Words Matter
Railroads sometimes received this type of government assistance, which could include money or land grants.
What is a subsidy?
In railroad terminology, this word refers to the distance between the two rails of a railroad track.
What is gauge?
The word“gilded” literally describes something covered with a thin layer of this valuable metal.
What is gold?
This amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
What is the 13th Amendment?
This unusual word means crooked, sideways, or out of alignment.
What is cattywampus?
Railroads were eventually forced to stop granting secret rebates to favored customers. In this context, a rebate means this.
What is a refund or return of part of the money paid?
In 1863, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific began racing to construct this railroad connecting the nation's eastern and western rail networks.
What is the transcontinental railroad?
“The Gilded Age was a time from about 1870 to 1900 when America experienced rapid _____ and _____.”
What are growth and change?
This amendment said the right to vote could not be denied because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
What is the 15th Amendment?
This ridiculous-sounding word describes a silly, flighty, or overly talkative person.
What is a flibbertigibbet?
On the western mining frontier, these self-appointed groups attempted to enforce law and order when formal law enforcement was weak or absent.
Who were vigilantes?
The Comstock Lode was a massive mineral discovery in Nevada. In mining, the word“lode” means this.
What is a rich vein or deposit of gold or silver?
Even after the Civil War ended slavery, cotton farming continued to be an important part of the economy in this region.
What is the South?
This amendment granted citizenship to people born or naturalized in the United States and promised equal protection under the law.
What is the 14th Amendment?
This animal is famous for “playing dead” when threatened, although the reaction is actually involuntary.
What is an opossum?
When answering a written response in this class, CRE stands for these three things.
Claim, Reasoning, and Evidence?
In 1869, George Westinghouse began selling this invention, which allowed trains to stop more safely and efficiently.
What is the air brake?
During the Gilded Age, large factories became increasingly common in this region of the United States.
What is the North?
Southern states used these tests, supposedly designed to measure a person's ability to read and write, as a way to prevent African Americans from voting.
What are literacy tests?
This food can technically last for thousands of years without spoiling when properly sealed.
What is honey?
The 15th Amendment prohibited denying voting rights based on race, yet literacy tests and other practices were still used to prevent African Americans from voting. This demonstrates that putting a right into the Constitution does not necessarily guarantee that right without this.
What is enforcement?
Railroads helped the nation expand westward by making it faster and cheaper to move these three things across long distances.
What are people, goods, and resources?
Two prospectors struck gold in Nevada in this year. Starting the gold rush.
What is 1849?
This political agreement effectively ended Reconstruction by settling the disputed presidential election of 1876 and leading to the withdrawal of remaining federal troops from the South.
What is the Compromise of 1877?
This common yellow fruit is botanically classified as a berry, while a strawberry technically is not.
What is a banana?