Period 6: 1865-1900, The South, the West, Industrialization, and the Gilded Age

• This weakened the 14th amendment.

• The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (guaranteed all citizens, regardless of color, access to accommodations, theaters, public schools, churches, and cemeteries.) was declared unconstitutional.

• Declared that the 14th amendment prohibited only government (The States) violations of Civil Rights, not the denial of Civil Rights to individuals. This was because since it was a federal law, it could only effect the federal government.

• Case about segregated RxR cars in Louisiana

• The case declared that “separate but equal" accommodations for African Americans were constitutional.

• This led to separate schools for African Americans.

• Literacy tests & poll tax were made to deny blacks the right to franchise (Vote).

• The Grandfather Clause: Only people with relatives who voted before 1865 were exempt from the Literacy tests, this was to let poor whites still vote and not exclude them. 1865 was because that was when the 13th amendment (Universal Suffrage) was passed, meaning that very little blacks voted at that time.

• Booker T. Washington caIled for blacks to seek economic opportunities rather than political rights.

• “In all things purely social we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress"

• Booker T. Washington believed that if blacks were economic equals to whites, whites would view blacks differently.

• Black economic help.

• Accommodate white society.

• Vocational Education.

• Racial Solidarity.

• Opposed public political agitation.

• New South advocates supported a diverse economy.

• They championed the expansion of Southern Industry. While they still lagged behind, they were catching up.

• Redeemer governments supported the return of white conservatives to political power,

• They also supported the withdrawal of federal troops despite rises in KKK & Lynchings.

• African Americans who migrated to Kansas from the South were called exodusters.

• The 1st Transcontinental RxR was built in 1869

• 5 were built in the 19th century.

• The Irish in the East & the Chinese in the West helped build the RxR

• Affected buffalo & Great Plains Indians.

• Brought troops, farmers, miners & cattlemen to the Great Plains.

• Settlers built farms & range-fed cattle replaced the buffalo.

• Near extermination of buffalo (After farmers replaced them with cattle) doomed their nomadic way of life.

• The Indians were ravaged by disease.

• The economy of the region was transformed, so the Plains Indians had to redo their whole way of life.

• By Helen Hunt Jackson

• This book brought attention to the Native American Cause.

• Around public awareness of the federal government's low record of betraying the Native AmericansAmer.

• Goals: 1) attempt to reform governmental Native America. policy 2) Governments wished to assimilate Native Americans into American life by ending tribes as legal entities & eliminating tribal ownership of land (Private Property)

• Consequences: 1) Ended traditional Indian culture of tribal ownership of land 2) by 1900 the Native Americans lost 50% of their land from the previous 20 years. 3) Forced assimilation: The U.S. government’s policy for another 50 years in which they forced Native Americans to assimilate to American culture. 4) Indian Reorganization Act of 1934: Granted a new degree of autonomy to Native Americans in the United States, giving them greater control over their lands and allowing them to form legally recognized tribal governments.

• Sacred ritual expressing the return of buffalo & the vanishing of whites.

• 1890, the army tried to stop the ritual at Wounded Knee, afraid that the gathering of Native Americans would cause an uprising.

• 200 men, women, and children died at the battle.

• 1890, a frontier no longer existed, all of the unsettled areas in North America had been settled..

• The closing of the frontier influenced Fredrick Jackson Turner,to write "The Significance of the Frontier In American History."

• Frederick Jackson Taylor’s Book argued that cheap, unsettled land made American Society more Democratic. He believed that when people had a stake in society, they would be more nationalistic.

• A frontier helped shape a distinctive American Spirit of Democracy and egalitarian (Belief in human equality)

• A frontier created opportunities for Eastern Factories workers and immigrants as there were new opportunities

• Because there was a frontier, there was no hereditary landed aristocracy as land was ready to be used.

• Its main goal was to create a monopoly

• Vertical integration: When a company controls the means of production & distribution. Ex. Andrew Carnegie & U.S. steel.

• Horizontal integration: When a company controls all other  companies selling the same product.

• By 1900, monopolies & trusts influenced & controlled the American economy significantly. They also funneled their money into politics, becoming political machines.

• Corporations: Large systematic factories using machines & unskilled workers.

• Scientific management or Taylorism increased factory production while decreasing labor costs

• Corporations accumulated vast sums of investment capital

• Corporations used RxRs to develop the national market for goods.

• World Columbian Expo 1893 —showcased Amer. ind. dev.

• Horatio Alger Jr. Stories —examples of the idea of the Self-Made man.

• John Jacob Astor was a prime example of the self-made man, starting as a German immigrant, but rose to be the wealthiest person in the U.S.

• Immigrants, women, & children expanded the workforce.

• Machines replaced skilled artisans

• 3. Large bureaucratic corporations. dominated American economy

• 4. Corporations developed national & international markets for their goods.

• Founded by Terrace Powderly, they had 730k members by 1886.

• They mainly grew because of open membership, the industrializing American economy, & urban population growth.

• Skilled and semiskilled, women, immigrants, and African Americans were able to join this group. (But not Asians)

• They believed they could end conflict between labor & management, hopefully leading to a cooperative society in which laborers, NOT capitalists, owned the industry.

• 1886 Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago. It was a labor protest which erupted in violence after someone threw a bomb at police. The Knights of Labor were blamed for the occurrence, since they promoted anarchy. Their numbers would decline because of this event

• They embraced communism and were very radical

• Led by Mother Jones, Elizabeth Flynn, & Big Bill

• They wished to unite all laborers, including unskilled African Americans

• "An injury to one is an injury to all" , they wished to create "one big union”

• They embraced the Rhetoric of Class Conflict & endorsed violent tactics.

• This group never exceeded 150k members & collapsed after WWI (When the economy is doing well, people don’t care to join Unions. Plus the second red scare)

• They were led by Samuel L. Gompers, the leader of the Cigar Makers Union. 

• They consisted of skilled workers in Craft Unions.

• Their Bread & Butter issues: Higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. They were a nonviolent Union.

• Violent strikes: Homestead (1892) & Pullman (1894)

• A national depression led Pullman Palace Car Company to cut wages, but keep rents & prices up. 12k people lived in the factory town.

• The citizens of the Pullman Factory town halted a substantial portion of America RxR commerce in retaliation

• President Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to protest rail-carried mail, in reality he wanted to crush the strike.

• In the Homestead Strike, Carnegie Steel began to replace workers with machines, so the workers retaliated. Carnegie Steel hired Pinkerton Security Guards to stop the workers.

• Prior to 1880,  most immigrants came from Britain and Western Europe.

• In the 1880s, a new wave of immigrants came from South and East Europe such as from Italy, Russia, Poland, and Austria-Hungary

• These immigrants tended to settle in large cities in the Northeast & the Midwest.

• Very little went south, rathering to get factory jobs in the North

• This was the first time in U.S. history that a group what excluded based on their ethnic background

• This act stopped further Chinese Immigration

• Working-class Americans felt threatened by Chinese workers because they feared they “worked hard and complained less”.

• Support for this act was strong in California.

• Nativists originally opposed the Irish & German

• After the new wave of immigrants, nativists opposed the new Immigrants for the following reasons 1) Immigrants were Catholics & Jews 2) Immigrants spoke different languages & had different cultural traditions 3) They did not understand American political traditions (Easy to manipulate their votes) 4) Americans felt threatened because of the job competition (Skilled workers who went to the midwest)

• The belief that Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest in nature also applied to society.

• The wealthy used this to justify their success.

• They believed industrial and urban problems were a natural evolutionary process not controlled by man.

• Andrew Carnegie owned the U.S. Steel company

• He believed that the wealthy had a duty to serve society by funding social institutions rather than giving money to individuals.

• Carnegie donated over $350 million to libraries, schools, peace initiatives, & arts.

• Reform movement: They believed that christians had a responsibility to confront social problems

• Christian ministers were leaders in the movement, leading things like the Salvation Army.

• Realism, focused on the real aspects of society rather than the promise of prosperity or utopia.

• Edward Bellamy wrote “Looking Backwards: 2000-1887” which included the problems of industrial growth/ nationalism.

Ashcan School, a group of painters whose work focused on urban scenes. In that group was Jacob Riis, who exposed the conditions of the tenant slums.

• Farmers felt that the RxR used discriminatory rates to exploit farmers.

• Farmers felt that big business used high tariffs to exploit farmers.

• Farmers felt that the deflationary monetary policy used primarily hurt farmers.

• Farmers felt that corporations charged exorbitant prices for fertilizer & farm machinery.

• This group attempted to unite discontented farmers.

• This group attempted to improve farmers’ economic conditions.

• This group attempted to support the following: 1) Increased money supply with free & unlimited coinage for silver & gold (Since paper fluctuated a lot as it didn’t necessarily have value in itself, meanwhile gold and silver had a stable worth) 2) The Interstate Commerce Act of1887 to regulate RxR rates 3) the organization of cooperative marketing societies (Storing crops, so that they could have collateral. This removed banks as the middle-man) 4) and to support William Jennings Bryan (Cross of Gold speech) in 1896.

• Western & Southern farmers did not agree on political strategies.

• Racism divided white & black farmers.

• New immigrants created higher demand, leading to higher prices of agricultural products.

• Gold was found in the Yukon, increasing the gold supply and therefore easing credit.

• The Democratic Party absorbed the Populist program.

• William Jennings Bryan (Cross of Gold Speech) lost in 1896 to McKinley & the Republican Populists Party was absorbed by the Democrats.

• Sensationalized stories published by "yellow journalists" who used exaggerated stories to grab the reader's attention (Ex. Clickbait)

• A new naval policy promoted by Thayer-Mahan and Teddy Roosevelt (Talks about mimicking Britain naval power)

• European Imperialism in Africa made Americans feel as if they were falling behind. The Soviet Union was also imperializing.

• Social Darwinism created the idea that the U.S. had to educate the uneducated people.

• Idea: The U.S. was spreading moral improvement by bringing the blessings of civilization to less technologically advanced people.

• Causes: 1) The U.S.S. Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor. 2) Pulitzer and Hearst (Yellow Journalists) competed for readership, and their headlines and stories gained public support for the idea of Cuba being free from Spanish control.

• Territorial Acquisitions after the war: 1) Spain loses control over Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines. 2) The U.S. had a protectorate (A nation undet the defense of other nation) over Cuba, leading to imperialist foreign policy.

• The Debate over Annexing the Philippines: 1) The Anti-imperialist League opposed annexation because it went against the principles of self-determination and anti-colonialism. 2) Supporters of imperialism believed it was our moral responsibility to "civilize the uncivilized" and that the Philippines could be a valuable trading partner.

• Teddy Roosevelt feared that the Dominican Republic and other Latin American countries may default on their loans to Europe, provoking military intervention by Europe.

• Because of this fear, he added the Roosevelt Corollary to Monroe Doctrine to forestall European intervention.

• The Roosevelt Corollary expanded America’s role in Central America and the Caribbean.

• America had a role of international police power, used by Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson to send troops to Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Haiti.

• Their belief was to "Civilize the uncivilized."

• The use of economic investments to bolster American foreign policy.

• This was used in Asia and Latin America with little success.

• China was weakened by outside influences, Europeans created spheres of influence. They had political leverage and exclusive commercial privileges.

• Secretary of State John Hay was determined to protect American missionaries and commercial interests.

• Therefore, in 1899 Hay sent a letter to European nations with spheres to open access to China for American investment and commercial interests. He proposed that the nations should work together and not tax each other, but the European nations refused.

• The Open Door policy underscored America’s commitment to free trade and opposition to obstacles that thwarted international commerce.

• Boxer Rebellion: This was a Chinese uproar, hurting the foreign nations in China, They needed help from the U.S., leading to the acceptance of the Open-Door policy.