Murrin et al, Liberty, Power, Equality—chapter notes
McPherson, “Frontiers of Change, Politics of Stalemate, 1865-1890”
Name: ____________________________
Terms
Far West (give geographic definition)
sodbuster
hydraulic mining / strip mining
range-cattle industry
Chisholm Trail
refrigerated boxcars
barbed wire
“policy of concentration” / reservations
Lakota (Sioux)
Cheyenne
Sand Creek Massacre
Little Big Horn (1876)
Ghost Dance
Wounded Knee
“Peace Policy”
Dawes Severalty Act / Dawes Act (1887)
Chapter 18
Murrin et al, Liberty, Power, Equality—chapter notes
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Foreign Miners Tax of 1850
barrios
“New South”
Booker T. Washington
Atlanta Compromise Speech (1895)
Henry Grady
crop-lien system
debt peonage (we’ll cover in class)
lynching
poll taxes
“grandfather clauses”
literacy tests
Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
“Jim Crow” laws
Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883)
McKinley Tariff of 1890
Chapter 18
Murrin et al, Liberty, Power, Equality—chapter notes
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Chapter 18
Questions
1. List and briefly explain 2-3 reasons why transcontinental and western railroads were so
important (for economic and social changes, etc.)
2. What were the most heavily mined minerals in the Far West (from 1865-1890) and what
were they used for?
3. By the 1870s, in what ways did the actual working lives of miners clash with the
(romanticized) image of the independent miner (e.g., pan-handling for gold)?
4. List 2-3 factors that accounted for the rise and then the fall of open-range cattle drives and
cattle ranching (1865-1890)?
5. List and briefly 2-3 fundamental factors that led to rising tensions and conflicts between
white, private citizens and different western Indians by the 1860s? What factors led to
conflict between the U.S. government and western Indians?
6. Identify the most important factors, in each of the categories below, that led most western
and Plains Indians to eventually accept relocation to reservations:
government policies –
technology –
actions of private (U.S.) citizens –
environmental changes –
Murrin et al, Liberty, Power, Equality—chapter notes
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Chapter 18
7. Why has one historian described the Dawes Severalty Act as “an unqualified disaster” for
Indians on reservations and a boon [i.e., great benefit] for white settlers?
8. Identify and briefly explain 3 ways Mexican Americans suffered repression, dispossession,
and denial of rights.
9. Did blacks in the South immediately lose all political power and influence after 1877 (the
end of 1877)? Give some examples.
10. Identify and briefly explain at least 2-3 components of the “New South ideology.”
11. List the most important areas of industrial and agricultural production in the South
(between 1877 and 1900).
industrial production in the South –
agricultural production in the South –
12. Identify at least 2 ways in which the crop-lien system in the New South weakened the
Southern economy.
13. Identify at least 3-4 ways in which white Southern society disfranchised and repressed
blacks (legally and otherwise).
14. What were the nation’s major social and economic problems that McPherson claims the
Democratic and Republican Parties ignored between 1877 and 1900? Why was there a
“political stalemate”?