Pre-Civil War
The victory of this anti-slavery Republican candidate in the 1860 presidential election caused Southern states to secede.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
This constitutional amendment officially and permanently abolished slavery across the entire United States.
$100: What is the 13th Amendment?
Settlers and railroad workers hunted this animal almost to extinction, destroying the primary food source of Plains Native Americans.
What is the Buffalo (or American Bison)?
This term describes a "hands-off" government policy where the government does not regulate or interfere with private businesses.
What is Laissez-Faire?
Passed in 1882, this landmark federal law banned laborers from a specific Asian country from immigrating to the United States.
What is "Chinese Exclusion Act?"
Part of the Compromise of 1850, this strict law required Northerners to help return escaped enslaved people to the South.
What is the Fugitive Slave Act?
General Winfield Scott proposed this Union naval plan to surround the South, blockade ports, and control the Mississippi River.
What is the Anaconda Plan?
This 1862 law gave 160 acres of free Western land to any settler who agreed to live on it and farm it for 5 years.
What is the Homestead Act of 1862?
This industrial tycoon built Standard Oil into a massive monopoly by buying out competing oil refineries.
Who is John D. Rockefeller?
Located in New York Harbor, this main East Coast immigration center processed millions of European immigrants.
What is Ellis Island?
In this famous 1857 ruling, the Supreme Court stated that African Americans were not citizens and Congress could not ban slavery in territories.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford?
This Reconstruction amendment guaranteed birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law for all Americans.
What is the 14th Amendment?
Passed in 1887, this law tried to assimilate Native Americans by breaking up tribal reservations into individual family plots.
What is the Dawes Act of 1887?
In his essay The Gospel of Wealth, this steel tycoon argued that rich industrialists had a moral duty to give their money back to society.
Who is Andrew Carnegie?
Located in San Francisco Bay, Asian immigrants at this West Coast facility faced harsh interrogations and long detentions in wooden barracks.
What is Angel Island?
This principle allowed voters in a territory to vote and decide for themselves whether to allow slavery.
What is Popular Sovereignty?
In this post-war farming system, freedmen rented land from white landowners and often ended up trapped in cycles of debt.
What is Sharecropping (or Debt Peonage)?
Formed in 1867, this farmers' organization pooled resources to fight against unfair railroad shipping prices.
What is The Grange (or Farmers' Alliance)?
This business strategy involves buying out competing companies in the exact same industry to eliminate rivals and build a monopoly.
What is Horizontal Integration?
Millions of urban immigrants were forced to live in these dark, overcrowded, and unsanitary multi-family apartment buildings.
What are Tenements (or Slums)?
This 1854 law repealed the Missouri Compromise line and led to violent fighting in a territory known as "Bleeding Kansas."
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Historians use this term to describe the lowest point of race relations after Reconstruction, marked by disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws.
What is The Nadir?
Formed by farmers and factory workers in the 1890s, this third political party demanded "free silver" and federal regulation of railroads.
What is The Populist Party (or People's Party)?
This 19th-century theory applied "survival of the fittest" to human society to justify extreme wealth inequality and monopolies.
What is Social Darwinism?
Headed by bosses like William "Boss" Tweed at Tammany Hall, these powerful city organizations traded jobs and housing for immigrant votes.
What are Political Machines (or Tammany Hall)?