The Last West and the New South, 1865-1900

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The Last West and the New South, 1865-1900
Painting by Robert Lindneux in the Woolaroc
Museum, Bartlesville, Oklahoma
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• American social developments has been continually
  beginning over again on the frontier. This
  perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American
  life, this expansion westward with its new
  opportunities, its continuous touch with the
  simplicity of primitive society, furnish the
  forces dominating American character. The true
  point of view in the history of this nation is
  not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West.
• -Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893

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Settlement of the Last Frontier

• People began to migrate to the Great American
  Desert after the Civil War
• The Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the
  Western Plateau
• Little rainfall, open grasslands, buffalo
• By 1900, buffalo were wiped out and homesteads
  were fenced in
• 3 groups of pioneers miners, cattlemen/cowboys,
  and farmers

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The Mining Frontier

• California Gold Rush in 1849 was only the start
• Gold and silver strikes in Colorado, Nevada,
  Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and South Dakota
• Comstock Lode (340 million in gold and silver by
  1890) responsible for Nevada entering the Union
  in 1864

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Mining Towns

• Towns grew quickly and became famous for saloons,
  dance-hall girls, and vigilante justice
• Many became ghost towns after the mining boom
• 1/3 of western miners were Chinese immigrants
• Miners Tax 20/month for all foreign-born
  miners

Virginia City, Nevada
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Effects of Mining

• Impact on the economics and politics of the U.S.
• Environmental problems
• Native Americans lost their land

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The Cattle Frontier

• Traditions and techniques borrowed from Mexicans
• Railroad construction into Kansas opened up
  eastern markets for Texas cattle
• Cowboys, many of whom were blacks and Mexicans,
  earned about 1 a day
• Long cattle drives ended in 1880s after
  overgrazing destroyed the grass and a blizzard
  and drought killed off about 90 of the cattle
• Barbed wire revolutionized ranching (Joseph
  Glidden)

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The Farming Frontier

• Homestead Act of 1862
• Offered 160 acres of land free to families who
  settled it for 5 years
• Many families ended up paying for the best land
  that was owned by railroad companies and
  speculators

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The Farming Frontier Problems and Solutions

• Sodbusters
• Extremes of hot and cold
• Grasshopper plagues
• Isolation
• Water was scarce
• Falling prices
• High cost of new machinery
• Dry-farming and deep-plowing techniques
• Dams and irrigation saved many

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Turners Frontier Thesis

• Oklahoma Territory (old Indian Territory) opened
  for settlement in 1889
• Last great land rush
• 1890 U.S. Census Bureau declared that the
  frontier had been settled
• Significance of the Frontier in American
  History (1893)
• Expansion had promoted independence and
  individualism
• Free land a safety valve for discontent
• Were we doomed to follow the social conflict
  represented in Europe?

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Removal of the Native Americans

• Diverse population
• New Mexico and Arizona Pueblo farmed in
  permanent settlements
• Navajo and Apache of the SW were nomadic
  hunter-gatherers who had to adapt
• Pacific Northwest Chinook developed communities
  based on hunting and fishing
• 2/3 of tribes were nomadic, living on the Great
  Plains and hunting buffalo (Sioux, Blackfoot,
  Cheyenne, Crow, Comanche)

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Reservation Policy

• 1830s Jackson moved Natives westward into
  Indian Territory
• U.S. Government negotiated with tribes in 1851
  and moved them to reservations

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Indian Wars

• 1864 Colorado militia massacred Cheyenne women,
  children, and men at Sand Creek, Colorado
• Sioux War of 1865-1867 Army detachment wiped out
  by the Sioux
• Treaties provided for reservations after these
  battles, but miners refused to stay off land
• 1870s second Sioux War led by Sitting Bull and
  Crazy Horse
• Eventually defeated by the Army, but Custers
  command was destroyed at Little Big Horn in 1876

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Assimilationists

• A Century of Dishonor (1881) by Helen Hunt
  Jackson
• Created sympathy for Native Americans
• Many proposed education and conversion to
  Christianity

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Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

• The US government stopped negotiating treaties
  with the Native Americans as separate nations.
• This allowed the US government not to recognize
  the sovereign nations of the Native Americans and
  take on the more aggressive policy of
  assimilation.
• Families would receive 160 acres or less
• U.S. citizenship was granted to those who stayed
  on land for 25 years and became civilized
• Best land sold to white settlers by government,
  speculators, and even Native Americans
• Policy failed
• Disease and poverty reduced population to 200,000
• The failure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to
  manage this trust fund will bring about the
  lawsuits from the Native American tribes in the
  1990s.

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Ghost Dance Movement

• Religious movement
• Misunderstood
• Government tried to suppress
• Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull was killed
• December 1890 Over 200 Native American men,
  women, and children were gunned down at Wounded
  Knee in the Dakotas

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Indian Reorganization of 1934

• This signals a major reversal of previous federal
  Indian policies.
• Instead of forcing Native Americans to give up
  all of their customs and traditions to be farmers
  or live in cities, the IRA gave them back their
  rights to live as separate cultures.
• Tribes were allowed to form their own governments
  among their reservations to increase tribal
  holdings and encouraged tribal customs.
• This will end the push for assimilation.
• It will also remove the federal responsibility to
  the
• Native American Tribes under previous policies.

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Indian Reservation Today
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The New South

• Modern capitalist values
• Industrial growth
• Improved transportation
• Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution,
  spread the ideal of Laissez-faire capitalism
• Offered tax-exemption to investors
• Cheap labor

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Economic Progress

• Birmingham, AL leading steel center
• Memphis, TN growing lumber industry
• Richmond, VA center of tobacco industry
• Cheap labor allowed GA, NC, and SC to become
  chief producers of textiles
• Southern RR companies converted to standard gauge

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Continued Poverty

• Remained largely agricultural
• Northern investors controlled ¾ of the southern
  railroads and by 1900 had control of the steel
  industry
• Industrial workers (94 were white) in the S.
  earned ½ the national average
• Most remained in traditional roles of
  sharecropping and farming

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Why did the South remain poverty-stricken?

• Souths late start at industrialization
• Poorly educated workforce
• Failed to invest in technical and engineering
  schools
• Political leadership provided little support for
  the education of either poor whites or African
  Americans

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Agriculture

• Remained tied to cotton 1870-1890 cotton acres
  more than doubled
• Overproduction caused cotton prices to decline by
  more than 50 by the 1890s
• Per capita income declined and farmers lost their
  farms
• By 1900, over ½ of white farmers and ¾ of black
  farmers were tenants (sharecropping)

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Attempt at Diversification

• George Washington Carver
• African American scientist at the Tuskegee
  Institute in Alabama promoted the growing of
  peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybean

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Farmers Political Activism

• 1890 Farmers Southern Alliance had more than 1
  million members
• Colored Farmers National Alliance 250,000
  members
• Both promoted political reforms to help solve the
  farmers economic problems
• If they could have united, they would have been
  even more powerful

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Segregation

• Democrats came to power in the southern states
  after Reconstruction
• Business community
• White supremacists
• Favored segregation in public facilities
• Often used racial fears of whites to remain in
  power

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Discrimination and the Supreme Court

• During Reconstruction federal laws had protected
  against racial discrimination
• U.S. Supreme Court began to strike down these
  laws in the 1870s
• Civil Rights Cases (1883)
• Ruled that Congress could not legislate against
  racial discrimination practiced by private
  citizens

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Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

• Upheld a LA law requiring separate but equal
  accommodations for white and black passengers on
  the railroads.
• Did not violate the 14th Amendments guarantee of
  equal protection of the laws.
• Jim Crow laws were passed by many states after
  Plessy.
• Separate washrooms, fountains, park benches, etc.

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Loss of civil rights

• Voter registration dropped
• Ex. 130,334 registered in LA in 1896 and only
  1.342 in 1904
• Literacy tests, poll taxes, whites-only
  primaries, grandfather clauses
• Barred from serving on juries
• Stiffer penalties for crimes committed by African
  Americans
• Lynch mobs killed over 1400 men in the 1890s
• Remained in farming jobs and low-paying domestic
  work

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Responding to segregation

• International Migration Society
• Booker T. Washington
• Established Tuskegee Institute
• Largest and best-known industrial school in the
  nation
• Organized the National Negro Business League
• Racial harmony and economic cooperation
• Would rise up through education (W.E.B. Du Bois
  would later argue against this)

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Tuskegee Institute
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Farm Problems North, South, and West

• Farmers were becoming a minority
• Number of farms doubled
• Number of farmers went from 60 of population in
  1860 to less than 37 in 1900

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Changes in Agriculture

• More commercialized and specialized
• Farmers were getting food and goods from stores
  and catalogs
• More dependent on machines such as steam engines,
  seeders, and reaper-thresher combines

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Falling Prices

• Increased production and global competition from
  Argentina, Russia, and Canada drove prices down
  for wheat, cotton, and other crops
• Money supply was not changing, so went into
  deflation in the 1870s and 1880s
• Farmers faced high interest rates and need to pay
  off old debts

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Rising costs

• Monopolistic corporations kept prices high
• Middlemen took profit before selling to farmers
• Railroads, warehouses, and elevators charges high
  rates for transportation and storage
• Heavy taxes on property and land, but did not tax
  income from stocks and bonds
• Unfair tariffs

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Fighting back

• National Grange Movement
• National Grange of Patrons of Husbandry
• Originally a social and educational organization
  for farmers
• Established cooperatives
• Lobbied state legislatures to regulate railroad
  and elevator rates
• Illegal for RRs to fix prices through pools and
  to give rebates
• Munn v. Illinois (1877) SC upheld right of
  states to regulate businesses

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Interstate Commerce Act (1886)

• State laws could really only regulate the
  short-hauls, not across state lines
• Wabash v. Illinois (1886) individual states
  could not regulate interstate commerce
• Established the Interstate Commerce Commission
  power to investigate and prosecute pool and
  rebates
• RR rates had to be reasonable and just

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Farmers alliances

• By 1890, about 1 million farmers had joined
• Both whites and blacks joined
• Had serious potential of turning into an
  independent political party

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Ocala platform

• National Alliance
• Attacked major parties as being subservient to
  Wall Street and big business
• Supported direct election of U.S. senators
• Lower tariff rates
• Graduated income tax
• New banking system regulated by the federal
  government
• Treasury notes and silver be used to increase the
  amount of money in circulation
• Wanted to create inflation and raise crop prices
• Many of these ideas would become part of the
  Populist movement in 1892 and 1896