HIST 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Manifest Destiny, Disfranchisement, Sharecropping
19 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Recap
Reconstruction
Different periods
○
Growth of Federal Government
○
Citizenship and Civil Rights
○
"Free Labour" and New South
○
-
"Redemption" Compromise/Betrayal
Disfranchisement and black codes in South + Northern and federal
turning away from projects and Civil Rights
○
-
Compromise/Betrayal
Sharecropping
○
"Black codes"
Limit participation in voting
§
○
Racial terrorism
○
"Redemption" (increasing white Democratic control over Southern
government)
○
"Compromise of 1877"
Essentially end of "Reconstruction"
§
○
Legacy of Reconstruction
○
-
The West
"The West" as a place, idea, process
-
Westward expansion and conquest
Laws and policies
○
Infastructure
○
Warfare
○
Culture
○
-
Economic, technological and political processes that aimed to produce a more
modern and connected nation in the last half of the 19th century
Often relied on or engendered violent conflict and dislocations
○
-
Manifest Destiny and Settler Ideology
Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for
the free development of our yearly multiplying millions
-
Showing a conquest of the West enacted as progress
-
"The United States is"
Emphasizes that people starting thinking about the relationship between
states and the federal government differently
-
The United States are vs. The Unites States is
-
Civil War was followed by period of dramatic growth and consolidation of US
economy
Reconnected industrial North to agricultural South and increasingly in
the West
○
-
Through:
Transportation infastructure
○
Settlement (often on Native American territories)
○
Warfare
○
-
Homestead Act 1862
Government wants to settle more land Westward
-
Provided any adult citizen or any intended citizen, who had never borne arms
against the US government, could claim across 160 acres of surveyed
government land
-
Required to improve plot by building a dwelling and cultivating the land
-
After 5 years, the person who settled on the land could go to the government
and get titled the land, only small registration fee
-
500 million acres dispersed by the General Land Office between 1862 and
1904 and 80 million acres went to homesteaders
The rest went to railroad companies
○
-
Women Homesteaders
Single, widowed, divorced or deserted were eligible to acquire land in their
own name
-
Up to 12% of the people in CO, WY, MT, UT, Dakotas
-
One told Colliers: her life had seemed empty when she lived in a spacious
house. "Now I have my 10x12 house, my yellow land and my freedom, and I
think that life contains everything"
-
Mexican and Mormon women
-
"Exodusters"
The Was attractive to some freedpeople because they could own their own
land
Sharecropping
○
Labour laws
○
Convict labour
○
Racial terrorism
○
Disfranchisement
○
-
Railroads
Preceded by road and canal building
-
Provided engine for US growth after the Civil War
-
1862 Pacific Railway Act - the government gave land and subsidies to private
rail companies
Two railroads built to connect the nation
○
-
1869 - workers for Union Pacific and Central Pacific completed
transcontinental link
-
Over next 25 years, 125,000 more miles of track laid
-
Resulted in US have most extensive transportation system in world
-
Active Warfare
Periof of 1860-1890 was a period of active warefare between Native
Americans, the US government, and settlers
Settlers on land that was often already site of removal and reservation
○
-
Black Hills War (1877)
Sioux and Cheyenne in Dakotas
They win this war - one of the last battles US government loses
against Native Americans
§
○
-
Nez Perce War (1977)
NP refused to give up land in Pacific NW
○
Chief Joseph "I will Fight No More Forever"
Remaining sent to reservation in KS. 270 allowed back in 1885
§
○
-
Southwest settler Apache raids, retribution through 1880s
-
Weapons (Colt 6 shooter); US government winter campaigns: destruction of
NA food supply
-
Pattern: increasingly asymmetric, massacres
-
Indian Appropriations Act 1871
Sec. 71. No Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United
States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation,
tribe, or power with whome the US may contract by treaty; but no
obligation of any treaty lawfully made and ratified with an such Indian
nation or tribe prior to March 3, 1871, shall be hereby invalidated or
impaired
○
Indian policy through LEGISLATION (not treaty)
○
Path for "Indians" becoming legal "wards" of federal government
○
-
Dawes Act 1877
Congress gave President authority to:
Land allotments to individuals
40 - 160 acres
§
○
At first, did not apply to "Treaty Indians"
Eg. Cherokees, Seminoles
§
○
-
Increased power of Bureau of Indian Affairs
Explicit goal of cultural destruction through "assimilation"
○
-
Widespread (and ongoing) resistance from many tribal nations
-
Settlement of Unassigned Lands
Opening of Indian Territory to private settlement in 1889
Gunshot at noon
○
9 hours…2m acres of land became land of thousands of settlers
○
-
Massacre of Wounded Knee
Something that causes a lot of people to think more strongly about the
US government
○
Calls to US government to lessen military force during this time period
○
Memorialized in very specific local places
○
-
Custer's last fight
Memory of loss of US government fuels anger for US government to win
a war
○
-
Ghost dance movement
Spiritual movement for sovereignty
○
Something that the Bureau of Indian Affairs tries to stop
○
-
Lecture 4 - Homesteaded and Railroaded
Monday, January 15, 2018
9:31 AM
Document Summary
Disfranchisement and black codes in south + northern and federal turning away from projects and civil rights. redemption (increasing white democratic control over southern government) Economic, technological and political processes that aimed to produce a more modern and connected nation in the last half of the 19th century. Often relied on or engendered violent conflict and dislocations. Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. Showing a conquest of the west enacted as progress. Emphasizes that people starting thinking about the relationship between states and the federal government differently. Civil war was followed by period of dramatic growth and consolidation of us economy. Reconnected industrial north to agricultural south and increasingly in the west. Provided any adult citizen or any intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the us government, could claim across 160 acres of surveyed government land.
