APUSH: Period 6

Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877)

• President of the United States

• Caught in several scandals

Age of Invention/ Second Industrial Revolution

• Took place in the late 19th century

• Allowed for mass production

• Alexander Graham Bell

  • Invented the telephone-1875

• Thomas Edison

  • Invented the lightbulb-1879

    • Allowed for a longer workday

• George Westington

  • Invented alternating current electric system

Railroads

• Created time zones

• America’s first “big business”

• Served as America’s transition to an urban-industrial economy

Laissez-Faire

• Policy of the government to not interfere with big business

Gilded Age

• time period characterized by rapid economic growth, industrialization, and political corruption following the end of the Civil War, coined by Mark Twain

• Political corruption

  • Political Machines

    • Traded votes for favors like jobs

    • William Boss Tweed

      • Ran Tammany Hall

      • Exploited immigrants for votes

• Gilded Age Politics

  • End of the Spoils System

    • After the assassination of James Garfield

    • Pendleton Civil Service Act

      • Required government jobs to be earned on merit

  • Sherman Antitrust Act

    • Attempted to limit the power of monopolies

    • Difficult to enforce

• Gilded Age Reforms

  • Social Gospel movement

    • Advocated for social reforms as an expression of the Christian Faith

  • Jane Addams

    • Supported settlement house movement

    • Hull House

• Limited regulation caused the creation of corporations

• Robber barons vs. captains of industry

• Andrew Carnigie

  • Carnegie Steel Company

    • Practiced vertical integration

• John D. Rockefeller

  • Standard Oil

  • Was able to build his oil industry by the use of vertical and horizontal integration

    • Vertical integration

      • Controlled each stage of steel production

    • Horizontal integration

      • Buying out competition

• Gospel of Wealth

  • Coined by Andrew Carnegie

  • Belief that the rich should give back to society

• Social Darwinism

  • Idea that the rich are rich because they work hard

  • “Survival of the fittest”

Factories and Societal Life

• Growth in the middle class

  • Middle class women

    • Gained access to higher education

• The working class

  • Women, children, and newly arrived immigrants were hired

  • Harsh working hours

    • Average 59 hour week

  • Very poor working conditions

National Labor Union (1876)

• A federation of labor and reform leaders to advocate for federal and state laws for better working conditions

Knights of Labor (1869)

• Advocated for equal pay for BOTH men and women

• Became increasingly violent in efforts to achieve goals

• Declined due to Haymarket Riot

The Great Railroad Strike (1877)

• A group of railroad workers on the Baltimore and Ogio railroad rose up and began to strike due to wage cuts, spread nationally

• The first strike to spread nationally across multiple states

The Sand-Lot Incident (1877)

• Violence during the Great Railroad strike when white mobs attacked Chinese immigrants blaming them for economic hardship

• Considered the beginning of anti-Chinese activities in San Francisco

Haymarket Riot (1886)

• Violent uprising in Haymarket Square, Chicago, where police clashed with labor demonstrators in an aftermath of a bombing

American Federation of Labor (1886)

• National federation of trade unions made up of skilled workers

  • Unskilled workers were excluded

  • Women, immigrants, African Americans were also excluded

• Led by Samuel Gompers

  • Aimed for higher wages and shorter workdays

Homestead Steel Strike (1892)

• Labor conflict at the Homestead steel mill near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

  • Battle between strikers and private security agents

Pullman Strike

• National strike by American Railway Union, shut down major railways

• Intervention of troops

New South

• Myth of the New South

  • South wanted to follow the North’s example

• Textile mills were created

• Tobacco and cigarette production increased

• Failure of the New South

  • Decline of crop prices kept southerners poor

  • Crop-lien system and sharecropping also kept people poor

    • Economic slavery for both African Americans and whites

Racial Tensions

• Mississippi Plan

  • Prevented African Americans from voting

• Jim Crow

  • Supreme Court reversed the Civil Rights Act of 1875

  • Plessy v. Ferguson

    • Ruled that “separate but equal” was constitutional

• Lynchings and racial violence persisted

• Important African American Figures

  • Ida B. Wells

    • Editor of the Memphis Free Speech

      • Dealt with black issues

    • Spoke out against lynching

  • Booker T. Washington

    • Founded Tuskegee Institute

    • Eventually equal rights

  • Booker T. Washington vs. Eugene V Debs.

    • Debs wanted immediate end to segregation

West

• Homestead Act and completion of the transcontinental railroad caused a resurgence in westward movement

• Ranchers and miners are industries in the west

• Expansion westward dealt with conflict with Natives

• African Amreicans migrated west seeking better opportunities

  • exodusters

Native Americans

• Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)

  • Sioux and Lakota agree to settle in the Black Hill reservation in the dakota territory

  • Gold was discovered led to settlers violating the agreement

• Indian Wars

  • Between US soldiers and Native Americans in the West due to settlers moving into ancestral lands

• Sand Creek Massacre

  • US trips attacked and destroyed a village of friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho indians

• Great Sioux War

  • Conflict between Sioux and Cheyenne Indians against federal troops over lands in the Dakotas

• Wounded Knee

  • Last incident in the Indian Wars in 1870

  • Exposed the poor treatment of Native Americans

• Ghost Dance

• Dawes Severalty Act(1887)

  • Federal legislation that divided Native Americans lands amongst ancestral heads

  • Attempt at assimilation

• A Century of Dishonor

  • Written by Helen Hunt Jackson

Immigration

• New Immigrants 

  • Southern and eastern europe

  • Came through Ellis Island

• Asia

  • Angel Island

• Raise in the nativist movement

  • Chinese Exclusion Act was passed 

Populism

• Farmers dealt with

  • Low crop prices

  • High shipping rates

  • Crippling debts

• The Grange Movement

  • Farmers group aimed at promoting economic and social well-being for rural communities

• Creation of the Populist Party

  • Supported direct election of Senators

  • Graduated income tax

  • Government ownership of railroads

  • Ideas adopted by Democratic party

    • William Jennings Bryan (1896)

      • “Cross of Gold Speech”

        • Supported the coinage of silver

      • Lost to Mckinley(R)

        • Had the backing of big business

The End of the Frontier

• Turner’s Frontier Thesis

  • End of the first part of US history

  • US westward expansion has come to a close