Study Guide 5: Industrialization
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| 1372767543 | Homestead Act | 1862; Opened western land to settlement. If a US citizen that was at least 21 years old and head of the family, built a house on a property and lived there 6 months a year, and paid a registration fee of $10, 160 acres would be theirs. The opportunity brought many West in the post-Civil War period. This was one of the many pieces of legislature passed during the Civil War, when Congress was made of mostly Republicans. The South did not support this act before the war. | 1 | |
| 1372767545 | Morrill Land-Grant Act | 1862; to encourage the building of "land grant" colleges in Western territories that had already been granted statehood. Thousands of acres of land were given to state govts. The land could be sold by the state to pay for colleges. At 50 cents an acre, settlers and land speculators received land from individual states. | 2 | |
| 1372804522 | Pacific Railroad Acts | 1862 and 1864; the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads received grants of land to extend their rail lines westward. Part of the act also gave the railroads 10 sq. miles on both sides of the track for every mile of track constructed; this land was sometimes given to settlers at exorbitant prices. Another piece of legislature passed in the Congress during the Civil War. | 3 | |
| 1383124844 | How to Survive on the Great Plains | Issues: Temperatures varied greatly, having enough water, "prarie" (typhoid) fever, various natural things like blizzards and dust storms. Survival on the plains depended on cooperation with other settlers who lived nearby and technology and business approaches to agriculture. Successful farmers on the plains were not the individual yeomen envisioned by Jefferson. | 4 | |
| 1380268220 | Purchase of Alaska/Sewards Folly | 1867; Secretary of State William Seward's negotiation of the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Although seen as a foolish purchase (Alaska the "ice box"), this added more land and available resources to the U.S., and was the biggest bargain since the Louisiana Purchase.(During Reconstruction Era) | 5 | |
| 1380268221 | Transcontinental railroad | Completed 1869; went from St. Louis to San Francisco. Completed by immigrants, including the Chinese. The railroad made possible the extension of cattle raising (started by the Spanish much earlier). The railroads also advertised for settlers, led to the growth of cities where lines crossed, and slowly tied the nation together. | 6 | |
| 1380268233 | Battle of Little Bighorn | 1876; Last major Native American victory against the US army. Was the Sioux (Sitting Bull was the chief of the tribe) and General George Custer. As settlers moved onto the Sioux's land in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Sioux had left the reservation.The troops came to round them up, and Custer and his 200 men were all killed. | 7 | |
| 1380268231 | Exodusters | 1879; Black farmers who came to the Plains. Less than 20% became successful farmers. | 8 | |
| 1385778607 | Chinese Exclusion Act | 1882; Excluded Chinese immigrant workers for ten years and denied U.S. citizenship to Chinese nationals living in the United States. The ban was supposed to last 10 years, but it was expanded several times and was essentially in effect until WWII. | 9 | |
| 1380268223 | Dawes Act | 1887; Passed in the spirit of "civilizing" the Native Americans and was designed to give them their own plots of land to farm on. the real intent of the legislation was an attempt to destroy the tribal identities of Native Americans. Many Native Americans had little skill or interest in farming, and eventually sold the land to speculators. The purpose of the Dawes Act was to weaken tribes, allot land to individual Indians, and promote assimilation. | 10 | |
| 1383124845 | The Oklahoma boomers and sooners incident | 1889; 2 million acres of unclaimed land in Indian territory in Oklahoma. On April 22, mad rush of white settlers to stake claims in the land. Boomers staked claims that day; sooners were those who came earlier. | 11 | |
| 1380268229 | Massacre at Wounded Knee | 1890; After the death of Sitting Bull, some Sioux had tried to leave their reservation, and were quickly herded back by the army. As the male Sioux handed in their weapons, a shot was fired, and the soldiers fired on the Native Americans, killing over 200. | 12 | |
| 1380268234 | Ghost Dances | Nez Perce warriors took part in these dances that were supposed to remove whites from Native American territories, return the buffalo, and bring ancestors killed by the whites back to life. These dances terrified white settlers and served to bring more federal forces into Native American territories. | 13 | |
| 1380268222 | The Turner Thesis | 1893; Presented by Frederick Jackson Turner, which states that Americans were forced to adapt and innovate as they moved westward. The thesis also explains how western expansion helped to ingrain these characteristics into the fabric of American society. Turner stated that their frontier had created a society who were committed to self improvement, who supported democracy, and who were socially mobile. Basically, the nature of the US comes from western expansion. | 14 |
