David Rogers /
Study Guide for the Mississippi State U.S. History State Test /
Things We Need To Know /
David Rogers /
12/3/2010 /
This Study is the accumulation of over twenty years of work. It is hoped that this material will not only help to prepare the student for the State Test, but that it provides knowledge that the student will take out into the world and be better prepared to understand why modern events are occurring. The question that all students ask is “Why do I need to study History?” We all hear it as teachers of social studies and we all have some answer for it. My answer is this. “The reason why we need to know history is to keep from repeating the same mistakes over and over again. We learn from the past so that we can strive to make a better future.” It is the hope of this author that this work will provide clear and concise information that the student will find easier to understand and comprehend. If you suggestions or comments feel free to email them to me at . /

INDEX

Reconstruction

Lincoln’s Plan for Reconstruction

Johnson’s Plan for Reconstruction

Congressional Reconstruction Plan

Reconstruction in General

End of Reconstruction

The New South

Westward Expansion

What Caused Expansion to the West?

Pull Factors

Push Factors

Affects of Westward Expansion

Native Americans

American Economy

Populism

Industrialization in America

Revolution in technology

New Form of Energy

Advances in Communication

Advances in Transportation

Big Business

What is Big Business?

Robber Barons

Captains of Industry

Gospel of Wealth

Social Darwinism

Business on a Large Scale

Monopolies

Trusts

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Factory Workers

Division of labor

Work Environment

Working Families

Labor Unions and Strikes

Socialism

Knights of labor

American Federation of Labor

Wobblies

Reaction of Employers to Unions

Great railroad Strike

Haymarket Strike

Homestead Strike of 1892

Pullman Strike of 1894

Gilded Age

Laissez-faire policies of the Government

Credit Mobiller Scandal

Spoils System

Pendletion Act

Railroad regulation

Interstate Commerce Commission

Immigration

Chinese Exclusion Act

Gentleman’s Agreement

How did industry affect the cities?

City expansion

Political Machines

Social Gospel

Settlement movement

Nativists

Prohibition

Temperance Movement

Prohibition

Purity Crusader

Life in the Twentieth Century

Immigration and Public Education

Women and Higher Education

African American and Higher Education

New Forms of Entertainment

Vaudeville

Movies

Amusement Parks

Sports

Newspapers

Yellow journalism

Magazines

Jim Crow

Segregation

Plessey v. Ferguson

Violence

Resisting Discrimination

NAACP and Civil Rights

Changing Roles of Women

Becoming a World Power

Growth of Imperialism

Expanding U.S. Interests

Spanish-American War

Open Door Policy

Theodore Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy

Progressives

19th Amendment

World War I

Causes of World War I

The Great War

America at War

How did the U.S. Finance the War?

Enforcing Loyalty

War and its effects on Minorities and Women

The 1920s

The Changing role of Women

The Great Migration

Looking for American Heroes

Mass Media and the Jazz Age

Racial Tensions of the 1920s

End of First Semester

1920s a Republican Decade

The Red Scare

Labor Troubles of the 1920s

Harding Presidency

The Coolidge Presidency

Election of 1928

The Economy of the 1920s

Consumer Economy

Economic Danger Signs of the 1920s

Reconstruction

Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction

After the end of the Civil War there many ideas about what should be done to the south and how it was to be readmitted to the union. President Lincoln wanted the south to be quickly assimilated back into the union. He felt that the south had never left the union therefore it did not have to be readmitted. The plan that he developed is known as the Lincoln plan of reconstruction and included the following:

(1)Amnesty to all but a few of the top ruling confederate leaders. All people would have to do is to take an oath of loyalty to the United States.

(2)When 10% of the population that had voted in the 1860 election had sworn an oath of loyalty the states could organize a new constitutional convention to draw up a new constitution that would recognize the rights of all citizens white and black.

(3)Members of the confederate government, officers in the confederate army, judges, and members of congress who had left the union could not receive amnesty.

Lincoln did not want to punish the south and he wanted to bring the south back into the union as soon as possible so that the nation could begin to heal. But his untimely death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth brought this hope to a premature end.

Johnson’s Plan of Reconstruction

After Lincoln’s death his Vice President Andrew Johnson became president and he also wanted to bring the south back into the union as soon as possible. His problem was that he was a southerner and the radical republicans did not like him nor did they trust him because of his southern connections. Johnson’s plan was similar with Lincoln’s in many ways yet there were differences.

(1)Amnesty for those taking an oath of loyalty to the United States. It excluded high ranking Confederate officials and those with property valued at over 20,000 but they could each apply for a pardon individually.

(2)Required the states to ratify the 13th Amendment which ended slavery.

Due to the fact that Johnson was not popular nor did he have the political power of Lincoln Johnson’s plan was not very effective. Congress soon became the soul driver of reconstruction and they attempted to impeach him but he won his impeachment trial by one vote.

Congressional Reconstruction

Many of the republicans in congress wanted to see the south punished for the horrors of the war. They felt that Lincoln and Johnson’s plans for reconstruction were too easy on the southern states and they wanted to toughen it up. So in 1867 Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act putting Congress in charge of reconstructing the south and using the military to enforce their actions. The south would be divided up into military districts and a military general was placed in charge of each one. Congressional reconstruction called for:

(1)Passage of the 14 and 15th amendments.

(2)Military reconstruction of the south into 5 military districts.

(3)New state constitutions requiring a guarantee of voting rights.

(4)Empowering of African Americans and supported their education.

14th Amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and declared no state can deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process.

15th Amendment gave the African American male the right to vote.

Reconstruction in General

President Lincoln realized that at the end of slavery there were a large number of people in the south that were unemployed and homeless as well as uneducated. The Freedmen’s Bureau was created to aid the newly freed men to get food, shelter, clothes, and an education. It also helped them to find work. Many in the south opposed the Bureau and it was often the focus of attacks by the KKK.

Northern businessmen who had come south during reconstruction were resented by white southerners. They often arrived with their belongings in a carpet bag and they bought up businesses and lands for back taxes. They were known as carpet baggers and those southerners who assisted them were known as scalawags.

African Americans gained the right to vote and they were able to enter into political offices where they made contributions to rebuilding the south. Southerners resisted reconstruction by creating a terror organization called the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). They used fear, intimidation, and violence to try and control the African American and southern society.

End of Reconstruction

Reconstruction ended in 1876 because the rest of the nation had gotten tired of the expense of reconstruction. When the Republican John Hays made a deal with the democrats in the Compromise of 1877 that would allow him to the office of president, he agreed to end reconstruction in the south. After the end of reconstruction a “New South Arises”, some areas in the south began to industrialize while others remained agriculture. A new form of servitude developed called share cropping where people worked for the plantation owner for a percentage of the crop. He provided a house, the tools to plant with, and the seed. Often the plantation owner would have plantation store where the share croppers could get the things they needed on credit. The share cropper was always indebted to the plantation owner and they could never save enough to get ahead and buy their own land.

Westward Expansion

What caused Expansion to the West?

There are many factors that caused people to move westward. These factors are called Push/Pull factors. A pull factor is something that encourages someone to move west and push something that forces someone to move west. During the 1800’s the federal government passed a number of laws that made it easier for people to move west.

Pull Factors

Homestead Act – gave people free land as long as the meet certain criteria.

  1. Provided 160 acres of land
  2. Had to be 21 yrs of age or the head of the household
  3. Had to be an American citizen or working to be a naturalized citizen.
  4. Farm the land for five years
  5. Live on the land 6 months out of the year for 5 years

This act caused some 600,000 claims for land to be filed and the creation of more than 327,000 new farms.

Emancipation Proclamation- freed the slaves in the south and they moved west to escape the persecution of the south.

Pacific Railway Act 1862 and 1864- Government gave land to the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads to aid them in financing the Transcontinental Railroad. They were able to sell the land along the railroad to raise money to help build this railroad.

Morrill Land Grant Act- Gave states east of the Mississippi river land out west that they could sell to raise money for colleges.

Push Factors

Post war economic crisis caused many people to leave the east and go west to start over.

Former slaves moved west to escape the persecution of the south and to start over.

Outlaws moved west because of all the open spaces and the lack of the law.

As one can see there were many factors that caused people to move west, but one of the biggest was improved transportation. Once the transcontinental railroad was built it became easier for people to move west. No longer did one have to spend months riding a horse or wagon, enduring the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter, fearing an Indian attack at any moment. Now with arrival of the transcontinental railroad people move more easily to the west. Trains could move goods and people faster and more cheaply than horse.

Also advances in communication caused mover people to be willing to move west. The telegraph allowed for quicker communication than previously before. Morse code developed by Samuel Morris was used by the telegraph companies so that they could send messages electronically. Later in the 19th century Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone which would revolutionize communication ever more. It expanded from city to city and eventually into the rural areas allows people to speak in real time to others far away.

Also other things aided in westward expansion. The Bessemer process made the production of steel cheaper so it could be used to build bridges, trains, and railroads. The steel plow made it possible for farmers on the plains to turn the soil over. Another invention that had an influence on westward expansion was that of electrical power. Factories began to use this more reliable power source to power its machinery and machines began to replace workers. People lost jobs and they moved west seeking gold or land.

Affects of the Westward Expansion

Native Americans

One of the major affects of this expansion was that one the Native Americans. As White America moved west the Native Americans lost land and the Buffalo, which was the center of the culture of the native Americans. The Buffalo was the Wal-Mart of the Great Plains. It provided everything the Native American needed for survival. It provided food, shelter, clothing, tool, resources and even fire for the Native Americans living on the Plains. With the destruction of the herds the Native Americans were forced onto reservations and faced the loose of their culture.

The Dawes Act was an attempt of the Federal Government to assimilate the Native American into the American Culture. It divided the reservations into 160 tracts given to each family. Children were taken from parents and sent east to boarding schools where they lost their language and culture. As the older population died off there was no one to carry on the old ways.

American Economy

One of the things that drew people to the west was the chance of getting rich quick. Gold, silver, cooper, and other minerals were abundant in the west and this enriched the economy of the nation. People moved west in search of gold and silver causing many territories to acquire enough population to apply for statehood far earlier than what was expected. Also, the cattle industry helps to supply the demand of the east for meat. Great herds of cattle were driven from Texas to the cattle towns of Dodge City in Kansas and others to met cattle buyers who then sold them to the meat packing plants back in Chicago.

Populism

Farmers out west had a hard and difficult life. They soon learned that they had to depend on each other for help. The farmer during the Civil war had taken loans to purchase more land and newer equipment so they could work more land with less workers. After the war the prices for grain fell and they had a hard time paying their bills. They wanted to cause inflation which would make the dollar bill worth less money which meant that they would receive more dollars for their crops. They felt that they were making more money but they were not because it took more dollars to buy things than before. The farmer began to call for the free coinage of silver. They wanted the unlimited minting of silver coins to cause inflation. In 1873 in order to stabilize the economy the Congress had put the U.S. on the gold standard which meant that they could not print more money than they had gold for. The farmers wanted to do away with the gold standard and freely coin silver. In 1890 Congress passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act which increased the amount of silver the Government had to purchase but it did not require the government to mint the silver.

The American farmers formed the Populist part which called for the following:

(1)The increased coining of silver

(2)An increase in the circulation of money

(3)A progressive income tax

(4)Government ownership of communication and transportation systems. Railroads were charging farmers higher rates to haul their crops east than anyone else.

The Populist Party was able to influence many local and state elections and had some minor success in national politics.

Industrialization in America

Revolution in Technology

New form of energy

During the latter half of the 1800s there were many technological advances that changed not only how people worked but how they lived also. One of these changes was the development of electricity as a power source. It impacted not only people’s jobs but their home life also. Electricity was more efficient as a power source and it could be produced by burning coal, oil, or through hydroelectricity. Thomas Edison invention of the light bulb made it possible for factories to stay open later but it also influenced when people went to bed and what they did at night. Electricity would soon become common in the cities but it would still be a while before it would find its way into the rural areas.

Advances in Communication

The way that people communicated especially over long distances changed during this period. The telegraph was the first change that made it easier to communicate with others over long distances more rapidly. Telegraph used the Morse code developed by Samuel Morse and electricity to send messages over long distance more rapidly. Alexander Graham Bell in 1871 created the first Telephone. In 1881 Bell and some partners created the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Telephones soon began to make their way into business and homes located in the cities once again rural areas would have to wait before the lines would move outside city limits. The telephone really revolutionizes communications because for the first time you had real time communication. You no longer had to wait half a day or longer for a response on your message. All you had to do now was just pick the phone up and speak.