Epic Study Guide

1865-1900 Test

Groups A-C

Group A

Three results of the North’s victory:1. A society based on mass labor and mass consumption forms.2. Steam power begins to replace water power.3. Machines driven by steam engines supplant traditional hard labor in factories and on

farms.

Three changes in the nature of labor:1. Machines displace most of the hand labor previously required in manufacturing.2. Independent, skilled handcraftsmen become obsolete, unable to compete with machines

operated by semiskilled laborers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.3. The machines, with great cost/high efficiency, are seen by owners as far more valuable

and useful than the workers who tend them.

A Cause of the Urban Migration: Great numbers of men, women, and children, both native born and foreign, flocked to American cities, drawn by hopes for steady factory work and high factory pay.

Two Political changes: As more people of the urban classes sought and found power at the polls, the centers of political power shifted.

1. Traditional political alliances weakened. 2. New political groups emerged, taking their power from, and proclaiming their devotion to

the laboring classes.

William “Boss” Tweed: Confused and ignorant voters, who are new to the ballot box, elected big-city bosses and their henchmen who flourished on kickbacks and fraud, boldly collected their boodle, and scoffed at the law. In six years, during the 1860’s and 1870’s, New York’s William “Boss” Tweed and his “Tweed Ring” of municipal crooks cost the city of New York an estimated $200m.

Grant’s presidency: During Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency from 1869-1877, the crimes of high federal officials were exposed in scandals unequaled in the history of the United States. The elections of Grant in protecting his political cronies and ignoring their blatant misdeeds led many Americans to conclude that the President of the United States was himself a common thief. Never before had American government, at all levels, seemed so overrun with crooks.

Examples of National Government’s expanded power:1. The first national conscription laws were created.2. The first federal income taxes were levied.

3. The first national currency was issued.The Thirteenth Amendment (1865): Abolishes slavery in the United States.

Two examples of the end of isolation:1. Coast-to-coast overland mail service begins in 1858.2. The cross-country mail time is cut in half two years later with the Pony Express.

Two examples of the communications revolution:1. The invention of the Telegraph.2. The invention of the Telephone.

Railroads: Unites the United States. The first railroad, from Baltimore to Ohio, begins in 1830 with 13 miles of track. Five years later, railroad mileage exceeds 74,000 miles, and the U.S has the most extensive railroad system in the world.

The Transcontinental Railroad: The railroad that crosses the U.S.

Nationwide retail organizations: Meant to undersell local shopkeepers. The clothing, household goods, and farm equipment once made locally by costly handwork is replaced by inexpensive, mass-produced goods made from standardized patterns in centralized factories.

Causes of the ruin of Native-American culture: 1. The destruction of the buffalo.2. The white man’s land hunger.3. The white man’s gold fever.4. The white man’s whiskey.5. The white man’s diseases.

Examples of the age of industry:1. An age of steel, steam, electricity, and oil.2. Steel production in the U.S. increases more than 600x – steel becomes nations dominant

industry.3. A/C introduced in 1886.4. Incandescent lamps invented – powered by electricity from giant, steam driven dynamos.5. Oil lamps now filled with kerosene /American petroleum industry begins.6. With it comes the invention of the automobile.

Reconstruction Acts: A stringent series of acts by the U.S. government to force it’s will upon the South and to protect black freed-men. Voting rights are established for blacks, along with the right to testify in courts, serve on juries, own property, and hold public office.

Cause of the erosion of Reconstruction: With the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal from the South of the last federal occupying troops, most of the newly won rights for blacks become eroded.

Group B

Measures that re-established white supremacy:1. Poll taxes and literacy tests were legalized and used to disqualify black voters.2. Separate and unequal schools and public facilities were created, and legal rights were

denied in both the North and South.

Causes of immigration: Foreigners were beckoned by the American promise of jobs and political freedom.

Causes of the demand for widespread public education: Large-scale immigration and technical advancements in industry and agriculture increased the need for literacy, creating a demand for widespread public education.

Morrill Act of 1862: Millions of acres of federal land were given to the states for the establishment of public “land-grant” universities for “the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes”.

Gingerbread Era of American design: Rising from the increased wealth and the desire for its conspicuous display, the Gingerbread Era’s prime function was to attract attention. American millionaires built Gothic and Romanesque mansions and decorated them with towers, domes, columns, stained-glass windows, and ornamental gimcracks of wood and iron.

Examples of America’s cultural dependence on Europe:1. Americans remained culturally dependent on Europe for drama and music.2. Touring English actors presented European plays and popular European novels.3. Symphony orchestras limited their repertoires almost wholly to European music.

Folk songs and Negro spirituals: America’s greatest contributions to the world of music remained in its folk songs and its Negro spirituals.

Thomas Eakins: A painter who realistically portrayed the America he saw around him and who urged his students “to remain in America, to peer deeper into the heart of American life.”

Entertainments for the mass of the people: The mass of the people in America sought and found their entertainment in circuses, in vaudeville shows, in the new professional sports, and, after the 1890’s, in motion-picture theatres named ‘nickelodeons’, after their five-cent admission fee.

New York: As New England’s cultural dominance waned, New York replaced Boston as the nation’s literary center, drawing letters from New England, the South, and the West to the publishing houses and periodicals of the nation’s largest city.

Causes of the rise of periodicals:1. Technical improvements in printing.

2. Lower costs for paper.3. The rise of national corporations that could pour money into newspaper and magazine

advertisements.

Realism: Influenced by such Europeans as Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, America’s most noteworthy new authors established a literature of realism.

Local color literature: Realism first appeared in the United States in the literature of local color, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things immediately observable: the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America.

Naturalism: At the end of the century came a generation of writers whose ideas of the workings of the universe and whose perception of societies disorders led them to naturalism, a new and harsher realism. America’s literary naturalists scorned the idea that literature should present comforting moral truths. Instead, naturalist writers attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were dominated by their environment and heredity.

Forces that shaped naturalism: Naturalism had come from Europe. In America it had been shaped by the Civil War, by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age, and by the disturbing teachings of Charles Darwin.

What naturalistic writers wrote: They wrote detailed descriptions of the lives and of the downtrodden and of the abnormal; they offered frank treatment of human passion and sexuality; they portrayed men and women overwhelmed by the blind forces of nature.

Group C

Andrew Johnson: Lincolns successor; moderate democrat. Was fine with the idea that the South be readmitted on one condition; that they ratify the 13th amendment.

Radical Republicans:1. Thad Stephens (Pennsylvania)2. Ben Wade (Ohio)3. Charles Sumner (Massachusetts)4. Wanted revenge on the south; payback for the bloodshed they caused. They also wanted

power to control the congress, like the power they had when the southern democrats were gone in the Civil War.

Civil Rights Act of 1866:1. Declares that blacks are citizens.2. Denies the states’ rights to restrict blacks from voting.

Reconstruction Acts:1. Divide the South into military regions with Generals.2. The South can return to the U.S. if:

a. They adopt a constitution that allows blacks to vote.b. They accept the 14th amendment making blacks citizens, and we’ll punish states not

allowing blacks to vote.

Causes of Johnson’s impeachment:1. The radical republicans want to make him powerless.2. He tries to dismiss war secretary Edwin Stanton.3. Edwin is a radical republican ally.4. He violated the “tenure of office act”, which states that the President may not dismiss a

senate appointed individual without consenting the Senate first.

Reconstruction’s positive results:1. Black political power.2. Passage of the 15th amendment (race as a voting condition ends).

Corruption of power in Reconstruction:1. Blacks are uneducated and illiterate, and unskilled in constitutional government. The

south takes advantage of this.

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags: They seem guilty of political corruption. The carpet baggers are middle class professionals who go south for opportunities. The scalawags are white republicans, a nickname slapped on them by democrats.

Sharecropping: It’s the new slavery, everyone! Here’s how its done. The attempt to distribute and sell land to blacks fails, because they have no money. The South takes advantage by:

1. Allowing the black’s to work on the land as ‘tenant famers’, and splits the crops with the owner.

2. Owner supplies the blacks with seed and supplies payable with crops.3. The blacks are in perpetual debt to the land owner, which is handed down generation

after generation.

Lack of capital: Northern banks have money, but are Republican. They invest in the building of western railroads instead of rebuilding the south.

Ku Klux Klan (1867): With the blacks new political power, the whites who don’t like them aren’t very happy. This causes a white backlash. They form paramilitary societies to maintain white supremacy. The members are former commanders, soldiers, and leaders of the confederacy. Ironically, other members include churchmen. They use lynching’s and beatings and burnings..Causes of Western Indians losing their land:

1. The War of 1812.2. Manifest Destiny (The U.S. is destined to expand, it’s God’s will).3. The Mexican War.4. Gold rushes in California and Colorado.5. Public/Private enterprise.

6. The breaking of EVERY. TREATY.

Most powerful surviving tribes:1. Sioux2. Hunkpoppas3. Cheyenne (Wyoming and Colorado)

Results of Sioux resistance to opening the Bozeman Trail: Results in a treaty, which ends fighting, puts Indians on reservations run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (which are corrupt bastards).

Why the Sioux renewed fighting: The Sioux are ordered off the reservations later when gold is discovered in the black hills.

Groups D-F

Group D

Custer’s last stand (1876): – Big Horn River, Custer meets a Sioux-Cheyenne force, led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. He loses. This is the Indians last victory. Propaganda uses this battle to portray the Indians as blood thirsty.

The army’s mopping-up battles: The armies hunt down left over Sioux. They fight and beat Chief Joseph and the Nez Purse, as well as Geronimo and the Apaches.

Wovoka (1888): – A Paiute who starts “The Ghost Dance” movement:1. A religious thing that teaches that the world will end, Indians will inherit it, and

everything white will be rejected.2. Plains, Northwest, and Southwest Indians adopt it. They believe that their ghost shirts

will stop white bullets. They are wrong.

Wounded Knee Massacre:?

Cowboys (1867-1887): Portrayed as many things; moved the Texas longhorn steers to depots in Kansas City, Cheyenne, Dodge City, and Abalene.

Causes of the Wild West fading:1. Cattle raising becomes big business; the cattlemen discover you can raise steers in the

Northern plains.2. They begin using barbed wire in 1874, which allows them to fence in large land areas.

Cause of government corruption: Federal Government is giving land to railroad companies to reach the West. Called the Transcontinental Railroad, this causes schemes to cheat the treasury.

Credit Mobilier Scandal (1872): Oakes Aimes, a Massachusetts congressman, creates Credit Mobilier, and bribes federal officials with company stock to award him all construction contracts. He also charges $94 million for work worth only $44 million.

A second example of transcontinental railroad corruption: Lee Stanford, Central Pacific Railroad; he ignores good construction principles, and thousands of workers die. Towns bribe railroads with land, because having a railroad go through them makes them a REAL town, and would really help them.

Bureau of Indian Affairs: A corrupt bureau, they use their money as kickbacks, paid to officials. Reservation Indians starve due to the lack of food.

Robber Barons: They make theft look and sound like a business organization. They invent “Trusts”, and use railroads to get rich. Who wouldn’t trust something called a “Trust”?

Cornelius Vanderbilt: Uses graft and bribery to make the New York Central the largest railroad.

Jay Gould: Builds a Southwest railroad empire.

Jay Gould’s gold scheme: In 1869, he fools President Grant into stopping gold sales to drive up the price of gold. Grant catches on and releases $4m in gold. This causes the gold price to fall, the stock market panics, and a depression hits. Railroads almost go bankrupt.

J.P. Morgan: A banker and financer. He has a small group of men controlling the railroads by 1900 so they can set and control the rates.

Group E

Andrew Carnegie: Owner of U.S. Steel. Improves steel production. Wants to control the steel market. Violently anti-union.

Henry Clay Frick (1892): – A manager of the Homestead Pennsylvania Plant of U.S. Steel. He demands a pay cut of his workers and wants to end the union. The workers refuse, and he fires them. He then hires strikebreakers and Pinkerton guards. The guards fight the strikers and 20 strikers die. The Pinkerton guards don’t do well enough, so Frick calls the state militia. Alexander Berkman tries to shoot Frick, but only wounds him. Militia keeps the plant producing, and the union falls. All during this, Carnegie (the owner) gets off free, because he’s in Scotland on vacation.

John D. Rockefeller (1870): – Forms Standard Oil. He bribes legislatures and makes secret deals with railroads to get good rates. He either bribes his rivals or sabotages them, then he buys them out. By 1879, Standard has 98% of the nations refining capacity. He does this when oil is becoming valued in society.

Samuel Dodd (1899): - A Rockefeller lawyer, Dodd finds a way to avoid state laws governing corporations. The law he wants to get around is the Anti-Monopoly laws. He creates a trust run by a board of trustees – issues trust certificates.

Results of trusts:1. The idea is used in other industries; by the 1890’s, 5,000 companies formed into 3,000

trusts.2. Artificially high prices.3. No competition.4. Low workers wages.

Reasons trusts continued:1. The Interstate Commerce Commission was ineffective.2. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which protects trade against unlawful restraint, was

weakened by the Supreme Court, which rules that a company must be a manufacturing monopoly, not a commerce monopoly, to apply. This makes them immune to the law.

3. The Supreme Court also rules that the law can be used against striking railroad workers, because if they aren’t working, they’re restricting trade.

Basic cause of labor protests: Poverty. This is worsened by 19th century depressions.

Why labor didn’t organize sooner:1. The power of businesses and banks working with state and federal governments.2. It was a divide and conquer thing; ethnic groups disliked each other.3. Workers occupied with competing jobs ignore the industry itself.

Lynn, Massachusetts strike (1860): Shoe workers with wage concessions. This was the American laborers first victory.

The Molly Maguires (1875): Irish coal miners in Pennsylvania organize the Molly Maguires (a terrorist group).

Nationwide railroad strikes (1877): Caused by wage cuts. Makes the idea of organized labor take root.

Knights of Labor (1869): Has potential and negotiating power. Makes mistake in 1886 when it gets involved in a strike at the McCormick Reaper Factory in Chicago.

Haymarket Square Bombing: A result of the strike at the McCormick Reaper Factory in Chicago, riots and bombing in Haymarket Square are blamed on anarchists. When associated with anarchists, in 1890, the Knights of Labor fall.

Eugene Debs: Organized the militant American Railway Union, and started a national strike against the Pullman Car Company. When the Supreme Court said the strike interfered with

federal mail., President Grover Cleveland had troop suppress the strike, causing a battle in Chicago. Debs was jailed.

Samuel Gompers: Organized the American Federation of Labor, a collection of skilled craft unions, and used the strike effectively to win shorter work days and weeks, mine safety reforms, and collective bargaining rights. The AFL’s one fault was it did not admit blacks.

Group F

Basic causes of farm protests: Western and Southern small farmers were victims of:1. Eastern banks controlling credit.2. Manufacturing monopolies controlling machinery prices.3. Eastern rail trusts setting freight prices.4. Depression lowering land values and crop prices.

Granges: Local farmers’ organizations with political power to press reforms.

Southern black and white farmers: Seeing their common problems and interests, formed an alliance with city workers.

Populist party: Formed from Grangers and Knights remnants, called for the national ownership of rails, telephone and telegraph systems; system of keeping nonperishable goods off the market, and graduated income tax. Southern democrats undermined the Populists by heightening racial fears among urban workers. Despite a poor showing in the 1892 election, the Populists made strides in Farm Belt states.

The free silver-gold standard debate: Ruined the Populist Party. The debate hid the country’s serious economic problems from the 1893 depression. The Populists believed in free silver, a return to using gold and silver coins.

President Grover Cleveland: With the government’s gold reserves near bankruptcy, President Cleveland, a gold supporter, ruined himself politically by asking J.P. Morgan for a bailout, paying Morgan with government bonds he sold at enormous profit.

William Jennings Bryant: To keep the white house, the Democrats decided to support the Populist silver issue by nominating William Jennings Bryant after his inspiring “Cross of Gold” speech.

Mark Hanna: But Ohio industrialist Mark Hanna bought the republican nomination for William McKinley, and then lavishly outspent the democrats to get him elected, thus destroying Populism.

Plessy vs. Ferguson: Homer Plessey, 7/8 white and 1/8 black, was arrested for trying to sit on a white railroad coach. Justice Henry Brown wrote the majority opinion creating the separate but

equal concept allowing states to segregate races. Brown said the concept did not make one race inferior.

Justice John Marshall Harland: The lone dissenter in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, argued that race separation branded blacks with servitude and violated the Constitution’s freedom and equality.

Jim Crow: A result of the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, Jim Crow was a set of laws enacted by southern states segregating every part of life. The worst was school segregation, giving white schools ten times more funding than black schools. Some states did not have black high schools. Jim Crow was caused by:

1. Fear of black men having sex with white women.2. Fear of black economic power when Populists tried to unite poor whites and blacks.

Lynching: A common way of killing blacks, on the pretext of raping a white woman. Lynching’s were advertised in newspapers like sports.

Booker T. Washington: A former slave who became a teacher, and then founded Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute for black’s vocational training. He preached hard work and economic survival through education and entering professions.

Causes of the Spanish-American War:1. Racist belief in white, Anglo-Saxon superiority.2. Desire to expand the American empire.3. Desire to expand overseas trade markets, and capture valuable mineral deposits and farm

land.4. To liberate Cuba from the Spanish empire and keep it from becoming a black republic

like Haiti.5. Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Navy Secretary Theodore Roosevelt

wanted the war.6. Powerful newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer wanted to sell

more papers by printing war headlines.

Results of the Spanish-American War:1. 5,500 dead mostly from yellow fever and malaria.]2. Possession of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines – a Pacific

empire.3. A bloody, brutal war against Filipinos rebelling against American rules.4. War hero and Vice President Teddy Roosevelt becomes president when William

McKinley was assassinated in 1901. Roosevelt, at 42 (the youngest president ever), offended the South by inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House.

Essay

Essay One:● State two definitions of naturalism.● Which definition fits “To Build A Fire?”. Which definition fits “The Open Boat”?● What forces are controlling the characters in these stories?● Give five detailed summaries of events per story; that’s ten total.● State one character similarity between the man in “To Build A Fire” and the oiler in “The

Open Boat” (hint: the oiler left the group, so he died), supporting this similarity with a specific example from each story.

Essay Two:● Choose two of the following stories: “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”, “A White Heron”,

“Editha”, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.● Use three detailed summaries of events to prove that they are examples of realism.● Prove the stories are also examples of naturalism by stating which force or forces

influence the characters, using three summaries of events to prove those forces influence those characters.

A Word From The Author: This is MY notes, typed into a large packet so that others can benefit from it. I’m not God, and I’m not Mr. Regina either. I can’t guarantee these notes are flawless. Granted, they SHOULD be. However, whether they’re right or wrong, use at your own risk. I spent hours typing this up, and here’s the kicker; you didn’t, and you’ll get the same grade I do. If you get a sucky grade, you’re doing less work anyways, so quit your complaining.