American Federation of Labor

Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886, the AFL was a loose alliance of national craft unions tha organized skilled workers by craft and worked for specific practical objectives such as high wages, shorter wages, and better working conditions. It forbid letting blacks and women join and went to great lengths to keep them out.

Black Codes

Laws passed by southern states immediately after the Civil War in an effort to maintain the pre-war social order. The codes attempted to tie freedom to field work and prevent them from becoming equal to white southerners.

Chinese

Exclusion

Act

This suspended the immigration of Chinese workers for ten years. It also prevented the Chinese in  America from becoming American citizens as well.

Compromise

Of

1877

Compromise struck during the contested Presidential election of 1876, in which Democrats accepted the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for the withdrawl of federal troops from the South and the ending of Reconstruction.

Dawes

Severalty

Act

Law passed in 1887 that broke up tribal life and gave individual ownership of lands to Indians. It divided tribal lands into small plots which were to go to the head of every household. Each family head recieved 160 acres, single adults recieved 80 acres, and children recieved 40 acres.  After the land was distributed then the rest was sold to white settlers.

Delta

And

Chicago

Blues

Delta originated in the Mississippi Delta region and it was characterized by harmonica and guitar. It was then evolutionized and brought North during the Great Migration and electricity and other instruments were added thus making it thw Chicago Blues.

Force

Acts

Also known as the Klu Klux Klan Acts, made interference with voting rights a federal crime and established provisions for government supervision of elections.

Freedmen's

Bureau

Agency established by Congress in March 1865 to provide freedmen with shelter,food, and medical aid and to help them establish schools and fiond employment. It was dissolved in 1872.

Great

Man

Theory

Assumption that every so often, a great man  will arise and alter the course of history.

Herbert

Baxter

Adams

Born in 1850 and died in 1901. Proffesser at John's Hopkins University and trained many of the next generation historians. Scientific Method and Germ thoery of Politics. Father of American History.

Historicism

A theory that history is determined by immutable laws and not by human agency.

Historiography

Writing of history based on the critical examination of sources. Usually filled mainly with Jarginy.

Homestead

Act

Of

1862

Gave 160 acres of land to anyone who would pay a 10.00 registration fee and pledge to live on it and cultivate it for 5 years.

Ideology

A systematic set of ideas about human life and culture; practical elements as prominent as the theoretical ones. A system of ideas that aspires both to explain the world and to change it.

Knights

Of

Labor

Founded in 1869, it pursued broad-guaged reforms as much as practical issues such as wages and hours. It welcomed all laborers regardless of their race,gender, or skill.

Lost

Cause

States  rights rather than preservation of chattel slavery. Slavery was a beneficial system.

Moral

Purity

Campaign

Nationalism

Loyalty and devotion to a nation state, especially a sense of national consciousness.

Nativism

Favoring the interests and culture of native-born inhabitiants over those of immigrants.

New

Immigrants

German, Irish , and  Asians.

New

Orleans

Race

Riots

Discredited the Presidential Recostruction and made clear the existing state governments were failing to protect the life, liberty, or property of ex-slaves.

Ocala

Demands

This called for the creation of a sub-treasury system to allow farmers to store their crops until tehy could get the best price, a free coinage of silver, an end to protective tarrifs and national banks, a federal  income tax, the direct election of senators by voters, and tighter regulation of railroads.

Presidential

Reconstruction

Appointed govenors, who were to ensure only loyal whites could vote in constitutional conventions. Confederate leader and office-holdersand those possessing property exceeding 20,000 had to apply for individual presidential pardons.

Pullman

Strike

Employees at Pullman Palace Car Company , living in a town just outside Chicago,  protested wage cuts,contiuing high rents, and layoffs. This was one of the largest strikes in the country's history.

Radical

Republicans

Headed by Thadeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, insisted on black suffrage and federal protection of civil rights of African Americans.

Redeemers

Southerners who took over the southern state governments supposedly "reedeming" them  of the corruption of southern reconstruction. Committments to white-supremacy and laizze-faire economics.

People's

( Populist)

Party

This party was organized in 1892 by farm, labor, and reform leaders, mainly from Farme.r's Alliance. It was a broad based reform platform reflecting the Ocala Demands. It elected James B Weaver for President in 1892 and then William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

Settlement

House

Movement

Social

Gospel

focused primarily on improving the conditions of life  on earth as on saving souls for the hereafter. This worked for child labor laws and measures to alleviate poverty.

Tammany

Hall

The famous Democratic party organization that dominated city politics from the 1850's to the 1950's.

Wade

Davis

Bill

in 1864 this bill was passed to counter Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan for Reconstruction. The bill required that a majority of a former Confederate state's white male population take a loyalty oath and guarantee equality for African  Americans. President Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill.

William

Tweed

Head of the famed Tweed Ring in New York. Funneled millions of dollarsinto his own hands and in the hands of his cronies. He pumped up city debt by 70 million dollars and in 1874 was convicted and sent to jail.

Yellow

Peril

Racist discourse prevelant in the late 19th/20th century.  Assumes Asians are insidiousand inscrutable.

American

Exceptionalism