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Teaching American History
March 25, 2011
Cynthia Williams Resor, Ph.D.
The Daily Show “Message for Teachers”
Review
Primary Source Readings about Slavery
• To Be a Slave
– By Julius Lester
– Reading level: Ages 9-12
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project,
1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of
slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal
Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and
assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave
Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from
Interviews with Former Slaves.
– http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html
The term “scalawag” was used to
describe
1. Homeless unemployed
freedmen in the South
2. Northerners who came to the
post war South
53%
3. Native white Southerners who
cooperated with the
35%
Republicans
4. Union soldiers who occupied
the South during 12%
Reconstruction. 0%
1 2 3 4
The outcome of the election of 1876 was
significant because it
1. Was the last victory for Radical
Republicans.
2. Meant the end of
Reconstruction. 65%
3. Marked the beginning of a long
line of Democratic Presidents.
4. Showed that the North and 24%
South were able to reconcile.
6% 6%
1 2 3 4
Election of 1876
• Samuel J. Tilden (Dem.) of New York
– Won popular vote and 184 electoral votes
• Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio(Republican)
– 165 electoral votes to Hayes's
• 20 votes uncounted
• Hayes got to be president
• the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal
troops from the South, ending Reconstruction
In the post-Civil War era the idea that blacks
should concentrate on economic betterment
rather than political or social equality was
advanced by
1. W.E.B. DuBois 69%
2. William Lloyd Garrison
3. Booker T. Washington
4. Marcus Garvey
19%
13%
0%
1 2 3 4
• W. E. B. DuBois – (1868 –1963)
– sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author,
and editor
– wrote Black Reconstruction (1935)
• William Lloyd Garrison (1805 –1879) –
– abolitionist & publisher of The Liberator
– promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves
• Marcus Garvey (1887 –1940)
– Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur
– proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism
movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and African Communities League
(UNIA-ACL).
• Pan-Africanism - seeks to unify native Africans and those of
African heritage into a "global African community
Booker T. Washington (1856 –1915)
• Born a slave; slave mother and white father in Virginia
• Autobiography - Up From Slavery (1901)
• worked way through Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) and
attended college at Wayland Seminary (now Virginia
Union University).
• 1881 - named as the first leader of the
new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama
• Widely supported by black community
and among more liberal whites
(especially rich Northern whites)
• gained support of wealthy philanthropists
community schools and institutions of
higher education for Southern blacks
• Late in his career, Washington was criticized by leaders of the NAACP
– W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the founders in 1909
– NAACP advocated political activism to achieve civil rights
• Washington beliefs:
– Washington advocated a “go slow” approach.
– African-Americans should “concentrate all their energies on industrial
education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.”
– valued the "industrial" education for rural and agricultural jobs in the South
– in the long term “blacks would eventually gain full participation in society by
showing themselves to be responsible, reliable American citizens.”
– Blacks just slowly gain the economic power to back up their demands for
equality in the future
– Blacks may have to sacrifice political power, civil rights and higher education
NOW for long term change
– This action, over time, would provide the proof to a deeply prejudiced white
America that they were NOT “’naturally” stupid and incompetent.
• BUT Washington contributed secretly and substantially to legal challenges
against segregation and disfranchisement of blacks.
“Forty-acres and a mule” refers to
1. The allotment given Native
Americans under the
Dawes Severalty Act.
2. A typical homestead on the 71%
Great Plains in the 1870’s.
3. The proposal to make free
slaves small-scale farmers.
18%
4. The terms of the 12%
Homestead Act of 1862. 0%
1 2 3 4
• The Dawes Act
– February 8, 1887 by President Cleveland
– enforced distribution of land holdings among Native Americans, in
Oklahoma
– amended in 1891 and 1906 by the Burke Act; remained in effect until
1934.
– provided for the division of tribally held lands into individually-owned
parcels and opening "surplus" lands to settlement by non-Indians and
development by railroads
• Homestead Act
– signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862
– one of three United States federal laws that gave an applicant freehold
title to up to 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the
Mississippi River
– required three steps: file an application, improve the land, and file for
deed of title.
– could file an application to claim a federal land grant IF had never
taken up arms against the U.S. government
– Freed slaves could also apply
– had to be 21 or older, had to live on the land for five years and show
evidence of having made improvements.
Reconstruction legislation by Congress included
all of the following EXCEPT the
75%
1. Tenure of Office Act
2. Reconstruction Act
of 1868
3. Civil Rights Act of
1866
19%
4. Black Codes
6%
0%
1 2 3 4
• Tenure of Office Act
– March 3, 1867, enacted over the veto of President Andrew Johnson
– denied the President the power to remove anyone who had been
appointed by a past President without the advice and consent of the
United States Senate, unless the Senate approved the removal during
the next full session of Congress.
– In August 1867, President Andrew Johnson suspended Secretary of
War Edwin Stanton pending the next session of the Senate. (ignoring
the Tenure of Office Act)
• However, when the Senate convened on January 4, 1868, it refused to ratify
the removal by a vote of 35-16.
• Ignoring the Senate - President Johnson attempted to appoint a new
Secretary of War
• Proceedings for Johnson's impeachment were started because of this issue.
• Johnson was impeached BUT
• After a three-month trial, Johnson avoided removal from office by the Senate
by a single vote.
– Impeachment - formal process in which an official is accused of
unlawful activity
• If found guilty of the unlawful activity – then can be removed from office
• House of Representatives the sole power of impeachment
• the Senate the sole power to try impeachments
Andrew Johnson was the only
president to be impeached
1. True
94%
2. False
6%
1 2
FALSE!
• President Bill Clinton was impeached on December 19,
1998
– Charges by the House of Representatives
• perjury (specifically, lying to a federal grand jury) by a 228–206 vote
• obstruction of justice by a 221–212 vote.
• The House rejected other articles. One was a count of perjury in a
civil deposition in Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit against
Clinton (by a 205–229 vote) and an article which accused Clinton of
abuse of power by a 48–285 vote.
– President Clinton was acquitted by the Senate on February 12,
1999. The Senate vote fell short of the necessary 2/3 needed to
remove him from office, voting 45-55 to remove him on
obstruction of justice and 50-50 on perjury.
Reconstruction Acts 1867-1868
• Creation of five military districts in the seceded states
– not including Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution and was readmitted to
the Union
• Requiring congressional approval for new state constitutions
– New constitution required for Confederate states to rejoin the Union
• Confederate states give voting rights to all men.
• All former Confederate states must ratify the 14th Amendment
– Citizenship, due process, equal protection
• President Johnson VETOED all but was overridden by Congress.
Civil Rights Act of 1866
• intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans
• said people born in the U.S. and not subject to any foreign
power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race,
color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary
servitude
• Black citizens have the same right as a white citizen to
make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give
evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold,
and convey real and personal property
• These ideas included later in the 14th Amendment
– Did not protect Native Americans in the United States on
reservations
• President Andrew Johnson VETOED – passed over his veto
Throughout the early to mid-1800's, the Lowell
factory system primarily employed
82%
a. married women
b.married men
c. single women
d.single men
6% 6% 6%
a. b. c. d.
Lowell, Mass. Textile Factories
• "Lowell Mill Girls" - female textile workers in Lowell, Massachusetts,
in the 19th century.
• Up to ¾ of the workforce in the Lowell textile mills was female.
• 1850s and 1860s - The New England textile industry was expanding
and unable to recruit enough Yankee women to fill the jobs
• textile managers turned to survivors of the Great Irish Famine who
had recently immigrated to the US
• During the Civil War, many of Lowell's cotton mills closed, unable to
acquire bales of raw cotton from the South
• After war, the textile mills reopened, recruiting French Canadian
men and women.
• Many Irish and French Canadian immigrants moved to Lowell to
work in the textile mills BUT Yankee women still dominated the
workforce until the mid-1880s
Power
Looms
The Boott Cotton Mills complex contains mills built Photos from visit to Lowell National Park
from the mid-1830s to the early 20th century, http://www.nps.gov/lowe/index.htm
reflecting the early use of waterpower, steam BELOW – the mills today
power, and finally electric power
Boarding Houses for Mill Girls
Lowell Teaching Resources
• Educational project of the UMass Lowell Graduate School of Education in
cooperation with Lowell National Historical Park.
– http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/Curriculum_Materials/Curriculum_Materials.ht
ml
• Center for Lowell History
– http://library.uml.edu/clh/index.Html
• More Resources
– http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/000001/000000/000040/html/t40.htm
l
– Lowell Strike of 1834 or 1836
• http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6614/
– Lowell and the Factory System
• http://hti.osu.edu/history-lesson-plans/united-states-history/lowell-factory-system
– Boott Cotton Mills (in Lowell)
• http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/21boott/21boott.htm
A Year of Violence
Resource
• 1877, America’s Year of Living Violently
• By Michael A. Bellesiles
• 2010
Did Americans living in 1877 know
how bad it was?
• Yes – they read newspapers!
• 1877, America’s Year of Living Violently
– American newspapers from late 1800’s used as
the main primary sources
• Remember – newspapers report news but
ALSO create perceptions of news (that may or
may not be accurate)
• A consensus built through 1877 that the nation was in
the grip of a dangerous epidemic of violence.
Newspapers convinced readers that there were
numerous sources of violence:
– The Molly Maguires
– Strikers
– Tramps
– Southern Democrat
– Private security forces
– Public police forces
– The militia
– Indians
– Lynch mobs
– Vigilantes
– Hillbilly feuds
– “ordinary killings”
Lafcadio Hearn (1850 –1904)
newspaper reporter
• Greek & Irish parents – moved to USA – Cincinnati at 19
• reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, (1872 to 1875)
– the paper's premier sensational journalist
• known for florid accounts of local murders
• the author of sensitive, dark, and fascinating accounts of Cincinnati's
disadvantaged
• Married Alethea Foley, a black woman, an illegal act at the time
(divorced in 1877)
• 1877 – moved to New Orleans – wrote for New Orleans
newspapers
– Wrote many vigorous editorials denouncing political corruption,
street crime, violence, intolerance, and the failures of public
health and hygiene officials
• Moved to Japan in 1890 – stayed until death
– Wrote about the exotic, pre-industrial Japan
Jacob August Riis (1849 - 1914)
• social reformer,
"muckraking" journalist and
social documentary
photographer
• Riis emigrated to America
from Denmark when 21
years old
• Worked for NY City
newspapers
• Wrote several books about
poverty/slums
• Riis’ photos
– http://www.nytimes.com/
slideshow/2008/02/27/ny
region/20080227_RIIS_SLI
DESHOW_index.html
– http://xroads.virginia.edu/
~MA01/Davis/photograph
y/home/home.html
– http://www.museumsyndi
cate.com/artist.php?artist
=930
Violence in the West was worse than
violence in the South or Urban East
1. True 94%
2. False
6%
1 2
Poster of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
Review – Violence in South
• “Worse Than
Slavery”
– October 24,
1874
– Harper’s Weekly
Violence in the “Wild West”
Truth and Myth
• Example:
• Tombstone, AZ founded in 1877
– Silver mining boomtown
– no bloodshed during the 1st year as population grew
to 4,000
• BUT
– Famous for the gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1881)
• result of a personal, family, and political feud
– In the early 1880s, illegal smuggling and theft of
cattle, alcohol, and tobacco across the U.S./Mexico
border about 30 miles away
Theme of Western Violence
• Efforts by territorial, state and national
governments to bring West under control of
whites
– Often the elite whites seeking to control resources
– To get cooperation of white settlers, must offer
cheap land
• Easiest way to get cheap land
– From Hispanics
– From Indians
The Hispanic “problem”
• 1845 – Texas became a state
– Hispanics usually lost the legal title to their land
• Through violence, intimidation and legal decisions
– Court of Private Land Claims (1891-1904)
• created to decide land claims guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo (1848)
– Treaty ended the Mexican-American War
– Treaty guaranteed the rights of Mexican and former Mexican citizens to their
property
• Court ruled on the territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and
in the states of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming.
– Court returned only 5% of 35 million disputed acres in
Southwest to original Hispanic owners
Texas and the Salt War
• Fight for control of immense salt lakes at the base of the Guadalupe
Mountains of West Texas (near El Paso)
– the right to collect salt had been open to all
– 1870, a group of influential Republican leaders from Franklin, Texas
claimed the land on which the salt deposits were found
• Conflicts
– Hispanics (American and Mexican)
– Texas Rangers (all white – often Southern sympathizers)
– All-black - U.S. Army Tenth Cavalry – “Buffalo Soldiers”
– Rich / powerful Democrat and Republican leaders
– Border raids/smuggling (Conflicts between U.S. & Mexico over border)
• Dec. 1877 – Hispanic “mob” VS Rangers
and local elites
– Ranger surrendered, local elite leader killed
• Texas continued to create laws to suppress
Hispanics
The Indian “Problem” before 1877
• Grant's "Quaker" Indian Peace Policy (1868 and 1876)
– "Quaker" or Christian agents to various posts throughout the nation
– Tried to avoid corruption; Congress less likely to interfere with Church
appointments
• Grant signed the Indian Appropriation Act, which established Indians as
national wards and nullified Indian Treaties, March 3, 1871.
• Indians “encouraged” to move to reservations
– U.S. Army given the job of “encouraging” Indians to move
• Under Grant's program, educational and medical programs were
institutionalized in the Interior Department, and tons of food, clothing,
and books were donated by churches and relief organizations to tribes.
– Between 1868 and 1876 the number of houses on reservations climbed from
7,500 to 56,000.
– The amount of land under cultivation by Indians increased sixfold.
– Teachers and schools for Indians tripled.
– Indian ownership of livestock increased by over fifteen times.
• BUT – is re-making a Native American into a “white” American a good
solution?
Caption : Indian Chief. "Mr. President, we call here to-day to offer our fealty to
you as our recognized Guardian and Ward, and to pray you, Sir, to Robinson Crusoe Making a Man of his Friday"
continue our Good Friend and Father." The President. "You are
welcome; and in reference to continuing your 'Good Father,' as you say, February 12, 1870
I must answer that I have long thought that the two nations which you
represent, and all those civilized nations in the Indian Country, should be
their own Wards and Good Fathers. I am of the opinion that they should
become Citizens, and be entitled to all the rights of Citizens--cease to be
Nations and become States."
This Harper's Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast incorporates some of the
major assumptions and biases of reformers concerning federal Indian
policy and Native Americans. By the 1870s, most Native Americans
lived west of the Mississippi River, where they continued to clash with
white settlers. During the 1870s and 1880s, a series of bloody wars was
fought between the U.S. Army and various Native American tribes in the
West. Some Americans called outright for the extermination of Native
Americans. By 1890, most Native Americans had been "pacified" and
placed on reservations.
The reformers' alternative to extermination, war, or reservations was
assimilation of Native Americans into European-American
culture. President Ulysses S. Grant's comments in the caption of this
cartoon indicate that he was interested primarily in the political
assimilation of Native Americans through citizenship, the rights of
citizenship, and statehood for the Indian tribes.
The Nast cartoon portrays the more complete transformation of cultural
assimilation; that is, of the Native American accepting the cultural norms
of European Americans as his own. The cartoon's title conveys a familiar
image from Daniel Defoe's novel, Robinson Crusoe, to emphasize the
"white man's burden" of civilizing the natives. In order to achieve
genuine manhood, the Native American ("Friday") must emulate Grant
("Robinson Crusoe") and the concept of masculinity exhibited by
European American males. President Grant dresses the Native
American man (he does not dress himself) in the contemporary clothing
of European American men. The Indian's new suit comes with the rights
and responsibilities of citizenship--voting and taxes--in its pockets.
Reformers wanted Native Americans to become educated Christians who live
with their families on small farms (private property), rather than as a
tribe on common lands or reservations. Here, the traditional Native
American way of life (as Nast perceives it)--represented by weapons and
alcohol ("fire water")--has been shelved (right-background) as a sign of
peace. The new way of life for the Native American is symbolized (right-
foreground) by agricultural implements, a book of ABCs, and a copy of
Harper's Weekly. The work ethic and Christianity are both referenced in
the Biblical passage "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateC
bread." artoon.asp?Month=February&Date=12
BUT some Indians didn’t cooperate
• Sioux Insurrection
• June 25 - 26, 1876 - Battle of the Little Bighorn
– Custer's Last Stand
or Battle of the Greasy Grass (Native American title for the battle)
• US force of 600 that was outnumbered by approx. 1800 Sioux)
• Total U.S. deaths were 268, including scouts, and 55 were
wounded
• Difficult to know Sioux (Oglala Lakota) casualties
– AFTERWARDS
• U.S. Army even more aggressive in
forcing remaining free Indians to reservations
• 1877
– Sitting Bull fled to Canada
– Crazy Horse surrendered; killed by soldier
Nez Perce War of 1877
• Nez Perce had split into two groups
– one side accepted relocation to a reservation
– The other group, led by Chief Joseph, refused to give up
fertile land in Washington and Oregon
• Nez Perce were peaceful, respected, spoke English and
many Christian
• Nez Perce fought 13 battles and traveled 1,700 miles
– 1st thought they could move to Great Plains and find peace
– Later tried to escape to Canada
– Followed by whole nation in newspaper accounts
• October 1877 – Nez Perce surrendered
• marked the last great battle between the U.S.
government and an Indian nation
Chief Joseph's Surrender Speech at
Bears Paw Battle – Oct. 1877
“Tell General Howard I know his Heart. What He told me
before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting, Looking
Glass is dead. too-Hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all
dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on
the young men is dead.
It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are
freezing to death. My people, some of them have run away
to the hills, and have no blankets, no food; no one knows
where they are--perhaps freezing to death. I want to have
time to look for my children and see how many of them I
can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.
Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From
where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."
• Today can visit - National Historic Trail - 1170 miles
long, beginning at Wallowa Lake, Oregon, and ending
at the Bear Paw Battleground in Montana
the Nez Perce people
developed the original
American
Appaloosa horse
breed
1877 – “Tramp Scare”
What caused the fear of poverty?
Panic of 1873
• severe international economic depression in both Europe
and the US
• lasted until 1879
– One of the causes - Boom / Bust of Railroads
– 1866 and 1873 - a boom in railroad construction
– 56,000 miles of new track were laid
– Craze in railroad investment was driven by government land grants and subsidies to the
railroads
– large infusion of cash from speculators caused abnormal growth in the industry as well as
overbuilding of docks, factories and facilities.
• BUT - too much capital was involved in projects offering no immediate or early
returns
– September 1873, Jay Cooke & Company, a major US bank, couldn’t sell several million dollars
in Northern Pacific Railway bonds
– Meant to build the nation's second transcontinental railroad, called the Northern Pacific
Railway
– Bank was broke - On September 18, Jay Cooke & Company was bankrupt
• set off a chain reaction of bank failures and temporarily closed the New York stock
market
• Factories began to lay off workers
• Of the country's 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt
– Railroad industry was the nation's largest employer outside of agriculture
• 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875
• Unemployment reached 14% by 1876 - 8.9 % in February of 2011
Uncle Sam says "Look out,
boys, they say he's a Caesar
(seiz-er).“
October 11, 1873
Published in the midst of the Panic of
1873, this cartoon portrays President
Ulysses S. Grant as a watchdog guarding
the U.S. Treasury from Wall Street
speculators who are seeking a bailout
from the federal government. Lawyer
Reverdy Johnson (left) presents a brief for
financier Cornelius Vanderbilt (right), as
Uncle Sam warns the two men not to
provoke the Grant bulldog.
On April 14, 1874, Congress passed an
inflation bill that would increase the
nation's money supply by $100
million. President Grant had previously
endured poverty and been adversely
affected by the Panic of 1857, so he
genuinely sympathized with the
motivations behind the bill and those it
was trying to help.
However, on April 21, Grant vetoed the
bill, arguing that any short-term benefit
would be far outweighed by the long-
term damage done to the national
economy by the inflation it would
generate.
READ MORE
http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/Br
owseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=October
&Date=11
The middle class was afraid of poverty
• Hard to calculate “middle class” in late 1800s
– No definition by Census Bureau or social science
– Worked for a salary
• “workers” earned an hourly wage
• Did middle class include farmers and self-employed artisan?
– Owned home
• Not crowded into tenements
– “their sobriety, loyalty and religion sustained society”
– Didn’t want to fall into the class of destitute worker or
the wandering poor – tramps!
Newspaper accounts of TRAMPS!!
• “bold, numerous and troublesome”
• “an unpleasant and dangerous scab on society”
• “marauders” that institute “a reign of terror”
• “roving bands of thieves”
– All sorts of crimes blamed on tramps
• theft, violence
• “brotherhoods” of tramps – criminal conspiracies
• “barns are entered, poultry is stolen, clothes-lines are robbed, and
there is an uneasiness and insecurity which should not be endured
in a peaceful State.”
• Who were they?
– Jobless workers, looking for work
What could tramps do to the U.S.?
• Lead a social revolt and establish liberal communism!!!
– After all, it happened in France!
• Most covered foreign story in the 1870s
• Paris Commune
– Ruled March 18 to May 28, 1871
– the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial
Revolution
• 1877 – “a great communist wave” was believed to be
sweeping the nation!
– America’s first “red scare”
– Political leaders and journalists saw threats to capitalism,
religion and social order when workers demanded changes
The Anti-Tramp Crusade
• Often had been allowed to sleep in police stations
(remember – no homeless shelters then)
• Laws considered too lenient
– Useless to fine tramps – they had no money
• New anti-tramp efforts:
– Arrested for vagrancy – made to work in workhouses / chain
gangs
– People formed vigilante committees
• Turned into anti-charity campaigns
– “ Charity is merely an encouragement to vagrancy and crime,
and the real duty of the citizen is to hand him over to the
police.”
• Poverty was criminalized
What did people think caused the
tramp threat?
• The sins of the Civil War?
– Many feared the dangerous veteran, crazed by
war and unable to fit back into mainstream life
– Reality: many tramps WERE unemployed veterans
• The weakest, flawed people in society;
doomed through natural selection?
• VERY FEW newspapers discussed the REAL
cause – economic depression and
unemployment
Even more frightening
– Molly Maguires!
• members of a secret Irish-American organization
• the "Mollies" were present in the anthracite coal fields of
Pennsylvania after the Civil War
– Probably active in labor disputes on the side of miners after the
union was destroyed in 1875
• 1876−1878 sensational arrests and trials in the years
• Molly Maguires were accused of kidnapping and other
crimes
– Trial depended upon testimony of one powerful industrialist and
one Pinkerton detective
– 24 men were hanged
• Nationwide newspaper coverage
– Most saw Molly Maguires as a THREAT associated with strikes
and workers
Pinkerton National
Detective Agency
• a private U.S. security guard &
detective agency
• established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850
– security guarding
– private military contracting work.
– Pinkerton agents hired to infiltrate unions
– guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories
• Homestead Strike of 1892
• guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New
York, and Pennsylvania, and the Great Railroad Strike of 1877
– At its height, Pinkerton employed more agents than there were
members of U. S. Army
– 2011 - company is Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, a
division of the Swedish security company Securitas AB with
250,000 employees in over 30 countries worldwide
“Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this
alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest;
not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The
former carries society forward and favors all its best
members; the latter carries society downward and
favors all its worst members.”
These sentiments are most characteristic of:
1. the Social Gospel 88%
2. Social Darwinism
3. Socialism
4. Progressivism 13%
0% 0%
1 2 3 4
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910):
The Challenge of Facts
• Source of the quote in the previous question
– Text - http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914sumner.html
• Sumner was a prominent American Social Darwinist
– Mixed Social Darwinism with aspects of a Calvinistic work ethic
– Thought it was okay that only 5% of Americans went to high school & college –
that was winnowing out the best
– Thought it was okay that 1/3 of newborns died in Penn. Coalfields – survival of
the fittest!
– Sumner was against that ANY gov. intervention; thought it would disrupt the
workings of natural selection
• numerous books and essays on American history, economic history,
political theory, sociology, and anthropology.
• Introduced the term "ethnocentrism," a term intended to identify
imperialists' chief means of justification, in his book Folkways (1906)
“In 1877, the middle class was in the process of
construction an ideology that blamed the poor for
their poverty as a moral failing.”
Social Darwinism
• term first appeared in Europe in 1877
• term "social darwinism" rarely used by
supporters; usually used (pejoratively) by its
opponents
• VERY popular belief among educated Americans
in late 1870s
DEFINED:
• Applied ideas “survival of the fittest” to humans
– stressed competition between individuals in laissez-
faire capitalism
– promoted eugenics or scientific racism or imperialism
or a struggle between national or racial groups
Other prominent Social Darwinists
• Herbert Spencer (English) (1820 –1903)
• Francis Galton (1822 –1911)
– British “scholar” of Eugenics is the "applied
science or the biosocial movement which
advocates the use of practices aimed at improving
the genetic composition of a population“
– coining the term Eugenics and the phrase "nature
versus nurture"
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
• “The general truth will stand, that no man in
this land suffers from poverty unless it be
more than his fault – unless it be his sin.”
• Believed that economic success was evidence
of God’s will and natural selection
• More about Beecher later . . . . . . .
Which of the following events best supports a
“class conflict” interpretation of American
history?
1. The nationwide railroad
88%
strike of 1877
2. The Nullification crisis
3. The rise of the Know-
Nothing party
4. The Supreme Court’s 13%
decision in Plessy vs 0% 0%
Ferguson 1 2 3 4
• The Nullification Crisis
– Andrew Jackson - President
– sectional crisis created by South Carolina's 1832 Ordinance of
Nullification
– South Carolina declared that the federal Tariff of 1828 and 1832
were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the
sovereign boundaries of South Carolina.
• Know Nothing movement (1854 to 1856)
– Nativist American political movement
– Members feared German and Irish Catholic immigrants
• Believed to be controlled by the Pope in Rome
• hostile to Anglo-Saxon Protestant
– Wanted do decrease immigration and naturalization
– No very successful end slowing immigration
• Plessy vs Ferguson (1896)
– Supreme Court decision
– upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial
segregation in private businesses (particularly railroads)
– doctrine of "separate but equal".
When did the 8 hour day become the
legal standard work day?
1. 1877 40%
2. 1910 33%
3. 1922
4. 1935
5. 1950
13% 13%
0%
1 2 3 4 5
• In 1935, under the National Labor Relations
Act which also provided us with the
Occupational Health and Safety
Administration and child labor laws. The
National Labor Relations Board was also
crafted in the act.
Great Railroad Strike
• July 1877 - dozens of overlapping strikes
across the nation
• 1st use of federal troops to stop strikes on a
NATIONAL scale
• Pres. Jackson had used federal troops to end a strike on
the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
• During Civil War, local commanders used troops to stop
strikes on local scale
Why railroads?
• Industry worth the most in 1877
– Employed more workers than any other industry
– 50 corporations with 79,000 miles of track
– $5 billion in capital and $2.26 billion of bonded debt
(national debt in 1877 was only $2.1 billion)
• BUT – Panic if 1873 hit railroads HARD
– Defaulted on $800 million in bonds
– Stock value dropped to ½ of value
– Wages for railroad workers fell 20 to 50%
• BUT railroad stock was still paying usual 6-10% dividend
• by 1877 corporate profits were INCREASING BUT
railroad worker pay was SHRINKING
• Pay cuts continued for workers – pay fell far below a
living wage
Strikes began July 14 in
Martinsburg, West VA
• Close to Baltimore, MD
• in response to the cutting of wages for the 2nd
time in a year by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
• Striking workers refused to move trains until 2nd
wage cut was revoked
• Mayor demanded striker leaders be arrested BUT
local people joined strikers in protest
• Governor sent in state militia units to restore
train service
• but the soldiers refused to use force against the strikers and
the governor called for federal troops.
"Blockade of Engines at Martinsburg, West Virginia," an engraving on front
cover of Harper's Weekly, Journal of Civilization, Vol XXL, No. 1076, New York,
Saturday, August 11, 1877.
Meanwhile in Maryland
• July 20 - strike spread to
Cumberland, MD stopping
freight & passenger traffic
• Governor ordered the Baltimore
militia to Cumberland to stop the strike
– In Baltimore, the emergency militia bell rang at 6 pm, just
as workers were heading home from work
– Several thousand people (supporting the strikers) showed
up at the train station to stop the militia
– National Guard fired - killed 10 and wounded 25.
– Rioters injured several members of the militia, damaged
engines and train cars, and burned portions of the train
station.
– On July 21–22, the President Hayes sent federal troops and
Marines to Baltimore to restore order
– BUT the strike continued
"Sixth Regiment Fighting
its way through
Baltimore," an engraving
on front cover of Harper's
Weekly, Journal of
Civilization, Vol XXL, No.
1076, New York, Saturday,
August 11, 1877.
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Worst violence
• Executive of Pennsylvania Railroad want to give strikers "a rifle diet for a
few days and see how they like that kind of bread."
– local law enforcement officers and militia refused to fire on the strikers
– The mayor regretted to say that recent budget cuts had reduced the police
force and he could only spare 11 officers; just 6 showed up to stop the strikers
• July 21 – Philadelphia militia arrived bayoneted and fired on rock-throwing
strikers - 20 people killed, 29 wounded
• Philadelphia militia took refuge in a railroad roundhouse
• Crowd set fires
– Burned 39 buildings, 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and passenger cars.
• On July 22, Philadelphia militia shot way out of the roundhouse and killed
20 more people
• After over a month of constant rioting and bloodshed, President Hayes
sent in federal troops to end the strikes.
Destruction of the Union Depot," Shows burning of Union Depot, Pittsburgh, PA
pgs. 624, 625 of Harper's Weekly, Journal of Civilization, Vo.l XXL, No. 1076, New York,
Saturday, August 11, 1877.
Ruins near the Union Depot and Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA 1877
http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1726
RIGHT: originally
published in Allan
Pinkerton's critical
account of the Great
Strike of 1877 called
Strikers, Communists,
Tramps and Detectives,
published a year after
the uprising
In Philadelphia
• July 22
• Philadelphia strikers
battled local militia and
set fire to much of Center
City before federal troops
intervened and put down
the uprising.
• More photographs
– http://explorepahistory.co
m/displaygallery.php?galler
y_id=32&bcolor=tan&list=
1
Reading, PA
• Pennsylvania's third major industrial city
• Railroad engineers already on strike since April 1877
• All railroad employees joined the strike
– mass marches of strikers
– blocked of rail traffic
– Burned the bridge providing this railroad's only link to the
west - to prevent local militia from being mustered to
Harrisburg or Pittsburgh.
• 16 citizens were shot by “militia” hired by Reading
Railroad management - “Reading Railroad Massacre”
Image on Right
http://www.historyhappenshere.org/archives/5312
Top Image
http://explorepahistory.com/displaygallery.php?gallery_id=32&bcolor=tan&list=1
In Louisville KY
• L & N (Louisville & Nashville) and Louisville, Cincinnati
& Lexington Railroads had cut wages by 10% in early
July
• July 23 – Louisville railroad workers demanded
reversals of the pay cuts – AND pay was restored!
• BUT, workers in other Louisville industries also wanted
pay cut reversals
• Mayor tried to stop the strike – said that the strikes in
other cities had really been lead by tramps, leaving the
“poor workingman” to pay the cost
• July 25 – 1,000 volunteers + 400 state militia marched
through streets; strikers were fired upon and dispersed
• Strike over in Louisville
St. Louis
• July 22, East St. Louis, Illinois
– strikers halted all freight traffic
– Other black & white workers joined; huge
demonstrations
– Took over the town
• Workingman’s Party wanted no violence
– no property was damaged
– Saloons closed
– Demanded a living wage, nationalization of railroads
– City control of the strikers for almost a week
– July 28 – U.S. troops arrived – strike ended
Chicago
• Railroads shut down by strikers
• In sympathy, coal miners in the pits at Braidwood, LaSalle,
Springfield, and Carbondale went on strike as well.
• In Chicago, the Workingmen’s Party organized
demonstrations that drew crowds of twenty thousand
people.
• The mayor of Chicago asked for 5,000 vigilantes to help
restore order (they were partially successful)
• National Guard and federal troops arrived
• On July 25, violence between police and the mob erupted
– deaths of nearly 20 men and boys, many more wounded
Results of the Strikes
• At least 117 killed, hundreds wounded
• 2/3 of railroad tracks shut down
• In 8 days, 9 governors called for federal troops
– Before federal troops had been used to guard federal
property
– In this strike – federal troops worked for corporate
interests to guard private property
• Militia called out in 11 states
– At least 45,000 troops involved making it the largest
use to that point of militia in peacetime
Strikers – What did they gain?
• Tried to avoid violence
– Strikers never attacked U.S. Army
– But police, militia and U.S. Army used force against strikers
• Many resolved to avoid alcohol; closed taverns
• What did workers gain in the short term?
– Very little
• Thousands of workers were fired or blacklisted
• Some leaders arrested – did jail time
• Unions changed after the strike
– Decline of “craft” unions after the strike
– General union – Knights of Labor – grew rapidly
• Dedicated to organizing workers regardless of gender, race, ethnic background or skill
level
• Became most important labor organization in 1880s
• Workers more active in elections
– “punished” public officials that had called out troops
– In Louisville, a Workingmen’s Party formed and won 5 of 7 offices in August
1877
What did “middle class” Americans think
about the strikes?
• Mark Twain thought the strikes showed what happened
when the government lost touch with the people it was
supposed to serve
• Penn. Railroad owner Tom Scott said the strike showed a
greater need for a larger army in the service of industry
• N.Y. labor leader Samuel Gompers (future leader of AFL)
said it proved that workers were on their own and must
work together
• Some were shocked that working class women participated
– “unsexed mob of female incendiaries”
• Many said the strikes proved that communists were
everywhere
– Every opponent was labeled a communist
• Strike blamed on modern technology (telegraph and
railroad) used to quickly spread the strike - TODAY?
What did Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
think about strikers?
• 1877 – highly paid minister of a New York City
Congregational Church
– Had recovered from the national publicized sex scandal
• Had wife, Eunice, the mother of his 10 children
• a friend's wife, Elizabeth Tilton, admitted she had an adulterous
affair with Beecher
• The jilted husband told Elizabeth Cady Stanton of his wife's
confession
• Stanton told the story to other women’s rights leaders and they
published the story of that America's most renowned clergyman
was secretly practicing the free-love doctrines which he
denounced from the pulpit.
• the trial began in January 1875, and ended in July when the jurors
deliberated for six days but were unable to reach a verdict
http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/BeecherTilton.htm
After the strikes, Beecher preached . . .
• Lectured the workers for disrupting the nation’s peace with
their irrational strike and fancied grievances
• Questioned the manhood of workers that could not be
content on bread and water
• “God has intended the great to be great, and the little to be
little.”
• Government regulation of industry is “insane” while
government aid to the is “communistic” and “un-American”
• His very popular sermon was published nationwide
– Many Christian newspapers agreed that this was no time to
show charity and mercy toward the poor
– Another popular preacher said strikers were violent
communists, loafers and enemies of the human race
Not all Christians agreed . . .
• Social Gospel movement was forming
– a Protestant Christian intellectual movement
– the late 1800s / early 1900s
– applied Christian ethics to social problems
• social justice, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions,
slums, bad hygiene, child labor, weak labor unions,
poor schools, and the danger of war
• 1880 – Salvation Army started in US
Middle-class concern for the plight of the working
class in a period of rapid industrialization and
urbanization was shown in all the following EXCEPT
1. YMCA
2. Salvation Army
3. Social Darwinism 67%
4. Settlement house movement
33%
0% 0%
1 2 3 4
• YMCA - Young Men's Christian Association
– Founded on June 6, 1844 in England by Sir George Williams
– the goal – put Christian principles into practice, achieved by
developing "a healthy spirit, mind, and body.“
• Salvation Army
– founded in 1865 in England by Methodists William and Catherine
Booth
– 1880 – started in Australia, Ireland, and the United States
– an evangelical Christian church known for charitable work
– Focus in beginning - alcoholics, morphine addicts, prostitutes and
other "undesirables" unwelcomed into polite Christian society
• Settlement House Movement
– was a reformist social movement
– 1880s - 1920s in England and the US
– Teach rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an
interdependent community
– established of "settlement houses" in poor urban areas, in which
volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to
share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of their
low-income neighbors.
– In the US, by 1913 there were 413 settlements in 32 states
• Many thought that police; state militias
(National Guard) and U.S. Army should be
enlarged
– Some cities and states did increase police and
militias
– BUT U.S. Army was not increased
• Democrats in Congress opposed growth of U.S. Army
• Rep. Joseph Blackburn (Dem.) from Ky opposed using
the army for “the subjugation and slaughter” of
“impoverished citizens”
State Militias did grow
• Between 1877 – 1903 – state militias were called out more than 300 times
to put down strikes
• “The armory movement”
– Massive stone and brick armories built in the heart of American cities
Louisville Armory
In 1893 the Kentucky state legislators passed a law which
required every city of 1st or 2nd class to provide an armory
with a drill hall and ammunition repository for the local branch
1891 - Worcester, Massachusetts; Now of the state militia."
the Massachusetts Military Museum
• From A New History of Kentucky
• By Lowell Harrison and James Klotter
• 1997
“Kinship ties were a key to political
success”
• Rewards were expected for political
support (votes)
– Winners had “right” to put family members
in office – nepotism
• Government was LOCAL
– Local government Controversial ballot box
• Built roads from 1948 Texas
Congressional election
• Collected most taxes
• Dispersed all poor relief (the county farm/ poorhouse)
– By 1912 (last county was created – McCreary) Kentucky counties
were, on average, smallest in the US
• Localism / nepotism created semiautonomous “little
kingdoms”
• “vote buying” was quietly accepted or condoned
• “vote buying is as common as buying groceries”
• Counting ballots the day AFTER the election often allowed returns to
be “fixed”
Violence in Kentucky after Civil War
• Ku Klux Klan
– Not as active when Black’s rights were limited again
• “Regulators”
– vigilante groups that contributed to lawlessness
– “punished” people – no trials, no evidence, no appeal
• Between 1875 – 1900
– 166 lynchings (2/3 of victims were black)
– Mobs often murdered people
• Oct. 1899 – Mob burned accused killer to death in Maysville,
dragged body through the streets; no charges filed against
those in mob even though none wore masks
Moonshine and
Violence
• 1862 – new federal tax
on whiskey production
– Failure to pay tax made
“moonshining” illegal
• Federal revenue agents
tried to seize illegal stills
and arrest violators
– Example - 153 arrests
made in 1881
– BUT local community
members helped
moonshiners avoid the
federal law
"The Moonshine Man of Kentucky," showing five scenes of the
moonshining life, including a man chopping down a tree, a man mixing
ingredients, a moonshiner held captive by 3 men, 3 men on horseback
begging for breakfast from framer; and a boy holding a jug by the still
house. Courtesy of the Prints & Photographs Division, Library of
Congress, Washington, D. C
Moonshine and Violence
• Moonshine (1918)
• In an act approved on March 29,
1918, the legislature made it
unlawful for anyone "to buy,
bargain, sell, loan, have in
possession, or to operate or aid,
abet, or encourage in the
operation, or to harbor a person
in the possession or in the
operation of an illicit or
'moonshine' still." Persons
violating this act for the first time
were to be fined not less than
fifty dollars or more than five
hundred dollars and imprisoned
for up to six months. Second
offenders were to be imprisoned
not less than one or more than
five years. Persons arresting or
causing the arrest of persons in
violation of this act shall be
entitled to a reward of fifty
dollars for each person so
convicted.
• http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/M
oments07RS/21_web_leg_mome
nts.htm
Other Kentucky Violence
• Retributive violence not condemned
– Protecting one’s honor expected
• 1877 – Cassius M. Clay shot & killed Perry White
– Perry White was a black man whose parents had been fired by Clay the day
before the shooting
– many different stories (parents were stealing from him; parents tried to
poison Clay’s son; Clay and White were after same woman)
– Clay found NOT guilty by reason of self-defense
• 1883 – Congressman Philip Thompson from Harrodsburg killed a man
that had “debauched” his wife; jury acquitted him
• 1890s - Louisville husband killed his wife and the son of former
Governor John Young Brown after discovering them together; was
acquitted
• Juries often tainted through kinship or political ties
• BUT – Kentucky probably no worse than the rest of the
South
Kentucky Feuding
• “Feud” defined
• 1. Must take place over time 2. Must involve family 3. Must have the motive of revenge
• Examples
– Hill – Evans feud of Garrard County – 1820 – 1877
• May have been only one male participant left alive in by 1877
– Feud in Carter County may have been more about outlaws and Regulators at
first, but in 1877 turned into a feud
• Lots of arrests / few convictions
• As many as 30 deaths
– Rowan County War of 1880s - Martin-Tolliver-Logan Feud
• 20 murders; 16 wounding in 3 years (only 1,100 people in the county)
– Howard-Turner feud in Harlan County – 1860s - 1880s
• Over 50 people died over several decades
– French-Eversole Feud – Perry County –
• 2-day battle in streets of Hazard in 1880
• 40-50 deaths and 50 orphans by the decline in 1890s
– Hatfield – McCoy Feud
• Not the bloodiest but received national attention because involved 2 state governments
• 12 – 20 deaths
– Breathitt County
• Problems started during Civil War – lasted until 1912
Feud Characteristics
• Many leading citizens were involved
– Like a medieval feudal lord with “hired guns”
• Violence was often cruel and cowardly
– “code of honor” a myth
– A few pitched battles; but one side usually trapped and outnumbered
• Causes usually related to “the troubles” usually related to ineffective law
enforcement
– Civil War violence
– Whiskey at elections
– Political partisanship
– Economic rivalries
– Concealed weapons
– Localism made wore by restrictive isolationism
• If legal system is “rotten to the core: then family-oriented vigilantism
develops
– like early Middle Ages after Roman gov. failed in Western Europe
Long-term impact of KY Feuds
• Coal boom helped to off-set economic decline
BUT
• Appalachia stereotypes were created:
1. The forgotten pioneer
• Isolated, happy, self-sufficient people
speaking Shakespeare’s English and
playing dulcimers
2. The violent hillbilly
• Backward, ignorant, immoral, poor people
• Leslie’s Popular Monthly (1902) (popular national
publication) said in Kentucky’s feuding country “the sun set
crimson and the moon rose red”
• New York Times (late 1880s) called Kentuckians
“unreclaimed savages” and “effective assassins:
• Stories of Kentucky Feuds Index
– http://www.jeanhounshellpeppers.com/Kentucky_Feuds_Index.html
– Based on book written by Harold Wilson Coates
Stories of Kentucky Feuds- published by Holmes-Darst Coal Corporation 1923
• Kentucky's Famous Feuds and Tragedies: Authentic History of the World
Renowned Vendettas of the Dark and Bloody Ground (1917) -
• http://www.archive.org/stream/kentuckysfamousf00mutzuoft/kentuckysfamousf00mutzuoft_djv
u.txt
–
The Hatfield Clan of the
Hatfield-McCoy-feud.
The picture was taken in 1897
and appeared in the Iowa
State Press dated February
11, 1889. The headline read
"In a Careless Moment Devil
Anse Allowed It to be Taken. -
- The Hatfields Wrecked the
Photographer's
Establishment.“
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:HatfieldClan.jpg
Book on Kentucky Feuds
• Days of Darkness: The
Feuds of Eastern
Kentucky
• By John Ed Pearce
• The University Press of
Kentucky; 1994, Reprint
edition (July 28, 2010)
Resources
• http://rethinkingschools.org/news/WIProtestTeachingResources.shtml
• Labor History:
Hardball and Handshakes
– examines the relationship between employer and employee through the
example of professional baseball. Developed by the American Labor Studies
Center and the Baseball Hall of Fame, the unit focuses on collective bargaining
and is geared toward high school and college students.
– http://education.baseballhalloffame.org/experience/thematic_units/labor_his
tory.html
• Labor Arts
– http://www.laborarts.org/
– virtual museum displaying “the cultural artifacts of working people.” The site
includes powerful images from labor history and culture, as well as works of
art representing labor’s struggles using various media such as photography,
painting and sculpture, and organizing paraphernalia including buttons, fliers
and posters.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
• http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/teacherguides/stri
ke/index.html
• Lesson Plan from B & O Railroad museum
about the Strike of 1877
– http://www.eduborail.org/MHT-5.aspx
American Labor Studies Center
• http://www.labor-studies.org/
• Resources for teaching history of labor
– http://rethinkingschools.org/news/WIProtestTeac
hingResources.shtml
