The New South and Settlement of the West - Comprehensive Study Notes

1) The Economic Development of the New South

• Powerful, conservative oligarchy known as “Redeemers” or “Bourbons” came to dominate the economic and political Southern environment.
  • Advocated low taxes, reduced spending, and diminished state services.
• Industrial development proceeded in a peculiar fashion compared to the North.
  • Textile manufacturing developed as it had in the North at the start of the nineteenth century.
  • Number of spindles increased by 900\% from 1880 to 1900.
  • American Tobacco Company established a virtual monopoly on smoking products.
  • Railroad development accelerated; track length doubled from 1880 to 1890, i.e., 2\times.
• But Southern incomes were only 0.40 of Northern levels by 1900.
  • Capital was almost exclusively from the North.
  • Agriculture remained the backbone of the Southern economy.
• The “Crop-Lien” system became more dominant in the decades after Reconstruction.
  • Absence of a viable banking sector in the South meant that credit was difficult to secure.
  • “Furnishing merchants” filled the breach by providing farmers with credit.
  • Terms of credit:
  • Loans backed by liens on property and crops.
  • Credit extended at exorbitant rates and required purchase of goods at inflated prices.
  • System encouraged single-crop agriculture that allowed farmers to quickly convert crops into cash.
• Significance and implications:
  • Reinforced capitalist modernization in the South while tethering farmers to credit cycles and commodity markets.
  • Helped maintain racial and regional economic hierarchies through credit dependencies and monopolistic practices.
  • Set the stage for ongoing political power of Redeemers/Bourbons and limited public investment in non-elite public services.

2) Segregation in the New South

• General lack of federal support for black equality.
  • Federal troops removed after 1877.
  • Congress lost interest in championing black rights in the South.
  • Supreme Court cases weakened the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
  • 1883 civil rights cases provided for discrimination by private individuals or organizations.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) validated separate accommodations for the races.
  • Cumming v. County Board of Education (1899) allowed separate education facilities for whites even if no comparable black education facilities were provided.
• Disfranchisement was one of the most effective methods to ensure white supremacy.
  • Fifteenth Amendment prohibited states from denying the right to vote based on race, so states enacted laws effectively aimed at blacks.
  • Mechanisms included: poll taxes, property qualifications, literacy tests, and education requirements.
  • Grandfather clauses exempted those whose ancestors had voted before Reconstruction from these requirements.
• “Jim Crow” laws expanded to formally entrench segregation across the South.
  • Separate facilities for whites and blacks in schools, railroad cars, washrooms, hotels, restaurants, theatres, parks, and beaches.
  • Reinforced patterns of black deference in rural areas, legally anchoring de facto hierarchies in growing cities.
• Violence against blacks underpinned legal discrimination.
  • Lynchings were a regular feature in Southern life.
  • Nationally, about 188 lynchings per year in the 1890s and about 93 per year in the 1900s, with the vast majority targeting Blacks in the South.
  • Public lynchings could be planned, ritualized, and attract large public audiences.
  • Some lynchings were random vigilante actions.
  • Anti-lynching organizations formed over time.
• Connections to broader context:
  • Reflects the retreat of federal power to protect civil rights following Reconstruction.
  • Demonstrates how legal structures, economic pressure, and violence intersected to sustain racial hierarchy.
• Ethical, philosophical, and practical implications:
  • Raises questions about constitutional guarantees versus lived reality of citizenship.
  • Highlights the role of private discrimination as a complement to state policies.
  • Had lasting effects on Black mobilization, community institutions, and regional development.

3) The Economic Development of the West

• Settlement on the Great Plains was encouraged by the federal government, but population growth was slow.
  • Early explorers called the region the “Great American Desert.”
  • Transcontinental railway lines encouraged settlement.
• Homestead Act (1862).
  • Settlers could buy 160-acre plots for a nominal fee.
  • About 400{,}000 homesteaders settled under the Act, though many abandoned their lands.
• Timber Culture Act (1873).
  • Allowed extra 160 acre plots for homesteaders who planted 40 acres of trees.
• Desert Land Act (1877).
  • Claimants could buy 640 acres at 1.25 per acre if portions of the land were irrigated within three years.
• All Plains territory organized as states by 1900 except for Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
• Mining provided the first great economic boom.
  • Gold discovered in 1858 in Pike’s Peak district of Colorado territory.
  • Gold discovered in 1859 at Washoe in Nevada.
  • Gold discovered in 1874 in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory.
• Copper discovery in the 1880s near Butte, Montana, leading to the growth of the Anaconda copper mine owned by William Clark.
• Cattle proved to be a major economic driver of Western growth.
  • By 1865, an estimated five million cattle on Texas ranges.
  • Long drives to railheads (Sedalia, Missouri; Abilene, Kansas) via routes like the Chisholm Trail.
  • Development of permanent ranches and farming settlements disrupted open ranges.
  • Widespread speculation led to overstocking and depletion of grasslands; two severe winters in the mid-1880s drastically reduced open-range cattle.
  • Over time, closed cattle ranches produced much more meat per head and became more efficient.
• The development of the West had a tremendous impact on American culture.
  • Romantic image of the cowboy and frontier life; literature celebrated rugged individualism separate from organized society.
  • Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis (1893) argued the American frontier fostered individualism and democracy, producing a distinctive American identity.
• Connections and implications:
  • Federal policy stimulated settlement and resource exploitation while shaping environmental and labor patterns.
  • The shift from open-range ranching to fenced, larger-scale operations mirrors broader industrialization trends.
  • The frontier myth reinforced national self-conception even as real populations faced displacement and conflict with Indigenous peoples.

4) The Dispersal of the Indigenous Tribes of the West

• A large number of Native American tribes populated the West.
  • In the Southwest, Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache tribes combined agricultural and nomadic lifestyles.
  • Displaced Eastern tribes populated the Oklahoma Territory.
  • Plains Indigenous tribes lived a nomadic life centered on buffalo hunting; multiple tribes divided into smaller bands with limited inter-tribal cooperation.
• US policy toward Indigenous peoples evolved throughout the nineteenth century.
  • The West of the Missouri River was traditionally viewed as a single “One Big Reservation,” but policy shifted toward treaties with individual tribes allocating specific lands.
  • Indian Peace Commission established in 1867; sought to move Plains tribes to two reservations in Oklahoma and the Dakota territories.
  • Massive corruption in the administration of government policy.
  • Buffalo destruction forced Plains tribes to resist encroachment; buffalo population declined from an estimated 15 million in 1865 to only a few thousand ten years later.
• Resistance by Plains tribes.
  • Sioux rebellion in Minnesota under Little Crow (killed 700 white settlers) and was subdued.
  • Massacre of Cheyenne at Sand Creek (Colorado) led by Black Kettle.
  • Encroachment into the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory sparked resistance led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull; Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876).
  • Tribal unity hindered by internal divisions, limiting a unified large-scale victory.
  • Nez Perce under Chief Joseph conducted a resistance campaign in 1877.
  • Apache Wars (1860s–1880s) culminated in Geronimo’s surrender in 1886.
  • Ghost Dance movement in the late 1880s; culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
• The Dawes Act (1887).
  • Abolished communal ownership of reservation lands.
  • Allotment of land to individuals: 160 acres to the head of a family, 80 acres to a single adult, 40 acres to a dependent child.
  • Adult landowners did not receive title to their land for twenty-five years.
  • Assimilation into American society underpinned this policy.
  • The Dawes Act ultimately failed to secure lasting change and was largely abandoned by World War I.
• Connections and implications:
  • Represented a shift from collective stewardship to individual land claims, facilitating settlements and revenue extraction by non-Indigenous interests.
  • Policy failures contributed to long-term poverty, legal disenfranchisement, and loss of Indigenous cultures and governance structures.
  • The displacement and violence against Indigenous communities had lasting social, political, and cultural consequences across generations.