People
Robber Baron of the oil industry and richest American of all time.
John D. Rockefeller
The process of merging companies that all compete in one aspect of a long production process, creating a monopoly.
Horizontal Integration
Paper arguing that the frontier’s existence shaped the American character: a propensity for democracy, egalitarianism, individualism, and violence, as well as a disinterest in high culture. However, by 1890 the U.S. had no unsettled lands left.
Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”
Landmark Supreme Court case (1896) that upheld segregation, codifying the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
Plessy v. Ferguson
A social reform movement led by young female activists, as they could not become involved in the political process. It aimed to achieve social reform through mixed-incoming house, with people of different classes living in one house. These houses often offered education and daycare.
Settlement House Movement
Led soldiers into Little Bighorn, where they were brutally defeated by the Sioux. One of the last stands for Native American sovereignty.
George Custer
The point at which the rail lines of the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad met. Marked the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad
Promontory Point
Also known as the People's Party. Their 1892 policy platform advocated for a silver standard, a graduated income tax, direct election of U.S. senators, and ownership of railroads, telegraph, and telephone lines.
Populist Party
A system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. Created perpetual debt.
Sharecropping
Union Pacific Railroad insiders create credit mobilier company. Hire themselves out to build the railroad at high rates. Give money to congress and vp to keep quiet
Credit Mobilier
His sensationalized journalism is credited for bringing America into the Spanish-American War
William Randolph Hearst
Developed by an English inventor, this process revolutionized steel production by making it faster and cheaper. The increased availability and affordability of steel caused its use to increase in many industrial applications
Bessemer process
Nickname for an influx of immigrants to California in 1849 seeking riches in the gold rush.
Forty-Niners
Prompted by racist attitudes toward Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles and San Francisco, this 1882 law restricted Chinese immigration to the United States.
Chinese Exclusion Act
An influential Protestant social justice movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It stated that Christians had an obligation to improve the lives of those less fortunate, especially the poor.
Social Gospel
Cartoonist credited with the exposing and eventual capture of political machine: Boss Tweed
Thomas Nast
A nationwide strike involving 100,000 railroad workers, strike affected such cities as Baltimore, Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Chicago. President Hayes authorized the use of federal troops to break the strike. More than 100 workers were killed in the crackdown.
Great Railroad Strike of 1877
An 1887 act which stripped tribes of their official federal recognition and land rights and would only grant individual families land and citizenship in 25 years if they properly assimilated.
Dawes Act of 1887
A normal and industrial school led by Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, Alabama. It focused on training young black students in agriculture and the trades to help them achieve economic independence.
Tuskegee Institute
Founded in 1873, the group believed that prohibition would diminish threats to women and families that they saw as the direct result of alcohol over-consumption: domestic violence, misspent wages, and adultery.
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
Wealthy merchant during the California Gold Rush, and later served as Governor of California. As leader of the Central Pacific Railroad, he oversaw the construction of part of the transcontinental railroad.
Leland Stanford
A landmark 1895 Supreme Court case. It ruled that the use of court injunctions to break strikes was justified in the support of interstate commerce. In effect, the federal government had permitted employers to not deal with labor unions.
In re Debs
Former independent agency of the U.S. government, established in 1887; it was charged with regulating the economics and services of specified carriers engaged in transportation between states.
Interstate Commerce Commission
Tammany Hall
Formed in 1890, it combined the once rival National Woman Suffrage Association and American Woman Suffrage Association to fight for a woman’s right to vote.
National American Woman Suffrage Association