Chapter 16
Topic: CONQUERING A CONTINENT, 1854-1890
Name:
Class/Period:
Due:
Date:
Essential Question(s): In what ways did government seek to stimulate the economy and integrate the transMississippi west into the nation, and how did this affect people living there?
 Consideration of this question should draw from the following key concepts of Period 6:
o The rise of big business encouraged large-scale migrations, urbanization, and new efforts to reshape the
environment and the economy. (Key Concept 6.1)
 Westward migration, new systems of farming and transportation, and economic instability led to
conflict.
o An emerging industrial culture led to both opportunities and restrictions for immigrants, minorities, and
women. (Key Concept 6.2)
 Transcontinental railroads intensified westward migration, threatening the culture, identity, and very
existence of Native Americans.
Objectives:
WXT-3: Explain how changes in transportation, technology, and the integration of the U.S. economy into world markets have influenced U.S. society since the Gilded Age.
WOR-3: Explain how the growing interconnection of the United States with worldwide economic, labor, and migration systems affected U.S. society since the late 19th century?
ENV-5: Explain how and why debates about and policies concerning the use of natural resources and the environment more generally have changed since the late 19th century.
PEO-3: Analyze the causes and effects of major internal migration patterns such as urbanization, suburbanization, westward movement, and the Great Migration in the 19th and 20th
centuries.
PEO-4: Analyze the effects that migration, disease, and warfare had on the American Indian population after contact with Europeans.
PEO-5: Explain how free and forced migration to and within different parts of North America caused regional development, cultural diversity and blending, and political and social
conflicts through the 19th century.
CUL-2: Analyze how emerging conceptions of national identity and democratic ideals shaped value systems, gender roles, and cultural movements in the late 18th century and the 19th
century.
ID-6: Analyze how migration patterns to, and migration within the United States have influenced the growth of racial and ethnic identities and conflicts over ethnic assimilation and
distinctiveness.
Vocabulary:
Transcontinental railroad
INTRODUCTION: “Conquering a Continent”
-According to the Republicans, what was the key to nation building?
Union?”
To “preserving the
-What was one positive and one negative of “conquering the West?”
Laissez faire
Treaty of Kanagawa
Burlingame Treaty
THE REPUBLICAN VISION
-What was the relationship of government to business in the late nineteenth century?

Seward’s Icebox
The New Union and the World
-Union victory in the Civil War increased U.S. economic influence in which two areas
of the world?
-What was the new model for asserting U.S. power in Latin America and Asia?

Integrating the National Economy
-How were railroads financed in the late nineteenth century?
-Do you think government subsidies for transportation and communication were
congruent with the philosophy of laissez faire?
o Tariffs and Economic Growth
-How was the Civil War debt paid off?
Protective tariffs
-What was one argument for tariffs?
-What was one argument against tariffs?
Munn v. Illinois, 1877
o The Role of Courts
-Did the courts promote or impede economic growth?
o Silver and Gold
-Did the “Crime of 1873” increase or decrease the nation’s money supply?
-What was the purpose of limiting the money supply to the gold standard?
INCORPORATING THE WEST
-List two government policies that encouraged migration to the American West:
Comstock Lode

Mining Empires
-List three mining frontiers:
-How did the rise of western mining impact settlement of the Pacific Slope?
Long Drive

Cattlemen on the Plains
-Who became cowboys?
-Where did the “long drives” end up?
-What impact did barbed wire have on cattle ranching?

Homesteaders
-How ethnically diverse were homesteaders?
-Why did these homesteaders migrate to the “Great West?”
Joseph Glidden
“rain follows the plow”
o Women in the West
-What impact did Mormonism have on changing roles of women in the late
nineteenth century?
Report on the Lands of the
Arid Region of the United
States, 1879
o Environmental Challenges—list four:
-According to John Wesley Powell, what should be the role of government in
developing the “Great West?”
Yellowstone National Park

The First National Park
-List two examples of the government’s respect for land and wildlife:
Chief Joseph
Sand Creek Massacre
Fetterman Massacre
-Native resistance:
A HARVEST OF BLOOD: NATIVE PEOPLES DISPOSSESSED
 The Civil War and Indians on the Plains
-List two effects the Civil War had on conditions in the West:
-Why did eastern public opinion turn against the Indian Wars?
Red Cloud
Acculturation

Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock,
1903
o Indian Boarding Schools
-did these schools improve U.S. Indian relations?
Ex Parte Crow Dog
o Breaking Up Tribal Lands
-What was the purpose of the Dawes Severalty Act, 1887?
Dawes Act
Battle of Little Big Horn
Grant’s Peace Policy
-How did “reformers” address the “Indian Problem?”
-How did the Dawes Act affect Native Americans?

The End of Armed Resistance
-How did Grant’s peace policy fail to consider the needs of Native Americans in the
West and what were its results?

Strategies of Survival
-Identify three strategies of survival:
Syncretism
-What was the “final indictment of relentless U.S. expansion, white ignorance and
greed, chaotic and conflicting policies, and bloody mistakes?”
Buffalo Bill Cody
“The Significance of the
Frontier in American
History”

Western Myths and Realities
-Think about how Buffalo Bill Cody, “Deadwood Dick,” and Frederick Jackson Turner
interpreted the frontier experience. How much of what they thought about the “Great
West” was real and how much of it was myth?
-What did Native Americans find objectionable about Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West”
shows?
-According to Frederick Jackson Turner, what was the significance of the frontier?
Summary: (Use guiding question)
The authors of your text titled this chapter “Conquering a Continent.” Why do you suppose they characterized this
period in terms of a “conquest?” To what extent was the West “conquered?” In what ways did people evade this
conquest?