IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR

1. IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR Chapter 17 The American Nation, 12e Mark C. Carnes & John A. Garraty

2. CONGRESS ASCENDANT • Congress controlled the government as a series of weak presidents occupied the White House • Senate filled with wealthy men of long tenure who had the opportunity to learn politics • House of Representatives was a disorderly and inefficient legislative body

3. THE POLITICAL AFTERMATH OF THE WAR • “Bloody Shirt”: political tactic that consisted of reminding the northern states that the men behind the Confederacy and the Civil War were Democrats and, should they come to power, they would undo everything the Republicans had done • Rights of Blacks: Republicans tried to build numbers in the south by alternately appealing to black voters and trying to win conservative white support by stressing economic issues • Veterans Pensions: after Civil War, Union soldiers founded Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) which had a membership of 409,000 by 1890 and pressured Congress to aid Union veterans

4. Waving the Bloody Shirt! Republican “Southern Strategy”

5. THE POLITICAL AFTERMATH OF THE WAR • Tariff: While people talked about free trade, few believed it • Manufacturers desired protection for products • Workers believed it would protect wage levels • Farmers tended to favor despite low levels of imported competing agricultural products • Currency Reform: during war Congress had issued $450 million in paper money (greenbacks) but after the war there was a fear these would cause inflation and pressure developed to withdraw them • Deflation after war hit debtors, especially farmers, hard resulting in pressure for currency inflation • Came mainly from third parties

6. THE POLITICAL AFTERMATH OF THE WAR • Civil Service Reform: Federal employees rose from 53,000 in 1871 to 256,000 by end of century • Corruption, waste, and inefficiency flourished • Politicians argued patronage was the lifeblood of politics and refused to seriously consider reform

7. BLACKS AFTER RECONSTRUCTION • Little federal support was offered to blacks after Reconstruction • Initially blacks were not totally disenfranchised as rival white factions tried to manipulate them • Starting with Mississippi, southern states began to deprive blacks of the vote • Poll taxes • Literacy tests (had “understanding” loophole for poor whites) • Louisiana had 130,000 black voters in 1896 and 5,000 in 1900

8. “Boy, You ain’t a votin’ here”!

9. The organized violence of the Ku Klux Klan and the White League made life "worse than slavery" for Southern blacks.

10. BLACKS AFTER RECONSTRUCTION Supreme Court rulings • Civil Rights Cases (1883): declared the Civil Rights Acts of 1875 unconstitutional; blacks who were refused equal accommodations or privileges by privately owned facilities had no legal recourse • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Court ruled that even in places of public accommodation, segregation was acceptable as long as facilities of equal quality were provided— • SEPARATE BUT EQUAL!!!!!???

11. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), one of the most important cases to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, changed the lives of millions of black and white Americans. Interpreting law in a way that lasted for more than a half century, it permitted the segregation of blacks in public facilities throughout the land. • What exactly was the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson? • How did this ruling become the legal foundation of the Jim Crow system? • Were there many segregation laws on the books? • If not, how was segregation implemented and enforced?

12. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON:A “Reasonable” Champion for Blacks • Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Institute • Convinced that blacks must lift themselves up by their bootstraps and accommodate themselves to white prejudices

13. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON:A “Reasonable” Champion for Blacks • Atlanta Compromise (1895) • Don’t fight segregation and second class citizenship • Concentrate on learning useful skills • Progress up economic and social ladder would come from self-improvement • Asked whites to help blacks with economic self-improvement • Won him lots of white support but blacks were more mixed in response

14. Born a slave, Booker T. Washington had risen through hard work to become the founder of Tuskegee Institute in 1881, which he personally built into the nation's largest and best known industrial training school. • Did Washington advocate civil equality? • Why or why not? • Did all African Americans approve of Washington's approach? • Who was his major detractor, and how did his message differ?

15. American History Students at Tuskegee Institute • In what way was Washington an "accomodationist"? • Where did he most fully outline this philosophy? • How was his message received by the white leadership? Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of black advancement through accommodation to the white status quo was put into practice at Tuskegee Institute. These students were studying white American history, though most of their time was spent on more practical subjects. (Library of Congress)

16. THE WEST AFTER THE CIVIL WAR Chinese immigration • Beginning in 1850s, 4,000-5,000 per year as cheap labor for railroad construction • When railroads were finished, the Chinese began competing with white labor which led to a great cry of resentment on the west coast • When Chinese immigration reached 40,000 in 1882, Congress banned further immigration for 10 years (later indefinitely extended)—Chinese Exclusion Act

17. Political cartoon about the Chinese Exclusion Act

18. INDIAN WARS • 1867 government decided to confine all Indians to two reservations, one in the Dakota Territory and one in Oklahoma, and force them to become farmers • At two great meetings in 1867 and 1868 at Medicine Lodge and Fort Laramie the principal chiefs gave into the government’s demands

19. GREAT PLAINS Great Plains

20. INDIAN WARS • Many Indians refused to abide by these agreements • Indians made excellent guerilla fighters and were often able to stymie the military • Difficult to determine difference between treaty and non-treaty Indians • After 1849, Indian affairs were overseen by the Interior Department • Most agents systematically cheated the Indians • 1869 Congress created nonpolitical Board of Indian Commissioners to oversee Indian affairs but it was generally ignored

21. INDIAN WARS • 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills on the Sioux Reservation and thousands of miners poured in causing the Indians to go on the warpath • Treaty and non-treaty Indians concentrated in the region of the Bighorn River in Montana • George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry were sent ahead to locate the Indians and block their escape • Underestimating the number of Indians, Custer chose to attack • His 264 men were slaughtered by 2,500 Sioux • In autumn, short of rations and hard pressed by overwhelming numbers of soldiers, they surrendered and returned to the reservation

22. Bloody Battles Continue • 1874 – George A. Custer reports much gold in Black Hills (SD) • - the Gold Rush is on!

23. Bloody Battles Continue • Custer’s Last Stand: • At Little Bighorn • Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, crush Custer’s troops • By late 1876, Sioux are defeated • - many Indians are • starving, freezing • - Sitting Bull • surrenders in 1881 George Armstrong Custer, U.S. army officer who died in battle of Little Bighorn.

24. The Battle of Little Big Horn1876 Gen. GeorgeArmstrong Custer Chief Sitting Bull

25. A Sioux camp in South Dakota, 1891.

26. THE DESTRUCTION OF TRIBAL LIFE • Fighting lessened with the coming of the transcontinental railroad and the slaughter of the buffalo • In mid 1860s, 13 to 15 million buffalo roamed the Plains • Railroads contributed to slaughter, first to feed workers, then by bringing hunters from east • In 1871 commercial use of buffalo discovered and sealed their fate • In next three years 9 million were killed and after another decade, buffalo were almost extinct

27. Destruction of the Buffalo Herds The near extinction of the buffalo.

28. Destruction of Buffalo

29. Yellowstone National Park First national park established in 1872.

30. THE DESTRUCTION OF TRIBAL LIFE Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 • Tribal lands were to be split up into individual allotments • Land could not be disposed of for 25 years • Funds were to be appropriated for educating and training the Indians • Those who accepted allotments, took up residence separate from tribes, and adopted habit of civilized life were to be granted U.S. citizenship

31. Dawes Severalty Act (1887):Assimilation Policy Carlisle Indian School, PA

32. THE DESTRUCTION OF TRIBAL LIFE Effects • Assumed Indians could be transformed into small agricultural capitalists • Shattered what was left of Indians’ culture without enabling them to adjust to white ways • Unscrupulous white men systematically tricked Indians into leasing their lands for a pittance • Local authorities often taxed Indian lands at excessive rates • By 1934 Indians had lost 86 of their 138 million acres

34. Treaty of Ft. Laramie (1851) ColoradoGold Rush (1859)

35. Colonel John Chivington Kill and scalp all, big and little!Sandy Creek, CO MassacreNovember 29, 1864

36. The Battle of Wounded Knee (Dec. 28, 1890) • U.S. army thinks Sitting Bull is using “Ghost Dance” to start uprising–Sitting Bull is killed during arrest attempt • U.S. troops moves 350 Sioux to Wounded Knee Creek, SD • -somehow shot is fired and • Cavalry panics • - kill 300 unarmed • Indians (our book says 200) • Battle ends the Indian wars

37. Chief Big Foot’s Lifeless BodyWounded Knee, SD, 1890

38. BIG BUSINESS AND THE LAND BONANZA • Problems with settling the Plains • Soil rich but climate made agriculture difficult if not impossible • Blizzards, floods, grasshopper plagues, and prairie fires caused repeated problems • Bonanza farms: giant corporate controlled farms • Encouraged by the flat immensity of the land and newly available farm machinery • Could buy supplies wholesale and obtain concessions from railroads and processors • Most failed in the drought years of the late 1880s • Plains still became breadbasket of America after war

39. The Realty--A Pioneer’s Sod House, SD

40. WESTERN RAILROAD BUILDING • Government subsidies of railroads further contributed to exploitation of land resources yet grants of land seemed like a reasonable way to get railroads built and they were needed for the development of the West • Federal land grants to railroads began in 1850 • Over next two decades 49 million acres were given to various lines • Most lavish grants went to intersectional trunk lines which received more than about 155 million acres • 25 million reverted back to government when companies failed to lay requisite amount of track

41. Railroad Construction

42. Promontory Point, UT(May 10, 1869)

43. THE CATTLE KINGDOM • By late 18th Century large herds of cattle roamed southern Texas • These descendants of Spanish cows interbred with “English” to produce the Texas longhorn • While hardly the best beef cattle, they existed by the millions, largely un-owned • Eastern urban growth combined with railroad expansion made it profitable to exploit the cattle • Longhorns could be had locally for $3 to $4 a head and sold in the east for 10 times as much

44. THE CATTLE KINGDOM • Made sense to round up cattle, drive them north across federally owned land, allowing them to graze and fatten along the way, and deliver them to railroads running through Kansas • Between 1867 and 1872 1.5 million cattle traveled the Chisolm Trail to Abilene, Kansas • 10 million were driven north until practice ended in mid-1880s

45. Black Cowboys

46. BARBED-WIRE WARFARE • Cattlemen formed associations and to keep other ranchers’ cattle they began to fence huge areas • Fencing made possible by 1874 invention of barbed wire by Joseph F. Glidden • By 1880s thousands of miles of fence had been strong across the plains • Resulted in wars between competing interests • On open range, cattle could fend for themselves but barbed wire became lethal during winter storms

47. Barbed Wire Joseph Glidden

48. WEBSITES • Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Compiled and Edited by Charles J. Kappler (1904) http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler • Geronimo http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/geronimo/geronixx.htm • National Museum of the American Indian http://www.si.edu • The Transcontinental Railroad http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rail.html • African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murry Collections, 1818-1907 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphome.html