WESTWARD EXPANSION
Law that offered 160 acres to settlers willing to live on and improve land for 5 years.
What is the Homestead Act?
Federal law that broke tribal lands into individual family plots to encourage assimilation.
What is the Dawes Severalty Act?
Steel tycoon known for the “Gospel of Wealth.”
Who is Andrew Carnegie?
A situation in which one company dominates the market and eliminates competition.
What are Monopolies?
Early national labor organization that welcomed skilled and unskilled workers.
What are the Knights of Labor?
This mail-order company used catalogs to bring consumer goods to rural Americans in the late 19th century.
What is Sears, Roebuck and Company?
School designed to “Americanize” Native children by stripping language/culture.
What is the Carlisle Indian School?
Innovation that allowed steel to be produced faster and cheaper.
What is the Bessemer Process?
Legal arrangement where stockholders give power to a small group to manage several companies as one.
What is a Trust?
Major labor union founded by Samuel Gompers focusing on skilled labor and “bread and butter” issues.
What is the AFL?
Famous 1876 battle where Custer and his forces were defeated by Lakota and Cheyenne warriors.
What is Battle of Little Bighorn/Custer’s Last Stand?
This law aimed to replace communal tribal ownership with private property ownership.
What is the Dawes Severalty Act?
When one company controls every step of production (raw materials → shipping → sales).
What is Vertical Integration?
Industrialist who built Standard Oil and became a symbol of monopoly power.
Who is John D. Rockefeller?
Argument that society improves when the “fittest” rise to the top; used to justify inequality.
What is Social Darwinism?
This historian argued that the American frontier shaped democracy, individualism, and national character.
Who is Frederick Jackson Turner?
This event symbolized the end of organized Native resistance in the West.
What is the Wounded Knee Massacre?
When one company takes over competitors in the same industry.
What is Horizontal Integration?
President Grover Cleveland fought to repeal this 1890 law because he believed silver purchases were draining gold reserves, weakening the dollar, and worsening the Panic of 1893.
What is the Sherman Silver Purchase Act?
Founded in 1866, this was the first national labor organization in U.S. history, uniting workers to push for an eight-hour workday.
What is the National Labor Union?
This 1877 labor uprising began after repeated railroad wage cuts and spread nationwide, becoming the first major national strike in U.S. history.
What is the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?
This 1906 law amended the Dawes Act by delaying U.S. citizenship until Native Americans were deemed “competent” by federal officials, reinforcing racial hierarchies and extending federal control over Native land.
What is the Burke Act?
The powerful banker/financier who built influence by consolidating industries and stabilizing markets.
Who is J.P. Morgan?
Passed in 1890, this act marked the federal government’s first attempt to regulate big business and curb corporate power.
What is the Sherman Antitrust Act?
Founded in 1867, this organization helped farmers combat railroad abuses by forming cooperatives and pushing for regulation.
What is the Grange?