UNIT 3

Reconstruction - 

Spanish American War

PERIOD 6: 1865 - 1898

Text: Chapters 17 - 20

• One chapter from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Chapter will vary each year)

• Video: How the West was Lost: The Cheyenne

• Video: How the West was Lost: The Lakota

• Video: How the West was Lost: Kill the Indian to Save the Man

• Book Excerpts: Looking Backward (influence behind many labor and reform leaders)

PERIOD 6: 1865 - 1898

Themes and Content:

1. Large-scale industrial production -- accompanied by massive technological change, expanding international communication networks, and pro-growth government policies -- generated rapid economic development and business consolidation.

   • Following the Civil War, government subsidies for transportation and communication systems helped open new markets in North America.

   • Businesses made use of technological innovations, greater access to natural resources, redesigned financial and management structures, advances in marketing, and a growing labor force to dramatically increase the production of goods.

   • As the price of many goods decreased, workers' real wages increased, providing new access to a variety of goods and services; many Americans' standards of living improved, while the gap between rich and poor grew.

   • Many business leaders sought increased profits by cosolidating corporations into large trusts and holding companies, which further concentrated wealth.

   • Businesses and foreign policymakers increasingly looked outside U.S. borders in an effort to gain greater influence and control over markets and natural resources in the Pacific Rim, Asia, and Latin America.

2. A variety of perspectives on the economy and labor developed during a time of financial panics and downturns.

   • Some argued that laissez-faire policies and competition promoted economic growth in the long run, and they opposed government intervention during economic downturns.

   • The industrial workforce expanded and became more diverse through internal and international migration; child labor also increased.

   • Labor and management battled over wages and working conditions, with workers organizing local and national unions and/or directly confronting business leaders.

   • Despite the industrialization of some segments of hte Southern economy -- a change promoted by Southern leaders who called for a "New South" -- agriculture based on sharecropping and tenant farming continued to be the primary economic activity in the South.

3. New systems of production and transportation enabled consolidation within agriculture, which, along with periods of instability, spurred a variety of responses from farmers.

   • Improvements in mechanization helped agricultural production increase substantially and contributed to declines in food prices.

   • Many farmers responded to the increasing consolidation in agricultural markets and their dependence on the evolving railroad system by creating local and regional cooperative organizations.

   • Economic instability inspired agrarian activists to create the People's (Populist) Party, which called for a stronger governmental role in regulating the American economic system.

4. International and internal migration increased urban populations and fostered the growth of a new urban culture.

   • As cities became areas of economic growth featuring new factories and businesses, they attracted immigrants from Asia and from southern and eastern Europe, as well as African American migrants within and out of hte South. Many migrants moved to escape poverty, religious persecution, and limited opportunities for social mobility in their home countries or regions.

   • Urban neighborhoods based on particular ethnicities, races, and classes provided new cultural opportunities for city dwellers.

   • Increasing public debates over assimilation and Americanization accompanied the growth of international negotiated compromises between the cultures they brought and the culture they found in the U.S.

   • In an urban atmosphere where the access to power was unequally distributed, political machines thrived, in part by providing immigrants and the poor with social services.

   • Corporations' need for managers and for male and female clerical workers as well as increased access to educational insitutions, fostered the growth of a distinctive middle class. A growing amount of leisure time also helped expand consumer culture.

5. Larger numbers of migrants moved to the West in search of land and economic opportunity, frequently provoking competition and violent conflict.

   • The building of transcontinental railroads, the discovery of mineral resources, and government policies promoted economic growth and created new communities and centers of commercial activity.

   • In hopes of achieving ideals of self-sufficiency and independence, migrants moved to both rural and boomtown areas of the West for opportunities, such as building the railroads, mining, farming, and ranching

   • As migrant populations increased in number and the American bison population was decimated, competition for land and resources in the West among white settlers, American Indians, and Mexican Americans led to an increase in violent conflict.

   • The U.S. government violated treaties with American Indians and responded to resistance with military force, eventually confining American Indians to reservations and denying tribal sovereignty.

   • Many American Indians preserved their cultures and tribal identities despite government policies promoting assimilation, and they attempted to develop self-sustaining economic practices.

6. New cultural and intellectual movements both buttressed and challenged the social order of the Gilded Age.

   • Social commentators advocated theories later described as Social Darwinism to justify the success of those at the top of the socioeconomic structure as both appropriate and inevitable.

   • Some business leaders argued that the wealthy had a moral obligation to help the less fortunate and improve society, as articulated in the idea known as the Gospel of Wealth, and they made philanthropic contributions that enhanced educational opportunities and urban environments.

   • A number of artists and critics, including agrarians, utopians, socialists, and advocates of the Social Gospel, championed alternative visions for the economy and U.S. society.

7. Dramatic social changes in the period inspired political debates over citizenship, corruption, and the proper relationship between business and government.

   • The major political parties appealed to lingering divisions from the Civil War and contended over tariffs and currency issues, even as reformers argued that economic greed and self-interest had corrupted all levels of government.

   • Many women sought greater equality with men, often joining voluntary organizations, going to college, promoting social and political reform, and, like Jane Addams, working in settlement houses to help immigrants adapt to U.S. language and customs.

   • The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that upheld racial segregation helped to mark the end of most of the political gains African Americans made during Reconstruction. Facing increasing violence, discrimination, and scientific theories of race, African Americans reformers continued to fight for political and social equality.

Discussions:

• Was there really an end to Native American resistance?

• Why wasn’t the fight for Native American rights as strong as that for abolition?

• Bears, eagles, buffalo, & Indians: from near extinction to mascots

• Do businessmen owe something back to society, besides just the product?

• Is the “White Man’s Burden” still alive and well? If so, how are the goals phrased, today?

Movies:

Dances With Wolves – A lieutenant is sent to a remote outpost in the Dakota Territory during the Civil War, where he encounters and is finally adopted by a band of Lakota.

The Outlaw Josey Wales- A Missouri farmer joins a Confederate guerilla unit and winds up on the run from the Union soldiers, who murdered his family.

Little Big Man– A comedy in which an extremely old man tells of his life being raised by Indians and fighting with General Custer.

Son of the Morning Star (TV Movie)– The parallel lives of George Armstrong Custer and Crazy Horse until they come together in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (TV Movie)– Picking up after Custer’s defeat, the movie follows the lives of Charles Eastman (a Dartmouth-educated Sioux), Sitting Bull, and Henry Dawes, writer of the infamous Dawes Act.

Tombstone – Wyatt Earp’s plans to retire quietly in Arizona are disrupted by the kind of outlaws he was famous for eliminating in Kansas.

Far and Away- A young man leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter after some trouble with her father, and they dream of owning land at the big land rush in Oklahoma in 1893.

Geronimo: An American Legend – The pursuit and defeat of the last Apache resisters.

Pale Rider- A mysterious preacher protects a prospector village from a greedy mining company trying to gain title of their land.

Open Range- During the range wars of the late 1800s, a few cowboys try to defend themselves and their quickly disappearing way of life against a corrupt sheriff.

Unforgiven – A retired, Old West gunslinger reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner and a hotheaded young man.

Rough Riders (TV Movie) - This movie follows the rise of Teddy Roosevelt and his band of Rough Riders in the Spanish American War.