Unit 7 General Questions

Unit 7 General Questions

Closing the Western Frontier

1. Describe the caste system that developed in the American Southwest under Spanish and Mexican rule. What role did the Pueblo Indians and other tribes play in this system?
2. List some of the characteristics of the culture of the Plains tribes, with particular emphasis on gender roles and the importance of the American bison, or buffalo.
3. What factors led to the decline of Mexican-American economic and social dominance in California and Texas? What was the socio-economic status of most Mexican Americans by the end of the 19c?
4. Up to 1869, in what two fields did the greatest number of Chinese immigrants work?
5. Why was Anglo-European hostility toward the Chinese so high in California? What actions resulted from this hostility? How did the Chinese Americans respond?
6. What was the composition of the western labor force? How was it shaped by racial prejudice and gender imbalance?
7. What was the typical pattern of development and decline in the western mining industry?
8. What were the responses made by the Plains' settlers to the living conditions and challenges they encountered?
9. Describe the origins, purposes, and practices of the "long drive" and "open range" periods of the cattle industry.
10. What unique challenges did women settlers face in the West?
11. Why did women tend to gain the right to vote in the western states and territories before they did in the East?
12. What were the characteristics and functions of the Western cow town that emerged in the late 19c?
13. How did the transformation of the open-range ranch change the nature of the cattle industry on the Western frontier?
14. Why do the "new western historians" argue that Anglo-European Americans did not so much settle the West as conquer it? Is this a fair characterization of the course of events?
15. Why did many Americans view the West so romantically? Is this view still strong in the American character/psyche today?
16. How accurate was Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis about the American frontier?
17. Describe the evolution of traditional national Indian policy up to the 1880s. What did these policies accomplish? How were the policies and their implementation flawed?
18. What happened to the great buffalo herds in the last half of the 19c? What role did the railroad play? How did this affect Native American life?
19. Explain the advantages and disadvantages that the Plains Indians had in their conflicts with white settlers? Why did white culture prevail?
20. How did the government's reservation policy help make way for the market economy?
21. Identify some of the major encounters/battles between Native Americans and white settlers/US Army at the end of the 19c.
22. What were some of the attempts on the part of whites to raise the American conscience to what was going on in the Great Plains?
23. What was the basic objective of the Dawes Severalty Act? How did it try to accomplish this goal?
24. What was the "Ghost Dance?" Why was it so threatening to the white community nearby?
25. Why has Wounded Knee, SD become a symbol in the struggle for Native American civil rights?
26. Why can it be said that the western railroads were essentially public projects, despite their private ownership?
27. How did the railroads stimulate settlement of the Great Plains?
28. How did Western farmers use invention, technology, and innovation to meet the challenges of Western settlement?
29. How were market forces changing the nature of American agriculture at the end of the 19c?
30. What were the main grievances of the late-19c farmer?

The Rise of Big Business and Big Labor

1. What technological innovations of the late 19c transformed communications and business operations?
2. What new methods were developed for the large-scale production of durable steel? Where were the principal American centers of steel production and ore extraction?
3. What was the relationship between the steel industry and the railroads?
4. What technological development profoundly changed the oil industry?
5. Although the age of the automobile would not fully arrive until the 1920s, what developments of the 1890s and early 1900s laid the basis for the later boom?
6. Describe the emergence of organized corporate research and its impact on American economic development. What role did universities play in this process?
7. Explain the concepts of "scientific management" and "mass production." Who were the leading pioneers of these new approaches to industry?
8. How did the railroad transform America economically and ecologically?
9. What was the main legal principle that made buying stock in the modern corporation attractive to investors?
10. Explain the new approach to management and business organization that accompanied the rise of large corporations. What industries led in these developments?
11. Compare and contrast the vertical and horizontal integration strategies of business combinations. Which approaches did Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller use initially? Why did they evolve toward using both strategies?
12. How did financiers and industrialists use pools, trusts, and holding companies to expand their control. What was the result of this trend toward corporate combination?
13. Describe how the railroad created a truly national market. Explain the ecological changes that accompanied this transformation. Were the advantages worth the costs?
14. How did popular culture keep alive the "rags-to-riches" and "self-made man" hopes of the American masses? How realistic were such dreams?
15. What parts of Horatio Alger's message often got lost in the public's mind at the time he wrote and later? Why was this the case?
16. Explain how the theories of Social Darwinism and classical economics complemented each other. Who formulated those theories? How did the great industrialists embody such concepts?
17. Describe the "alternative visions" to the business-dominated view of society. How influential were such radical voices?
18. What were the visible symptoms that many Americans blamed on the trend toward "monopoly?"
19. What were the two sources of the massive migration into the industrial cities of the late 19c and early 20c?
20. Contrast the earlier immigrants to the United States with those who dominated after the 1880s. What attracted these migrants? What tensions ensued?
21. What happened to the standard of living of the average worker in the late 19c? What physical hardships and psychological adjustments did many workers face?
22. Why did industry increasingly employ women and children? How ere they treated?
23. What attitudes toward working women were exhibited by many adult male workers and their unions?
24. What was the significance of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877?
25. Compare and contrast the organization, leadership, membership [especially the role of women] and programs of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.
26. Why did the AFL succeed, while the Knights of Labor disappeared by the end of the 19c?
27. What methods were used by business to thwart labor reforms?
28. Compare and contrast the Haymarket Riot, the Homestead Strike, and the Pullman Strike. On balance, what was their effect on the organized labor movement?
29. Why did labor union membership begin to decline in the late 1890s?
30. What factors combined to help explain why organized labor remained relatively weak before World War I?

Urbanization

1. What were the attractions of the city that led to population expansion? What were the main sources of urban growth?
2. What were the factors that inspired the exodus of southern African Americans into cities, especially northern cities, that began in the late 19c?
3. What is meant by "push" and "pull" factors in population migrations?
4. How did the foreign immigrants of the 1890s and later differ from most of the earlier immigrants? What attracted them to the United States?
5. How did 19c and early 20c immigration to the United States fit in the context of worldwide, especially European, migration?
6. What social institutions and community actions helped facilitate immigrant adjustment to urban life in America? What were the barriers?
7. Which immigrant groups seemed to adapt better than most others to America? Why?
8. What were the strains caused by the desire of immigrants for assimilation? How did native-born Americans regard assimilation?
9. What efforts were made to restrict immigration in the late 19c? What ethnic group and other types of immigrants were specifically restricted?
10. What inspired the move toward the creation of expanded public spaces and public buildings in large American cities? What were the lasting legacies of this impulse?
11. What led to the development of residential suburbs around big cities?
12. Contrast the residential pattern of the working class and the poor with that of the wealthy and moderately well-to-do.
13. What was big city life like for the poor?
14. How did urban mass transit technology evolve from the Civil War era to the turn of the century?
15. What technological innovations made the development of the skyscraper possible and desirable?
16. How did big cities cope with the urban hazards of fire, disease, and sanitation? What were the environmental implications of dense urban development?
17. What was the typical middle-class attitude toward the problem of widespread urban poverty?
18. How did the big cities respond to violent crime at the end of the 19c?
19. What were the factors that contributed to the rise of political machines and their bosses?
20. How did the typical political machine operate? What were the pros and cons of boss rule in large cities?
21. What were the changes in income and purchasing power of the urban middle class and working class? Who made the greater gains?
22. How did the emergence of mass-market products along with chain stores, mail-order outlets, and the large department stores impact the lives of American families, especially women?
23. Why and how did Americans begin to change their attitudes toward leisure and consumption? What factors contributed to this new view?
24. How did the approaches to leisure vary by class?
25. Why did spectator sports become very popular at the turn of the 19c? What changes were beginning to occur in women's sports?
26. What were the main sorts of popular entertainment activities available to urban dwellers of the late 19c and early 20c? How did class considerations shape the types of activities enjoyed?
27. Why was the Fourth of July such an important holiday? How was it different in the South?
28. What important changes occurred in journalism and publishing in the decades after the Civil War?
29. What issues did the realist novelists explore? How did the realist authors approach these problems?
30. By the early 1900s, what movements in American visual art were becoming evident? How did these movements reflect the contrast between the genteel and modern approaches?
31. How did Darwinism challenge traditional American faith and contribute to the growing schism between cosmopolitan, mostly urban, and traditional, mainly rural, values [late 19c "culture wars"]?
32. How did the new social science disciplines of economics, sociology, and anthropology impact the intellectual view of contemporary and historic America?
33. Describe the evolution of free public schooling in the United States. What parts of the nation lagged in education?
34. What government and private actions combined to lead to the establishment or significant expansion of universities and colleges after the Civil War?
35. What opportunities for higher education were available to women in this era? What were the distinctive characteristics of the women's colleges?
36. Was America at the beginning of the 20c truly a "Melting Pot?" Is it today?

Gilded Age and Populism

1. Why was the period of the late 1870s to the early 20c called the "Gilded Age?"
2. How were the views of Democrats and Republicans about the role of government different at this time? [Identify these views about both the federal, and state and local governments.]
3. Identify the major political factions within the Republican Party at the end of the 19c.
4. List the significant political and economic issues of the Gilded Age.
5. What were the provisions of the Pendleton Act of 1883? What were the positive and negative effects of this law on the quality of government employees hired at the turn of the last century?
6. How did state legislatures attempt to regulate the railroads? What was the response to these regulations of the Supreme Court in these rulings?:Munn v Illinois;Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway Co. v Illinois.
7. How was the protective tariff as an issue reflective of regional as well as agrarian-industrial divisions at the end of the 19c?
8. Why did tariff reform fail in the 1890s?
9. Distinguish between the sound [hard] money policy [gold] and the inflationary [soft] money policy [silver/greenbacks] being debated at the end of the 19c.
10. Where did the major political parties stand on the monetary issue? How were the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 attempts on the part of the Democrats and Republicans to find a compromise on this issue?
11. Why did Republicans include Chester A. Arthur as their Vice Presidential candidate in the 1880 election?
12. What personal scandal plagued Grover Cleveland's campaign in 1884? Why did he win the presidency in spite of it?
13. What progress was made in the women's suffrage movement during the Gilded Age? Why was there a split in the movement?
14. Why was the position of the presidency relatively ineffective at the end of the 19c?
15. Why did Southern agriculture, unlike that of the Midwest, not benefit much from mechanization?
16. How did the crop-lien system work? Why did it cause such economic hardships for the tenant farmers stuck in that system?
17. What were the major farmer organizations that emerged in the U. S. during the late 19c? Identify the major contributions that each of them made to agricultural reform.
18. How was the demise of the Granger Laws related to the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act? Why was the ICC so ineffective?
19. How was the National Alliance movement and evangelical Protestantism connected? What was the impact of this movement on race issues in the South?
20. What is populism? Who were its early spokespersons?
21. What were the major causes of the Panic of 1893? How did President Cleveland respond to this depression?
22. What was Coxey's Army? How was this "movement" different from socialism?
23. What were the issues in the Populist Party Platform [Omaha] of 1892?
24. What is the main role played by third parties in the American political process to date?
25. Why did William McKinley win the 1896 presidential election? How did he make good on his campaign promises?

Imperialism

1. Identify the intellectual, social, philosophical, and racial factors which helped create a new nationalistic mood more receptive to overseas expansion in the late 19c.
2. How did the new imperialism of the 19c differ from the older style empires?
3. What were the justifications for imperialism put forth by its most ardent advocates? How did the British Empire influence American thinking?
4. What was Alfred T. Mahan's thesis concerning national power?
5. How did the Congress respond to Mahan's book?
6. Why did imperialists view colonization as a solution to their domestic economic problems?
7. How did U. S. economic prosperity lead it to pursue a policy of imperialism?
8. What were James G. Blaine's objectives in promoting a Pan-American cooperation? How successful were his efforts?
9. What problems did the McKinley Tariff of 1890 cause for American sugar growers in Hawaii?
10. Why did Americans have an interest in annexing Hawaii?
11. How did the Cleveland administration handle the annexation issue? What role did Queen Liliuokalani play?
12. What were the positions of the Democrats and Republicans in the Congressional debate over the annexation of Hawaii?
13. Why was the United States interested in obtaining control over such places as the SamoanIslands?
14. How did the United States respond to the Venezuelan crisis of 1895?
15. What were the causes of America's involvement in Cuban affairs?
16. What is meant by "yellow journalism?" How was it spurred by the Spanish-American War? What was its legacy?
17. Describe early American business and political interests in Cuba and the threats to these interests during Spanish rule of the island.
18. Who was José Martí? Why did he destroy American-owned sugar mills and plantations in Cuba in the 1890s?
19. List the factors that promoted American support for Cuban independence in the late 1890s.
20. What were America's motives for going to war with Spain in 1898?
21. List the provisions of the Teller Amendment.