Essay about The Gilded Age

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Chapter 23:vocab

“waving the bloody shirt”-the nickname for the post-Civil War campaign strategy of reviving gory memories of the Civil War to get voter support

Tweed Ring-the group of corrupt politicians who milked New York City of $200 million during the 1860s

Credit Mobilier scandal-1872-; tarred Grant's presidency; Union Pacific Railroad insiders formed this construction company and then hired themselves at inflated prices to build the railroad line, earning dividends as high as 348 percent; furtively distributed shares of its valuable stock to congressmen to prevent whistle-blowing; a newspaper expose and congressional investigation of the scandal led to the formal censure of two congressmen and the revelation that the vice president had accepted payments from this company

panic of 1873-over 15,000 businesses went bankrupt and the whole speculation-based credit system of the 1870s collapsed in this financial crisis

Gilded Age-he name Mark Twain gave to the period 1865-1873 in which currency inflation, speculation, over expansion, and loose business and political works were the order of the day

patronage-a system in which benefits, including jobs, money, or protection are granted in exchange for political support.

Compromise of 1877-compromise reached over the controversial Hayes-Tilden presidential election of 1876; Democrats agreed the Hayes (Republican) could take office if he withdrew federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina; Republicans assured the Democrats support for a bill subsidizing the Texas and Pacific Railroad's construction of a southern transcontinental line; Hayes became president; compromise soon led to the Republican party quietly abandoning its commintment to racial equality

Civil Rights Act of 1875-although it proved toothless and ineffective, the last feeble grasp by radical Republicans to guarantee black equality was this law.

Sharecropping-A way of farming that kept blacks in debt to whites for a long time.

Jim Crow-state-level legal codes of separation between blacks and whites in the South in the 1890s; literacy requirements, voter-registration laws, and poll taxes to ensure disenfranchisement of blacks; "separate but equal" facilities validated in Plessy v. Ferguson; intimidation (lynching); sharecropping and tenant farming kept blacks in debt to whites

Plessey v Ferguson-the court case in which the Supreme Court validated the South's segregationist social order; ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional under the "equal protection" clause in the Fourteenth Amendment; in reality the quality of African American life was grotesquely unequal to that of whites

Chinese Exclusion Act-1882; barred nearly all Chinese from the United States for sixty years

Pendleton Act-1883; spawned by Garfield's murder; it made compulsory campaign contributions from federal employees illegal and established the Civil Service Commission to make appointments to federal jobs on the basis of competitive examinations rather than "pull"

Homestead strike-thistrike against Carnegie Steel Company to protest salary reductions. Henry Clay Frick hired Pinkerton security guards to protect Carnegie's plant, but fighting resulted in deaths among both sides. The Pennsylvania State Militia was brought in to take control. Made the union movement seem violent and radica

grandfather clause-Cheating method employed by many Southern districts to prevent the now freed African Americans from voting. In addition to requiring literacy tests and poll taxes for those who wished to vote (really an attempt to weed out most blacks), this law was implemented to prevent anyone whose forbear had not voted in the election of 1860 from voting in the presidential election

Jay Gould-an American financier that was partnered with James Fisk in tampering with the railroad stocks for personal profit. He, like other railroad kings, controlled the lives of the people more than
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