The Triumph of Industry Immigration & Urbanization The South & West Transformed Issues of the Gilded Age

“I know you won’t believe it but it’s true. I went out of town for five days and where the timber stood thick as I went out, when I came back it was all built up solid. On both sides of a street….there were stores selling goods, restaurants, boarding house, offices and all kinds of businesses running full blast, and not in tents, but in houses.”

 Cash Crop  Farmers’ Alliance  Civil Rights Act of 1875

 New Industries in the South (post Civil War) ◦ Coal, iron, and steel processing  Railroads link towns ◦ Linked southern freight to Northern markets  Southern Economic Recovery ◦ Very limited ◦ Industry needs 3 things: natural resources, labor, capital  South doesn’t have work force or capital

 Cash crop ◦ Crops to be sold for cash  Cotton dominates ◦ Risky to depend on one crop ◦ Problems  Cotton prices fell  Boll weevil: beetle that destroyed whole crops  Farmers’ Alliance ◦ Negotiate as a group for lower prices for supplies ◦ Fought for government regulation of RR & interest rate banks could charge

GainsLosses  Citizenship  Farmers’ Alliance  Access to education  Civil Rights Act of 1875 ◦ Right to ride trains ◦ Use public facilities  KKK emerges  Churches segregated  Elimination of black public officials  Supreme Court ruled that segregation was a local level decision, not federal

Objectives: 4af, 5c

 Reservation  Sand Creek Massacre  Sitting Bull  Battle of the Little Big Horn  Chief Joseph  Wounded Knee  Assimilate  Dawes General Allotment Act

 Diverse Cultures ◦ Depended upon where they were geographically  Common Thread ◦ Saw themselves as part of nature and it was sacred  White people viewed land as a resource to produce wealth  Forced Indians onto reservations  Introduced to new diseases  Killed all the buffalo

 Sand Creek Massacre ◦ First conflict  Battle of Little Big Horn ◦ Sioux Indians led by Chief Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse ◦ Killed General Custer ◦ Indian Victory  Chief Joseph ◦ Nez Perce leader attempted to escape to Canada ◦ Was capture ◦ “I will fight no more forever”

 Wounded Knee ◦ Fought over the Ghost Dance ◦ Sitting Bull’s people were massacred ◦ Ends the Indian Wars

 Reservation policy was a failure  Hoped Indians would assimilate and become farmers (since whites killed all the buffalo)  Criticism ◦ Helen Hunt Jackson: A Century of Dishonor  Told about the mistreatment of the Indians  Dawes Act ◦ 160 acres given to Indian families ◦ Hope that they would grow into farmers eventually

4d, 5a,5c

 Vigilante  Transcontinental Railroad  Land Grant  Open-range System  Homestead Act  Exoduster

 Boom Towns ◦ When minerals to mine were found, towns “sprang up” ◦ Rough environment led to crime ◦ Vigilantes: self-appointed law officers  Punished lawbreakers  Ghost Town ◦ When the minerals had all been mined people literally picked up and moved on ◦ Towns were abandoned

 Transcontinental Railroad ◦ Rail link between the East and West ◦ Delayed being completed  Land Grants ◦ Government offered land grants to RR companies to persuade them to build ◦ Central Pacific and Union Pacific  Chinese labor was used  Promontory Point, Utah ◦ The golden spike connected the 2 railways

 Tied nation together ◦ Moved products and people  Spurred industrial growth ◦ South can get raw materials to the North

 Vaqueros ◦ Original Mexican “cowboys”  Open-Range System ◦ Property was not fenced ◦ Ranchers branded cattle to indentify their herd ◦ Cattle Drives  In the spring, the herded north to the rail lines (cow towns)  Cattle were shipped back East

 Barbed Wire ◦ Fenced in property  Demand for beef ◦ Supply exceeded demand, price dropped  Extreme Weather

 Homestead Act ◦ 160 acres of land given to people ◦ Encouraged the settlement out West  “Exodusters” ◦ African Americans that settled out West  Challenges ◦ Windstorms ◦ Blizzards ◦ Droughts ◦ Locusts ◦ Loneliness  Inventions ◦ Sod houses ◦ Morrill Land Grant Colleges (agricultural education) ◦ Windmill ◦ Dry-farming techniques

 Differences in ◦ Language ◦ Food ◦ Religion ◦ Cultural practices  All reinforced distrust and fear of one another