Presentation18

Settling the WestChapter 181865-1890

International Relations in Latin AmericaThe nations of Latin America share a common heritage that influences the nature of their relationships with other countries. For example, their policies toward European states tend to be the products of long colonial associations with Spain and Portugal, and more recent commercial contacts with Great Britain, France, and Germany. International relations within the Americas are influenced by the powerful presence of the United States. As early as 1821, the Monroe Doctrine established the self-proclaimed right of the United States to protect all Latin American nations from foreign intervention.

The Spanish-American War of 1898, followed in 1905 by the Roosevelt Corollary by President Theodore Roosevelt to the Monroe Doctrine, imposed the right of the United States to intercede in Latin American affairs. The United States enforced this policy in the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone; military occupations of Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic; intervention in Cuba; and incursions into Mexico. The Good Neighbor Policy announced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 improved inter-American relations.

The RailroadsThe first transcontinental railroad

The American West

The Building of the RailroadsBuilt in 1860s Two companies

Central Pacific Railroad CompanyUnion Pacific Railroad Company

Met and joined railroad in Promontory, UtahDate of completion 10 May 1869By 1893 there were 6 major railroad

companies

Why did America need Railroads?Communication from East to West was not

very goodTravelling time from East to West took 6

months +It would help fulfil ‘Manifest Destiny’The U.S. needed to keep up with other

countriesTrade links with China and JapanHelp to bring law and order to the West

Effect of the Railroads: Quick and easy travel to the WestPrevious methods

Wagon TrainFootBy boatPony Express

The railroad turned a 6 month journey into a maximum of 8 days

Effect of the Railroads: Cheap land for people wanting to go West

Once the Railroads were built the Railroad companies had no use for the excess land

Sold land off cheapBenefitted

Homesteaders and Ranchers who came west.

Effect of the Railroads: Destruction of the IndiansHunters used the

Railroad to go west to hunt the buffalo

Hunters were only interested in buffalo skin

1875 southern buffalo herds wiped out

1885 northern buffalo herds wiped out

Indians depended on the buffalo, but now they were gone!

Effect of the Railroads: Helps develop the Cattle Industry

Cattle were transported by the railroads making it easier to move them from Texas to the East

Cow Towns grew up around these railroad stops

TaskEssay Question:

How important were the railroad and railroad companies in opening up the west?

Step 1: Planning your answerStep 2: Writing your answer

The Transcontinental RailroadThe transcontinental railroad in North America became a reality on 10 May 1869, when the tracks of the Union Pacific joined those of the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah. The event fulfilled dreams of spanning the continent that were spurred by settlement of the American West and that dated back to at least 1845. Interest in a transcontinental railroad was heightened by the acquisition of Oregon (1846) and California (1848) and the subsequent gold rush in California (1849). In 1853, Congress appropriated $150,000 to defray expenses of surveying feasible routes, but the question of the best one quickly became a matter of sectional controversy.Once the South left the Union, Congress pushed through the Pacific Railroad Act (1 Jul 1862), which authorized the Central Pacific to build eastward from San Francisco and the Union Pacific to build westward from Omaha, NE, via South Pass; the two were to join at the California-Nevada line. Each company was to receive 400 ft (122 m) of right-of-way through public (or 100 ft/31 m—through private) lands and 10 alternate square-mile sections of public land for each mile of track laid. Loans of $16,000 to $48,000 per mile—depending on the grade of the terrain—were also available as a first mortgage on the railroad. In 1864, Congress doubled the land grant and made the financial subsidy a second lien on the property. Congress yet again amended the original legislation in 1866 to allow the Central Pacific to advance eastward until it met the Union Pacific, thereby turning the project into a construction race.

The Last Spike by Thomas Hill, 1869

Golden spike that was donated by the governor of Arizona Territory. It is one of four ceremonial spikes driven at the completion (but is not the final golden spike).

SuffragetteThe demand for the enfranchisement of American women was first seriously formulated at the Seneca Falls Convention (1848). After the War between the States, agitation by women for the ballot became increasingly vociferous. In 1869, however, a rift developed among feminists over the proposed 15th Amendment, which gave the vote to black men. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others refused to endorse the amendment because it did not give women the ballot. Other suffragists, however, including Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, argued that once the black man was enfranchised, women would achieve their goal. As a result of the conflict, two organizations emerged. Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association to work for suffrage on the federal level and to press for more extensive institutional changes, such as the granting of property rights to married women. Stone created the American Woman Suffrage Association, which aimed to secure the ballot through state legislation. In 1890, the two groups united under the name National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In the same year Wyoming entered the Union, it became the first state with general women’s suffrage (which it had adopted as a territory in 1869).

The GrangeThe National Grange is the popular name of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, the oldest general farm organization in the United States. It was established in Washington, D.C. on 4 Dec 1867, largely through the efforts of Oliver Hudson Kelley, a Minnesota farmer who was deeply affected by the poverty and isolation of the farmers he saw while inspecting farm areas in the South for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1866. He felt they had to unite and promote their interests collectively. The organization, which acquired the character of a fraternal society, provided lectures and entertainment for farm men and women. It also experimented in cooperative buying and selling of farm products and supplies and carried on educational programs, setting up Grange units for children as well as adults.In the 1870’s, the Grange was prominent in the broader Granger movement, which campaigned against extortionate charges by monopolistic railroads and warehouses, and helped bring about laws regulating these charges in some states in the upper Mississippi Valley. Although challenged, the constitutionality of such laws was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Munn V. Illinois (1877).

PopulismThe Populist party was formed in the 1890’s at the culmination of a period of agrarian discontent in the United States. The party traced its roots to the farmers’ alliances, loose confederations of organizations that had formed in the South and West beginning in the late 1870’s and expanded rapidly after about 1885. The alliances advocated tax reform, regulation of railroads, and free silver (the unlimited minting of silver coins). In 1890, many candidates who supported alliance objectives were elected in state and local contests. Encouraged by these results, alliance leaders formed a national political party, officially the People’s party, but usually called the Populist party.At a convention in Omaha, NE, in 1892, the Populists nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa as their presidential candidate. Hoping to unite Southern and Western farmers with industrial workers of the Northeast, the party adopted a platform calling for government ownership of the railroads and the telephone and telegraph systems; free silver; a graduated income tax; a ‘subtreasury” plan to allow farmers to withhold crops from the market when prices dipped; the direct election of U.S. senators; immigration restriction; an 8 hour day for industrial workers; and other reforms. Many of these reforms or ideas were socialist ideas that had come from Europe. In the election of 1892, Weaver received more than a million popular votes and 22 electoral votes, but the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, won the election. Several Populist candidates won election to Congress that year in 1894.

Progressivism: Socialism Begins in AmericaThe origins of progressivism were as complex and are difficult to describe as the movement itself. In the vanguard were various agrarian crusaders, such as the Grangers and the Populists and the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan, with their demands for stringent railroad regulation and national control of banks and the money supply. At the same time a new generation of economists, sociologists, and political scientists was undermining the philosophical foundations of the laissez-faire state with socialism and constructing a new ideology to justify democratic collectivism; and a new school of social workers was establishing settlement houses and going into slums to discover the extent of human degradation. Allied with them was a growing body of ministers, priests, and rabbis—proponents of what was called the Social Gospel—who struggled to arouse the social concerns and consciences of their parishioners. This philosophy led to collective salvation. Finally, journalists called “muckrakers” probed into all the dark corners of American life and carried their message of reform, usually through government intervention, by mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.

An entirely enclosed court in a tenement district in Baltimore

Immigrant children at Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago

Robert M. "Fightin' Bob" LaFollette (1855-1925)--Progressive Era political leader who served as a United States Congressman from 1885 to 1891, governor of Wisconsin from 1900 to 1905, and United States Senator from 1905 to 1925. In 1924, LaFollette ran as an independent Progressive candidate for President and polled nearly 6 million votes out of some 30 million cast.

Theodore Roosevelt is "Dee-Lighted" to throw his hat into the ring of the 1912 presidential election

Battle of the Little Big HornThe Battle of the Little Big Horn (25 Jun 1876), also called “Custer’s Last Stand,” was the last major Indian victory in the Indian Wars of the American West. The Lakota, Sioux, and Cheyenne peoples resisted incursions of whites prospecting for gold on Indian land in the Black Hills of Dakota beginning in 1874. In 1876, the U.S. Army sent an expedition to subdue the Sioux leaders, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. On 24 June, COL George Armstrong Custer, commanding the 7th Cavalry, located their camp on the Little Big Horn River in Montana. Underestimating his opponents’ strength, he attacked them with a small force of about 225 men the following day. In the ensuing battle, Custer and all of his men were killed. Despite their victory, most of the Sioux had been expelled from the Black Hill by the end of 1876. The site of the battle is now a national monument.

Chief Sitting Bull of the Lakota and Sioux Nations

GEN George Armstrong Custer, the commander of the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn

Wounded Knee Creek MassacreWounded Knee was the last Indian battle that ended the wild frontier. White officials became alarmed at the religious fervor and in December 1890 banned the Ghost Dance on Lakota reservations. When the rites continued, officials called in troops to Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. The military, led by veteran General Nelson Miles, geared itself for another campaign. The presence of the troops exacerbated the situation. Short Bull and Kicking Bear led their followers to the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge reservation, to a sheltered escarpment known as the Stronghold. The dancers sent word to Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas to join them. Before he could set out from the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, however, he was arrested by Indian police. A scuffle ensued in which Sitting Bull and seven of his warriors were slain. Six of the policemen were killed.General Miles had also ordered the arrest of Big Foot, who had been known to live along the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. But, Big Foot and his followers had already departed south to Pine Ridge, asked there by Red Cloud and other supporters of the whites, in an effort to bring tranquility. Miles sent out the infamous Seventh Cavalry led by Major Whitside to locate the renegades. They scoured the Badlands and finally

Wounded Knee Creek Massacre (cont’d)found the Miniconjou dancers on Porcupine Creek, 30 miles east of Pine Ridge. The Indians offered no resistance. Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, rode in a wagon. The soldiers ordered the Indians to set up camp five miles westward, at Wounded Knee Creek. Colonel James Forsyth arrived to take command and ordered his guards to place four Hotchkiss cannons in position around the camp. The soldiers now numbered around 500; the Indians 350, all but 120 of these women and children.The following morning, December 29, 1890, the soldiers entered the camp demanding the all Indian firearms be relinquished. A medicine man named Yellow Bird advocated resistance, claiming the Ghost Shirts would protect them. One of the soldiers tried to disarm a deaf Indian named Black Coyote. A scuffle ensued and the firearm discharged. The silence of the morning was broken and soon other guns echoed in the river bed. At first, the struggle was fought at close quarters, but when the Indians ran to take cover, the Hotchkiss artillery opened up on them, cutting down men, women, children alike, the sick Big Foot among them. By the end of this brutal, unnecessary violence, which lasted less than an hour, at least 150 Indians had been killed and 50 wounded. In comparison, army casualties were 25 killed and 39 wounded. Forsyth was later charged with killing the innocents, but exonerated.

Miniconjou Chief Big Foot lies dead in the snow. He was among the first to die on December 29, 1890

Ghost Dance Shirt

View of canyon at Wounded Knee, dead horses and Lakota bodies are visible.

Definition

Vocabulary Development

Word

Leaders

ExamplesNon-examples

Seeking and Losing Freedom Quiz1. What imposed the right of the United States to

intercede in Latin American affairs?

2. Where did the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet on the transcontinental railroad?

3. Name one of the suffragettes that led the movement for women’s right to vote?

4. Name one of the Progressive effort of the later 19th century.

5. Name the general that lost the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Why Did the Mormons Manage to Survive Salt Lake City?

The Geographical Position of Utah

Brigham YoungPrior PlanningMormons had faith in

their leaderOrganisational SkillsSetting up supply depots

and workshopsNo land ownershipPersuaded the U.S.

Government to elect him Governor of Utah territory

PolygamyBrigham Young

had 27 wivesSet Mormons apart

as immoral outcasts

Enabled every woman to be taken care of

Larger populationHaving more

than one wife.

Self Sufficiency and the RailwayMormons were farmersIrrigation system Wheat production triplede between 1850-

1860Everyone contributed

Railway ran through UtahMade travelling easierMade trade a possibility – especially as a way

of increasing income

Perpetual Emigrating FundSet up by Brigham

YoungHelped Mormons

travel from anywhere to Utah

Money to be paid back once settled

4225 Mormons had reached Utah using this fund

1880’s Census/Livestock Quiz1. What section of the country has the largest

population?A. NortheastB. MidwestC. SoutheastD. West

2. What section of the country produced the largest amount of hogs?

A. NortheastB. MidwestC. SoutheastD. West

We’re Spreading OutDespite widespread public recognition of worsening urban housing problems and frequent calls for reform, only after the War between the States were government efforts undertaken to improve housing conditions. In 1867, the New York state legislature enacted the first tenement-housing legislation, which regulated the construction of railroad flats by establishing minimum construction standards. The continued influx of immigrants, however, resulted in the proliferation of overcrowded tenements and deplorable health conditions. Attempts to improve housing were spurred by the writings of such reformers as Jacob Riis and Lawrence Veiller in the 1890’s, as well as by the first federal report on housing conditions, issued in 1894. Nevertheless, it was not until 1901 that a law permitting enforcement of housing standards was enacted. The landmark New York City “New Law” required building permits and inspections, prescribed penalties for noncompliance, and created a permanent city housing department. Subsequently, the New Law was copied in other U.S. cities and provided an impetus for housing legislation at the state level in the early 1900’s. By 1930, many state and local governments also had adopted city planning, zoning, and subdivision regulations to guide the development and location of new residential areas.

Pictures by Jacob Riis

The Mulberry Bend became a parkThe walls began to giveNight School in the Seventh Avenue Lodging HousePoverty Gappers Playing Coney IslandThe Slide That Was the Children's Only PlaygroundOld Mrs. Benoit in Her Hudson Street Attic

Bohemian Cigarmakers at Work in Their TenementIn a Sweat ShopNibsy's Alley, Torn Down in the Fall of 1895A Seven-Cent Lodging House, Pell StreetEldridge Street Police Station LodgersMen's Lodging Room in the West 47th Street StationIn Sleeping Quarters, Rivington Street DumpPedler Who Slept in the Cellar of 11 Ludlow Street RearReady for Sabbath Eve in a Coal CellarIn Poverty Gap, an English Coal-Heaver's HomeScene on the Roof of the Mott Street BarracksIt Costs a Dollar a Month to Sleep in These ShedsA Flat in the Pauper's Barracks with All Its FurnitureDens of DeathMulberry Bend, New York