IN THE WAKE OF WAR
• New Problems, New Solutions
– industrialization and urbanization changed
the structure of the American economy and
society
– American political history in the last quarter
of the 19th century was singularly divorced
from the meaningful issues of the day
– on the rare occasions that important issues
did become the subject of debate, they
occasioned far less argument than they
merited
• The Triumph of Self-Interest
– after Civil War Americans became
materialistic
– they professed a belief in laissez-faire, a
policy of government noninterference in
business
– people tolerated the grossest kind of waste
and corruption in high places
– Mark Twain described this period as “the
Gilded Age” dazzling on the surface but
base metal below
– by the 1870s, Charles Darwin’s Origin of
the Species (1859) influenced American
public opinion
– William Graham Sumner drew an analogy
between survival of the fittest in nature and
in human society
– the application of Darwinist theory to social
relations became known as social
Darwinism
• Congress Ascendant
– a succession of weak presidents occupied
White House, and Congress dominated
government
– within Congress, the Senate generally
overshadowed the House
– critics called the Senate a rich man’s club,
but its real source of influence derived from
the long tenure of many of its members
and the small number of senators
– then, too, the House of Representatives
was one of the most disorderly and
inefficient legislative bodies in the world
– although the Democrats and Republicans
competed fiercely, they seldom took clearly
opposing positions on the issues of the day
– fundamental division between Democrats
and Republicans was sectional, result of
Civil War
– the South was heavily Democratic; New
England remained solidly Republican; and
the rest of the country was split, although
Republicans tended to have the advantage
– wealthy northerners and blacks tended to
be Republicans; immigrants and Catholics
tended to be Democrats
– even though Democrats won presidency
only twice, most presidential elections in
late nineteenth century were extremely
close, and congressional majorities
fluctuated continually
• The Political Aftermath of War
– Republicans attacked Democrats by
waving the “bloody shirt” (reminding voters
that the Democrats had been party of
secession and that Democrats denied
rights to blacks in South)
– other major issues included the tariff,
currency, and civil service reform
• Blacks After Reconstruction
– both Republicans and Democrats
subscribed to hypocritical statements about
black equality and constitutional rights, but
neither did anything to implement them
– for a time, southern blacks were not totally
disfranchised
– rival white political factions tried to
manipulate black voters
– in the 1890s, however, southern states
began to use poll taxes and literacy tests to
bar blacks from voting
– Supreme Court decisions curtailed black
civil rights and power of government to
defend them
– in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), Court
declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875
unconstitutional and ruled that the
Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed civil
rights against invasion by the state, but not
by individuals
– Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld legality
of separate public accommodations for
blacks and whites, so long as they were of
equal quality
– in practice, facilities provided for blacks
• Booker T. Washington: A “Reasonable”
Champion for Blacks
– some blacks responded to racism and
discrimination by adopting militant black
nationalism; others advocated a revival of
the African colonization movement; neither
of these approaches won many adherents
– the dominant black leader of the period,
Booker T. Washington, believed that blacks
needed to accommodate themselves to
white prejudices, at least temporarily, and
concentrate on self-improvement
– these ideas, expressed in his “Atlanta
Compromise” speech, established his
reputation as a moderate, “reasonable”
black leader
– in public, he minimized the importance of
civil and political rights; behind the scenes,
however, he lobbied against discriminatory
measures and financed test cases in the
courts
• White Violence and Vengeance
– for decades after the Civil War, some
southern whites had attempted to replace
the legal subjugation of slavery with a new
form of subjugation based on terror
– between 1890 and 1910, an average of
nearly a hundred blacks were lynched
each year
– even more striking was the utter savagery
of many of the lynchings
– violence succeeded in disfranchising
southern black men and driving them out of
public spaces
– ironically, this created an opportunity for
black women to fill the void created by the
disfranchisement of black men
– black women in religious and reform
associations became the points of contact
with the white community
• The West after the Civil War
– there was neither a typical West nor
westerner
– many parts of region had as large a
percentage of foreign-born residents as the
eastern cities
– although often portrayed as an
unpopulated region with large open
spaces, the West contained several
growing cities, including San Francisco and
Denver
– if the western economy was predominantly
agricultural and extractive, it also had both
– the West epitomized the social Darwinist
psychology of post-Civil War America
– beginning in the mid-1850s, a steady flow
of Chinese immigrated to the United States
– many worked building the railroads
– with the completion of the railroads,
Chinese began to look elsewhere for work
– workers in San Francisco, who resented
the competition, rioted
– by 1882, these problems led Congress to
prohibit Chinese immigration for ten years;
later this ban was extended indefinitely
• The Plains Indians
– in 1860, the Indians still occupied roughly
half the United States; by 1877, they had
been shattered as independent peoples;
the Plains Indians lived by hunting
– they eagerly adopted the products of white
culture-clothing, weapons, horses
– westward expansion by whites put
pressure on Indian lands
– in 1851, Thomas Fitzpatrick, an Indian
agent, negotiated agreements with several
tribes of Plains Indians at Horse Creek,
Wyoming
– each tribe agreed to accept definite limits
on its hunting grounds
– in return, the Indians were promised gifts
and annual payments
– this policy, known as “concentration,” was
designed to reduce intertribal warfare and,
more important, to enable the government
to negotiate separately with each tribe
– the United States maintained that each
tribe was a sovereign nation, to be dealt
with as an equal in treaties, although both
sides knew that such was not the case
• Indian Wars
– white encroachments led to the outbreak of
guerrilla warfare, in the course of which
both sides committed atrocities
– in 1867, the government tried a new
strategy to replace the “concentration”
policy
– all Indians would be confined to
reservations and forced to become farmers
– some Indians refused to yield to the new
policy and waged war against both the
U.S. Army and settlers
– Indians made superb cavalry soldiers and
often held off or defeated American troops
– granting the inevitability of white
expansion, some version of the “small
reservation” policy was probably best for
the Indians
– however, maladministration hampered the
government’s policy
– treaties did not provide adequate land for
the Indians, and Indian agents often
cheated Indians
– the discovery of gold on the Black Hills
Indian Reservation led to further fighting,
including Custer’s defeat at the Little
Bighorn
• The Destruction of Tribal Life
– the bison formed the mainstay of the
Indian’s food and provided materials for
clothing, tools, and shelter
– its destruction led to disintegration of tribal
life
– many whites, including those sympathetic
to the Indians’ plight, believed that the only
way to solve the “Indian problem” was to
persuade them to abandon their tribal
culture and to live on family farms
– the Dawes Severalty Act (1887) allotted
tribal lands to individual Indians, provided
funds for education, and granted United
States citizenship to those who accepted
allotments and “adopted the habits of
civilized life”
– although the bill’s sponsors perceived it as
a humanitarian reform, it had disastrous
results
– it shattered what remained of Indian culture
without enabling Indians to adapt to white
ways
• The Lure of Gold and Silver in the West
– Americans had long regarded the West as
a limitless resource to be exploited
– miners chased “strikes,” which gave rise to
boom towns, many of which soon died
– major strikes were made at Fraser River,
Pikes Peak, and Nevada (the Comstock
Lode)
– the boom towns of the West reflected the
get-rich-quick attitude prevalent in the East
– few gave any thought of conserving the
resources
– gold towns attracted a variety of
characters, and law enforcement was a
constant problem
– prospectors may have made key
discoveries, but larger mining interests
developed the resources and made most
of the profits
– gold rushes increased interest in the West
and generated a valuable literature
– moreover, each new strike and rush, no
matter how ephemeral, brought permanent
settlers: farmers, cattlemen, storekeepers,
lawyers, and ministers
– gold bolstered the financial position of the
United States and helped pay for the
import of European goods
– gold towns also consumed American
agricultural and manufactured goods
• Big Business and the Land Bonanza
– the Homestead Act (1862) intended to
create 160-acre family farms, but things did
not work out as planned
– even if land was free, most landless
Americans could not afford the cost of
moving and purchasing the necessary farm
equipment
– factory workers had neither the skills nor
the interest to become farmers
– moreover, 160 acres was not sufficient for
farms in the far West; the Timber Culture
Act (1873) increased the figure to 320
acres and required the planting of trees on
the land
– large speculators grabbed much of the
land, and private interests destroyed much
of the western forests
– some corporate “bonanza” farmers made
profits, but even commercialized
agriculture could not withstand the
droughts of the 1880s
• Western Railroad Building
– the government subsidized the
construction of western railroads through a
combination of land grants and loans
– government lands adjacent to the railroads
were not open to homesteading because
such free land would prevent the railroads
from disposing of their granted lands at
good prices
– land grant railroads encouraged the growth
of the West by advertising and selling their
lands
– they also provided inexpensive
transportation and shipping for settlers
– corruption and waste often marred the
construction of railroads
• The Cattle Kingdom
– the cattle industry developed as a result of
increasing demands for food in eastern
cities and the expansion of the railroad
network
– cattle were driven from Texas to Sedalia,
Abilene, and points westward on the
railroads, where the cattlemen sold them
for substantial profits the long drive
produced the American cowboy, about a
third of whom were black or Mexican
– cattle towns such as Abilene, Wichita, and
Dodge City thrived
– life in these towns was neither so violent
nor disorderly as legend has it
• Open-Range Ranching
– cattlemen began raising stock closer to the
railheads, eliminating the long drive
– open-range ranching on the northern plains
required little more than the possession of
cattle and access to water
– the open range made actual ownership of
much land unnecessary
– ranchers often banded together to obtain
legal title to watercourses and grazed their
cattle in common on adjacent lands
– their herds became intermixed and could
be distinguished only by brands
– Easterners and Europeans invested in the
ranches, and a few large ranches
eventually came to dominate the industry
• Barbed Wire Warfare
– by the mid-1880s, crowding on the range
and lack of clear land titles gave rise to
conflict and violence
– compounding matters, Congress refused to
change the land laws and thereby
encouraged those who could not get title to
enough land legally to resort to fraud
– individuals and groups began to fence off
large areas of land they considered their
own, a step made possible by the invention
of barbed wire
– fencing often led to conflicts
– overproduction drove down beef prices,
and many sections were overgrazed
– the severe winter of 1886 to 1887 killed
between 80-90 percent of cattle on the
range and ended open-range cattle
ranching
– the industry revived on a smaller, more
efficient scale