➢ Chapter 26. The Great West and the Agricultural Revolution, 1865-1896.
Theme 1: After the Civil War, whites overcame the Plains Indians’ fierce resistance and settled the Great West, bringing to a close the long frontier phase of American history.
Theme 2: The farmers who populated the West found themselves the victims of an economic revolution in agriculture. Trapped in a permanent debtor dependency, in the 1880s they finally turned to political action to protest their condition. Their efforts culminated in the Populist Party’s attempt to create an interracial farmer/labor coalition in the 1890s, but William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in the pivotal election of 1896 signaled the triumph of urbanism and the middle class.
I. Summary for Chapter.
Read this section as you are reading the text, as these are the main ideas and concepts of the reading. It is also very important to look over all text inserts, cartoons, pictures, maps, charts etc. that are in the reading. (33 pgs)
1. At the close of the Civil War, the Great Plains and Mountain West were still occupied by Indians who hunted buffalo on horseback and fiercely resisted white encroachment on their land and way of life. But as the whites’ livestock grazed the prairies and diseases undercut Indian strength and numbers, a cycle of environmental destruction and intertribal warfare soon threatened Native Americans’ existence. The federal government combined a misconceived “treaty” program with intermittent warfare to force the Indians into largely barren reservations.
2. Attempting to coerce Indians into adopting white ways, the government passed the Dawes Act, which eliminated tribal ownership of land while often insensitive “humanitarians” created a network of Indian boarding schools that further assaulted traditional Native American culture.
3. The mining and cattle frontiers created colorful chapters in western history. Farmers carried out the final phase of settlement, lured by free homesteads, railroads, and irrigation. The census declared the end of the frontier in 1890, concluding a formative phase of American history. The frontier was less a “safety valve” than many believed, but the growth of cities actually made the West the most urbanized region of the United States by the 1890s.
4. Beginning in the 1870s, farmers began pushing into the treeless prairies beyond the 100th meridian, using the techniques of dry farming that gradually contributed to soil loss. Irrigation projects, later financed by the federal government, allowed specialized farming in many areas of the arid West, including California. The “closing” of the frontier in 1890 signified the end of traditional westward expansion, but the Great West remained a unique social and environmental region.
5. As the farmers opened vast new lands, agriculture was becoming a mechanized business dependent on specialized production and international markets. Once declining prices and other woes doomed the farmers to permanent debt and dependency, they began to protest their lot, first through the Grange and then through Farmers’ Alliances, the prelude to the People’s (Populist) party.
6. The major depression of the 1890s accelerated farmer and labor strikes and unrest, leading to a growing sense of class conflict. In 1896 pro-silverite William Jennings Bryan captured the Democratic Party’s nomination, and led a fervent campaign against the “goldbug” Republicans and their candidate William McKinley. McKinley’s success in winning urban workers away from Bryan proved a turning point in American politics, signaling the triumph of the city, the middle class, and a new party system that turned away from monetary issues and put the Republicans in the political driver’s seat for two generations.
II. Major questions & concepts for consideration. Write these out on a separate sheet of paper. These will be the topics of discussion and class participation. Look above in the summary of the chapter, as you answer the following conceptual questions:
1. Discuss the causes and results of the warfare between whites and Native Americans in the great West.
2. Explain the development of federal policy toward Native Americans in the late nineteenth century.
3. Analyze the brief flowering and decline of the cattle and mining frontiers.
4. Explain the impact of the closing of the frontier and the long-term significance of the frontier for American history.
5. Describe the revolutionary changes in farming on the Great Plains.
6. Describe the economic forces that drove farmers into debt, and describe how the Grange, the Farmers’ Alliances and the Populist Party organized to protest their oppression.
7. Explain the major issues in the critical campaign of 1896 and describe the long term effects of McKinley’s victory.
III. Significant names, terms, and topics: Know these terms etc. A.P. Jeopardy:
The Clash of Cultures on the Plains (Page 594) • Before reading this section read the quotation of Frederick Jackson Turner on page 594. This is a quote from his famous essay The significance of the Frontier in American History (1920) Also read the analysis of the essay in Varying Viewpoints on page 622. Also see 48 below. Please also see the picture and caption on page 595 this certainly “talks” to the document from the Coronado expedition of 1541.
• Overview Cause: The encroachment of white settlement and the violation of treaties. Effect: Led to nearly constant warfare with Planes Indians from 1868 to about 1890.
1. Significance of intertribal warfare, and forced migration of tribes. • Cheyenne and Sioux transformation from foot travel, crop villages to nomadic buffalo hunters.
2. Effects of European diseases, and white introduced livestock had devastating results.
3. Pacification Treaties marked the beginning of the reservation system in the West. • Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1851 • • Treaty of Fort Atkinson, 1853 • • These treaties established boundaries for each: • • Attempted to separate Indians into two great colonies North and South of intended:
4. White misunderstanding of Indian culture and the results: • Study the picture and caption Pawnee Indians in Front of their Lodge 1868 and the document One Dishearten Indian complained on page 592.
5. (1860) Great Sioux reservation (Dakota Territory) and Indian Territory in Oklahoma. • Continued dishonesty of federal Indian agents. • • Immigrant and Buffalo Soldiers were involved in fierce warfare on the plains. See picture on page 597.
Receding Native Population (Page 597) • Study the map Indian Wars, 1860-1890 on page 598. As you read below locate the major Indian battles on the map.
6. Sand Creek Massacre (1864) Colorado, Killing of over 400 Indians.
• Colonel J.M. Chivington. See Chivington document on page 598.
7. Fetterman Massacre (1866) The Sioux led by Chief Red Cloud attempted to stop the Bozeman Trail, which was to go from Fort Laramie, Wyoming, straight through the heart of the Sioux hunting ground in Montana. Captain William Fetterman and his command of 81 were killed in Wyoming. • The cycle of vicious warfare followed.
8. Treaty of Fort Laramie, (1868) The U.S. government abandoned building the Bozeman Trail.
9. “Black Hills gold” (1864) Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s scientific expedition into the South Dakota. • Gold Rush
10. Little Big Horn Massacre (1876) Col. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry of 264 officers and men killed. • Indian leaders were Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. • • Indian resistance was gradually worn down, and by the end of the 1870s, most Sioux were on reservations. •
11. Nez Perce (1977) • In 1877 the U.S. government ordered the Nez Perce of eastern Oregon to move to a smaller reservation in Idaho. When they were given the orders to move the young braves staged a series of raids. Fearing reprisals, the Nez Perce attempted to escape to Canada, led by Chief Joseph. This group of 800 Indians evaded capture for 75 days before surrendering to the U.S. troops just 40 miles from the Canadian border. In advising his people to give up, Chief Joseph made a moving speech.
• “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed…The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want time to have to look for my children and see how many I can find. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heat is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever”.
12. Apache tribes of Arizona and New Mexico • Geronimo (c1823-1909 See the picture and caption on page 599.
13. The fate of the Plains Indian culture
14. Name the factors that” tamed the Indian” Note that the author has prioritized the factors, often this is what you are asked to do in historical essays. Can you see the type of question that could be asked here, and how you would set up your thesis? Within your thesis one would include what major factors? • Railroad • • Diseases • • Alcohol • • Extermination of the Buffalo • • Note that you have a classic cause and effect: Railroad building, disease, and the destruction of the buffalo, decimated Indian and hastened their defeat at the hands of advancing whites.
Bellowing Herds of Bison (Page 599)
15. Bison as the staff of life for the Plains Indians. •
16. Railroad construction and the food supplies f or the workers. • William Cody -hero or villain? •
The End of the Trail (Page 602)
Study the map, caption and text Vanishing Lands on page 602. Study the text on The Indian Removal Act of 1830 and The Dawes Act of 1887.
17. Helen Hunt Jackson A Century of Dishonor (1881) • Ramona (1884) • What was the significance of these books? • • What other books in your study of history had significant influence on public opinion? • • Study the photograph and caption Lakotas Receiving Rations at Standing Rock Reservation, ca. 1881. On page 603. Also study the document Plenty Coups speaks
18. Why did do-gooders want to make Indians white folks?
19. Outlaw of the Sun Dance in 1884. • “Ghost Dance” cult spread among the Sioux •
20. The Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890) on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota resulted in the deaths of 200 Indians, many of them women and children. The incident at Wounded Knee marked the end of armed conflict between the United States government and the Indians.
• Read the documents Civil War veteran General Sheridan reflected on page 602.
21. Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. This dissolved many tribes as legal entities. Forced-assimilation • No tribal ownership • • Individual family heads with • • Severalty: The condition, as of land being held or owned by separate or individual right. • Reservation land not given to the Indians was sold, money going to help “civilize” and educate the Indians. • Why do the authors call this a misbegotten offspring of the Indian reform policy?
22. Carlisle Indian School (1879) Pennsylvania. Kill the Indian and save the man. • By 1900 Indians had lost;
23. Indian Reorganization Act, (1934) • (The Indian New Deal did what?) •
24. By 1887 “Bullets, bottles, and bacteria” resulted in? • • What did the census of 2000 indicate? •
Mining: From Dishpan to Ore Breaker (Page 604)
25. “fifty-niners” (1858) Colorado gold rush • Pike’s Peak many stayed on to mine or farm grain.
26. Nevada, 1859 • Comstock Lode (1860-1890) both gold and silver. • Significance to Lincoln in 1864? • Smaller mining strikes drew population into Montana, Idaho and other western states
27. Boomtowns • Vigilante justice
28. What replaced the individual miner? • Why was this significant? • Why was the mining frontier important to women? • Why are the dates given and states given important to women?
29. The great abundance of precious metals mined in the West had a profound affect on the nation. (Thesis) • Note the factors of importance given by the author and how they prioritize these factors. • Quickly list those factors under: • economic: • • political: • • social: •
Beef Bonanzas and the Long Drive (Page 605) • Study the map Cattle Trails on page 605 and note the photograph and caption Dressed to Kill. •
30. Solution of the marketing problem for the Long Horn
31. “Beef barons” Swift and Armour Giant meat packers at Kansas City and Chicago
32. The “long drive” Texas cowboys to the Railroad terminal • Cow towns: Dodge City, Abilene, Kansas, Ogallala, Nebraska, and Cheyenne Wyoming. See the map on page 605 and locate the rail heads
33. Frontier justice • The cattle drive continued fro 1866-1888
34. The Railroad and what other factors killed the Long Drive? • • Winter of 1886-1887 •
35. As a result the stockmen did what to save his livelihood?
• Wyoming Stock Growers Association • • The cowboy folklore lives on. • • Study the map and caption Myth and reality on page 603.
The Farming Frontier (Page 606) Note the DBQ The Farmers’ Movement, 1870-1900 on page A118.
36. Sodbuster
37. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed a settler to acquire: • • How was this Act different from previous policy? • Why did the Homestead Act often turn out to be a “Cruel Hoax”? • •
38. How did railways play a major role in the development of the agricultural West? • Marketing of crops • RR induced people to buy cheap land (Propaganda) •
39. The myth of the great American Desert What does the author mean? • •
40. 100th meridian and its significance?
• John Wesley Powell director of the U.S. Geological Survey warned in 1874: • • See Average Annual Precipitation map on page 610. Locate the 100th meridian line. • Drought 1887-1892
41. “Dry farming” and its future consequences? • • Winter wheat from: •
42. Joseph F. Glidden (1874) and his contribution:
43. Irrigation systems. One should note the consequences of this damming of the rivers in Marc Reisner”s classic book: Cadillac Desert. The American West and its Disappearing Water.
The Far West Comes of Age (Page 608)
44. What was the motive of the Republican Congress of 1888-90? •
45. What held up Utah from becoming a state until 1896? •
46. “Sooners” “Boomers” “Sooner State” (1889) •
The Fading Frontier (Page 610)
47. What was the significance of the watershed date-1890? •
48. Frederick Jackson Turner “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1920) •
49. National Parks, Yellowstone (1872) Yosemite, Sequoia (1890)
50. “Safety-valve theory” You should be able to restate this in your own words, and give reasons for its validity.
The author suggests that the safety valve of the late 19th century was: • • • • Some validity? • • • Study the chart Homestead from Public Lands on page 611. • Real safety valve in late 19th century was in western cities: • • Study the chart
51. In this last section the author’s sets in motion a thesis based upon the trans-Mississippi West as a unique area. • Note how they bring in diversity and a blend of cultures. • • Native American • • Anglo culture • • Hispanic culture • • Asian-American
What other factors do they bring to his position? • Environment molds • Social • Political • American imagination • Federal government role in the West
Do you agree? •
Look at VI. Below: Expanding Viewpoints and see how historians Turner and White disagree. These thoughts are expanded also on page 622 “Was the West Really Won”? Do you recognize their thesis? •
The Farm become a Factory (Page 612)
52. The situation American farmers, once the jacks-and- jills-of- all-trades, were rapidly changing. (A thesis) • Note the support for this thesis below: • Can you identify the causes and the effects? Place a (C) for causes and a (E) for effects and be able to defend your position. • “Cash crops” wheat or corn • • Cogs-tied to: • • Had to buy expensive machinery • • Placement of blame • • “mechanization of agriculture” • • (farm as factory) •
53. The reformer Henry George Progress and Poverty (See pages 579) description of agricultural California.
Deflation Dooms the Debtor (Page 609)
54. One crop economy has a written in danger, to understand what follows is to understand this danger. • World Market and its influences •
55. Know how low prices and a deflated currency caused trouble for the farmer North, South and West. • • • If you’re not sure ask in class.
56. What is a static money supply? • •
What results? •
57. What was the vicious cycle the farmers were caught in? • farm machinery increased production • Increase of grain lowered the price • Farmers thus became deeper in debt
58. What were the effects on the farmers? • Mortgage default • Farm tenancy rather than ownership • Sharecropping in the South • New industrial feudalism
Unhappy Farmers (Page 613) • Farmers faced many problems and grievances • See the poster and caption The Farmer’s Grievances on page 615.
59. Effects of nature on the farmers: • Insects • Floods, erosion • drought • Expensive fertilizers •
60. Effects of government on the farmers: • Local, state, national gouged the farmers • Land overassessed • taxes • High protective tariffs •
61. Effects of corporations on farmers: • At the mercy of Trusts • Harvester, barbed wire, fertilizer trusts • Middleman cut • Mercy of the grain warehouses, elevators and railroads. •
62. Effects of the railroad on farmers: • Freight rates • Difficulty to protest, RR operators revenge. •
63. Why were the farmers unorganized? • Independent • Individualistic •
64. Restriction of production was forced by the Federal government during the Great depression under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. See Paying Farmers Not to Farm, pages 783.
The Farmers Take Their Stand (Page 615)
For an overview of this movement see Fast Track To A 5, pages 219-222 The Growth of Discontent: Farmers Organize
65. Greenback movement in 1868 demanded: • •
66. National Grange (1867) organized by Oliver H. Kelley.
67. First objective of the Grange: • Social • Economic • Fraternal activities
68. Next goal of the Grange: • Economic • Coop. stores, grain elevators and warehouses • Manufacture of harvesters
69. Grange political goals: • State legislation of RR rates, Grain storage fees • Granger laws defeated • • Wabash decision, 1886. See page 538. The Supreme Court ruled that individual states had no power to regulate interstate commerce. Later (1887) the congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act that created the Interstate Commerce Commission which forbade railroads from some of their wrongdoings.
70. Greenback Labor party (goals) • • James B. Weaver (Greenback Labor Party) ran in the Presidential election of 1880, against (James A. Garfield (Rep) and Winfield S Hancock (Dem) he polled only 3% of the popular vote. See page A59. • Note that Weaver again run for President with the Populist (People’s) Party in 1892 and won over a million popular votes and 22 electoral votes. See pages 523-24.
Prelude to Populism (Page 613)
Also see Fast Track To A 5, pages 221-24. The Populist Party. Also see Mr. Soward’s handout Pictotext 34 The Farmers Seek a New political Party Read the text and turn to the pictures Highlights of the Populist Platform.
71. Farmers’ Alliance goals: • • • What weakened the Alliance? • Ignored: • •
72. Colored Farmers’ National alliance (1880) History of racial division and divide and rule.
73. The emergence of the People’s Party (Populists) • What were their goals? It is very important to know these goals as they set you up to understand the great reforms that were to follow. • Nationalize the • • Graduated: • • Create federal Subtreasury • • Free and unlimited coinage •
74. William Hope Harvey and his pamphlet Coin’s Financial School (1894) • His goal was for what?
75. Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota a Populist Congressman.
• Mary Elizabeth Lease (1853-1933) Raise “Less Corn and more Hell.” See the picture and caption on page 616. • Standing almost six feet tall, she spoke passionately on behalf of the downtrodden farmers and challenged them to unite to improve their condition. Her legendary speeches could mesmerize an audience for two or three hours. “You may call me an anarchist, a socialist, or a communist, I care not, but I hold to the theory that if one man has not enough to eat three times a day and another has $25 million, that last man has something that belongs to the first.” By 1890 she backed the Populist Party and traveled West and South, stirring up support for the third party. “Let the old political parties know that the raid is over,” she exhorted, “and that monopolies, trusts, and combines shall be relegated t Hades.” The Gilded Age, Janette T. Greewood,Oxford U. Press, page 140
• The other major political parties began to pay attention to Populist issues. See James B. Weaver in the election of 1892. .
Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike (Page 614) • Before your study of Coxey’s Army and its significance, one might want to make the connection with other rebellions in American history and see what their origins were and note any similarities.
• See: Andros Rebellion (1689) page 53. Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) page 68. • Leisler’s Rebellion (1689-91) page 82. Salem Witch Trials (1692-3) page 79-80. • Paxton Boys (1764) page 88. (Also see Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson, pp. 210-14.) • Shays’s Rebellion (1786) page 176. Whiskey Rebellion (1794) page 196. Bonus Army (1932) page 766.
76. The Panic of 1893 (This lasted from 1893-1894), followed by the Silver Campaign Depression 1895-98
77. The goals of General Jacob S. Coxey (1894) • • • Study the photograph and caption Coxey’s Army Enters the District of Columbia, 1894 on page 617.
Coxey’s achievement: •
78. Pullman Strike of 1894. • See the picture and caption on page 618. • Eugene V. Debs, American Railway Union • Union Grievances •
79. Governor Peter Altgeld • • Vs. Att. Gen. Richard Olney. • President Cleveland’s stance. •
80. What is a Federal Court Injunction? • •
81. What was the unholy alliance between business and the courts? • • What was the significance of this belief? •
Golden McKinley and Silver Bryant (Page 618)
82. Election of 1896. • Conservatives feared class upheaval. • • Discontented farmers and workers looked for political salvation. •
83. Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Ohio a “President Maker.” • Hanna’s ideology: • Prime function of government: • Prosperity trickled down to labor •
84. Republican Platform favored: • Gold • Democratic incapacity and the economic hard times of the Panic of 1896 • Continued protective tariff • Study cartoon and caption Crying for Protection, 1898 on page 619).
85. Democratic Convention July 1896. • Refusal to endorse President Cleveland. •
86. William Jennings Bryant of Nebraska gave the stirring speech Cross of Gold speech. • See the picture and caption on page 621 and the cartoon and caption The Sacrilegious Candidate.
” Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold”.
• Bryan was nominated by the Democratic party. •
87. Democratic Platform favored: • Inflation (unlimited coinage of silver 16 oz to 1
88. A number of Democratic Gold Bugs left the Party
89. The Populist Party dilemma: • • The Populist Party endorsed Bryan for president, the so called Demo-Pop party.
Class Conflict: Plowholders versus Bondholders (Page 620)
90. Why were some people fearful of the Free Silver issue? • •
91. How did the “dirty tricks” (“Stop Bryan, Save America” crusade)work in favor of the big industrialists? • • •
92. McKinley triumphed
93. The authors make the point the” the free-silver election of 1896” was ...the most significant political turning point since Lincoln’s victories in 1860 and 1864.” • What evidence do they give? • • Eastern wage earners voted for jobs • • Wage earners had no reason to favor inflation • • Outcome of the election was a victory for big business, big cities, middle class values and financial conservatives.
• Last real effort to win the Presidency with mostly agrarian votes. •
94. Republicans held on to the White House from 1896 to 1912 when Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected.
95. Republican dominance in 1896 gave the death knell of the Gilded Age political party system. • See map and caption Presidential Election of 1896 on page 623. • Diminishing voter participation • Weakening of political organizations • Fading of money,and civil service reform issues • Replaced by Issues of industrial regulation and welfare for labor (The 4th Party system) • Read carefully the footnote at the bottom of page 623 dealing with the 5 party systems, it is important to understand these party systems, as it will make more sense as we move ahead to the study of F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (5th party system) and R.M. Nixon’s election of 1968-the 6th party system? Did we enter a 7th party system with George W. Bush?
Republican Stand-pattism Enthroned (Page 623)
96. Republican conservative approach: • Shy away from issues of reform • Business and trusts given free reign • • Dingley Tariff Bill (1897) • It is important to look at the Tariff Chart in the Appendix (A55) • • Look at the Tariff of 1828 and then up to the Dingley Tariff (1897) • Note the North American Free Trade Agreement (N.A.F.T.A.) (1993). As we continue our studies and explore other tariffs please refer to this chart.
97. Gold Standard Act of 1900 provided: •
98. How did nature and science provide for inflation? • • Cause and effect: The return of prosperity after 1897 and new discoveries in Alaska and elsewhere effectively ended the free silver agitation and the domination of the money problem in American politics.
Study the chronology on page 624.
IV. Thought Provokers: (Or for class discussion)
1. Why has the Plains Indians’ resistance to white encroachment played such a large part in the popular American view of the West? How is that mythical past related to the Indians’ actual history?
2. What was “romantic” about the final phases of frontier settlement, and what was not?
3. Why was the “passing of the frontier” in 1890 a disturbing development for many Americans? Was the frontier more important as a particular place or as an idea?
4. Was the federal government biased against farmers and workers in the late ninetieth century? Why or why not?
5. Was McKinley’s election really a “conservative” one, or was it Bryan and the Populists who represented the agrarian past resisting a progressive urban American future?
V. Makers of America: The Plains Indians (Questions for class discussion):
1. Compare the Plains Indians’ history and culture, especially before the coming of the whites, to that of the Iroquois (Chapter 2). How does this comparison prove the assertion that the cultures of various Indian peoples differ greatly?
2. In what ways did the Plains Indians benefit by the transformation of their way of life brought about by the horse? In what ways were they harmed?
VI. Expanding the “Varying Viewpoints”
~ Frederick Jackson Turner, “Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)
• A view of the West as a place permanently shaping the formerly “European” American character: (His thesis)
“The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.... This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.... In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave--the meeting point between savagery and civilization....”
~Richard White, The Middle Ground (1991)
• A view of the West as the product of the interaction of whites and Indians: (His thesis)
“(The West) is not a traditional world either seeking to maintain itself unchanged or eroding under the pressure of whites. It is a joint Indian-white creation.... The real crisis came... when Indians ceased to have power to force whites onto the middle ground. Then the desire of whites to dictate the terms of the accommodation could be given its head.... Americans invented Indians and forced Indians to live with the consequences.”
VII. Questions about the “Varying Viewpoints”
1. What does each of these historians understand to be the essential characteristics of the West?
2. How does White’s assessment differ from Turner’s view of the frontier as a “meeting point between savagery and civilization”?
3. How would each of there historians interpret the Plains Indian wars and the confinement of Indians on reservations?
VIII. Past A.P. Essay Questions from this area of study.
1. Ironically, popular belief in the ‘self-sufficient farmer’ and the ‘self-made man’ increased during the nineteenth century as the reality behind these beliefs faded. (1978) Assess the validity of this statement.
2. In what ways were the late nineteenth-century Populists the heirs of the Jacksonian Democrats with respect to overall objectives AND specific proposals for reform? (1989)
3. Although the economic development of the Trans-Mississippi West is popularly associated with hard individualism, it was in fact largely dependent on the federal government.
Assess the validity of this statement with specific reference to western economic activities in the nineteenth century. (1991)
4. To what extent did the natural environment shape the development of the West beyond the Mississippi and the lives of those who lived and settled there? how important were other factors? DBQ (1992) Use BOTH evidence from the documents AND your knowledge of the period from the 1840s through the 1890s to compose your answer.
5. Analyze the economic consequences of the Civil War with respect to any TWO of the following in the United States between 1865 and 1880. (1997) Agriculture Labor Industrialization Transportation (See Free Response Question 1997 booklet Rubric-Question # 4, pages 53-62.)
6. How were the Plains Indians in the second half of the nineteenth century affected by technological developments and government actions? (1999)
7. Ironically, popular belief in the ‘self-sufficient farmer’ and the ‘self-made man’ increased during the ninetieth century as the reality behind these beliefs faded (1978) Assess the validity of this statement.
8. Documents A-H reveal some of the problems that many farmers in the late nineteenth century (1880-1900) saw as threats to their way of life. Using the documents and your knowledge of the period, (a) explain the reasons for agrarian discontent and (b) evaluate the validity of the farmers’ complaints.
The Populists. (1983 DBQ) Doing the DBQ pages # 130-138 (A-H = 8 Docs.)
9. Analyze the reasons for the emergence of the Populist movement in the late nineteenth century. (1995)
10. Analyze the ways in which technology, government policy, and economic conditions changed agriculture in the period 1865 – 1900. DBQ (2007) In your answer be sure to evaluate farmers’ responses to these changes.
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In the late 1800s, Americans were continuing to expand Westward as they “worried that the Northeast was overpopulated and that, as a result, the country would face the same problems as Europe—class conflict, poverty, and urban ills” (Document I). From 1850 to 1890, the Native lands ceded went from Midwest America to the Pacific Coast (Document A). This presented a similar problem that they had faced in the past with Native American land. In an attempt to overcome conflicts with the possession of Native American land, the United States set in place policies that were often inconsiderate to the Natives, but that they believed to be better economically, politically, and morally. These policies varied from government provided food for the Natives, to the distribution of the new land, and the treatment of Native for their various practices. All of these things greatly affected the course of Native American people and their cultures to this day.…
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In early May 1877, the Lakota Sioux medicine man and war chief Sitting Bull led his following of 135 lodges across the "medicine line" which was the name used for the border between the United States and Canada. Sitting Bull 's decision to move his people north into the Province of Saskatchewan was the outcome of the gradual erosion of the Sioux way of life in the American plains because of the decimation of the buffalo herds. In addition, he was unable to protect his people against the U.S. military in the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877. He hoped that in Canada he would enjoy the protection of the Great Mother, Queen Victoria, and that the buffalo herds would return to allow Sioux to rebuild their way of life.…
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From 1865-1900, America was going through a lot of agricultural changes due to the growth of industrialization. Farmers were the most influenced because they found themselves not making any profit from their crops. The new technologies, government policies, and economic conditions all impacted America’s agriculture. In response to these changes, farmers were being treated poorly and found themselves at a loss when it came to working with large corporate companies such as the railroads. During this time period, the shift from American farmers was beginning to surcome to industrialization.…
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In the late nineteenth century, twenty years after the Homestead Act, farmers used their land in the western plains to produce both crops and profits. The farmers of this time struggled in the agricultural way of life by facing economic and political obstacles that were impossible to avoid, requiring them to do something about their complaints. Although the farmers had plausible arguments for most of their criticisms, their beliefs of the silver standard and overproduction sometimes could not be backed up. However, farmers continued to struggle between inevitable issues like the currency debate, constant debt and rising costs.…
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The author, Dee Brown, gives a brief description about Andrew Jackson’s policy on Indian removal in order to gain popularity and power. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the cause and effects of “Indian Removal” during Jackson’s terms, ultimately creating the “Trail of Tears.” As early as the colonial period Indian removal was evident, Brown claims. Indians never really got along with white settlers, and even if they tried to resolve the conflicts, it would fail. Indian Removal calmed down over time but in 1828, Andrew Jackson ran for president and immediately knew he would have to wipe out the frontier states. He made a treaty in which the Indians had to remove themselves from the states and move west toward the Mississippi. On there “trip” to the Mississippi, Indians faced many hardships that included starvation, death, and disease.…
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At the end of the Civil War more white settlers moved to the Southwest and used the Overland trail to cross Texas into New Mexico, Arizona, and California. This brought conflict with other Indian tribes such as Comanche’s and the…
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The removal of American Indian tribes from lands east of the Mississippi River to what is now the state of Oklahoma is one of the tragic episodes in American history. Early treaties signed by American agents and representatives of Indian tribes guaranteed peace and the integrity of Indian territories, primarily to assure that the lucrative fur trade would continue without interruption. American settlers' hunger for Indian land, however, led to violent conflict in many cases, and succeeding treaties generally compelled tribes to cede large areas to the United States government.…
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America, like any other nation, has always relied heavily on agriculture. Differing from other nations, however, is the problems that agriculture has created through America's brief history. It can be argued that the Civil War was started by agriculture; the South developed as an agricultural dependent region, while the North developed as a manufacturing region; creating two distinct, almost separate cultures. Some twenty years after the Civil War, new problems were arising; that of agrarian discontent. Farmers of the 1880s and 90s were having a harder and harder time getting by. Mother Nature was showing no mercy; through grasshoppers, floods, and draughts. But the farmers placed the blame of their problems on two main areas; the money supply, and the railroads.…
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In the late nineteenth century, there were two distinct movements representing the common man in the United States. The labor movement represented the urban Americans laboring in factories and the populist movement represented simple, agrarian farmers. While both of these movements had evident similarities, it is worth noting that there were also clear distinctions. Both the similarities and differences between the two movements can be observed in two historic speeches: “The Labor Day Address” by the progressive John Peter Altgeld, and the “Cross of Gold” speech by populist champion William Jennings Bryan. Through these speeches, one can conclude that both of these movements sought to improve the lives of everyday Americans compared to the…
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In 1860 in the United States to the West of the Mississippi river there were still large expanses of sparsely populated fertile land. From the Northern States rushed there the poor and small farmers and from the South to these same lands were moving slave-owning planters. The armed forces of the slave-owners seized the land in the West and drove out the farmers. The struggle between North and South over the Western lands was growing desperate.3…
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Describe how Native Americans were forced to assimilate into white society in the late 1800s.…
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