Terms : Hide Images
| 306769969 | Waving the bloody shirt | Republicans whipped up ethusiasm for Grant by eg\nergetically "Waving the bloody shirt"- that is, reviving gory memories of the Civil War- which became for the first time a prominent feature of a presidential campaign. The expression is said to have derived from a speech by Representative Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts, who allegedly waved before the House the bloodstained nightshirt of a Klan-flogged carpetbagger. | |
| 306769970 | Tweed Ring | A symbol of Gilded Age corruption, "Boss" Tweed and his deputies ran the New York City Democratic party in the 1860s and swindled $200 million from the city through briber, graft, and vote-buying. Boss Tweed was eventually jailed for his crimes and died behind bars. | |
| 306769971 | Credit Mobilier scandal | A construction company was formed by owners of the Union Pacific Railroad for the purpose of receiving government contracts to build the railroad at highly inflated prices-and profits. In 1872 a scandal erupted when journalists discoreved that the Credit Mobilier Company had bribed congressmen and even the Vice President in order to allow the ruse to continue. | |
| 306769972 | Panic of 1873 | A world wide depression that began in the United States when one of the nation's largest banks abruptly declared bankruptcy, leading to the collapse of thousands of banks and businesses. The crisis intensified debtors' calls for the unlimited coin-age of silver. Conflicts over monetary policy greatly influenced politics in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. | |
| 306769973 | Gilded Age | A term given to the period 1865-1896 by Mark Twain, indicating both the fabulous wealth and the widespread corruption of the era. | |
| 306769974 | Patronage | A system, prevalent during the Gilded Age, in which political parties granted jobs and favors to party regulars who delivered votes on election day. Patronage was both an essential wellspring of support for both parties and a source of conflict within the Republican party. | |
| 306769975 | Compromise of 1877 | The agreement that finally resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction. In exchnage for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, winning the presidency, Hayes agreed to withdraw the last of the federal troops from the former Confederate states. This deal effectively completed the southern return to white-only, Democratic-dominates electoral politics. | |
| 306769976 | Civil Rights Act of 1875 | The last piece of federal civil rights legislation until the 1950s, the law promised blacks equal access to public accommodations and banned racism in jury selection, but the Act provided no means of enforcement and was therefore ineffective. In 1883m, the Supreme Court declared most of the Act unconstitutional. | |
| 306769977 | Sharecropping | An agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a certain "share" of each year's crop. Sharecropping was the dominant form of southern argiculture after the Civil War, and landowners manipulated this system to keep tenants in perpetual debt and unable to leave their plantations. | |
| 306769978 | Jim Crow | System of racial segregation in the American SOuth from the end of Reconstruction until the mid-twentieth century. Based on the concept of "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites, the Jim Crow system sought to prevent racial mixing in oublic, including restaurants, movie theaters, and public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation. | |
| 306769979 | Plessy v. Ferguson | An 1896 Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of segregation laws, saying that as long as blacks were provided with "separate but equal" facilities, these laws did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision provided legal justification for the Jim Crow system until the 1950s. | |
| 306769980 | Chinese Exclusion Act | Federal legislation that prohibited most further Chinese immigration to the United States. This was the major legal restiction on immigration in U.S. history. | |
| 306769981 | Pendleton Act | Congressional legislation that established the Civil Service Commision, which granted federal government jobs on the basis of examinations instead of political patronage, thus reigning in the spoils system. | |
| 306769982 | Homestead Strike | A federal law that gave settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by, for instance, building a house on it. The act helped make land accessible to hundreds of thousands of westward-moving settlers, but many people also found disappointment when their land was infertile or they saw speculators grabbing up the best land. | |
| 306769983 | Grandfather clause | A regualtion established in many southern states in 1890s that exempted from voting requirements (such as literacy tests and poll taxes) anyone who could prove that their ancestors (grandfathers) had been able to vote in 1860. Since slaves could not vote before the Civil War, these clauses guaranteed the right to vote to many whites while denying it to blacks. | |
| 306769984 | Jay Gould | Jay Gould devised a plot to drastically raise the price of the gold market in 1869. On "Black Friday," September 24, 1869, the two bought a large amount of gold, planning to sell it for a profit. In order to lower the high price of gold, the Treasury was forced to sell gold from its reserves. | |
| 306769985 | Horace Greeley | The Liberal Republican Party met in Cincinnati and chose Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate for the election of 1872. The Democratic Party also chose Greeley as their candidate. | |
| 306769986 | Rutherford B. Hayes | The Republicans chose Rutherford B. Hayes as their presidential candidate for the election of 1876. There was an unclear victory so the Compromise of 1877 was passed. Rutherford B. Hayes became president and the federal troops were order out of the old Confederate states. | |
| 306769987 | James A. Garfield | Because President Hayes was despised by his own Republican Party, James A. Garfield was chosen as the presidential candidate for the election of 1880. His vice-president was Chester A. Arthur, a former Stalwart. The Democrats chose Civil War hero, Winfield Scott. Garfield won the election of 1880, but was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau at a Washington railroad station. Guiteau, claiming to be a Stalwart, shot the president claiming that the Conklingites would now get all the good jobs now that Chester Arthur was President.The death of Garfield shocked politicians into reforming the spoils system. | |
| 306769988 | Chester Arthur | Garfield's vice-president was Chester A. Arthur, a former Stalwart. Garfield was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau at a Washington railroad station. Guiteau, claiming to be a Stalwart, shot the president claiming that the Conklingites would now get all the good jobs now that Chester Arthur was President. | |
| 306769989 | Grover Cleveland | The Democrats chose Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was a very honest and admirable man. Cleveland won the election of 1884. | |
| 306769990 | Thomas B. Reed | When the Democrats were prepared to stop all House business, the Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed, took control and intimidated the House to his imperious will. The Billion-Dollar Congress, named for its lavish spending, gave pensions to Civil War veterans, increased government purchases on silver, and passed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890. | |
| 306769991 | Tom Watson | Created the Grandfather clause and poll taxes. | |
| 306769992 | William Jennings Bryan | Democratic congressman from Nebraska; won party's nomination for president in 1896 after giving famous "Cross of Gold" speech | |
| 306769993 | J.P. Morgan | Introduced the practice of Interlocking directorates in order to eliminate banking competition in the 1890's. | |
| 306769994 | Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois | A Supreme Court decision that prohibited states from regulating the railroads because the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. As a result, reformers turned their attention to the federal government, which now held sole power to regulate the railroad industry. | |
| 306769995 | Interstate Commerce Act | Congressional legislation that established the Inerstate Commerce Commision, compelled railroads to publish standard rates, and prohibited rebates and pools. Railroads quickly became adept at using the Act to achieve their own ends, but the Act gave the government an important means to regulate big business. | |
| 306769996 | Vertical integration | The practice perfected by Andrew Carnegie of controlling every step of the industrial production process in order to increase efficiency and limit competition. | |
| 306769997 | Horizontal integration | The practice perfected by John D. Rockefeller of dominating a particular phase of the production process in order to monopolize a market, often by forming trusts and alliances with competitors. | |
| 306769998 | Trust | A mechanism by which one company grants control over its operations, through ownership of its stock, to another company. The Standard Oil Company became known for this practice in the 1870s as it eliminated its competition by taking control of smaller oil companies. | |
| 306769999 | Interlocking directorates | The practice of having executives or directors from one company serve on the Board of Directors of another company. J.P. Morgan introduced this practice to eliminate banking competition in the 1890's. | |
| 306770000 | Standard Oil Company | John D. Rockefeller's company, formed in 1870, which came to symbolize the trusts and monopolies of the Gilded Age. By 1877 Standard Oil controlled 95% of the oil refineries in the U.S. It was also one of the first multinational corporations, and at times distributed more than half of the company's kerosene production outside the U.S. By the turn of the century it had become a target for trust-busting reformers, and in 1911 the Supreme Court ordered it to break up into several dozen smaller companies. | |
| 306770001 | Social Darwinists | Believers in the idea, popular in the late nineteenth century, that people gained wealth by "survival of the fittest." Therefore, the wealthy had simply won a natural competition and owed nothing to the poor, and indeed service to the poor would interfere with this organic process. Some social Darwinists also applied this theory to whole nations and races, explaining that powerful peoples were naturally endowed with gifts that allowed them to gain superiority over others. This theory provided one of the popular justifications for U.S. imperial ventures like the Spanish-American war. | |
| 306770002 | Sherman Anti-Trust Act | A law forbade trusts or combinations in business, this was landmark legislation because it was one of the first Congressional attempts to regulate big business for the public good. At first the law was mostly used to restrain trade unions as the courts tended to side with companies in legal cases. In 1914 the Act was revised so it could more effectively be used against monopolistic corporations. | |
| 306770003 | National Labor Union | The first national labor organization in U.S. history was founded in 1866 and gained 600,000 members from many parts of the workforce, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks. The organization devoted much of its energy to fighting for an eight-hour workday before it dissolved in 1872. | |
| 306770004 | Knights of labor | The second national labor orginaztion, organized in 1869 as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. The Knights were known for their efforts to organize all workers, regardless of skill level, gender, or race. After the mid-1880's their membership declined for a variety of reasons, including the Knight's participation in violent strikes and discord between skilled and unskilled members. | |
| 306770005 | Haymarket Square | A May Day rally that turned violent when someone threw a bomb into the middle of the meeting, killing several dozen people. Eight anarchists were arrested for conspiracy contributing to the disorder, although evidence linking them to the bombing was thin. Four were executed, one committed suicide, and three were pardoned in 1893. | |
| 306770006 | American Federation of labor | A national federation of trade unions that included only skilled workers, founded in 1886. Led by Samuel Gompers for nearly four decades, the AFL sought to negotiate with employers for a better kind of capitalism that rewarded workers fairly with better wages, hours, and conditions. The AFL's membership was almost entirely white and male until middle of the twentieth century. | |
| 306770007 | Closed shop | A union-organizing term that refers to the practice of allowing only unionized employees to work for a particular company. The AFL became known for negotiating closed-shop agreements with employers, in which the employer would agree not to hire non-union members. | |
| 306770008 | Cornelius Vanderbilt | A wealthy, corrupt railroad tycoon and innovator. Vanderbilt was one of the first in the industry to make rails out of steel instead of iron and also established a standard gauge for his railroads. Despite these innovations that led to the improvement of the railroad industry, he and his son were notorious "robber barons" who issued unfair rebates, hiked rates arbitrarily, and cared little for American consumers. | |
| 306770009 | Alexander Graham Bell | Invented the telephone | |
| 306770010 | Thomas Alva Edison | Thomas Alva Edison invented incandescent light bulb. | |
| 306770011 | Andrew Carnegie | perfected the Vertical integration | |
| 306770012 | John D. Rockefeller | Founder of the Standard Oil Company and also prefected the Horizontal integration. | |
| 306770013 | Samuel Gompers | Led the American Federation of labor |
