Westward Expansion
This 1862 law offered 160 acres of public land to settlers who agreed to live on and improve the land.
What was the Homestead Act?
This 1877 agreement effectively ended federal military involvement in the South and helped bring an end to Reconstruction.
What was the Compromise of 1877?
Under this system, government jobs were given to political supporters rather than based on qualifications.
What was the spoils system?
This inventor developed and patented the telephone.
Who was Alexander Graham Bell?
This New York immigration station processed millions of immigrants arriving from Europe.
What was Ellis Island?
Completed in 1869, this railroad connected the eastern and western United States and greatly increased western settlement.
What was the Transcontinental Railroad?
These laws established racial segregation throughout much of the South after Reconstruction.
What were Jim Crow laws?
This New York City political boss became famous for controlling Tammany Hall and was targeted by political cartoonist Thomas Nast.
Who was Boss Tweed?
This inventor became famous for developing practical electric lighting and numerous other inventions.
Who was Thomas Edison?
This San Francisco immigration station processed many immigrants arriving from Asia.
What was Angel Island?
This federal policy forced many American Indian groups to live on designated areas of land controlled by the federal government.
What was the reservation system?
These methods, including poll taxes and literacy tests, were used to prevent many African Americans from voting.
What were disenfranchisement methods?
This president's assassination by a disgruntled office seeker helped create support for civil service reform.
Who was James A. Garfield?
This businessman became one of the nation's leading steel producers and used vertical integration to control his industry.
Who was Andrew Carnegie?
These factors encouraged immigrants to leave their home countries, while these factors attracted them to the United States.
What are push and pull factors?
This policy attempted to replace Native American cultures and traditions with white American customs, education, and economic practices.
What was assimilation?
This Supreme Court case upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
What was Plessy v. Ferguson?
This 1883 law created a merit-based federal civil service system and reduced the spoils system.
What was the Pendleton Act?
This industrialist built Standard Oil and became famous for controlling much of the nation's oil industry.
Who was John D. Rockefeller?
This journalist documented the terrible living conditions of poor immigrants in New York City in How the Other Half Lives.
Who was Jacob Riis?
This 1887 law divided tribal lands into individual allotments in an effort to assimilate American Indians and opened “surplus” lands to non-Native settlement.
What was the Dawes Act?
Benjamin “Pap” Singleton encouraged African Americans to leave the South for western settlements, while these migrants became known as Exodusters.
Who were African Americans migrating west in search of greater economic and political opportunity?
This scandal involving a railroad company and members of Congress demonstrated the corruption associated with Gilded Age politics.
What was the Credit Mobilier scandal?
This inventor developed alternating-current electrical technology that helped make large-scale electrical distribution possible.
Who was Nikola Tesla?
This law prohibited most Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States and reflected the growing anti-Asian movement.
What was the Chinese Exclusion Act?