TCC Online US His Exam 1 ID’s
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Fourteenth Amendment
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Constitutional amendment ratified in 1868 which defined a dual citizenship and said national citizenship takes precedence over state citizenship, said no state can deny any person the rights to life, liberty, and property without due process of law, and required states to give all persons equal protection of the laws.
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\"Jim Crow\" Laws
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Laws which segregated blacks from whites first in public facilities and ultimately in all aspects of life and which were passed in the South beginning in the 1890s. These laws limited the rights of freedmen, creating a second class citizenship.
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Carpetbaggers
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Northerners (Republicans) who moved South after the Civil War for idealistic and materialistic purposes. They took over southern governments and were resented by southerners as a result. The term carpetbaggers came to represent the southern belief that these individuals were scoundrels and thieves, and also represented the hostility which existed between the North and South after the War.
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Homestead Act
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Act passed in 1862 which granted 160 acres of government land to any adult who lived on a claim for five years or who paid $1.25 an acre after six months of residence. This act was designed to encourage settlement of the West, but, in fact, the amount of land which could be homesteaded was too much to irrigate and too little to dry farm. In addition, the best lands were bought by speculators or controlled by railroads.
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Munn v. Illinois
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Supreme Court decision in 1877 which upheld state laws regulating railroads and grain elevators within their boundaries. Having satisfied their major goal, and, as a result of the return to prosperity following the Depression of 1873, the Grangers became less active. However, the Court reversed this decision in the Wabash Case of 1886 by distinguishing between interstate and intrastate commerce and by arguing that property rights are a natural right (and therefore anterior to government) rather than societal rights, leading to the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act.
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Vertical Integration
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One of two methods used in the late 19th century to gain control of an industry, vertical integration involved adding operations before or after the production process to control all phases of an industry from acquisition and transportation of raw materials to distribution of finished products. This method is significant because it shows how many of the great entrepreneurs of the late 19th century (such as Andrew Carnegie) were organizers rather than technically expert in their product and how in the process of seeking to improve efficiency, increase sales, and insure profits, they built bigger and bigger operations which eliminated competition
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Horatio Alger
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Author of 119 novels which were based on the rags-to-riches myth. While Alger's goal was to inspire boys to work hard with the promise of success as a reward, most of his heroes prospered as a result of luck as well as pluck. These novels convinced many that anyone could succeed fantastically with effort, although this was not typically the case.
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Gospel of Wealth
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Andrew Carnegie's argument that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few was beneficial but that the wealthy had an obligation to use their fortunes for the benefit of society. Many wealthy industrialists adopted this philosophy as a means of justifying their great fortunes, and provided endowments for universities, libraries, and other benefits for society, while not raising wages or worrying much about the fate of their employees.
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Monroe Doctrine
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U.S. foreign policy statement issued by President Monroe in 1823 which stated the Americas were no longer open to European colonization, that the Western and Eastern Hemispheres were distinct political spheres, and that the U.S. would not meddle in European affairs. The doctrine has come to symbolize the idea that the Western Hemisphere is a US sphere of influence and remains a major part of U.S. foreign policy.
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De Lome Letter
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Letter from the Spanish minister to the United States which criticized McKinley. The letter, which was sent by De Lome to a personal friend in Cuba, was stolen from the mails and published by the Hearst press. The publication of this letter outraged American public opinion although many shared De Lome's views of McKinley as being weak for resisting public pressure. It was a cause of the Spanish-American War.
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White man's burden
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Rudyard Kipling's phrase representing the idea that western civilizations have a duty and destiny to civilize inferior peoples and give the inferior peoples of the world the benefit of their government, economy, religion, culture, everything. Written in 1899 in honor of the U.S.'s acquisition of the Philippines, Kipling's poem on the white man's burden is representative of the late 19th century's belief in racism, social Darwinism, determinism, and the necessity and goodness of empire and was a major justification for imperialism.
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\"40 acres and a mule\"
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Expression of freedmen's hope for and expectation of land following the Civil War. While this hope was not fulfilled, it represented the desire of freedmen for economic independence.
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\"waving the bloody shirt\"
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Campaign tactic used by Republicans who identified the Democratic party with rebellion and Republicans with Union victory in order to get Northern votes, beginning with the Grant campaign in 1868. This is symbolic of the inclination of politicians in the late 19th century to avoid the substantive issues created by the Civil War and urban and industrial growth and instead to use emotional arguments and stereotypes to appeal to the common man.
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Dawes Severalty Act
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Legislation intended to destroy tribal bonds by allotting tribal reservations in 160 acre plots to individual members of tribes as private property with the promise of ultimate citizenship. A good deal of tribal land was thus made available for settlement by white settlers.
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Plessy v. Ferguson
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Supreme Court decision in 1896 which paved the way for legal segregation by declaring that \"separate but equal\" facilities did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
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Horizontal Integration
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Combinations of businesses in the same field in an effort to monopolize one stage of production in an industry. Such combinations were pioneered by John D. Rockefeller, and resulted in the elimination of many competitors.
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Patronage
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The practice of office-holders rewarding supporters for their support during campaigns by appointing them to a job in the government. Public disgust at the patronage system led to Civil Service Reform with the Pendleton Act of 1883, although only about 10% of federal offices were originally covered and state and local patronage continued (and continues).
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Free Silver
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Unlimited coinage of silver to inflate the currency which was demanded by the Populists and the Democrats in the 1896 election. This was an effort to deal with the harmful deflation of the Gilded Age which led to falling crop prices and wages for the majority of Americans, but was seen at the time as unsound economics.
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Bread and butter issues
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Labor issues such as higher wages, shorter hours, industrial safety, benefits, and the right to organize and bargain collectively. These issues could be negotiated directly with management in contrast to such issues as the elimination of prostitution and over-consumption of alcohol, which had to be dealt with by the government. The focus on these issues by unions such as the AFL led to more successes for labor.
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Manifest destiny
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The conviction which spread in the 1840s that the superior institutions and culture of the U.S. gave Americans a God-given right, even an obligation, to expand across the continent. It is significant because it fueled the expansionism in the 1840s and imperialism in the 1890s.
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Filipino - American War
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The war between the United States and the Philippines, 1899-1902, in which the Filipinos unsuccessful attempted to gain independence from U.S. control. This war convinced many smaller countries that the U.S. was a typical imperialist nation, similar to the imperialistic nations of Europe, and shows that the U.S. was not as committed to national self-determination and self-rule as it previously had indicated.
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Black codes
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Laws passed by Southern states following the Civil War which extended limited rights to blacks and attempted to control the actions of freedmen. As a result, a second-class citizenship for freedmen was created.
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Crop lien
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The use of future crops to guarantee loans farmers contracted from merchants so they could plant crops and support their families until harvest time. Falling crop prices in the Gilded Age resulted in many farmers being unable to repay their loans in full and created a debt peonage which limited farmers' options and tied them to the land.
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Ghost Dance
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Movement centered in the revelations of Wovoka, a Paiute prophet, who predicted natural disasters would eliminate the white race, while dancing Indians would not only avoid destruction but would gain strength thanks to the return to life of their ancestors. This movement created fear of a major Indian uprising, and led to the Massacre at Wounded Knee.
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Omaha Platform
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Platform of the Populist party in the 1892 election which called for the reforms demanded by the Ocala Platform of 1890 including a subtreasury system, plus more means of direct democracy, legislation benefiting labor, a graduated income tax, the inflation of the currency through the unlimited coinage of silver, and government ownership of railroads, telegraph, and telephone. This was the first major call in modern politics for the national government to take more responsibility for the well-being of the society at large.
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Rebates
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Kickbacks secretly given by the railroads to large shippers in order to attract their business. Smaller businesses had difficulty competing as a result, leading to more consolidation in business.
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Pools
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Informal agreements between competitors to set uniform rates and divide markets, thereby cutting competition. These arrangements, pioneered by the railroads, resulted in higher rates to small shippers and higher prices to the public. In addition, they were difficult to enforce, leading to more permanent and enforceable arrangements like trusts.
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Social Darwinism
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Herbert Spencer's adaptation of Charles Darwin's biological concepts of natural selection and \"survival of the fittest\" to human society. Any effort to mitigate the conditions of the poor was thus wrong. The concept of \"the fittest\" also came to mean some people, some countries, and some races were superior to others, thus promoting racism, giving it a pseudo-scientific basis, and justifying war, conquest, and imperialism as a duty, leading to colonies and protectorates abroad and segregation at home.
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Alfred T. Mahan
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Naval officer, strategist, and historian who argued, in books such The Influence of Sea Power on History (1890), that national power depended on naval supremacy, colonies, and foreign markets. He called for the US to have a two-ocean navy, strategically placed coaling stations around the world, a canal in central America, and control over the access routes to that canal in the Caribbean and the Pacific. His ideas became the basis for the Republican foreign policy platform in 1896 and for Roosevelt's policies in the early 1900s.
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Josiah Strong
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Congregationalist minister who, in his book, Our Country (1885), combined ideas about Christianity with social Darwinism and the theory of evolution to provide religious and racist justifications for U.S. expansion. He is a representative of the widespread conviction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that race and racial differences are scientific, that racial differences are one of the keys to history and society, that some races are superior to others, and that the superior races have a duty to spread their civilization to others.
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U.S.S. Maine
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U.S. battleship which exploded in Havana harbor in 1898 outraging the American public and contributing to the onset of the Spanish-American War.
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Poll tax
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A tax which had to be paid each year in order to retain the right to vote. This tax was used to disenfranchise poor blacks in the South.
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Literacy Test
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A test which required citizens to read and interpret a part of the state constitution in order to register to vote which was used in the South to disenfranchise blacks.
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\"Atlanta Compromise\"
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Speech delivered by Booker T. Washington at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895 in which he renounced black interest in the vote, civil rights, and social equality with whites while proclaiming black loyalty to the economic development of the South. This was seen as a sell-out by Washington's critics such as W.E.B. Du Bois, but made him a major force in negotiating compromises and attracting white support for black institutions.
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New Immigrants
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Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who were primarily Jewish and Catholic in religion, non-English speaking, penniless, unskilled, and unfamiliar with democratic traditions and who came to the United States in large numbers after 1880. They provided much of the cheap, unskilled labor needed for industrialization. However, tensions resulted between native-born Americans and these immigrants, which resulted in demands for immigration reform.
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Protective Tariff
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Tax on imported goods designed to protect American businessmen, wage earners, and farmers from the competition and products of foreign labor. This led to higher prices, especially for farmers, resulting in this tariff becoming a major issue in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (as it had been in the Ante-Bellum Era).
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U.S v. E.C. Knight Co.
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Supreme Court decision in 1895 which ruled that the American Sugar Refining Company was not in violation of the Sherman Act because the Sherman Act applied only to commerce, not manufacturing. This decision is an example of how in the late 19th century, business influenced government and government sided with big business and aided business while the businessmen, in apparent contradiction, declared their belief in laissez faire economics.
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Open Door Policy
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U.S. China policy calling for equal trading rights for all nations in China and the territorial and administrative integrity of China drafted by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and distributed to the other major powers in the form of two sets of diplomatic notes, one for equal trading rights in 1899 and one for the integrity of China in 1900. This remained the basis for U.S. policy toward China until World War II and cast the U.S. in the role of the protector of China.
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Roosevelt Corollary
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Theodore Roosevelt's reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine (1904) to justify U.S. intervention in Latin America which resulted in the creation of U.S. protectorates in Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Haiti between 1903 and 1916. The Corollary argued that if other countries in the Americas failed to uphold order and the standards of civilization (such as paying their debts), then the U.S.'s adherence to the Monroe Doctrine could force the U.S. to intervene in those countries. This led to the anti-American sentiment which continues today in Latin America.
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Big Stick Diplomacy
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Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy calling for the creation and display of U.S. armed forces (such as the Great White Fleet) for active, aggressive U.S. action to keep international order and peace. Such action became the trademark of U.S. foreign policy in the Progressive Era, as the U.S. assumed a greater role in world affairs.
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Boss Government
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Government by political machines who dispensed political jobs and favors in return for votes and contributions. This led to considerable corruption in many larger cities and some states, and led to efforts at reform.
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Compromise of 1877
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Agreement between Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans which brought an end to Reconstruction by allowing the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President in return for the withdrawal of the remaining troops from the South, appointment of a former Confederate general to the Hayes cabinet, federal aid to bolster economic and railroad development in the South, and a free hand for Southerners in regard to race relations.
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Company Town
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Town owned by the company where management controlled all aspects of workers' lives. This limited options for workers, often tying them to the company which set prices for all products they needed as well as wages, although some company towns (such as Hershey and Pullman) were considered by many as exemplary.
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American Federation of Labor
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Federation of craft unions founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886 which organized skilled workers only and emphasized immediate, realizable \"bread and butter\" issues. The AFL was more successful than previous unions, but its refusal to organize unskilled workers, women, and minorities created an economic split between the skilled and the rest of the working class.
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Debt Peonage
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A perpetual indebtedness tying the debtor to the land which resulted from tenant farmers buying supplies on credit based on future crops.
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15th Amendment
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Constitutional amendment ratified in 1870 which forbade states to deny the vote to anyone because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Due to the wording of this amendment, however, it was possible to disenfranchise black voters by other means.
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Long Drives
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The herding of cattle north from Texas to railhead towns in Kansas and Nebraska for shipment east or to ranches on the northern plains.
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Interstate Commerce Commission
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Regulatory commission established by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 which had the power to investigate and prosecute railroad corporations that charged unfair rates or engaged in illegal practices. Congress passed this measure after the Granger Laws were ruled unconstitutional in the Wabash Case, and it was not strictly enforced in the remainder of the 19th century, resulting in calls for further reform.
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New South
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The vision of a south which was modern, progressive, and self- sufficient advocated by Henry Grady and others beginning in the 1880s. They urged the South to abandon its dependence on cotton and industrialize and economically diversify. The South did diversify economically and grow industrially but at such a relatively slow pace compared to the North in the late 19th century that it actually became more dependent on cotton. The New South also came to represent policies favoring small government which translated into few state prisons and public schools as well as policies of racial segregation and disfranchisement.
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Populists
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Reform political party which emerged from the Farmers Alliance movement to advocate legislation to benefit farmers and the working class. The Populists first fielded a Presidential candidate in 1892, and, in 1896, they nominated Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan and campaigned for a number of programs to benefit farmers and laborers including the unlimited coinage of silver. Although the Populists disappeared after this election, much of their platform was enacted during the Progressive Era.
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Redemption
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Southern Democratic term for the end of Reconstruction and the return of white southern Democratic rule to the South. This restoration of \"home rule\" occurred gradually, state-by-state between 1870 and 1877 when Reconstruction ended.
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Knights of Labor
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Labor organization founded in 1869 by Uriah Stephens which organized all workers on a geographic basis, proposed a cooperative system of production be established alongside the existing competitive system, and worked for a wide variety of other labor, political, and social reforms. The Knights faced problems because they worked for political reform and organized all workers, making it difficult for protests to succeed.
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Rural Myth
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The notion that the farmer and farm life symbolized the essence of America, that farmers were independent, self-sufficient, and non-materialistic, and that farm life was pleasant, peaceful, and satisfying. This was far from the truth in the Gilded Age as farmers lost influence politically and struggled to maintain solvency in an era dominated by industry.
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Social Gospel
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Socio-religious movement led by Protestants, beginning in the 1880s, to tie salvation to the improvement of society and to make Christianity relevant to industrial and urban problems. Advocates of the Social Gospel such as Washington Gladden, D. P. Bliss, and Walter Rauschenbusch called for people to live their faith everyday not by simply ministering to people's souls but by helping them with everyday needs such as housing, jobs, wages, working conditions. Hence, the churches should take action in the community, and government should regulate factories and utilities.
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Sharecropping
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Labor system whereby landowners provided land, equipment, and provisions for workers who then worked the land for a portion of the crop harvested. This system put the sharecroppers at the mercy of the landowners and local merchants so that they fell into debt. This soon became perpetual indebtedness or peonage which tied them to the land while ensuring poverty and social and economic subordination.
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Sherman Anti-Trust Act
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Measure passed in 1890 which made combinations in restraint of trade illegal. This act proved ineffective as it did not clearly define terms such as \"conspiracy\" and \"in restraint of trade,\" no strong regulatory body existed to enforce it, and the Supreme Court took a pro-business position and ruled that it did not apply to manufacturing monopolies and \"reasonable\" monopolies, but did apply it to labor unions, agricultural organizations, and strikes which were then suppressed.
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Yellow Press
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Newspapers (such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World) which printed sensational stories in order to increase their circulations and manipulate public opinion. By exaggerating incidents, using scare headlines, printing lurid details of private lives, emphasizing scandals, and especially by using the developments in Cuba prior to the Spanish-American War, these two papers aroused public opinion against Spain, contributing to the coming of the Spanish American War.
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Thirteenth Amendment
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Constitutional amendment (ratified in 1865) which made slavery unconstitutional in the United States. This is significant because it shows that the objectives of the Civil War changed as the war proceeded so that by the end its goal was not simply to preserve the Union but to promote the nation's professed, but previously denied, ideals of liberty and equality for all.
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The Wabash Case
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Supreme Court decision in 1886 which reversed the Munn v. Illinois decision and declared state laws to regulate railroads were unconstitutional. This created an area of ambiguity in the law, allowing the railroads to operate more freely. The decision reflected the conservative view that property rights are a kind of natural right which precede government as opposed to the view that property is a construct of society and can be regulated if the property involves a public interest. The case is also significant as one of several Supreme Court decisions in the mid-1880s benefiting business and reflecting conservative interpretations of the Constitution.
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Southern Farmers Alliance
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Agricultural reform organization of the 1880s which called for measures to improve the quality of rural life, regulation of monopolies in the interests of farmers, and inflation of the currency. Ultimately frustrated with their inability to influence legislation, they merged with the other Farmers' Alliances, labor organizations, and Greenbackers to form the Populist Party.
