America After the Civil War: 1870-1900

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America After the Civil War 1870-1900
Industrialization Urbanization
Ranching, Mining, Farming
Reconstruction Rise of Jim Crow
Segregation
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America in the Gilded Age 1870-1900
The South By 1877, the South was recovering from
the Civil War but was no longer forced to
reconstruct
Jim Crow reigned supreme as whites legally
segregated the South into 2 distinct societies
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America in the Gilded Age 1870-1900
The North Experienced a 2nd Industrial
Revolution, mass immigration, urbanization
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Railroads, steel, oil companies formed
Americas first monopolies
American industry urbanization grew
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America in the Gilded Age 1870-1900
The West Manifest Destiny continued after 1865
as miners homesteaders, ranchers headed West
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The United States by 1890
Washington
North Dakota
Montana
Idaho
Established new states closed the frontier by
1890
South Dakota
Colorado
Wyoming
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..but this came at the expense of Native Americans
Western raw materials fueled eastern factories
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Settlement of the West
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The Mining Bonanza

• Mining was the 1st magnet to attract settlers to
  the West
• CA (1849) started the gold rush, but strikes in
  Pikes Peak, CO Carson River Valley, NV (1859)
  set off wild migrations to the West
• Comstock Lode 306 million
• John Mackays Big Bonanza made him richest man in
  world

John Mackay earned 25 a minute from his
gold/silver lode in Sierra Mountains
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Mining Regions of the West
Created need for local govt, law enforcement,
sanitation, businesses, prostitutes
Individual placer miners took little skill or
money to start, but could not reach deep lodes
Corporations had the expensive machinery
(hydraulic mining techniques) to extract most
of the gold in the West
Discoveries of gold silver led to overnight
mining towns
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Mining Bonanza

• ¼ to ½ of the mining population was foreign born
• Latin American miners brought experience new
  techniques
• Chinese brought a tireless ethic
• Led to hostility riots
• Foreign Miners Act in 1852 charged a monthly
  mining fee
• Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 suspended Chinese
  immigration

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The Cattle Bonanza
A cattle bought for 4 in Texas sold for 40 in
Kansas
In the 1860s, cattle ranching boomed
Ranchers used the open range to graze longhorns
By 1867, ranchers started using trains to ship
cattle to Chicago
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The Cattle Bonanza

• ½ of all cowboys were black ¼ were Mexican
• By 1880, the open
  range was ending
• Wheat growers, homesteaders, barbed wire
  blocked the range
• Many switched to raising sheep

But range wars erupted over grazing rights
between cowboys sheep-boys
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The Farming Bonanza
2/3 of all homesteaders failed to farm their land

• The U.S. govt offered incentives for farmers to
  settle the West
• Homestead Act (1862)gave 160 acres of land if
  families pledged to live there for 5 years
• Other govt acts helped develop western lands by
  planting trees building irrigation systems
• Due to land grants, RRs were the largest western
  landowners

500 million acres doled to businesses but only 80
million to homesteaders
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The Farming Bonanza

• In 1870, homesteaders pushed West adapted to
  the harsh farming conditions
• Farmers used dry farming techniques planted
  tougher varieties of wheat
• New machinery sped harvesting planting led to
  bonanza farms
• By 1890, the U.S. became a major crop exporter

A pioneer sod house
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Exodusters

• Exodusters were
  black farmers who
  moved West
  to escape
  Southern crop liens
  Jim Crow Laws

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Rails Across the Continent

• In 1862, Congress authorized the transcontinental
  railroad
• Union Pacific worked westward from Nebraska
  (Irish laborers)
• Central Pacific worked eastward from CA (Chinese
  immigrants)
• May 10, 1869 the 2 tracks met at Promontory Point
  in Utah
• By 1900, 4 more lines were built to the Pacific

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Federal Land Grants to Railroads by 1871
The national govt doled 65 million millions
of acres in land grants (received reduced
rates for shipping)
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The Transcontinental Railroad
Pullman cars refrigeration cars
In 1870, RR companies developed the 1st time
zones to better schedule the RR system the US
would not adopt time zones until 1918
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Crushing the Native Americans
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The Plains Indians
In 1865, 2/3 of all Indians lived on the Great
Plains
Their culture was dependent upon the buffalo
the horse
Tribes of several 1,000 people were subdivided
into bands of 100s which made it difficult for
the U.S. to negotiate treaties
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Searching for an Indian Policy

• Before the Civil War, the West was one big
  reservation
• The Indian Intercourse Act (1834) forbade whites
  from entering
  Indian country
  without
  a license

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Searching for an Indian Policy

• Butrapid Western expansion in the 1850s brought
  a new Indian concentration policy with distinct
  boundaries
  for each
  tribe as
  long as the waters
  run and grass
  grows

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Searching for an Indian Policy
Kill and scalp all, big and little

• Concentration did not last as whites ignored
  these boundaries
• Sand Creek Massacre (1864)Col John Chivington
  attacked 700 sleeping Indians in CO after a peace
  agreement was signed
• Sioux War (1865-1867)gold miners wanted a
  Bozeman Trail (across Sioux hunting grounds) to
  connect mining towns Sioux murdered 88 U.S.
  soldiers

Congress investigated condemned Chivingtons
attack
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Searching for an Indian Policy

• In 1867, the U.S. formed the Indian Peace
  Commission
• Ended Bozeman Trail plans
• Made small reservations in the Dakota
  Oklahoma territories
• Few Native Americans settled into these
  reservations peacefully
• Red River War (1874)
• Little Big Horn (1876)
• Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

The discovery of gold in South Dakota led a Sioux
army of 2,500 to ambush kill Lt Col Custer
his 197 soldiers
Black soldiers in the U.S. army called buffalo
soldiers were used to fend off Indian attacks in
the West
Custers Last Stand set off demands for
revenge among Americans
The U.S. army was ordered to stop Sioux ghost
dances machine gunned 200 men, women,
children
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The End of Tribal Life
Kill the Indian and save the man Richard
Pratt, founder of Carlisle

• In 1871, the U.S. adopted its 4th Indian
  policy Assimilation
• U.S. citizenship was offered to all Indians who
  farmed, lived away from their tribe adopted
  the habits of civilized life
• Dawes Severalty Act in 1887 offered farms (160
  acres to families 80 to men) the protection
  of U.S. laws

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The End of Tribal Life

• The final blow to Indian culture came with
  annihilation of buffalo
• Began with the construction of the
  transcontinental RR in 1860s
• From 1872
  to 1874,
  3 million
  buffalo
  were killed each year

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1 hunter 100 buffalo per day
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The Final Fling

• In 1889, Congress responded to demands to open
  the Oklahoma Territory to white settlement
• On April 22, 1889, about 100,000 Boomers
  Sooners flooded into the last Indian land
• White migrants claimed 2 million acres in
  Oklahoma homesteads
• Moved out Creeks Seminoles

Sooners couldnt wait until noon
Oklahoma Boomers waiting for noon
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Conclusions The End of the Frontier

• By 1890, the western frontier ended
• Miners, ranchers, cowboys flooded West at the
  expense of Indians who were restricted to smaller
  smaller reservations
• Westerners were commercially connected to Eastern
  markets but would grow increasingly frustrated by
  the economic political concentration of power
  in the East

With no more West to conquer, where would
American expansion go next?
A continuation of antebellum Manifest Destiny