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Comstock Lode
The Comstock Lode was the first major U.S. discovery of silver ore, located under what is now Virginia City, Nevada. After the discovery was made public in 1859, prospectors rushed to the area and scrambled to stake their claims. Mining camps soon thrived in the vicinity, which became bustling centers of fabulous wealth. -
Boss Tweed - 1860-76
An American politician most notable for being the "boss" of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in the politics of 19th century New York City and State. He controlled political power from 1860 to 1876 until he died in prison. Thomas Nast, the political cartoonist, played a role in ending the corruption. -
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Civil War
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Homestead Act of 1862
gave an applicant freehold title to an area called a "homestead" – typically 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River. 160 acres/ $10/ live on it for 5 years. -
13th Amendment
Abolishes Slavery -
Freedmen's Bureau
to aid former slaves through legal food and housing, oversight, education, health care, and employment contracts with private landowners. It became a key agency during Reconstruction, assisting freedmen (freed ex-slaves) in the South. Lasted until 1869 -
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Reconstruction
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Lincoln Assassinated
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Thomas Nast - 1860s - 1900
a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist who is considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon". - the scourge of Boss Tweed/ Tammany Hall machine. --the creator of Santa Claus, and Uncle Sam + both major United States political parties - donkey and elephant. -
Cyrus Field
created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858, but the permanent = 1866 -
National Labor Union
The National Labor Union (NLU) was the first national labor federation in the United States. Founded in 1866 and dissolved in 1873, it paved the way for other organizations. It followed the unsuccessful efforts of labor activists to form a national coalition of local trade unions. -
Ragged Dick - Horatio Alger
The tale follows a poor boot black's rise to middle class respectability in 19th-century New York City. - Rags to Riches -
14th Amendment
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. ends Dred Scott v. Sandford -
Alaska purchased from Russia
Seward's Folly, thought to be a wasteland of grass and cold air. It later turned out to be a blessing as oil was found during the depression. -
Promontory Point, Utah
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Knights of Labor
The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s. Its leader was Terence Powderly. The KoL promoted the social and cultural uplift of the workingman, rejected Socialism and radicalism, demanded the six-hour day, and promoted the producers ethic of republicanism. -
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Gilded Age
An age of specialization and industrialization. Was it really a "Gilded" Age? A horde of immigrants coming to work as cheap labor and horrid conditions resulting. . . -
15th Amendment
prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" -
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Depression of 1873-79
Known as the Long Depression - also part of a depression in Europe - problem with silver -
Alexander G Bell invents telephone
Bell spoke into the device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” -
Battle of Little Big Horn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho people against the 7th Cavalry, US Army. It occurred near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory, near what is now Crow Agency, Montana. The Indians won. -
Compromise of 1877
Rutherfraud Hayes becomes president and the military leaves the south. This ends Reconstruction and the freedmen are on their own. -
B&O Railroad Strike
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States and ended some 45 days later after it was put down by local and state militias, and federal troops. -
Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act
Required the U.S. Treasury to buy a certain amount of silver and put it into circulation as silver dollars. -
Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor
An activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government, she detailed the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor (1881). -
Chinese Exclusion Act
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by Chester A. Arthur. Congress suspended Chinese immigration, a ban that was intended to last 10 years but lasted until 1943 (61 years later). -
Pendelton (Civil Service Reform) Act
stipulated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit. The act provided selection of government employees competitive exams, rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation. It also made it illegal to fire or demote government employees for political reasons. -
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Also wrote Tom Sawyer - 1876. A story of a boy and his run-ins with the adult world . . . is it really what it's cut out to be? -
AFL - American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) was elected president -
Haymarket Square Riot
The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre or Haymarket riot) was a demonstration and unrest that took place at the Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a rally in support of striking workers. The AFL will be created afterwards. -
Interstate Commerce Commission
The agency's purpose was to regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including interstate bus lines and telephone companies. -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Act, adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide the land into allotments for individual Indians.The intent was to remove Indians from reservations and turn them into "white farmers" with a homestead (160 acres of lThe stated objective was to stimulate assimilation of Indians into American society. Severalty means = A separate and individual right to possession or ownership that is not shared with any other person. -
Jane Addams, Hull House begins
Hull House is a settlement house in the United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located in the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, Hull House opened its doors to the recently arrived European immigrants. With its innovative social, educational, and artistic programs, Hull House became the standard bearer for the movement -
Oklahoma Boomers
Oklahoma settlers moved into indian territory - people who moved into the land prior to the official date were known as Sooners -
Jacob Riis, "How the Other Half Lives."
An early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future "muckraking" journalism by exposing the slums to New York City’s upper and middle classes. -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
Requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies. Teddy Roosevelt put teeth into it (used it). -
Booker T. Washington - Tuskegee, AL
Booker Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915. Representative of the last generation of black American leaders born in slavery, he spoke on behalf of the large majority of blacks who lived in the South but had lost their ability to vote through disfranchisement by southern legislatures -
Wounded Knee
The Wounded Knee Massacre happened near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, It was the last major conflict between the US Army and the Indians of the West. -
Populist Party - 1892-96
.. it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites generally. It sometimes formed coalitions with labor unions, and in 1896 endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. The terms "populist" and "populism" are commonly used for anti-elitist appeals in opposition to established interests and mainstream parties. -
Homestead strike
The Homestead Strike was an industrial lockout and strike. It was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. The final result was a major defeat for the union and a setback for efforts to unionize steelworkers. -
Turner's Thesis
The Frontier Thesis, aka the Turner Thesis, - the origin of the distinctive egalitarian, democratic, aggressive, and innovative features of the American character has been the American frontier experience. In the thesis, the frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mind-sets -
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Depression of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures.. Also a run on the gold supply (relative to silver - 16:1 ratio) Worst depression to date. -
Immigration Restriction League
- people who opposed the influx of "undesirable immigrants" that were coming from southern and eastern Europe. They felt that these immigrants were threatening what they saw as the American way of life and the high wage scale. They worried about immigrants bringing in poverty and organized crime at a time of high unemployment.[1]
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Coxey's Army
Coxey's Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by the populist Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time. It started in March and ended in early May. Most did not reach the Ohio River. -
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between labor unions and railroads that occurred in the United States in 1894. The conflict began in the town of Pullman, Illinois when approximately 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt.The American Railway Union, the nation's first industry-wide union, was led by Eugene V. Debs -
Atlanta Compromise
African-American spokesman and leader Booker T. Washington spoke before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. His “Atlanta Compromise” address, as it came to be called, was one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. -
Plessy v Ferguson
"Seperate but Equal" accomadations -
Election of 1896
W.J. Bryan (D) v W. McKinley (R). Switch of philosophy - D = strong central gov't now - to help farmers against trusts and R = weak central gov't since business no longer need tight reins over them. Issue = silver. -
McKinley assassinated
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The Jungle
A book detailing American capitalism during the 1990s. Written by Upton Sinclair, it chronicles the hardships a Lithuanian family of immigrants, Jurgis and Ona, faces in Packingtown.
