1. CH. 17
STUDENT NOTES

2. The Frontier An empty land awaiting settlement and civilization
The “Great American Desert,” “Far West,” “Great West” – land west of Mississippi River
Inhabitants –
Farmers
Miners
Ranchers
Indian tribes, Chinese immigrants, Hispanics

3. The Romantic West ALL CONTRASTED EASTERN RIGGEDNESS Landscape:
Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, Cascade Ridge, Grand Canyon – created
Fantasy of “wilderness”
Cowboy Culture
Owen Wister’s, The Virginian (1902)
Traveling Wild West Shows
Idea of Frontier
Mark Twain, Roughing It (1872)
Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West (1890s)
Frederick Jackson Turner: historian from University of Wisconsin
1893 – speech “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
Frontier line could not long be seen = frontier closed, closed era in American history

4. “The West is now closed.”
1890 Census Bureau announced end of frontier
“The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement, explain American development.”
“So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power.”

5. Settlement West Settlement during Post War boom:
Immigration
Transcontinental RR
Federal policy
Economic prosperity
*Negatives: mechanization, rising costs, 160 acres not enough, arid land
Federal gov’t to provide solution: Timber Culture Act (1873), Desert Land Act (1877), Timber and Stone Act (1878)
Acquire more land, low price
Statehood: 1864 – NV; 1867 – Nebraska; 1876 – CO; 1889 – ND, SD, MO, WA; 1890 – WY, ID; UT

6. Homestead Act, 1862 160 acres Small fee
Live there for five years and “improve” the land
Passed during Civil War
Union control of the west
Free-Soilers

7. Nativism Against Irish & Chinese Laborers

8. Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882

9. Western Economy Connected market economy
East – supply capital and markets
West – supply raw material and workforce
Workforce – migrant, economically divided (similar to east)
Western populated by single white males – Anglo, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Filipino, African-American
Caste system
Dominant industries: Mining, ranching, commercial farming

10. PROBLEMS farmers faced:
Crop prices declined: wheat corn
Bank interest rates going up
Machinery price going up – NEED this but can’t afford it
Frustrated w/ RR and big business b/c gouged prices
Currency – want more silver purchased to put more money in circulation, against gold standard
Greenbacks were in circulation – taken out of circulation hurt farmers b/c less paper equals more debt

11. REACTION of farmers: The Grange – collective bitching
Attempted to bring farmers together into a community – social and educational activities
Share costs, share ideas = cooperate
Farmer’s Alliances – political and legally organizing
Munn v. Illinois – state could regulate RR
Wabash overturned so then Congress passed ICC – behvior of middleman unacceptable
Alliances merge into Populist Party aka the “people’s party”
Call for greenbacks and/or “free silver”
Sherman silver purc

12. Mining & Boomtowns Flourished b/t 1860s – 1890s
Cycle: strike, boom on surface, corporate takeover
CA – gold 1849
Colorado Rush – gold 1859
Nevada – silver 1860s
Natural resources: iron, tin, lead, quartz, zinc = more important over time
Out-laws and vigilantes
Men outnumbered women

13. Cattle Kingdom Mexican and Texan ancestry
CW vets, Mexicans, former slaves, European immigrants
Cowboys employed: branding, roundups, roping, gear (saddles, spurs, leather chaps)
Open range: vast grasslands of open domain of Great Plains
Ranching replaced cattle drives (Chisholm Trail) – TX – KA
Conflicted w/ homesteaders on the range
Invention of barbed wire by Joseph F. Glidden

14. Indian Tribes Eastern: Cherokee, Creek
Plain Indians – diverse group of tribes and language groups
Arapaho, Cheyenne, Pawnee
Varied lifestyles – most powerful Sioux Nation
Believed in spiritual power of natural world, moved w/ buffalo herd, road horses
Downfall: outmanned, outgunned, disease

15. White Tribal Policies 1851 Reservation policy – “Concentration”
1867 Indian Peace Commission – replace “concentration” with 2 large reservations: 1) OK Indian Territory, 2) Dakotas
Buffalo – livelihood for Plain Indians
Flesh = food; skin = clothing, shoes, tepees, blankets; bones = weapons
White slaughtered buffalo – 1865: 15 million; 1875: < 1,000

17. Indian Affairs
Dawes Severalty Act (1887) – gradual elimination of tribal ownership of land
Assimilation
Failed administratively
Divided tribal lands and allotted property to individuals BUT dismantled tribal culture and legal status of natives
Helen Hunt Jackson – A Century of Dishonor 1881
"Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations."

18. The New South
Henry Woodfin Grady, proponent of progressive “New South”
Industrialization & wage labor to replace plantation system
Cordial race relations, albeit under segregation
Geography
Wealth and power shifted inland from tidewater (coast) to piedmont (foothills)
“Good Roads” movement to enable public education & link internal trade
Industry & Labor
New industries: textile mills, tobacco factories, steel mills & mines
Company towns exerted a great deal of control over workers’ lives

19. BIRTH OF JIM CROW Grandfather laws (clause)
Jim Crow laws – institutionalized segregation; custom to law (replace Black Codes)
SEGREGATION
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – institutionalized separation of the races
LA law separate seating
Separate BUT equal
VOTING
Poll tax or property qualification
Literacy test (different for black and white)
Grandfather laws (clause)

20. BLACK SPOKESMEN BOOKER T. WASHINGTON W.E.B DU BOIS Former slave
Founder Tuskegee Institute (AL)
Adopt standards of WHITE middle class
NO agitation of political structure
Atlanta Compromise (1895) – submission and compliance
Massachusetts – graduated from Harvard
Demanded complete equality
FIGHT for CR, don’t settle
Niagara Movement (1905) – opposition to segregation and disenfranchisment
Co-Founder NAACP (1909)

21. “Atlanta Compromise” (1895)
“To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition… I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are’ – cast it down… in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions… No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”
Booker T. Washington

22. The Negro Problem (1903)
“I insist that the true object of all true education is not to make men carpenters but to make carpenters men… The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it.”
W.E.B. DuBois

23. NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Evolved from the Niagara Movement
Founded in 1909

24. Jim Crow Laws Segregation (Plessy decision) Disfranchisement Poll Tax
Literacy Test
Grandfather Clause

25. BIRTH OF A NATION
Set during and after the American Civil War and directed by D.W. Griffith – 1915
promotion of white supremacy and glorification of the Ku Klux Klan
Led to 2nd rise of KKK

26. ANTI-LYNCHING Anti-lynching 1892 Ida B. Wells
Black journalist launched nat’l anti-lynching movement
Goal – federal law to supersede state oppression