Chapter 19: The South and the West Transformed Outline

I. The New South

A. A Fresh Vision
1. Henry W. Grady:
a. Major prophet of the New South
b. Young editor of the Atlanta Constitution
c. Believed that the Confederacy lost in the Civil War because of their reliance on
King Cotton and need to look to a new society of small farms, thriving industries
and bustling cities
2. New South- resemblance of North; more diversified and efficient agriculture as
foundation for economic growth and more widespread education, especially vocational
training, that would ultimately promote material success
B. Economic Growth
1. 1880-1900: number of cotton mills in the South grew from 161 to 400 and the number
of mill workers increased fivefold
2. 1900- South surpassed New England as nation’s largest producer of cotton cloth
3. Duke Family of Durham, North Carolina-
a. Major producers of tobacco (1872- 125,000 lbs. of tobacco annually)
b. Buck- American Tobacco Company (controlled nine tenths of the nation’s
cigarette production in 1890)
c. 1911- Supreme Court ruled massive company in violation of anti-trust laws and
ordered it broken up
4. Coal production in the South grew from 5 million tons in 1875 to 49 million tons by
1900
5. Birmingham, Alabama- major steel-producing center by 1870s; “Pittsburgh of the
South”
6. 1870- lumbering deforestation saved by warm climate, which fostered quick growth
of replanted forests and the rise of scientific forestry
7. Petroleum in the SW and hydroelectric power in the SE
8. Spindletop oil gusher- 1901, brought a huge bonanza in Texas
9. Richmond, Virginia- developed the nation’s first electric streetcar in 1888
10. Columbia, South Carolina- developed first electrically powered cotton mill in 1894
11. Buck Duke’s Southern Power Company- set out to electrify entire river valleys in the
Carolinas
C. Agriculture Old and New
1. Prolonged deflation in crop prices affected the entire Western world during the last
third of the nineteenth century more difficult to buy land
2. Sharecroppers- worked the owner’s land in return for supplies and a share of the crop,
generally about half
3. Tenant farmers-
a. Might have had their own mule, a plow and credit with the country store
b. Entitled to claim a larger share of the crops
c. Extensive use of phosphate fertilized accelerated soil depletion, move to another
farm once the soil lost its fertility which caused runoff
4. Crop-lien system-
a. Merchants furnished supplies in return for liens (mortgages) on farmers’ crops
b. Hopeless cycle of perennial debt
 c. Merchant generally charged high interest and required his farmer clients to grow a
cash crop, which could be readily sold at harvest time
D. Tenancy and the Environment
1. Growing commercial row crops like cotton year after year leached the nutrients from
the soil
2. Used fertilizers to accelerate growing cycle, extensive use of phosphate fertilizers only
accelerated soil depletion
3. Once the soil had lost its fertility, tenants moved on to another farm, leaving behind
rutted fields whose topsoil washed away with each rain
4. South: deep gullies sliced through, bare eroded hillsides, and streams and deep lakes
were clogged with silt
E. The Bourbons and the Redeemers
1. Redeemers-
a. Supporters of postwar Democratic leaders who believed that they supposedly
saved the South from Yankee domination, as well as from the limitations of a
purely rural economy
b. Rising class of entrepreneurs eager to promote a more diversified economy based
upon industrial development and railroad expansion
2. Bourbons-
a. Forgotten nothing and learned nothing in the ordeal of the Civil War
b. Political alliance with northeastern conservatives and an economic alliance with
northeastern capitalists
c. Frugality
d. Disposition toward railroads
e. Convict leasing- due to destruction of prisons and poverty of state treasuries and
demand for cheap labor
f. Reduced vast amount of government debt- nine states repudiated more than half
of what they owed bondholders and other creditors
g. Established boards of agriculture and public health, agricultural and mechanical
colleges, teacher-training schools and women’s colleges, state colleges for
African Americans
h. Dem party== old Whigs, Unionists, secessionists, businessmen, small farmers,
hillbillies, planters and some Repub against Radical Reconstruction never
achieved complete unity
i. Black congressmen to elections every year until 1900
F. Disenfranchising African Americans
1. “Negrophobia”
2. New generation of young African Americans born and educated since the end of the
Civil War determined to gain true equality
3. By the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called New South had come to resemble
the racially segregated Old South violence/repression 1890s-1910s
4. Jim Crow Laws- mandated public separation of the races
5. Populism- a farm-based protest movement that culminated in the creation of a third
political party in the 1890s divided the white vote to such an extent that in some places
the African American vote became the balance of power; some courted black votes
6. Bourbons 1890s- insisted that the black vote be eliminated completely from southern
elections sporadic segregation poll taxes (head taxes) and literacy test to deny
votes to blacks around 15th Amendment
 7. Mississippi Plan- 1890, disenfranchisement of blacks
a. 1) residence requirement- two years in the state, one year in an election district
b. 2) voters were disqualified if convicted of certain crimes, many of them petty
c. 3) all taxes, including a poll tax, had to be paid by February 1 of each year
d. 4) voters had to be literate; adopted by seven more states
8. “understanding” clause
a. Alternative to the fourth requirement of Mississippi Plan
b. If unable to read the Constitution, could quality by “understanding” it
9. “grandfather” clause
a. Allowed illiterates to register to vote if their fathers or grandfathers had been
eligible to vote on January 1, 1867, when African Americans were still
disenfranchised
b. LA, GA, NC, VA, AL, OK
10. Every southern state, moreover, adopted a statewide Democratic primary
G. The Spread of Segregation
1. 1883 seven civil rights cases-
a. Involving discrimination against blacks by corporations or individuals
b. Individuals were free to discriminate as fit
c. “separate but equal”
2. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)-
a. Homer Plessy refused to leave a whites-only railroad car when asked to do so
b. Court ruled that segregation laws are matters of the state in the exercise of their
police power
c. Statutory racial segregation extended to every area of southern life
3. 1890-1899- lynching in the US averaged 188/ year; 82% occurred in South; 1900-1909-
averaged 93%/year, of which 92% in South
4. Some blacks left South in search of equality and opportunity, but vast majority stayed
in native region
5. Often the only public buildings available for blacks, churches used for worship and
social gatherings, club meetings and political rallies
6. Deacon= prestigious roles of African Americans
7. New class of African American entrepreneurs emerged to provide services- insurance,
banking, funeral, barbering- to the black community in the segregated South
8. Middle class black women: clubs were engines of social service in communities
a. National Association of Colored Women- 1896, formed by leaders of women’s
club dedicated to reforms, created to combat racism and segregation
H. Ida B. Wells
1. After being denied a seat on a railroad car because she was black in 1883, she became
the first African American to file suit against discrimination; ruled in her favor
2. Editor of Memphis Free Speech- newspaper focused on African American issues
3. Helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) in 1909 and promoted women’s suffrage
I. Washington and Du Bois
1. Booker T. Washington
a. Born in VA; son of slave mother and white father
b. Hampton University and Tuskegee, Alabama (leading college for African
Americans)
c. 1890= nation’s foremost black educator
 d. Believed blacks should establish an economic base for their advancement and not
concentrate on demanding social/political equality
e. Famous speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in
1895- sacrifice broad educational and civil rights for the dubious acceptance of
white conservatives and creation of economic opportunities for blacks
f. Criticized by W.E.B. Du Bois
2. W.E.B. Du Bois
a. Born in MA; son of free blacks
b. First African American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard (in history) and
afterward attended the University of Berlin
c. Taught at Atlanta University in 1897
d. Criticized Booker T. Washington
e. Architect of the twentieth-century civil rights movement
f. Believed that the education of African Americans should not merely be vocational
but should nurture bold leaders willing to challenge segregation and
discrimination through political action
II. The New West
• 1870-1890: Americans settled more land in the West than had been occupied by all Americans up to
1870
• Great American Desert- trans-Mississippi states- Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska-, western Minnesota,
Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Great Basin
- Scarcity of water and timber, deposits of gold, silver and other minerals, completion of
transcontinental railroads, destruction of buffalo, rise of range-cattle industry, techniques of
dry farming and irrigation
A. The Migratory System
1. Second half of nineteenth century
2. Poor could not afford to relocate
3. ¾ of western migrants men
4. Largest number of foreign immigrants: northern Europe and Canada
5. Northern plains: Germans, Scandinavians and Irish
B. African American Migration
1. Exodusters- thousands of Africans Americans who began migrating west from KY,
TN, LA, AK, MS, TX;
a. 6,000 southern blacks in Kansas in 1879, 20,000 in following year
b. Exodus from south- in search of a haven from racism and poverty
2. Benjamin “Pap” Singleton-
a. Promoter of African American migration to the West
b. Recruiting pamphlet to former slaves, The Advantage of Living in a Free State
c. 1878- 200 to Kansas, 7,500 acres
d. Dunlop community
3. 1879- white MS closed access to river and threatened to sink all boats carrying black
colonists from the South to the West
4. Exodus died out by early 1880s: Kansas homesteads not large enough to allow self-
sufficiency, hired by white ranchers, natural disasters=crop failures, taxed resources
5. 520,000 African Americans lived by MS River 1890; 25% of cowboys
6. Buffalo soldiers- Civil War veterans from LA and KY
a. 1866- Congress passed legislation establishing two “colored” cavalry units and
dispatched them to the western frontier
 b. Built and maintained forts, mapped vast areas of the SW, strung hundreds of
miles of telegraph lines, protected railroad construction crews, subdued hostile
Indians, and captured outlaws and rustlers
c. Paid $13 a month
C. Mining the West
1. Forty-Niners- mass migration of miners to California in 1849, gold rush
2. 1849 gold rush- 100,000 early rushers crowding around Pikes Peak in CO in 1859
Comstock Lode at Gold Hill, NV $300 million in gold and silver
3. Arizona and Montana- copper
4. 1861- NV= territory; 1864- state
5. 1866- CO= state
6. Democrats were reluctant to create states out of territories that were heavily Republican
7. Dakotas, MO, WA in 1889
8. ID and WY in 1890
9. Utah 1896, OK 1907, 1912 AZ and NW 48 states
D. Mining and the Environment
1. “placer” mining or “panning”- sifted gold dust and nuggets out of riverbeds
2. Hydraulic mining- powerful jet of water to evacuate whole hillsides, washing the
gravel through sluices that caught gold nuggets and disposed of tailings (dirt and gravel
debris) cannons shot enormous streams of water under pressure, stripping the topsoil
and gravel from the bedrock and creating steep-sloped barren canyons that could not
sustain plant life
3. Dredging- carved out whole riverbeds in order to sift gold from the surrounding sand
and gravel
4. Anti-Debris Association- 1878, formed with its own militia by irate CA farmers in the
fertile Central Valley protesting against the damage done downstream by the industrial
mining operations; wanted to challenge the powerful mining companies
5. Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company (1884)- first major
environmental ruling in the nation
a. Outlawed dumping of mining debris where it could reach farmland or navigable
rivers
b. As a result, hydraulic mining dried up, leaving a legacy of abandoned equipment,
ugly ravines, ditches, gullies, and mountains of discarded rock and gravel
E. The Indian Wars
1. 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty- chiefs of the Plains tribes agree to accept definite tribal
borders and allow white settlers to travel on their trails unmolested, worked for a while,
with wagon trains passing safely through Indian lands and the army building roads and
forts without resistance
2. 1850-1860- 150,000 whites moved into Sioux territory in violation of treaty agreements
3. Sand Creek Massacre- 1864, Colonel John Chivington’s militia assaulted an Indian
camp along Sand Creek in CO Territory; Indians held white flag of truce, soldiers
slaughtered 200 Indians
4. “Report on the Condition of the Indian Tribes”- 1867, led to an act to establish an
Indian Peace Commission charged with removing the causes of Indian wars in general
5. 1870, Indians outnumbered whites in Dakota territory by two to one; in 1880, whites
outnumbered Indians by more than six to one
 6. 1867 conference at Medicine Lodge, KS ended with Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahos,
and Cheyennes accepting land in W OK following spring, Sioux agreed to settle
within Black Hills Reservation in Dakota Territory
7. Great Sioux War-
a. Lieutenant Colonel Custer led exploratory expedition into the Black Hills
b. Miners were soon filtering onto the Sioux hunting grounds despite promises that
the army would keep them out
c. Lasted fifteen months with fifteen battles in WY, MO, SD, NB
d. Sioux leader= Sitting Bull
e. Custer and 210 soldiers annihilated by Sioux and Northern Cheyenne allies at
Little Bighorn River
f. Army took offensive and Sioux forced onto reservations situated on the least
valuable lands in the region where they found themselves struggling to subsist
under harsh conditions and many died of starvation or disease
8. Idaho, peaceful Nez Perce bands refused to surrender land along Salmon R., fighting
erupted there and in E OR
9. 1886- generation of Indian wars virtually ended with capture of Geronimo, chief of the
Chiricahua Apaches, who fought encroachments in the SW for fifteen years
10. Battle of Wounded Knee 1890-
a. Wovoka (Jack Wilson) had delirium that entered spiritual world, hasten
deliverance with ceremonial dance at each new moon (Ghost Dance craze)
b. Banned Ghost Dance on Lakota reservations
c. Accidental rifle discharge led to nervous soldiers to fire into a group of Indians
who had come to surrender
d. Nearly 200 Indians and 25 soldiers died
F. The Demise of the Buffalo
1. 1750- 30 mill buffalo; 1850- less than 10 million; 1900- few hundred
2. Demand for buffalo robes/ leather
3. Average white hunter killed 100 animals a day, and the hides and bones (ground into
fertilizer) were shipped east on railroad cars
4. Some army officers encouraged slaughter
5. Environmental reasons: change in climate, competition with other grazing animals and
cattle-borne disease; drought
6. Competition for forage with horses, cattle and sheep
7. Plains Indians after 1840; white hunters
G. Indian Policy
1. Dawes Severalty Act of 1887-
a. Proposed to introduce communal Indians to individual land ownership and
agriculture
b. Senator Henry Dawes of MA- Pres could divide land of any tribe and grant 160
acres to each head of a family and lesser amounts to others
c. Trust for twenty-five years, after owner won full title and became US citizen
d. Broke up reservations and led to the loss of Indian land to whites
e. Land sold or lost to speculators
f. 1887-1934- Indians lost an estimated 86 million of 130 million acres
H. Cattle and Cowboys
1. Texas longhorns-
 a. Descended from stock brought to US by Spaniards: cowboy’s saddle, chaps
(chaparreras) to protect legs, spurs and lariat
b. Lean and rangy, noted more for speed and endurance than for yielding a choice
steak
c. Little value because the largest markets for beef were too far away
2. Joseph G. McCoy- IL livestock dealer, encouraged railroad executives to run a line
from the prairies to Chicago, the meatpacking center; liked by Kansas Pacific Railroad;
Abilene, KS became western terminus of new line; 1867- first shipment of TX cattle
went to Chicago
3. Twenty years after Civil War, 40,000 cowboys in Great Plains average age= 24,
30%= Mexican/ African Americans/ Indians
4. Population of Kansas increased from 107,000 in 1860 to 365,000 ten years later and
reached almost 1 million by 1880
5. Secret to higher profits for cattle industries: slaughter cattle in Midwest and ship
dressed carcasses east and west refrigeration
6. G.H. Hammond- Chicago meat packer, 1869- shipped first refrigerated beef in an air-
cooled railcar from Chicago to Boston
7. Gustavus Swift- 1877, developed a more efficient system of mechanical refrigeration,
an innovation that earned him a fortune and provided the cattle industry with a major
stimulus
8. Railroads spread out into Texas and across plains, cattle business spread as far as
Montana and on into Canada
9. Joseph Gliden- IL farmer, 1873- invented the first effective barbed wire, which
ranchers used to fence off their claims at relatively low costs; orders for the new fence
poured in, and soon the open range was no more
I. The End of the Open Range
1. Farmers kept crowding in and laying out homesteads
2. Stockbreeders formed associations
3. Sheepherding in 1880
4. 2 unusually severe winters, in 1886 and 1887, followed by ten long years of drought
5. Ranchers had to establish legal titles, fence in the land, limit the herds to a reasonable
size, and provide shelter and hay during the vigors of winter
J. Range Wars
1. SW: shepherds were Mexican Americans; Idaho and NB: Basque region of Spain or
Mormons
2. Sheep found refuge in high pastures of mountains, leaving grasslands of plains to
ranchers
3. Fence-Cutters’ War of 1883-1884- large and small ranchers would fight over land
where the large ranchers would fence in huge tracts of public land, leaving the smaller
ranchers with too little pasture, while the small ranchers would cut down the fences to
survive
a. Several ranchers were killed and dozens wounded before the state ended the
conflict by passing legislation outlawing fence cutting
K. Farmers and the Land
1. Homestead Act of 1862- a farmer could gain title to federal land either by simply
staking out a claim and living on it for five years or by buying the land at $1.25 an acre
after six months
2. Bureau of Reclamation-
 a. established by the 1901 Newlands Reclamation Act- develop irrigable land,
control of water
b. Proceeds of public land sales in sixteen states created a fund for irrigation works
and it set about building such major projects such as the Boulder (later the
Hoover) Dam on the Nevada-Arizona Line, the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona, and
the Elephant Butte Dam in New Mexico
3. 274 million acres claimed under Homestead Act passed to cattle ranchers or speculators
and then to settlers
4. Land-grant railroads got 200 million acres of public domain 1851-1871 and sold much
of it to build towns along the lines
5. West of ranchers and fanners was in fact largely the product of railroads
6. Freight rates and interest rates on loans seemed criminally high
7. Declining crop rates chronic indebtedness strapped western farmers to embrace
any plan to inflate money supply
8. Pioneer families used buffalo chips (dried dung) for fuel
9. Constant battle with nature
10. James Oliver- Scottish immigrant, 1868- made a successful chilled-iron plow; eased
the task of breaking the shallow but tough grass roots of the Plains
11. Wheat produced on eastern plains from Minnesota and ND down to TX, like cotton in
the antebellum period, great export crop that evened US balance of payments and
spurred economic growth
L. Pioneer Women
1. Minority; faced traditional legal barriers and social justice
2. Couldn’t sell property without her husband’s approval
3. Fight for survival made husbands and wives more equal partners in everyday life
4. Prairie life allowed more independence than domestic lives in the East
M. “The Frontier Has Gone”
1. Frederick Jackson Turner-
a. 1890- superintendent of national census noted that he could no longer locate a
continuous frontier line beyond which population thinned out to fewer than two
people per square mile
b. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)- outlined the
frontier theory
c. View of the frontier as the westward-moving source of the nation’s democratic
policies, open society, unfettered economy, and rugged individualism, far
removed from the corruptions of urban life
d. Ignored the role of women, African Americans, Indians, Hispanics, and Asians in
shaping the West