Chapter 17 Study Questions

1. Which book did James Bryce write that included commentary on the American political system in 1888?
2. What problem did Bryce note about politicians within his book?
3. What was Laissez Faire?
4. What was The Gilded Age?
5. What argument did William Graham Sumner generate?
6. What was Social Darwinism?
7. Which novel did Henry Adams write in 1880?
8. How did the Senate generate so much of power?
9. Why was the Senate called a "rich man's club?"
10. What is the best way to describe the House or Senate majorities between 1876 and 1896?
11. What was the bloody shirt?
12. What was the GAR?
13. Who was affected by deflation?
14. What was the National Greenback Party?
15. What caused the failure of an 1874 bill, which would increase the circulation of greenbacks?
16. What was "sound money?" Who were the Bourbons?
17. What was the number of federal employees by the turn of the century?
18. Which state led the way of depriving blacks of their right to vote in the 1890s?
19. Which president embarked on a new "Era of Good Feelings" tour?
20. What was the effect of the Civil Rights Cases of 1883?
22. What was the result of Hall v. De Cuir?
23. Which court decision created "separate but equal" public facilities?
24. How did Social Darwinism relate to segregation?
25. Who founded the Tuskegee Institute? Who was W.E.B. Du Bois? Who was Booker T. Washington?
26. Who offered the Atlanta Compromise? What did this speech emphasize?
27. What made San Francisco different from many other boomtowns?
28. Which western state was refused to ratify the 15th Amendment?
29. Which Asian ethnic group began to immigrate in large numbers to the West starting in the 1850s?
30. What was the cause of riots in San Francisco in 1877?
31. What was the result of the Burlingame Treaty?
32. What provided a steady source of food for Plains Indians?
33. What was the most important item that the Indians put to use that was from whites?
34. What policy did the U.S. government adopt with Plains Indians during the 1850s and 1860s?
35. What was the Chivington massacre? When did it happen?
36. How were the Indians at a disadvantage when fighting U.S. troops?
37. Who prepared a list of charges against agents of the Indian Bureau?
38. When was the Board of Indian Commissioners created?
39. Where was gold discovered in 1874?
40. In which year did heavy fighting between U.S. Troops and the Indians break out in Southern Montana territory?
41. Why were the buffalo slaughtered?
42. Of what tribe was Geronimo?
43. What was the Dawes Severalty Act? When was it passed?
44. Where was the "Big Bonanza" discovered?
45. Which tribe laid claim to the lands of the Black Hills?
46. Who was General Sheridan?
47. Who was Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull?
48. What happened at the Little Bighorn?
49. What piece of literature by Mark Twain is famous for documenting mining?
50. What type of building was generally absent from mining towns?
51. What was the Timber and Stone Act?
52. How much would even the simplest house cost a farmer to build in the West?
53. Who was Josiah Royce?
54. When was the 47.7 million acres of land thrown open in the South?
55. Why were the plains used for agriculture? What crop eventually became the most profitable and common one in the Plains?
56. What permitted the construction and growth of railroad lines?
57. About how many acres of land were granted to railroad companies by the 1870s?
58. What was the Pacific Railway Act? Which railroads received about 75% of the government's land grants to build transcontinental railroads?
59. Which President permitted homesteaders to settle in the railroad indemnity zones?
60. Were any railroads built by private money only?
61. Who were the "big four" men who built the Central Pacific Railroad?
62. What was "Promontory Point?"
63. How did cattle end up in Texas? What is a Texas Longhorn?
64. Who were Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving?
65. Why was cattle herding profitable in Texas? Why were cattle taken to Abilene?
66. What were vaqueros?
67. How did open-range ranching work? How did groups of ranchers cooperate?
68. Why did the homestead laws not work in the semiarid West?
69. Who was John Wesley Powell?
70. What was the Desert land Act?
71. What's so important about barbed-wire? How did it lead to war?
72. Why is the blizzard of 1886-87 so important?
73. Who was Clem Rogers?