REUNION, CONQUEST, INDUSTRIALIZATION, AND POLITICAL REALIGNMENT
Behavioral Objectives (Test Items)
Here are the specific tasks you will be called upon to perform successfully on the Unit 1 Exam. The information required for mastery of the reading objectives is contained in Chapters 16-20 of America: Past and Present. The information required for mastery of the lecture objectives is contained in the classroom lectures for this unit - "Walter Prescott Webb's Great Plains Thesis," "Agrarian Problems and Gilded Age Politics," and "Populism and Political Realignment."
READING OBJECTIVES
The Agony of Reconstruction
Identify and describe those qualities of the 1876 presidential election which make it extraordinary in American electoral history.
Identify the provisions of the Compromise of 1877.
Identify the "Redeemers" according to who they were, what parts of society they represented, their economic views, and their impact on Southern politics during the latter 1800s.
Describe the attitude of Northerners and the Supreme Court toward race relations in the South and the situation of Southern blacks politically, socially, and economically in the latter 1800s being sure to contrast the Redeemer period (1877-1890) with the Jim Crow period.
Identify and recognize the historical significance of each of the following: (a) Civil Rights Cases (1883), (b) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), (c)Williams v. Mississippi (1896), (d) "Jim Crow" segregation, (e) "waving the bloody shirt" or "bloody shirt" oratory
For students using the 10th edition of America: Past and Present, v. 2 look on pps. 451, 454-455, and 468 for additional information required to answer the first two objectives for "The Agony of Reconstruction".
The West: Exploiting An Empire |
Identify the impact American buffalo hunters had upon the conquest of the Plains and the subordination of the Plains Indians.
Identify major pieces of legislation dealing with settlement of the West, the manipulation of the laws by various groups, and evaluate how well these laws worked.
Identify and describe the role of the railroads in the settlement and development of the West.
Contrast placer mining and quartz mining and evaluate the role of each in developing the mineral wealth of the West.
Identify factors leading to the birth and then death of the open-range cattle industry of cattle drives.
Identify and recognize the historical significance of each of the following:
(a) "The Great American Desert", (b) Dawes Severalty Act, (c) "buffalo
soldiers", (d) Overland Trail, (e) land speculation in the West, (f) Joseph
G. McCoy, (g) barbed wire
The Industrial Society
Identify factors of American life helping produce rapid industrialization in the United States during the second half of the 1800s.
Identify fully the reasons local, state, and national governments were willing, even eager, to subsidize railroad construction.
Identify methods by which local, state, and national governments subsidized railroad construction.
Identify the impact of the railroads on the rapid industrialization of the United States.
Identify the impact of overbuilding and excessive competition upon the railroads and other industries.
Identify and describe how cooperation, consolidation, and "trust" efforts attempted to solve the problems of overbuilding and excessive competition in American industry.
Be familiar with the organizational innovations of Andrew Carnegie (vertical integration), John D. Rockefeller (the trust technique and holding company technique), and J. Pierpont Morgan (investment banking).
Describe the techniques of vertical integration and the trust being sure to identify the reasons they were adopted by industrialists during the Gilded Age.
Identify the various ways in which working conditions changed for the American laborer during the process of industrialization.
Identify the various obstacles to unionization in the latter 1800s during the process of industrialization.
Compare and contrast the Knights of Labor and the American Federation
of Labor with respect to organization, the types of laborers each tried
to organize, goals, attitudes towards strike and boycotts and assess their
effectiveness in light of these differences.
Toward An Urban Society, 1877-1890
Contrast the "new immigrants" arriving in the United States increasingly during the 1880s and 1890s with earlier waves of immigration in terms of their origin, language, religion, cultural habits, etc.
Evaluate the significance of these differences on the reception the "new immigrants" received and their difficulty in adjusting to American life.
Identify the serious problems troubling most large nineteenth century cities as they underwent phenomenally rapid growth.
Rate the performance of the "city bosses" who emerged in many American
cities during the 1880s and1890s. Who were their constituents? What services
did they provide? What problems did they cause?
Political Realignments in the 1890s
Describe the presidential elections during the final quarter of the nineteenth century with respect to each of the following items: (a) political balance of power between Democrats and Republicans, (b) victor's general margin of victory, (c) key electoral states which alternately supported both parties, (d) the home states of major party candidates
Identify the major supporters of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Identify the relationship between party equilibrium and the reticence of both major parties to take clear and firm stances on the major issues of the Gilded Age such as currency and tariff policy.
Identify the crucial event in the creation of the "civil service system" by congressional passage of the Pendleton Act.
Identify and recognize the historical significance of each of the following:
(a) Munn v. Illinois (1877), (b) Wabash v. Illinois (1886),
(c) Interstate Commerce Act (1887), (d) Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), (e)
U.
S. v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895),
(f) Sherman Silver Purchase Act, (g) The Depression of the 1890's, (h) Coxey's Army.
LECTURE OBJECTIVES
"Walter Prescott Webb's Great Plains Thesis"
Specify the location of the Great Plains as described by Webb.
Identify and describe the physical characteristics which made the Great Plains environmentally unique in North America and so foreboding to Anglo-Americans.
Identify and describe fully the relationship between the physical environment of the Great Plains and the initial attempts of Anglo-Americans to settle and develop that last frontier of continental North America.
Identify specific "adaptations" in Anglo-American lifestyles, law, literature, etc. forced by the Great Plains physical environment according to Webb.
Define "primary" and "secondary" windfalls and identify specific examples
of each according to Webb.
"Agrarian Problems and Gilded Age Politics"
Identify and discuss in detail the major problems of American farmers during the latter 1800s, both real and imagined.
Identify the concept, aim, and operation of protective tariffs as they were used to encourage industrialization.
Identify the groups of people who supported and those who opposed protective tariffs as well as the nature of their arguments.
Define "hard" and "soft" money and identify the supporters of each as well as their respective arguments and motivations.
Identify the reason many agrarians were upset and dissatisfied with the two major political parties during the Gilded age of the latter 1800s.
The Grange and the Farmers' Alliance were two farm protest organizations
active in the 1880s. Identify and discuss the social, economic, and political
goals of both organizations paying special attention to the "cooperative
programs" of the Grange and the "subtreasury program" of the Farmers' Alliance.
"Populism and Political Realignment"
Out of the Grange, the Farmers' Alliance, and other reform/dissident groups sprang the Populists or People's Party. Describe fully the Populists according to the following: (a) class origins, (b) occupational backgrounds, (c) geographical distribution
Cite specific demands of the Populists, both social, economic, and political.
Identify specific factors working against the Populists in their attempt to win national office and become one of the two major political parties.
Be familiar with the specific characteristics of the 1894-96 elections which make them realigning rather than maintaining or deviating elections.
Identify specific reasons why William Jennings Bryan lost the election of 1896.