THE NEW SOUTH AND THE FRONTIER Unit IVD AP United States History

Fundamental Questions ► ► Did the Civil War and Reconstruction solve the nation’s issues? ► ► How better off was the nation after the Civil War and Reconstruction?

The “New” South ► ► The Compromise of 1877 withdrew federal troops from former Confederate states, ended Reconstruction with a promise of development ► ► New vision   From slave-dependency to self-sufficient and diverse agricultural   Industrialization and infrastructure   Redemption…

Southern Agriculture ► ► Cotton remained the dominant crop   Cotton farms doubled   Large supply of world’s cotton drove prices down ► ► Diversity of crops   Peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans   Tobacco and cigarette companies

Sharecropping ► ► 50% white farmers and 75% black farmers ► ► Crop liens kept small farmers in constant debt

Southern Industry ► ► Growth of cities in the South   Textiles, steel, lumber, tobacco ► ► Industrialization spearheaded by cheap labor rates ► ► More railroads built and designed on national standards

“Southern” Economy ► ► Northern investment control and slow progress kept the South poor ► ► Cheap labor wages and sharecropping ► ► Poor education attributed to Southern poverty

Redemption ► ► Redeemers   Rid of Republican state governments   White supremacy   laissez-faire economics ► ► Hamburg Massacre (July 1876) ► ► Senator Benjamin Tillman (D-SC) ► ► Origin of Bible Belt ► ► Instituted Jim Crow laws

Segregation ► ► Supreme Court   Civil Rights Cases of 1883 ► ► Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional ► ► Segregation may be practiced by private individuals and businesses   Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) ► ► Established “separate but equal” ► ► Jim Crow Laws   Established by white Redeemer state governments   Legitimized by Plessy v. Ferguson   Examples ► ► Segregated public facilities and accommodations ► ► Disenfranchisement   Grandfather clauses   Literacy tests   Poll taxes

Frontier Thesis ► ► Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 ► ► The frontier defined the American identity ► ► It promoted independence and individualism unlike European conformity and social structure ► ► The distinct American political society was a result of surviving the frontier ► ► The edge of the frontier was the figurative border of civilization and the wild ► ► The loss of the frontier could signal the beginning of social conformity and rigidity

Railroads Drive the Expansion ► ► 35,000 miles in 1865 to 193,000 in 1900 ► ► Gauge standards connecting various local and national lines ► ► Connection of rails to cities, water ports, market centers, Atlantic to Pacific   First Transcontinental Railroad (1869) ► ► Federal land grants and subsidies ► ► Overexpansion and corruption led to consolidation by business moguls

Expansion of Railroads

Settling the West: Mining Frontier ► ► Gold and silver from California to Black Hills   Comstock Lode in Nevada (1859) ► ► Boomtowns and States   Most settlers established markets for miners   Deadwood, Dakota; Tombstone, Arizona ► ► Employed foreign-born miners   South Americans brought experience   Chinese were cheap labor

Settling the West: Cattle Frontier ► ► Vaqueros – Cowboys ► ► Cattle in West to Beef Markets in East   Cattle trails connect to railways in Kansas ► ► Decline   Loss of land ► ► Homesteader claims ► ► Commercial agriculture   Environment ► ► Overgrazing ► ► Cold winters

Settling the West: Farming Frontier ► ► Homestead Act of 1862   160 acres for $10 and to live on and cultivate land for 5 years ► ► Oklahoma Land Rush (April 1889)   Sooners and Boomers ► ► Exodusters   Southern free/freed blacks ► ► Innovation   Barbed wire   Dry farming ► ► Bonanza Farms   Outside capital and new machinery led to massive and lucrative farms ► ► National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry   Movement to better connect farmers amid dreary rural life   Cooperatives ► ► Stores, elevators, insurance

Manifest Destiny and the Natives ► ► Most western tribes based on a nomadic lifestyle and buffalo herds   Whites decimated buffalo herds for fur, sport, pests ► ► Reservations   Concentrations of tribes through separate treaties   Tribal chiefs selected by white officials ► ► Indian Wars   Theaters   Sand Creek Massacre (1864)   Little Big Horn (1876) ► ► Destruction of Colonel George Custer’s unit ► ► A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson in 1881   Nonfiction historical account of government policies toward Natives   Purpose was to shed light on atrocities and pursue humane and equal treatment

Reactions Toward and By Natives ► ► Assimilation   Formal education and religious conversion   A “white” education ► ► Dawes Severalty Act (1887)   Broke up tribal organizations;   lands divided into 160 acre plots;   citizenship grants;   disease, alcoholism, poverty, starvation ► ► Ghost Dance Movement   Wovoka’s attempt to drive the settlers out through circle dances and chants ► ► Wounded Knee (1890)   Massacre of Sioux men, women, and children signifying the end of the Indian Wars