The Last West and the New South

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The West: Last Frontier

✤ Open lands now fenced with homesteads, ranches, and crisscrossed with rails.!

✤ Frenzied rush west caused near extermination of the buffalo and serious damage to the environment.!

✤ Native Americans also paid a huge price.!

✤ Miners; cattlemen; farmers

The Mining Frontier

✤ Series in gold strikes in western states/territories brought steady flows of prospectors.!

✤ NV, ID, MT annexed because mining brought $$!

✤ Panning for gold lead to deep-shaft mining!

✤ Req’d expensive equipment and investments from corporations.!

✤ Created boomtowns overnight… lead to success or ghost towns. San Fran, Sacramento, Denver survive bc they were commercial centers!

✤ CA: Miner’s Tax of $20/mo. on immigrant miners (Chinese)!

✤ Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882… first major legislation to restrict immigration on basis of race/nationality.

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Cattle Frontier

✤ After the war, cattle business profitable as cattle freely roamed the plains.!

✤ “Cow towns” est. along railroads (Dodge City)!

✤ Blizzard and droughts in 1885-186 killed 90% of cattle.!

✤ Homesteaders used barbed wire fencing to cut off access to the range.!

✤ America’s eating habits change from pork to beef, creating the legend of the self-reliant American cowboy.

Farming Frontier

✤ 1870-1900: hundreds of thousands of native and immigrant families flood Great Plains (Homestead Act)!

✤ 1874: Invention of barbed wire (Joseph Glidden) helped farmers fence land!

✤ Severe weather + falling prices of crops + cost of machinery = failure of two-thirds of homesteaders’ farms (W. Kansas)!

✤ Learned to cope by planting new crops and irrigating.!

✤ Fredrick Jackson Turner’s, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893).!

✤ Frontier experience promoted a habit of independence and individualism; social leveler.

Removal of Native Americans

✤ About two-thirds of tribes lived on Great Plains (Jackson’s Indian Removal Act)!

✤ Reservation policy: fed. creates reservations but natives refuse as they need to follow the buffalo migration.!

✤ Indian Wars: Cheyenne massacre; Sioux War!

✤ Miners flocked to Dakota Black Hills even though it interrupted native tribes.!

✤ Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse lead 2nd Sioux War!

✤ Col. George Custer @ Little Big Horn in 1876!

✤ Helen Hunt Jackson’s, “A Century of Dishonor” proposed assimilation.

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Dawes Act (1887)

✤ Divided tribal lands into ≤ 160 acres.!

✤ U.S. citizenship granted to those who stayed on land for 25 years and “adopted habits of civilized life”.!

✤ 47 million acres of land distributed to Natives.!

✤ But, 90 million acres of former reservation land — often the best land — would be sold to white settlers.!

✤ Disease and poverty reduced Native pop to 200,000.

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Ghost Dance Movement ✤ Sitting Bull (Sioux) killed during religious

proteste movement.!

✤ 200+ natives massacred at Wounded Knee (Dakotas)… marked end of Indian Wars!

✤ Aftermath:!

✤ 1924, fed. granted citizenship to all natives no matter Dawes Act compliance.!

✤ FDR’s New Deal: Indian Reorganization Act (1934) promoting tribal cultures.!

✤ Now, ~2 million living Natives.

The New South

✤ At this time, South still recovering from Civil War and Reconstruction.!

✤ Tax exemptions and cheap labor in an attempt to lure investors.!

✤ Many former confed. cities develop into leading steel, lumber, tobacco centers.!

✤ GA, NC, and SC overtook New England in textiles.!

✤ By 1900, South had 400 cotton mills with 100,000 white laborers!

✤ Integrated rail network boosted New South.

Continued Poverty

✤ South remained agricultural and poorest area of the country.!

✤ Large share of profits from South went to northern banks/investors.!

✤ Poverty in south were results of!

✤ 1) South’s late arrival to industrialization!

✤ 2) Poorly educated workforce!

✤ Southern politicians did not support education of poor whites or poor AA’s… couldn't compete in changing world.

Southern Agriculture

✤ Devotion to cotton remained.!

✤ Increased production of cotton caused prices to drop by ~50%!

✤ By 1900, majority of farmers were sharecroppers… forced mortgages lead to virtual serfdom.!

✤ George Washington Carver and the Tuskegee Inst. in Alabama scientifically experiments with diversified crops.!

✤ Yields better $$$ return (w/ peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans)!

✤ Farmers’ Southern Alliance (White) did not ally with Colored Farmers’ Natl. Alliance… could have been a strong political force.

Discrimination and the Supreme Court

✤ Southern Redeemers (D’s) got support from white supremacists and businessmen.!

✤ Gain and keep political power by tugging on the racial heartstrings of whites.!

✤ Civil Rights Cases of 1883: Court ruled Congress could not legislate against racial discrimination practiced by private citizens (railroads, hotels, etc.)!

✤ Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): Court rules in favor of “separate but equal” for white and black railroad passengers. (14th Amendment)!

✤ Jim Crow laws: wave of segregation laws adopted by southern states.!

✤ Park benches, water fountains, bathrooms… permeated the public space.

Loss of Civil Rights

✤ Wholesale disenfranchisement of blacks voters by 1900.!

✤ Louisiana: 130,334 registered black voters in 1896… only 1,342 in 1904… -99%!

✤ Literacy tests, poll taxes, white only elections!

✤ Grandfather clauses… allowed a black man to vote only if their grandfather was able to vote prior to Reconstruction.!

✤ Supreme Court sanctioned by upholding literacy test laws.!

✤ Booker T. Washington: Est. schools to educate AA’s in skills and trade. Money empowers.. it was a “little green ballot”.!

✤ Later civil rights leaders considered Booker T. a sellout to segregation.

Farm Problems Everywhere

✤ 1860: 60% workers were famers; 1900: only 37%!

✤ Farming becomes increasingly commercialized/specialized!

✤ Increased dependency on expensive machinery…. driven out of business when couldn’t afford.!

✤ Falling prices: wheat ($2 to $.70) and corn ($.78 to $.23) bc of competing intl. markets.!

✤ Debts, foreclosures lead to tenant/sharecropping.

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Fighting Back

✤ Farmers begin to organize for their common interests and protection.!

✤ National Grange Movement: Tried to regulate rates charged by middlemen.!

✤ Interstate Commerce Act: Transportation rates needed to be “reasonable and just”.!

✤ Ocala demands…Lower tariff rates; graduated income tax; new banking system regulated by fed; fed storage of crops; and fed loans!

✤ Leads to the Populist political movement.

Rise of Industrial America: Railroads

✤ Railroads created a market for goods on a national scale.!

✤ Mass production, consumption, and specialization.!

✤ Helps develop complex finance structures; time zones; stock holdings.!

✤ Eastern Trunk Lines: Uniform track and equipment allowed for all trains to run on all tracks.!

✤ “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt merged co.’s… owned 4,500 miles of track.

Western Railroads

✤ Linked the West with the East, thereby creating a national market.!

✤ Federal land grants: fed provided co.’s with huge subsidies to promote western settlement.!

✤ But.. 1) promoted hasty and poor construction; 2) widespread corruption in all levels of govt. (Crédit Mobilier construction co.)!

✤ Protests when citizens realized railroad co.’s owned half of land in western states.!

✤ Transcontinental railroads: Union Pacific and Central Pacific built railroads to link two coasts.!

✤ Union Pac. used Irish immigrants; Central Pac. used Chinese…. very dangerous and laborious.!

✤ By 1900, four other transcontinental railroads.

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Competition and Consolidation

✤ Financial panic in 1893 due to over-investment in new technologies (railroad).!

✤ J. Pierpont Morgan consolidated bankrupt rail co.’s!

✤ By 1900, seven giant corporations controlled nearly 2/3rds of the rails.!

✤ Efficient and reliable, but now a major monopoly.!

✤ Not until early 20th C. that the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was given expanded powers to protect the public consumer from corporate fraud and greed.