Chapter 18

Frontiers of Change, Politics of

Stalemate, 1865-1898

© 2003 Wadsworth Group All rights reserved.

 Agencies of Westward
Expansion
• Transcontinental railroads
• “The Great American Desert”
• “Sodbuster"
• “Bonanza farms“
• Mining and ranching
• Power of eastern capital and railroads

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 The Mining Frontier
• Gold, silver and copper mines
• Mining becomes high capitalized and
mechanized
• Western Federation of Miners

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 The Ranching Frontier
• Civil War creates viable market for free roaming
western cattle
• Sedalia, Missouri
• Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas
• Railroad creeps west
• “Range wars“
• Decline of free range cattle
• Western Frontier as myth
– Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
– Frederick Jackson Turner
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 Beef Cattle in the United States, 1867-1897
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 The Last Indian Frontier
• Expansion of ranching and farming doomed
Plains Indians and buffalo
• “Policy of concentration”
• 5 “Civilized tribes” reconstructed
• Indians settled on land reconstructed from 5
“Civilized tribes”

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 Conflict with the Sioux
• Civil War loosens control of western
Indians
• Santee Sioux (1862)
– Chief Little Crow
• Lakota Sioux
– Little Big Horn (1876)
• Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse vs. George A. Custer
– Philip Sheridan
• "Ghost Dance" (1890)
– Wounded Knee

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 Suppression of Other Plains
Indians
• Cheyennes
– Chief Black Kettle
– Sand Creek massacre (1864)
• Buffalo
• Reservations
• Nez Percé
– Chief Joseph

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 The “Peace Policy”
• Helen Hunt Jackson
– A Century of Dishonor (1881)
– Ramona (1884)
• Grant proposes “civilization and ultimate
citizenship”
• Board of Indian Commissioners (1869)
• Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
– Gave individual Indians land, made tribal land open to
American settlement
– Indian non-cooperation as resistance

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 Mexican Americans
• Mexican Americans in West forced to
adjust to new order
– Many lost their land, political influence and
cultural identity
• Barrios
• Mexican legacy
– Mining and agricultural techniques
– Mining, community property, and water law

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 The New South
• “Lost Cause” mythology
– Thomas Nelson Page
• Election of 1880
– Winfield Scott Hancock
– James Garfield
• Henry Grady and the New South

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 Southern Industry
• Cotton textile mills
• James B. Duke and the American Tobacco
Company (1890)
• Railroad and iron industries
– Birmingham
• South dependent on North for much of the
capital to finance New South

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 Southern Agriculture
• Crop lien system
• Sharecropping
• Increase in global cotton production
• Emphasis on cash crop production
• South becomes food importing region

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 Race Relations in the South
• Lynching
• Disfranchisement
– Poll taxes, literacy tests, etc.
– Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
– Republican party almost disappears
– White primary
• "Jim Crow" laws
– Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• Convict lease system
• Booker T. Washington
– Atlanta Exposition speech (1895)
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 The Politics of Stalemate
• Grave economic issues of U.S. from 1873-
1893:
– Rapid industrialization
– Inadequate monetary system
– Agricultural distress
– Labor protests
• Despite these national crises, the political
parties remained mired in their partisan
pasts
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 Knife-Edge Electoral Balance
• 5 Presidential Elections between 1876-1892 were
most closely contested in history
• Political Stalemate:
– Divided government
– Even balance between 2 major parties
• Republicans “waved the bloody shirt”
• Geographic “availability” of presidential nominees
– Swing states: New York, Ohio, and Indiana

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 Civil Service Reform
• Republican factions
– Mugwumps, Stalwarts, and Half-Breeds
• James A. Garfield (1881)
– Charles Guiteau
– Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885)
• Pendleton Act (1883)
• Election of 1884
– Republican James Blaine
– Democrat Grover Cleveland
– Mugwumps defect to Cleveland
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 The Tariff Issue
• Cleveland and low tariffs
• Benjamin Harrison
– Protective tariffs
– Generous pensions to Union veterans to spend
surplus caused by protective tariffs
• McKinley Tariff (1890)
– William McKinley
– Negative voter reaction

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 Conclusion

• Frederick Jackson Turner

– “Frontier thesis”
• Panic of 1893 and resulting depression

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