribal ownership of land 

  • Allotted tracts of land to individual owners 

  • Led to forcing Indian children into boarding schools away for their families. 

  • Encouraged Christianity stopping Indian religious act. 

The rise and decline of the western farmers. 

  • From boom to bust after mid 1880’s 

  • Farming on the Plains 

  • Railroads promoted settlement to create new markets. 

  • Sold land acquired with little or no money from the government for a profit. 

  • !870’s – increased downpour of rain 

Problems 

  • Fencing 

  • Lack of wood and stone led to development of barbed wire. 

  • Water 

  • After 1887 dry seasons began 

  • Required large scale irrigation projects. 

  • Required government assistance – not funded by state of federal government. 

  • Crop prices fell in the late 1880’s. 

Commercial Agriculture 

  • Dependent on bankers and interest rates 

The farmers grievances 

  • Higher railroad rates for farm goods 

  • Railroads also controlled elevator and warehouse charged arbitrary storage rates. 

  • High interest rates companies rolling credit. 

  • Inadequate currency 

The agrarian malaise 

  • Isolation and obsolescence 

  • Many lacked access to adequate education for children or proper medical facilities 

  • Lacked organized recreational or cultural activities. 

  • Led to feelings of humiliation. 

  • Farmers losing important place in society to rising urban-industrial society. 

Limited Liability 

  • Investors could now buy stock in the corporations and would be free from liability for debts of the corporation that might accumulate beyond that point 

  • The ability to sell stock to the public gave corporations large amounts of capital 

Horizontal integration and vertical integration – forms of corporate consolidation 

  • Horizontal integration – combining firms engaging in the same enterprise into one corporation 

  • Vertical Integration – the takeover of different businesses by one company that relied on those businesses to provide a function 

  • Standard Oil – John D. Rockefeller  

  • Expanded horizontally and vertically 

Wealthy people had not only great power, but great responsibility to use wealth ti advance social progress to use wealth to advance social progress (Carnegie…Bill Gates)

Horatio Alger

Taxing only land would destroy monopolies, distribute wealth more equally and eliminate poverty

Edward Bellamy - “Nationalism”

The problems of Monopoly

  • Economic Concentration Challgenged

  • Monopolies kill competition and can charge any price

  • Creates artificially high prices

  • Severe recessions occured every 5-6 years with each worse than the last

The Ordeal of the Worker

  • Immigrant Workforce

  • Greatly increased due to massive migration into industrial cities - From rural areas

  • Labor Contract Law

  • Permitted employers to pay for passage of workers then deduct amount from wages (repealed in 1885)

  • Arrival of new groups(poles, greeks, Chinese, Mexicans) led to tensions with existing workers

Wages and Working Conditions

  • Low wages (average was below that required to maintain reasonable levels of comfort) and harsh conditions

  • 10 hours a day, 6 days a week (steel industry 12 hrs)

  • Frequent industrial accidents

  • Use of women and children

  • Paid less than men

  • By late 19th century - 38 states passed child labor laws

  • Minimum age of 12 yrs old - mx workday of 10 hrs (some did 12)

  • 60% employed in agriculture - exempt from labor laws

Emerging Unionization

  • Little success by end of century

  • Labor disputes turned violent

  • Molly MaGuires

  • Militant irish labor organization used violence and sometimes murder against coal operators

  • Great railroad strike of 1877

  • 10% wage cut led to strike

  • Strikers disrupted rail service from baltimore to st. louis

  • Destroyed equipment

  • State Militia called out followed by federal troops

  • Philadelphia - state militia killed 20 people when troops opened fired on a group blocking railroad tracks

Knights of Labor - 1860

  • First major effort to create an actual national labor organization

  • Open to all workers including women

  • Championed an 8 hr work day, and abolish child labor

  • Failed to win in anything major

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) - 1881

  • Represented craft unions - skilled workers

  • Samuel Gompers (leader)

  • Concentrated on wages, hours, working conditions

  • Haymarket Bombing

  • Anarchists charged with inciting someone to throw a bomb

  • police killed 8 people

The Homestead Strike

  • Carnegie and his lieutenant, Henry Clay Frick, wanted to oust the Amalgamated of Iron and Steel workers from homestead plant near Pittsburgh

  • Pinkerton Detective Agency guards acting as strike breakers fought with strikers

  • 3 guards and 10 strikers killed; many more injured

  • National guard was sent and strike was broken

The Pullman Strike - 1894

  • Pullman Palace Car company manufactured railroad sleeping and parlor cars

  • Company constructed a town, pullman, where employees rented houses

  • Company slashed wages during a depression that led to a strike (rent was not reduced)

  • Workers gained support from American railway union by Eugene v. Debs

Sources of Labor Weakness

  • Labor organization represented only small percentage of industrial workforce

  • ADL excluded unskilled labor, most women, blacks, recent immigrants

  • Many immigrants planned to return home and weren’t willing to organize

Urban Poverty

  • Urban expansion led to widespread poverty

  • Public Agencies and private organizations were poorly funded

  • Salvation Army (1879) concentrated more on religious revivalism than on relief for homeless and hungry

  • Growing alarm over number of poor children in cities

The machine and the boss

  • Political “Machine” - strong urban institutions supported by voting power of immigrant population and enabled by power vacuum the chaotic growth of cities

  • The urban bosses - would win votes for his organization (buy people out of jail, buy food, supplies, or cash in exchange for a vote)

The rise of mass consumption

  • Patterns of income and consumption

  • Incomes rose for almost everyone

  • growth and prosperity of middle class - most important

  • Created new markets for consumer goods via technological innovations

Chain Stores, Mail Order houses, department stores

  • Offered great variety of goods

  • A&P; F.W. Woolworths

Women became the primary consumers

  • Women in the middle class became the shoppers (consumers) for the family

Leisure in Consumer Society

  • Increase in Leisure times

  • Decline in working hours

  • Mechanized equipment for farmers

Redefining Leisure

  • Theory of Prosperity(1902) by Simon Patten

  • Fear of Scarcity

Spectator Sports

  • Baseball

  • Cities fielded professional teams

  • 1876 - creation of national league;1901 American league

  • 1903 first world series

Pragmatism

  • A doctrine the scientific studies should guide modern society; not moral principles or religious faith

Universities and the growth of science and technology

  • Spread due to Morill land grant act (1862)

  • Federal government donated public land to states for universities