Terms : Hide Images
| 837406817 | Conestoga Wagons p 370 | Sturdy vehicles topped with white canvas Built by Germans to carry produce to town, rifles and axes of pioneers and other supplies. They had wide wheels, curved beds, canvas covers, and we used by many pioneers traveling west. | |
| 837406818 | Erie Canal p 372 | An artificial waterway completed in 1825 connecting the Hudson river at Albany with Lake Erie at Buffalo; now part of the New York State Barge Canal. The canal was considered a marvel of the modern world at the time, allowed western farmers to ship surplus crops to sell in the North and allowed northern manufacturers to ship finished goods to sell in the West. | |
| 837406819 | Samuel F. B. Morse p 379 | Invented the telegraph which allowed faster communication over longer distances. He also developed Morse code with Alfred Vail | |
| 837406820 | Eli Whitney p 381 | An American inventor (1765-1825) who developed the cotton gin. Also contributed to the concept of interchangeable parts that were exactly alike and easily assembled or exchanged | |
| 837406821 | Cyrus Hall McCormick p 383 | This Virginian invented the mehanical reaping machine which harvested grains like wheat, which allowed a 600% increase in production (1809-1884) | |
| 837406822 | Lowell Girls | In a 1837 textile mill at Lowell, Massachusetts virtually all of the workers were New England farm girls. They were cheaper to hire than males. They lived in company-owned boardinghouses where older women acted as chaperones who supervised them both on and off the job, and even escorted to and from church. They earned $2-4 a week but worked long hours in the factory all year getting little time for meals and sleep. They had few opportunities to express their discontentment of their working conditions. Was one example of inhumane labor conditions in America during the Industrial Revolution. | |
| 837406823 | Cult of Domesticity p.394 | This is an idealized view of women & home; women are self-less caregiver for children, and a refuge for husbands. This role model ideal woman is a tender, self-sacrificing caregiver who provided a nest for her children and a peaceful refuge for her husband. These social customs restricted women to caring for the house. | |
| 837406824 | minstrelsy p.395 | The songs, dances, skits, and stagecraft of the 19th century American blackface minstrel show. It was the most popular form of entertainment and it enforced the stigmas of racism as it contained white performers made up as blacks for blackface minstrel shows. | |
| 837406825 | Irish Potato Famine p.396 | A famine in 1845 when the main crop of Ireland, potatoes, was destroyed by disease. Irish farmers grew other food items, such as wheat and oats, but Great Britain required them to export those items to them, leaving nothing for the Irish to live on. As a result, over 1 million Irish died of starvation or disease, while millions of others migrated to the United States. | |
| 837406826 | Coffin Ships p.396 | Over-crowded, disease-ridden, and often unseaworthy ships that carried Irish immigrants to North America. | |
| 837406827 | Levi Strauss p.399 | Entrepreneur who made rugged denim pants for miners, Immigrant from Germany who produced the first denim pants in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush. | |
| 837406828 | Nativism p.400 | a policy of favoring native-born individuals over foreign-born ones | |
| 837406829 | Know-Nothing Party p.401 | Secret Nativist political party that opposed Immigration during the 1840's and early 1850's. Officially called the American Party. The new immigrants in the U.S. began to pose a threat to the "natives" because of their unknown languages and cultures. Some feared that the foreigners would outnumber them and eventually overrun the country. This hostility rekindled the spirit of European religious wars, resulting in clashes between the Protestants and Catholics. Some nativities formed this party in New York called the "Order of the Star Spangled Banner". The members refused to indentify themselves and would say they know nothing. They were an anti-Catholic group, until it subsided and slavery became the focal issue. Immigrants were helping to form the U.S. into one of the most ethnically and racially diverse societies in the history of the world. | |
| 837406830 | Panic of 1837 p. 470 | Van Buren inherited a financial mess from the Jackson administraton. Before the 1840 inaugural, dramatic inflation raised the price of cotton and food. New Yorkers protested the food price increases. At the time, people blamed Jackson's Specie Circular. The executive order required people buying government land to use gold or silver as opposed to paper money or credit. Prior to the order, banks lent money to land speculators sparking a crisis. After the order, inflation increased. Many asked Van Buren to reverse Jackson's order. Van Buren wanted a consensus and asked for opinions from his advisors and party leaders. He spent a month collecting opinions while the economy collapsed. The banks suspended payments because they did not have the gold or silver on hand to make payments. The currency depreciated, unemployment skyrocketed, and food prices continued to rise. Van Buren did not know what to do. On May 15, he called for a special session of Congress to meet in September. The president needed time to develop strategy. The federal government had never responded to an economic crisis before. Plus, Van Buren was deliberative by nature and took time to make decisions. However, people wanted help immediately as opposed to four months down the road. Despite a brief recovery in 1838, the recession persisted for approximately seven years. Banks collapsed, businesses failed, prices declined, and thousands of workers lost their jobs. Unemployment may have been as high as 25% in some locales. The years 1837 to 1844 were, generally speaking, years of deflation in wages and prices, and Van Buren lost his bid for re-election. | |
| 837406831 | Jacksonian Inequality p. 407 | The American legend of men rising from rags to riches was a common story, but was really more legend than fact. The fact was that in the Jasksonian "age of the common man", the top wealth was controlled by only 4 of the population. THose who started out poor and uneducated rarely mde it to the top. This divide in wealth separated the haves and the have-nots. |
