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APUSH
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Reconstruction
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The Gilded Age
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Sand Creek Massacre
675 Colorado Volunteers raided a peaceful Cheyenne village at Sand Creek, killing over 400 Native Americans, most of which were women and children. Chief Black Kettle had made attempts at friendship and peace, but American troops rejected them and violently destroyed the village without thought of peace or the consequences. John Chivington, the general in charge, was said to have told his troops to kill all the Natives, "big or little." -
Freedmen's Bureau
The Freedmen's Bureau signified a positive change in race relations in the post-war South. Originally, the Bureau promised to not only protect the rights guaranteed to freedmen by the 13th and 14th Amendments but also, initially, to grant "forty acres and a mule" as a redistribution of farmland to freed blacks to aid them in starting their lives anew. It ultimately failed due to racist whites in the South rejecting such a proposition and proposing sharecropping as a labor-intensive alternative. -
The Klu Klux Klan Is Founded
The KKK was an organized terrorist movement of white supremacy whose primary goal was to reestablish Antebellum order of the pre-Civil War era by oppressing freedmen into a state that Thomas Nast dubbed "worse than slavery." They viciously murdered innocent black families and worked to scare them away from the polls and any job interviews. This effort was a violent way of suppressing any capability of a black person or family to have social mobility and take advantage of the freedom they got. -
National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry
A movement of farmers that worked to unite them as political focus seemed to disregard the crucial role they played in the American economy. It held public events to increase their publicity and influence. It was the very small beginnings of the farmer-focused Populist Party that was officially developed over twenty years later. -
Johnson Impeached
A known racist of Tennessee, President Johnson wanted a quick and easy restoration of Southern states into the Union to ease the Reconstruction process. He proposed that Southerners be granted pardon (except some rich whites), that they denounce their secession, ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, and then be simply be reinstated. His Reconstruction just led to "Black codes."Johnson's opposition to the 14th Amendment was overcome by the two-thirds majority, and he was impeached for obstructionism. -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
Similar to other the Civil Rights Acts we see today in society, the Act of 1875 made illegal all discrimination based on race in public areas, related, more specifically, to public transportation, access to food and drink, etc. Despite the forward progress made by its passage, the act was nullified under ten years later when it was deemed unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. This was one of the first of many legislative efforts at achieving social equality in U.S. History. -
Boss Tweed
Boss Tweed was one of the most famous "bosses" of the Gilded Age. He was a corrupt politician who convinced poor immigrants and inner-city residents to provide him with their votes in exchange for promises of wealth, well-being, financial support, and even bribes. As a result, he gained considerable political power as the destitute flooded into the polls to give him their vote as they promised. Once in office, though, he quickly forgot about the needs of the people whom he'd befriended. -
Bison
Only about one thousand bison remain in existence on the Great Plains and West of the United States. 17 years earlier, at least 15 million roamed the area, but as corporations made way for railroads and they were killed for food and mercilessly without reason, their population plummeted dramatically. -
Social Gospel
Popular socialist-Christian movement that initiated ideas of social change. Particularly, it focused on communities coming together and working for the common good of the people. Also, it emphasized assisting the poor through organizations like settlement houses that often were used by poor immigrants for food and shelter. -
Immigration - The Gilded Age
As stories spread around the globe of the United States' prowess and its abundance of opportunities for new life, the rate of immigration into the country soared. Often times the highest numbers were from countries already experiencing some degree of political turmoil, whose citizens saw the U.S. as a safe haven. The number of immigrants from Austria-Hungary in 1890 was over 45 times what it was in about 1861. The number from the USSR was almost 85 times what it was just twenty years earlier. -
Jacob Riis
Riis was a Gilded Age-era photographer who worked to expose the political corruption and poverty that existed during the late 1800s, contrary to the stories of a golden America of great economic success and happiness. The photos were taken mostly of inner-city immigrants who lived in frightening conditions that fostered the spread of diseases. The most important elements of the photos were the expressions of the subjects, who reflected moods of despair and sadness. -
Teller Amendment
The Teller Amendment is passed after the U.S. wins the Spanish American war and amasses the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The Teller Amendment made it clear that the U.S. would not interfere with the governance of Cuba and would allow it to grow as a free nation with the full capacity to trade, produce, and interact. It was essentially an ordinance of self-governing for the Cubans, but was nullified by the Platt Amendment, which gave the U.S. special privileges and influence over Cuba. -
USS Maine
USS Maine explodes in port at Cuba due to mechanical malfunctions. Thanks to yellow journalists like William Randolph Hearst, the event is blown out of proportion and blamed on the Spanish in order to encourage the calls for war. This event swayed public opinion against Spain, and, combined with the politically turbulent DeLome Letter, pushed the US from neutrality into war with Spain. -
Spheres of Influence
Larger European empires took China and divided it up, establishing specific regions of trade-based exclusivity that allowed each empire to interact economically and unopposed with China. It helped to prevent violence among the world's superpowers but also restricted the liberty of the Chinese economy and those other countries who were not allowed to trade with it. The countries consisted of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, and it was opposed by American John Hay who proposed an Open Door. -
The Boxer Rebellion
In the age of the spheres of influence, a radical political group consisting largely of the poor, working class of China revolts, blaming non-Chinese residents for the divisive socio-economic issues the country was facing. They killed many foreign people and even more Chinese Christians (up to thousands). The rebellion was finally suppressed with the Boxer Protocol in 1901, which required that Beijing be disfortified, that China not import firearms for a couple of years, and mass punishment. -
Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States who earned a reputation as a "trustbuster" who targeted the massive corporations of the early 1900s in an attempt to restore fair business practices and abolish monopolies and trusts that threatened small business. -
Upton Sinclair
Muckraker and author of "The Jungle," an expose that was meant to work as a social cry for the rights for labors. Rather, he ended up exposing the horrifying, unsanitary practices of the meatpacking industry that caused huge audiences to be in disgust of what they were eating, resulting in reform not on labor but on the way food was prepared and processed. -
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
A fire occurred in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory where female employees were in a non-fire safety conducive working environment that included locked doors and overcrowded work rooms. Workers were forced to plunge to their death from rooftops as blankets ripped on impact. The tragedy resulted in at least 146 deaths and 71 injuries. -
Carrie A. Nation
Social activist who advocated for prohibition through excessive violence and strong speech. She was best known for destroying bars in Wichita, Kansas as an attempt to show a fiercer side of the temperance movement that otherwise involved civil discourse and political organizations. Though she was jailed for about a month, she continued protesting throughout Kansas when released. -
The Federal Reserve Act
Due to a weak financial system that was too concentrated to truly support the American economy in all regions, President Wilson helps to sign this act, which provided for 12 regional federal reserve banks that would act as a safety net for banks during bank runs and could print money to be issued and backed by a gold standard, which would later be removed in 1933. It was the basic layout of the Federal Reserve system we know today. -
Tampico Incident
Seven American sailors were arrested and detained by the Mexican government for trespassing, which offended the American people and led to a call for federal intervention. Wilson demanded an apology after their release and a 21-gun salute, which weakened international relations as a power shift put a former trade partner of Wilson, Carranza, in power. Despite this, the situation cooled off until another political challenger killed American settlers in his search for political power in Mexico. -
The Lusitania
A British passenger ship sailing straight through a war zone littered with German U-Boat submarines is sunk, killing over 100 American passengers and adding to the enormous tension caused by the rise in German-related submarine warfare. Despite expliaining that they had sunk the ship due to its carrying small amunition, the Germans later proclaimed that any and all ships passing through their naval territory would be sunk, sending the United States into war. -
The CPI
The Wilson wartime administration provides for the Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel. The goal of the committee was to induce overwhelming national support for the war through the spreading of propaganda. Posters that encouraged enlistment, domestic support through dietary and living changes, and increased investment in U.S. wartime bonds spread rapidly, along with speeches delivered by "4-minute men." Wilson needed national support since he had promised peace earlier. -
The Red Scare
A time of political turmoil in which the Russian rise of communism induced widespread fear in the United States of an eventual revolution and overthrow of American democracy. Nativism contributed and many Russians were unfairly targeted as they were commonly associated with the fear of overthrowal. This fear was federally reflected during the Palmer Raids, when President Wilson took law enforcement action by arresting many Eastern-Europeans for possible conspiracy/treason related to Communism. -
The 18th Amendment
Led by the influence of the temperance movement, the eighteenth amendment to the United States Constitution sends America into the Prohibition era. The sale and use of alcohol is strictly prohibited on a federal level, but it was challenged by the passage of the 1919 Volstead Act, which looked to concentrate prohibition on hard liquor rather than beer. Temperance-based organizations like the Anti-Saloon League displayed harsh resistance to the Volstead Act. -
Immigration Act of 1924
Reform of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. It required that, for each nationality of immigrants, only 2% of the American population would be permitted entrance annually. It was based on fear of a rapidly growing immigrant population that was filling the country too fast. They also wanted to concentrate a flow of Northern Europeans. -
American Auto Industry
Automobile production was becoming a new science, evolving and changing the way Americans were transported on a personal level. Thanks to Frederick Taylor who suggested a new theory of scientific management that involved merit, rather than time-based pay, factory production experienced rapid improvements. In 1927, Ford was producing a Model T once every 24 seconds and had sold 15 million in just 17 years, a major breakthrough. The assembly line drove down costs as much as $600 from 1903 to 1924. -
The Nye Committee
Senator Gerald Nye formed a committee that questioned hundreds of witnesses and organizations about the possible deals between munition companies and the U.S. Government prior to the declaration of war against Germany in World War I. They suspected that the involvement in the war had been based on interests of profiting, which covered American headlines and alarmed the population, who was under the impression that they had been duped into believing WWI to be a moral conflict, not commercial. -
FDR Four Freedoms
FDR spoke about the four freedoms during the course of World War II: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. With perceptions of evil dictators stemming on the homefront from both propaganda and nationalism, fear of losing these freedoms became motivation for support of American intervention in the war. Additionally, it caused popular fear of the unknown, which encompassed foreigners like Mexicans and Japanese, who suffered the consequences of suspicion. -
Executive Order 9066
This order was a culmination of American nationalist fear of Axis ideals in militant empires like Japan. It effectively suspended the rights of all Asian-Americans, particularly in the West Coast, to the authority of the Federal Government, leading to mass deportation and encampment of Japanese who, for the majority, were citizens of the United States. It marked a dark period in the war as many had already faced harsh discrimination and lynchings in California towns, which went unpunished. -
G.I. Bill
The G.I. Bill was a peacetime measure taken in order to ensure that the millions of incoming veterans from the war were re-integrated into society and the economy in the smoothest, fairest way possible. By 1946, the G.I. Bill led to over 1 million receiving secondary education and 4 million receiving heavy breaks on home-loans and mortgages, which boosted real estate while taking care of American heroes. The bill was in light of the economic disasters caused by similar issues faced after WWI.
