Reconstruction & West FC
Reconstruction Era
Winning the Peace
1. After the civil war, there were many questions over what to do with the free Blacks, how to reintegrate the Southern states into the Union, what to do with Jefferson Davis, and who would establish policy on Reconstruction.
2. The Southern way of life was ruined, as crops and farms were destroyed, $4 billion invested in slavery was gone, and physical landscape devastated. Still, some Southerners remained defiant. Especially in light of the fact that the North moved too slow regarding any form of punishment or retribution. Immediately following the war the South expected a harsh hand, but as time went by without one they slowly reverted back to old practices – such as white superiority.
3. At first, the freed Blacks faced a confusing situation, as many slave owners re-enslaved them again after Union troops left. Other planters resisted emancipation through legal means, citing that emancipation wasn’t valid until local or state courts declared it. Some slaves stayed with their owners out of a misplaced sense of loyalty while others let out their pen-up bitterness in their freedom, pillaging their former masters’ land, property, and even whipping them.
4. Ultimately, however, the slaves were afforded their freedom, with many of them taking to the roads to find new work, look for lost loved ones or to just move about.
5. The church became to the focus of the Black community in the years following the war.
6. Emancipation also meant education for Blacks, but despite the limited gains, they still faced severe institutionalized racism as in the form of black codes, laws denying them basic civil rights.
The Freedman’s Bureau
1. In order to train the unskilled and unlettered freed Blacks, the Freedman’s Bureau was set up on March 3, 1865; it was led by Union General Oliver O. Howard.
2. Through the Freedman’s Bureau, approximately 200,000 former slaves learned how to read, but the literacy gap was daunting. The Freedman’s Bureau was not as effective as hoped, as evidenced by increased hostility from whites and subjugation of former slaves. The bureau expired in 1872 after much criticism.
Andrew Johnson
1. Andrew Johnson came from very poor and humble beginnings, and yet rose to serve in Congress for many years (he was the only Confederate Congressman not to leave Congress when the rest of the South seceded).
2. Feared for his short temper and being a great fighter, he was a dogmatic champion of states’ rights and the Constitution. The decisions he made regarding the sectional controversy and his southern heritage, however, left him in a kind of political limbo were he never fully earned the trust of northerners and couldn’t regain the confidence of the South.
Reconstruction
1. Abraham Lincoln believed in reconciliation more so that retribution. And as he felt that the South had never legally withdrawn from the Union, restoration was to be relatively simple: the southern states could be reintegrated into the Union if and when 10% of its voters pledged an oath to the Union and acknowledged the emancipation of slaves; this became known as the Ten Percent Plan.
2. The Radical Republicans in the Congress feared that such a lenient plan would allow Southerners to continue as they had before – placing the former slaves back in bondage. The actions of southerners regarding the black codes already spoke to justify their fears. The Wade-Davis Bill, an alternative to the lenient 10% Plan, required that 50% of the states’ voters take oaths of allegiance, military districts be established throughout the south, and demanded stronger safeguards for emancipation, such as affording former slaves the right to vote. Lincoln – again, reconciliation, not retribution - pocket-vetoed the bill by letting it expire, and the 10% Plan remained in place.
3. It became clear that there were now two types of Republicans: the moderates, who shared the same views as Lincoln and the radicals, who believed the South should be harshly punished.
4. When Andrew Johnson assumed power after Lincoln’s assassination, the radicals moved to exercise more direct control, but Johnson thwarted them by maintaining Lincoln’s policy and issuing his own Reconstruction proclamation. Johnson’s Plan allowed for the disenfranchisement of certain leading Confederates; repudiated all Confederate debt; called upon southern states to repeal their respective secession ordinances and to ratify the 13th Amendment – the outlawing of slavery - prior to readmission to the Union.
Black Codes
1. In order to control the freed Blacks, many Southern states passed Black Codes, laws aimed at keeping the black freedman in submission. Former slaves who “jumped” their labor contracts, or walked off their jobs, were subject to penalties and fines; their wages were generally kept very low. The codes also forbade black freedman from serving on a jury and some even barred them from renting or leasing land. The former slaves could also be punished for “idleness” by being subjected to work on a chain gang.
2. Rendering a mockery of blacks newly won freedom, the Black Codes made many abolitionists – and radicals - question aloud whether the steep price of the Civil War had been worth it.
Congressional Reconstruction
1. By December, 1865, with southern states like Tennessee reentering the Union, their lack of regret, shame, appalled my Republicans. This was particularly true as the southern states began sending former Confederate officials to Congress, men such as Alexander Stephens, the former Vice President of the Confederacy. This so disgusted the Republicans that they refused to seat the new Congress.
2. During the war, without the Democrats, the Republicans had passed legislation that had favored the North, such as the Morrill Tariff, the Pacific Railroad Act, and the Homestead Act, and the Republicans didn’t want to give the power back to a political party that they blamed for the war. They also realized that the South would be stronger politically than before since Blacks now counted for a whole person instead of just 3/5 of one toward apportionment, meaning that their would be more southerners in the House of Representatives than before the war. Because of this, Radical Republicans argued that Northern and Southern Democrats might now join and take over Congress and the White House, institute their Black Codes over the nation, and defeat all that the Civil War gained.
4. On December 6, 1865, President Johnson declared that the South had satisfied all of the conditions needed, and that the Union was now restored.
Johnson Clashes with Congress
1. Johnson - who ardently blamed wealthy southern planters for the war, but now tried to assist the South’s working class in rebuilding - repeatedly vetoed Republican-passed bills, such as a bill extending the life of the Freedman’s Bureau, and he also vetoed the Civil Rights Bill, which conferred on blacks the privilege of American citizenship and struck at the Black Codes.
2. As Republicans gained control of Congress, they overrode Johnson’s vetoes by passing the bills over his veto through a 2/3 majority.
3. In the 14th Amendment, Republicans sought to instill the same ideas of the Civil Rights Bill: (1) All Blacks were American citizens, (2) If a state denied citizenship to Blacks, then it’s representatives in the Electoral College were lowered, (3) Former Confederates could not hold federal or state office, and (4) The federal debt was guaranteed while the Confederate one was repudiated.
4. The radicals were disappointed that Blacks weren’t given the right to vote, but all Republicans agreed that states wouldn’t be accepted back into the Union unless they ratified the 14th Amendment.
5. In 1866, Republicans, disagreeing with the President, would not allow Reconstruction to begin without the 14th Amendment, and as election time approached, Johnson, seeking to lower the amount of Republicans in Congress, began a series of ‘Round the Circle speeches. It was a mistake. As the audience heckled him and his ideas, he hurled back insults, gave “give ‘em hell” speeches, and generally denounced the radicals. In the process, Johnson gave Republicans more power in Congress than they had before—the opposite of his intention.
Republican Principles and Programs
1. The Republicans now enjoyed a veto-proof Congress with nearly unlimited control over Reconstruction, but moderates and radicals still couldn’t agree. Radicals were led in the Senate by Charles Sumner, long since recovered from his caning (see Sumner-Brooks Affair); and in the House, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, an early and vehement critic of President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policy and an advocate of treating Southern states during Reconstruction as "conquered provinces”
2. The radicals encouraged strong, sweeping action by the federal government to revolutionize the institutions and culture that bolstered white supremacy in the South. The measures they supported included the Fourteenth Amendment and an unsuccessful plan to confiscate plantations and redistribute the land to former slaves.
3. The Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867 divided the South into five military zones, temporarily disfranchised tens of thousands of former Confederates, and laid down new guidelines for the readmission of states. All states had to approve the 14th Amendment; and they had to guarantee full suffrage of all male former slaves. The 15th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1869, ultimately gave Black males the right to vote.
4. By 1870, the former Confederate states had complied with the standards of Reconstruction, and in 1877, the last of the states were given their home rule back, and Reconstruction ended.
The Realities of Radical Reconstruction in the South
1. Blacks began to organize politically, and their main vehicle was the Union League. It became a network of political clubs that educated members in their civic duties and campaigned for Republican candidates, and later even built Black churches and schools, represented Black grievances, and recruited militias to protect Blacks. Black women became involved, attending the parades and rallies of Black communities. Black men also began to hold political offices; men like Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce served in Congress (representing Mississippi).
4. Southern Whites hated this, blaming the North and those that would help them. “Scalawags,” were southerners accused of plundering treasuries and selling out the South; “Carpetbaggers,” were northerners accused of sleazily seeking power and profit in a now-desolate South.
The Ku Klux Klan
1. In response to these conditions, white supremacists founded the “Invisible Empire of the South,” or Ku Klux Klan, in Tennessee in 1866—an organization devoted to restoring white rule in the south through tactics such as intimidation of blacks who sought to vote or seek jobs, often resorting to violence. The KKK sought to undermine much of what Reconstruction and the abolitionists before them had accomplished.
Johnson’s Impeachment
1. Radicals, angry with President Johnson for a myriad of reasons, decided to force him out of office.
2. In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which provided that the president had to secure the consent of the Senate before removing his appointees once they had been approved by the Senate (one reason was to keep Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a Republican sympathizer, in office). Johnson, however, regardless of the law, dismissed Stanton early in 1868, and the Republicans moved to impeach him. At the trial, Johnson’s lawyers refused to allow him to testify, arguing rather that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional and that Johnson was acting under the Constitution, not the law.
2. On May 16, 1868, Johnson was acquitted of all charges by a single vote, as seven Republican senators with consciences voted “not-guilty” (those seven never secured a political office against afterwards).
3. Die-hard radicals were infuriated by the acquittal, but many politicians feared establishing a precedent of removing the president through impeachment.
Reconstruction – The aftermath
1. Many Southerners regarded Reconstruction as worse than the war itself, as they resented the upending of their social and racial system. But the radicals were on to something and had they been allowed to finish the job, many of the horrible events involving race in this country that came after may have been avoided.
WESTWARD EXPANSION
THE FRONTIER HAS GONE:
After the 1890 population count, the superintendent of the census noted that he could no longer locate a continuous frontier line beyond which population thinned out to fewer than two per square mile. This fact inspired the historian Frederick Jackson Turner to develop his influential Frontier Thesis, first outlined in his paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History, delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893. "The existence of an area of free land," Turner wrote, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explains American development. The frontier had shaped the national character in fundamental ways:
"It was to the frontier [that] the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom - these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier.
Turner concluded that, "four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years under the Constitution, the frontier has gone and with its going has closed the first period of American history." Turner's "frontier thesis" guided several generations of scholars and students in their understanding of the distinctive characteristics of American history. However, the frontier experience as described by Turner exaggerated the homogenizing effect of the frontier environment and virtually ignored the role of women, blacks, Indians, Mormons, Hispanics, and Asians in shaping the diverse human geography of the western U.S. In 1893, Turner felt that the frontier experience was essentially over. Yet, in many respects that region has retained the qualities associated with the rush for land, gold, timber, and water rights during the post Civil War decades.
LAND-GRANT ACTS:
Homestead Act (1862)
The Republican Party made the demand for free homesteads a major plank in the 1860 election. With the election of Lincoln and the secession of the South, the passage of a homestead act was ensured. The central premise of the Homestead Act of 1862 was simple: Any family head or adult male who was a citizen or who had filed a declaration to become one could claim 160 acres of surveyed land in the public domain for a small registration fee and a promise to live there for five years. There were, however:
- Abuses
- Shortcomings
- Land Speculators
- Particularly with regard to the Desert Land Act.
In spite of the act's failures, westward migration was still popular. Five years after the passage of the Homestead Act, Horace Greeley, the editor of New York’s Herald-Tribune, still advised workers to "Go West!" Strike off "into the broad, free West", Greeley said, and "make yourself a farm from Uncle Sam's generous domain, you will crowd nobody, starve nobody, and ... neither you nor your children need evermore beg for something to do." [Do you think that Native Americans would agree with this statement?] They listened and regardless of the hardships they went west – for what else did many of these folks, especially immigrants, have? Because the government and railroads owned the best lands, however, most settlers were forced to acquire their land outright through purchase from them. The purchase of land and start-up costs sent many farmers into debt. Some eventually mortgaged their property and many ultimately lost it.
Morrill Land Grant Act (1862)
Gave states 30,000 acres of public land, per senator and representative, as a subside to finance land-grant colleges offering education to ordinary citizens in practical skills such as agriculture, engineering, and military science. Florida Agricultural College (University of Florida), Clemson, Pennsylvania State, Iowa State, Auburn, Cornell, and Michigan State, are all examples of land grant colleges, or cow colleges as the were derogatorily described. While initially a northern venture, southern states became eligible in the post civil war years and benefited greatly from this. The state often had the option to either build new schools or add the designated programs to the existing state school. At all land grant schools, male students had to take two years of ROTC; however, this was dropped during the Vietnam era (class discrimination?). It was the most significant higher education legislation ever offered.
Second Morrill Act (1890) Under what is called the Second Morrill Act of 1890, states that chose to open a second land-grant university to serve Black students are required to provide a fair distribution of state funds between their 1862 and 1890 land-grant universities. The State of Florida already had the University of Florida, and now opened the Florida Agriculture & Mechanical University (FAMU).
Desert Land Act (1877)
The Desert Land Act allowed homesteaders to buy 640 acres at $1.25 per acre if they promised to irrigate it. Few settlers could afford the expense of irrigation, however, and speculators moved in, sometimes fulfilling the promise to irrigate by throwing out a bucket of water.
Timber Culture Act (1873)
The Timber Culture Act allotted settlers an additional 160 acres of land in return for planting and cultivating 40 acres of trees. The new forests, Congress hoped, would improve the weather and provide a source of fencing and fuel. Because residence was not required, and because tree planting could not be assessed for at least thirteen years, speculators could file several claims at once, then resale them without having planted a tree.
TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD
During the congressional debate regarding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, broad support emerged for a transcontinental railroad: Northern vs. Southern route; Gadsden Purchase; Kansas/Nebraska Act
Post war industrial economics emphasized the development of railroads. Railroads were the first big business. They opened the West, connected raw materials to factories and markets, and in doing so created a national market. At the same time they were themselves gigantic markets for iron, steel, and lumber. After the Civil War, railroad mileage grew from 30,600 in 1862 to 199,000 in 1900. The transcontinental railways were the most spectacular. They served the national purpose of binding the country together and so received generous government support.
The Pacific Railway Act (1862) authorized a north-central route, to be built by the Union Pacific Railroad westward from Omaha and the Central Pacific Railroad eastward from Sacramento. As amended in 1864, the act donated to these two corporations’ twenty sections of land per mile of track, in alternating blocs of railroad and government property, and loans of $16,000 to $48,000 per mile, depending on the difficulty of the terrain.
Both railroads began construction during the Civil War, but most of all the work was done after 1865. The Union Pacific pushed across the plains at a rapid pace, avoiding the Rockies by going through Evans Pass in Wyoming. The work crews, with large numbers of ex-soldiers, and Irish immigrants as laborers, had to cope with bad roads, water shortages, extreme weather, and Indians. The moveable encampments with their peddlers, gamblers, and prostitutes were aptly dubbed "Hell on Wheels." Construction was hasty and much of it so flimsy that it had to be redone later.
The Central Pacific was organized and dominated by the "Big Four," Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland Stanford, Sacramento businessmen who all had a major impact on California's development. Leland Stanford was elected governor of the state in 1862. The Central Pacific crews were mainly newly arrived Chinese immigrants from the region around Canton on the Southeast coast. Made destitute by the mid-century economic and political collapse in south China, and lured first by the California gold rush and then by railroad jobs, thousands of Chinese migrated to America, raising their numbers in the U.S. from 7,500 in 1850 to 105,000 in 1880. Most of these laborers were single males intent upon accumulating money and then returning to their homeland, where they could then afford to marry and buy land. Their temporary status and dream of a good life back in China made them more willing than Americans to endure the dangerous working conditions and low pay of railroad work. Many Chinese died on the job.
Fifty-seven miles east of Sacramento, the construction crews of the Central Pacific rose into the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, slowing work considerably; yet eventually they cut through. The Union Pacific had built 1,086 miles to the Central Pacific's 689 when the race ended at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. Leland Stanford drove a gold spike symbolizing completion as the telegraph lines informed the nation.
It was twelve years before the next transcontinental was completed. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe made contact with the Southern Pacific at Needles in southern California. The Santa Fe ultimately fed on to San Diego by 1884. Meanwhile, the Southern Pacific, which had absorbed the Central Pacific, built on by way of Yuma, AZ to El Paso, TX in 1882, where it made connections to St. Louis and New Orleans. To the north, the Northern Pacific had connected Lake Superior with Portland by 1883.
THE INTERNAL EMPIRE:
After the fur traders, the first white settlers in the west were miners. Discoveries of gold and silver led to large scale migration. Most of the fortune seekers left without riches, but mines laid the basis for the new economy and interim government as well as establishing the first white communities.
Mormons fled east and settled in Utah where by 1900 then numbered more than 200,000. Mormons shared land and water as they built agricultural communities. A series of clashes between Mormons and the federal government over polygamy led Mormon leaders to ultimately renounce the practice. Mormon society soon resembled the individualistic east the original settlers had sought to escape.
The Southwest saw a series of clashes between Anglos and Mexicans over control of the land. The major gist of the problem involved American settlers moving into areas traditionally owned my Mexicans of Spanish Colonial descent and claiming title to these lands. In accordance with Manifest Destiny, and as with the Native Americans, many Mexicans were forced either legally or physically off of their land.
American Holocaust:
Widespread violence marked Anglo-Native relations on the Great Plains. The various tribes of Plains Indians were diverse. The Cheyenne practiced small-scale agriculture and horse trading and relocated frequently. Plains Indians such as the Sioux, mounted horses which were a legacy of the Spaniards, relied on the buffalo for food, and from their hides, clothing and shelter. In a number of disputes, government policy sought to pressure Indians to accept reservations and become self-sufficient farmers. Some accepted, but many hunting peoples resisted. The elimination of the buffalo destroyed the Plains Indians' ability to resist white pressure to go to the reservations and accept dependency. But clashes erupted when white settlers violated such treaties. From the early 1860s to the late 1870s, the frontier was ablaze with Indian wars. The first serious trouble developed in Minnesota, in 1862, when a band of Sioux, aroused by recent land cessions, killed 5 whites. Some of the Sioux fled farther west, but others remained, wreaking havoc on the frontier, killing or capturing some 1,000 whites until the militia’s overwhelming force drove them back and inflicted devastating revenge. Out of 400 Indians captured, 300 were sentenced to death and eventually 38 were hanged in a mass execution the day after Christmas, 1862.
In Colorado, where chiefs of the Cheyenne and Arapaho accepted a treaty banishing them westward, protesting braves began sporadic raids on the trails and mining camps. In 1864 the territorial governor persuaded most of the warring Indians to gather at Fort Lyon on Sand Creek, where they were promised protection. Despite this promise, Colonel J. M. Chivington ordered his militia to attack an Indian camp. While flying the American flag and a white flag of truce, Chivington’s men slaughtered 450 peaceful Indians - men, women, children. General Nelson A. Miles called it "the foulest and most unjustifiable crime in the annals of America." Chivington, a former Methodist minister who cared little for the souls of red folk, later exhibited his personal collection of 100 scalps in Denver.
In 1874 trouble began brewing again in the North. General George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills, accompanied by gold seekers, who began to find what they were looking for. Miners soon filtered into Sioux hunting grounds despite promises by the government that the army would keep them out. Yet while the army did little to protect the Indian lands, when ordered to move against wandering bands of Sioux hunting on the range according to their treaty rights (1867 treaty), they moved vigorously. In 1876, after several indecisive encounters, Custer found the main encampment of Sioux and their Cheyenne allies on the Little Big Horn River in Montana. Separated from the main body of his men Custer and a detachment of 200 became surrounded by a body of warriors numbering about 2,500 and annihilated. But the Battle of Little Big Horn proved only an isolated incident in this war. Instead of following up their victory, the Indians threw away their advantage in celebration and renewed hunting. When the army regained the offensive, the Indians began to melt away in to wilderness. Chief Sitting Bull escaped to Canada, only to return to the Sioux reservation several years later. Crazy Horse was captured and murdered by military guard. The remaining Sioux were forced to give up their hunting grounds and gold fields in return for payments.
In the Rockies and westward the same story of hopeless resistance was repeated. In Idaho the peaceful Nez Perce finally refused to surrender lands along the Salmon River. Chief Joseph tried to avoid war, but when some unruly braves began to fight, he was forced to direct a masterful campaign and against overwhelming odds, one of the most spectacular feats in the history of Indian warfare. After a retreat of 1,500 miles, through mountains and plains, across the Yellowstone region and through the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, Chief Joseph and his followers were finally caught thirty miles short of the Canadian border, and exiled to Oklahoma. To many, the heroic Chief Joseph embodied the image of native nobility. He maintained strict discipline among his followers, allowed no scalping or outrages against civilians, bought supplies which he could have confiscated, and kept his dignity to the end. His speech of surrender was an epitaph to the warrior’s last stand:
I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed.... The old men are all dead....I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find....Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.
A generation of Indian Wars came to an end in 1886 with the capture of Geronimo, a chief of Chiricahua Apaches, who had fought encroachments in the desert southwest for fifteen years. But there was one more tragic epilogue. Late in 1888 Wovoka [Jack Wilson], a Paiute in western Nevada, fell ill and in a delirium imagined he had visited the spirit world where he learned of a deliverer coming to rescue the Indians and restore their lands. To hasten the day, he said, they had to take up a ceremonial dance at each new moon. Known as the Ghost Dance, this craze fed upon old legends of a coming Messiah and spread rapidly. In 1890 the Sioux took it up with such fervor that it alarmed white authorities. An effort to arrest Sitting Bull led to his death and shortly afterward, on December 29, 1890, a bloodbath at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. An accidental rifle discharge led nervous soldiers to fire into a group of Indians who had come to surrender. Nearly 200 Indians and 25 soldiers died in the so-called "Battle of Wounded Knee." The western Indian Wars had ended with characteristic brutality.
Most frontiersmen had little tolerance for moralizing on the Indian question. Easterners, however, who were far removed from frontier danger, took a different view. Helen Hunt Jackson, a novelist and poet, focused attention on the Indian cause in A Century of Dishonor (1881), which struck a popular chord just as Uncle Tom's Cabin had done for slavery. Jackson’s book moved people to get off of the fence on the issue of Native American relations, and during a groundswell for progressive reform.
THE CATTLE INDUSTRY
Tremendous profits awaited those who could transport cattle from the range in Texas to eastern markets. For many years wild cattle competed with buffalo in the Spanish borderlands. Natural selection and contact with Anglo scrub cattle produced the Texas Longhorn; lean and rangy, they were noted more for speed and endurance than for choice steaks. During the twenty years after the Civil War some 40,000 cowboys roamed the Great Plains, rounding up herds for $30 a month and living under harsh conditions. Contrary to what popular culture reflects, the Cowboy labor force was ethnically diverse. Thirty percent were either Mexican or African-American and hundreds were Indians. There were as many as 5,000 African-American cowboys serving in every capacity.
Aaron Ashworth was a free black who owned a ranch in Texas and 2,500 head of cattle.
Cherokee Bill was a biracial/mulatto [Indian/Black] born in Texas. Upon killing his brother-in-law at the age of 14, Cherokee became a gun for hire, killing casually and inspiring fear. He became so successful at killing that he grew careless and was captured. He was subsequently tried, convicted and sentenced to die. At the hanging, when was asked if he had any last words, he bluntly replied, No, I came to die.
Nat Love was an outstanding cowboy exhibiting skill in both riding and marksmanship. He could also speak Spanish and was knowledgeable in reading brands, a valuable trade. In 1876 Nat Love became known as "Deadwood Dick" after winning a riding, roping, and shooting [pistol and rifle] championship in Deadwood, South Dakota. In 1907 Nat published his autobiography, The Life and Times of Deadwood Dick. He went on to travel with various Wild West shows, becoming a popular draw to audiences.
Few women worked on the open range, though some 50,000 women worked as prostitutes in the West during the second half of the 19th century. Their life was harsh, even though such Anglo women who were paid better than their minority counterparts.
Stagecoach Mary was an African-American woman living in Montana as a restaurant owner, stagecoach driver, laundress; she was also good with guns. She had to be; personal violence was commonplace in the cattle towns and mining camps. During the 1870s range wars turned violent when farmers, sheep ranchers, and cattle ranchers battled over the same land. By the mid-1880s the cattle drives ended due to overstocking and a turn in the weather. (Read from Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, "Interlude: Winter of Blue Snow, 1886-1887."
But the legend of the west continued on, encouraged by books such as Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902), in which the hero utters the famous line: "When you call me that, smile!"
FARMING COMMUNITIES ON THE PLAINS
Prior to the Civil War many Americans viewed the Great Plains as a great American desert. Transportation and technological improvements helped open the land to white settlement. Over 2 million immigrants, many from northern and central Europe, where weather conditions were even more severe, helped to settle the region. Many groups of immigrants formed their own tight-knit communities; native-born settlers were much more individualistic and mobile and less given to community building. Nevertheless communities developed in towns along railroads. Family ties and fraternal societies helped to build a close community. Farm families survived by having all members of the family participate in the difficult work. Neighbors would sometimes cooperate on common projects and barter surplus goods and labor. Better roads and postal service would ease the sense of isolation that made this cooperation so necessary. Still, farming remained a hard life, not al all the Garden of Eden imagined by romantics.
THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE
The West and its people came to represent something special about the American landscape. Writers described in great detail the wonder of nature's majesty. The federal government, under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, created national parks [Yosemite, Yellowstone…] and sent a team of scientists and photographers to record the region's beauty. Landscape painters from the Rocky Mountain School, such as Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, piqued the public's interest in the West with their rugged portrayals of the noble savage and the bold cowboy.
The Bone Wars, taking place in the late 19th Century, and fought primarily between bone hunters O.C. Marsh and Edward Cope, took paleontology, which had been viewed as a hobby for wealthy gentleman, and turned it into a recognized science. (O.C. Marsh himself was appointed to the first University Chair in Paleontology at Yale.) A fierce competition fought mostly in the American West, these battles between Marsh and Cope unearthed many species of dinosaurs that were previously not known to exist. Triceratops, Allosaurus, Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus, all famous in the own right today, had never been imagined, much less seen before this time.
Marsh and Cope brought back to the east tons of fossils, providing proof positive that these magnificent creatures had once existed. The media coverage was fantastic! This competition did have its problems, mostly in the way that the two men went after each other, doing whatever they could to discredit one another. Had Marsh and Cope, who at one time were friendly with each other, served more as allies rather than as jealous competitors, more fossils would have been recovered and more research conducted.
The Bone War resulted in fortunes being spent, reputations ruined, and fossils wasted. Perhaps their greatest crime was demolishing bones, rather than allowing the other to find them. In doing so they destroyed each other, one mostly discredited, the other made poor. What should not be forgotten, however, was the wealth of new science that these two men produced and the impact felt on science because of it.