US History - Terms To Know
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Created by:
imakneefoot on June 25, 2012
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40 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Reconstruction | The period after the Civil War in the United States when the southern states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union. |
| Pacific Railway Act | 1862 legislation to encourage the construction of a transcontinental railroad, connecting the West to industries in the Northeast (Union Pacific and Central Pacific RR) |
| Railroads | Networks of iron (later steel) rails on which steam (later electric or diesel) locomotives pulled long trains at high speeds. The first were built in England in the 1830s. Success caused the construction of these to boom lasting into the 20th Century |
| Homestead Act | Passed in 1862, it gave 160 acres of public land to any settler who would farm the land for five years. The settler would only have to pay a registration fee of $25. |
| Chinese Exclusion Act | Passed in 1882; banned Chinese immigration in US for a total of 40 years because the United States thought of them as a threat. Caused chinese population in America to decrease. |
| Helen Hunt Jackson | A writer. Author of the 1881 book A Century of Dishonor. The book exposed the U.S. governments many broken promises to the Native Americans. For example the government wanted Native Americans to assimilate, i.e. give up their beliefs and ways of life, that way to become part of the white culture. |
| Dawes Act | An act that removed Indian land from tribal possesion, redivided it, and distributed it among individual Indian families. Designed to break tribal mentalities and promote individualism. |
| Ghost Dance | A religious movement which incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the teachings, the dance would reunite the living with the spirits of the dead and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to the natives throughout the region. The Ghost Dance led to the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. This act tried to reform Indian tribes and turn them into "white" citizens. It did little good. |
| Wounded Knee | This location held the last notable armed conflict between the US troops and Native Americans. This battle arose due to the development of the Ghost Dance religious movement. As a result, over 150 natives, including innocent women and children, were killed. |
| Andrew Carnegie | Created Carnegie Steel. Gets bought out by banker JP Morgan and renamed U.S. Steel. He used vertical integration by buying all the steps needed for production. Was a philanthropist. Was one of the "Robber barons" |
| Vertical Integration | Absorption into a single firm of several firms involved in all aspects of a product's manufacture from raw materials to distribution. |
| John D. Rockefeller | An American industrialist and philanthropist, he founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 and ran it until he retired in the late 1890s. His wealth soared and he became the world's richest man and first U.S. dollar billionaire, and is often regarded as the richest person in history |
| Horizontal Integration | Absorption into a single firm of several firms involved in the same level of production and sharing; a technique used by John D. Rockefeller. |
| Robberbarons | Term for entrepreneurs who didn't pay workers enough; John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. |
| Monopoly | A market in which there are many buyers but only one seller. |
| Factories | Place in which workers and machines are brought together to produce large quantities of goods. |
| Tariff | A government tax on imports or exports. |
| Gilded Age | A name for the late 1800s, coined by Mark Twain to describe the tremendous increase in wealth caused by the industrial age and the ostentatious lifestyles it allowed the very rich. The great industrial success of the U.S. and the fabulous lifestyles of the wealthy hid the many social problems of the time, including a high poverty rate, a high crime rate, and corruption in the government. |
| Laissez-faire | Policy based on the idea that government should play as small a role as possible in the economy. |
| Unions | An association of workers, formed to bargain for better working conditions and higher wages. |
| Knights of Labor | One of the most important American labor organizations of the 19th century. Founded by seven Philadelphia tailors in 1869 and led by Uriah S. Stephens, its ideology may be described as producerist, demanding an end to child and convict labor, equal pay for women, a progressive income tax, and the cooperative employer-employee ownership of mines and factories. Leaderships under Powderly, successful with Southwest Railroad System, failed after Haymarket Riot. |
| Strikes | The unions' method for having their demands met. Workers stop working until the conditions are met. It is a very effective form of attack. |
| New immigrants | Immigrants who came to the United States during and after the 1880s; most were from southern and eastern Europe. |
| Ellis Island | Opened in 1892 as a immigration center. New arrivals had to pass rigorous medical and document examinations and pay entry before being allowed into the U.S. |
| Tenements | Urban apartment buildings that served as housing for poor factory workers. Often poorly constructed and overcrowded. |
| Nativism | The belief that native-born Americans are superior to foreigners. |
| Social Darwinism | Applied Darwin's theory of natural selection and "survival of the fittest" to human society -- the poor are poor because they are not as fit to survive. Used as an argument against social reforms to help the poor. |
| Political Machines | Corrupt organized groups that controlled political parties in the cities. A boss leads the machine and attempts to grab more votes for his party. |
| Farmers | Tend land and other natural resources to grow crops and livestock that are later sold and processed; experienced many difficulties economically in the 1920's. |
| The Grange | It was a farmers' movement involving the affiliation of local farmers into area "granges" to work for their political and economic advantages. The official name of the National Grange is the Patrons of Husbandry the Granger movement was successful in regulating the railroads and grain warehouses. |
| Plessy vs. Ferguson | A case that was brought to supreme court by black lawsuits to challenge the legality of segregation. The court ruled that segregation was legal as long as it was "equal." |
| Election of 1896 | Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Bryan was the nominee of the Democrats, the Populist Party, and the Silver Republicans. Economic issues, including the gold standard, Free Silver, and the tariff, were crucial. |
| William Jennings Bryan | This Democratic candidate ran for president most famously in 1896 (and again in 1900). His goal of "free silver" (unlimited coinage of silver) won him the support of the Populist Party. Though a gifted orator, he lost the election to Republican William McKinley. He ran again for president and lost in 1900. Later he opposed America's imperialist actions, and in the 1920s, he made his mark as a leader of the fundamentalist cause and prosecuting attorney in the Scopes Monkey Trial. |
| Sherman Antritrust Act | In 1890, the act made it illegal to form a trust that interfered with free trade between states or with other countries |
| Progressivism | The movement in the late 1800s to increase democracy in America by curbing the power of the corporation. It fought to end corruption in government and business, and worked to bring equal rights of women and other groups that had been left behind during the industrial revolution. |
| Muckrakers | This term applies to newspaper reporters and other writers who pointed out the social problems of the era of big business. The term was first given to them by Theodore Roosevelt. |
| The Jungle | This 1906 work by Upton Sinclair pointed out the abuses of the meat packing industry. The book led to the passage of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act. |
| Settlement houses | A welfare agency for needy families, combated juvenile delinquency, and assisted recent immigrants in learning the English language and in becoming citizens. Jane Addams of the Hull House Settlement in Chicago. |
| Election of 1912 | Presidential campaign involving Taft, T. Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Taft and Roosevelt split the Republican vote, enabling Wilson to win |
| Interstate Commerce Act | Approved on February 4, 1887 the Interstate Commerce Act created an Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the conduct of the railroad industry. With this act the railroads became the first industry subject to Federal regulation. |
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