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| 288192374 | "waving the bloody shirt" | The use of Civil War imagery by political candidates and parties to draw votes to their side of the ticket. | 0 | |
| 949755748 | 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. | 1 | |
| 325678875 | Chinese Exclusion Act | Federal legislation that prohibited most further Chinese immigration to the United States. This was the first major legal restriction on immigration in U.S. history. | 2 | |
| 325678879 | 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 1883, the Supreme Court declared most of the Act unconstitutional. | 3 | |
| 325678883 | Compromise of 1877 | The agreement that finally resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction. In exchange 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-dominated electoral politics. | 4 | |
| 325678885 | Crédit 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 discovered that the Crédit Mobilier Company had bribed congressmen and even the Vice President in order to allow the ruse to continue. | 5 | |
| 325678889 | 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. | 6 | |
| 325678891 | grandfather clause | A regulation established in many southern states in the 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. | 7 | |
| 325678893 | Homestead Strike | A strike at a Carnegie steel plant in Homestead, P.A., that ended in an armed battle between the strikers, three hundred armed "Pinkerton" detectives hired by Carnegie, and federal troops, which killed ten people and wounded more than sixty. The strike was part of a nationwide wave of labor unrest in the summer of 1892 that helped the Populists gain some support from industrial workers | 8 | |
| 325678966 | 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 public, including restaurants, movie theaters, and public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation. | 9 | |
| 325678967 | 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 inflationary measures such as the printing of more paper money and the unlimited coinage of silver. Conflicts over monetary policy greatly influenced politics in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. | 10 | |
| 325678968 | patronage | Practice of rewarding political support with special favors, often in the form of public office. Upon assuming office, Thomas Jefferson dismissed few Federalist employees, leaving scant openings to fill with political appointees. | 11 | |
| 325678969 | Pendleton Act | Congressional legislation that established the Civil Service Commission, which granted federal government jobs on the basis of examinations instead of political patronage, thus reigning in the spoils system. | 12 | |
| 325678970 | 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 agriculture after the Civil War, and landowners manipulated this system to keep tenants in perpetual debt and unable to leave their plantations. | 13 | |
| 325678971 | 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 bribery, graft, and vote-buying. Boss Tweed was eventually jailed for his crimes and died behind bars. | 14 | |
| 593167690 | Arthur, Chester | Elected as Vice President in 1880, Arthur became President after Garfield's assassination. He was primarily known for his efforts at civil service reform, culminating in the Pendleton Act. | 15 | |
| 548755520 | Bryan, William Jennings | A Democratic congressman from Nebraska who was an outspoken "free silver" advocate. His "Cross of Gold" speech at the Democratic convention in 1896 won him the party's nomination. The Populists also backed him in a "fusion" ticket with the Democrats. Bryan's eloquent advocacy for free silver and farmers' interests earned him millions of devoted followers, but never quite enough to win the presidency, for which he ran three times (1896, 1900, 1908). Later in life, as Secretary of State he led the resistance to American entry into World War I and in 1925, an ardent Fundamentalist, he gained fame from some quarters—and great disdain from others—for joining the prosecution of high-school biology teacher John T. Scopes for teaching evolution. | 16 | |
| 774142499 | Cleveland, Grover | President from 1885-1889 and again from 1893-1897, Cleveland's first term was dominated by the issues of military pensions and tariff reforms. He lost the election of 1888, but he ran again and won in 1892. During his second term he faced one of the most serious economic depressions in the nation's history but failed to enact policies to ease the crisis. | 17 | |
| 770541799 | Garfield, James | Elected to the presidency in 1880, Garfield served as president for only a few months before being assassinated by Charles Guiteau, who claimed to have killed him because he was denied a job through patronage when Garfield was elected. The assassination fueled efforts to reform the spoils system. | 18 | |
| 884943274 | Gould, Jay | A railroad magnate who was involved in the Black Friday scandal in 1869 and later gained control of many of the nation's largest railroads, including the Union Pacific. He became revered and hated for his ability to manipulate railroad stocks for his personal profit and for his ardent resistance to organized labor. | 19 | |
| 596666329 | Grant, Ulysses S. | Ohio-born Union general and eighteenth president of the United States. During the war, Grant won Lincoln's confidence for his boldness and his ability to stomach the steep casualties that victory required. First assigned to the West, Grant attained Union victories at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, seizing control of the Mississippi River and splitting the South in two. After taking command of the Union Army, he fought Lee in a series of bloody battles in Virginia, culminating in Lee's surrender at Appomattox. As President, he took a hard line against the South, but economic turmoil and waning support for Reconstruction undermined his efforts. | 20 | |
| 973685040 | Greeley, Horace | A New York newspaper editor, Greeley ran for President in 1872 under the mantles of the Liberal Republican and Democratic Parties. | 21 | |
| 406467309 | Hayes, Rutherford B. | The former Republican governor of Ohio, he became President after the contested 1876 election. By 1880 he had lost the support of his party and was not re-nominated for the office. | 22 | |
| 406467310 | Morgan, J. P. | A banker who became a national symbol of the power of the banks during the Gilded Age, he helped all the big businesses of the era consolidate their holdings and ultimately bought Carnegie's steel empire for more than $400 million in 1900. He also helped to bail the U.S. government out of a currency crunch in 1895 when he organized a loan to the government of $65 million in gold. In 1902 his Northern Securities Company became one of the first targets of Teddy Roosevelt's trustbusting crusades, but Roosevelt's 1907 decision to allow a steel merger under Morgan's watch showed the limits of Roosevelt's efforts. | 23 | |
| 571825175 | Reed, Thomas B. | The Republican Congressman from Maine who became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1889, then led the Billion-dollar Congress like a "Czar," making sure that his agenda dictated the business of the legislature. | 24 | |
| 571825176 | Watson, Tom | A Populist leader who initially advocated interracial political mobilization but later became a symbol of the party's shift to white supremacy. | 25 |
