Period 6: 1865–1898

"Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. . . . The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done."
— Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

Which of the following was a direct result of the majority decision in the Supreme Court case referenced in the excerpt?

"If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. ... You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper."
— Chief Joseph, Nez Perce, 1879

Which of the following federal policies of the late nineteenth century most directly created the conditions criticized by Chief Joseph in the excerpt?

In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled in *In re Debs* that the federal government had the authority to issue an injunction to end the Pullman Strike, citing the government's duty to prevent obstructions to interstate commerce and the transit of the mail. This ruling and the government's actions during the strike best support which of the following conclusions about the Gilded Age?

Source: Circular distributed by the Singleton Colony, a Topeka-based organization promoting African American migration to Kansas, 1879.

"To the Colored People of the United States.

We, the undersigned, colored citizens of the State of Kansas, having settled here... find ourselves in a country of peace and plenty. We have land of our own, we have our own schools, and we vote without fear or hindrance. We ask you to come and join us. Land can be had cheap from the government under the Homestead Act, and from the railroad companies. By coming to the West, you can escape the oppression of the sharecropping system and build a prosperous future for your families."

Which of the following was a major economic and social factor that directly encouraged the migration described in the excerpt?

Read the following excerpt from a statement by Henry Clay Frick, manager of the Homestead Steel Works, in 1892:

"I will never recognize the Union, never, never! We had to decide whether we or the Amalgamated Association [of Iron and Steel Workers] should run the Homestead works."

Which of the following general trends in late nineteenth-century industrial relations is best reflected by the attitude expressed in the excerpt?

"It is now two years since the first legislature of Wyoming gave to women the right of suffrage... The experiment has been a success. It has not only elevated the character of our elections, but it has shown that women can exercise the elective franchise without losing any of their womanly qualities. More than all, it has invited to our territory the class of settlers we most need—intelligent, moral families who will make Wyoming their permanent home."

— Governor John A. Campbell, address to the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, 1871

The arguments in the excerpt most directly reflect which of the following developments in the West during the late nineteenth century?

"We have come to this country under the treaties between the United States and China... We have built your railroads, reclaimed your swamplands, and worked in your mines. Yet, we are met with constant hostility, special taxes aimed only at our people, and acts of violence that go unpunished by local authorities. We ask only for the equal protection of the laws promised to all who reside under your flag."
— Petition of the Chinese Six Companies to the President of the United States, 1876

Which of the following developments during the late nineteenth century most directly contributed to the conditions described in the excerpt?

Source: Letter from a Swedish immigrant homesteading in Nebraska to his family, 1884.

"We have harvested thirty acres of wheat and twenty of corn this season... But we are completely at the mercy of the railroad line. The local station agent dictates the price of our grain, and the cost of shipping agricultural machinery from Chicago is so high that we have had to take out a second mortgage on our land. Farming here is no longer a matter of feeding one’s family from the soil; it has become a speculative venture dependent on Eastern capitalists and distant markets."

The situation described in the excerpt most directly reflects which of the following developments in the late nineteenth century?

"We have a nice claim here in Dakota, but the life is hard. The wind blows constantly, and there is no timber. We must burn coal or twisted straw for fuel. Yet, we are independent, and the railroad has promised to reach us by autumn, which will allow us to ship our grain to the Chicago market instead of hauling it forty miles by wagon."

—Excerpt from a letter by a pioneer settler in Dakota Territory, 1881

Which of the following historical developments in the late nineteenth century is most directly reflected in the excerpt?

"The massive influx of foreign laborers, who are unfamiliar with our political institutions and accustomed to a much lower standard of living, has worked to the great detriment of the American workingman. These immigrants are frequently used by large corporations to break strikes, reduce wages, and impede the progress of trade unions. If we are to preserve the dignity of labor and the standard of American citizenship, we must place reasonable restrictions on this unrestricted flow of immigration."

—Adapted from Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, address to the AFL Convention, 1891

The sentiments expressed in the excerpt were most directly a reaction to which of the following Gilded Age developments?

"The real aim of this bill is to get at the Indian lands and open them up to settlement. The provisions for the apparent benefit of the Indians are but the pretext to get at his lands and occupy them. ... If this were done in the name of greed, it would be bad enough; but to do it in the name of humanity, and under the cloak of an ardent desire to promote the Indian's welfare by making him a landholder, is infinitely worse."
— Minority Report of the House Committee on Indian Affairs, 1880

Which of the following federal policies is the target of the criticism in the excerpt?

"These men [buffalo hunters] have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary; and it is a well-known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is disadvantaged... Send them powder and lead, if you will; but, for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle, and the festive cowboy..."
—Attributed to General Philip H. Sheridan, Address to the Texas Legislature, 1875

Which of the following was the most direct consequence of the developments described in the excerpt?

"I attended a funeral once in Pickens county in my State. . . . They buried him in the midst of a marble quarry: they cut through solid marble to make his grave; and yet a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him in the heart of a pine forest, and yet the pine coffin was imported from Cincinnati. They buried him within touch of an iron mine, and yet the nails in his coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were imported from Pittsburg. . . . The South didn't furnish a thing on earth for that funeral but the corpse and the hole in the ground."

— Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, speech to the Bay State Club, Boston, 1889

Which of the following statements best describes a major limit on the realization of the "New South" economic vision described in the excerpt during the late nineteenth century?

"The reservation system is a constant obstacle to the civilization of the Indian... We believe that the Indian should be prepared for citizenship by the division of their lands in severalty, the establishment of schools, and the introduction of the laws of the states and territories."
— Proceedings of the Lake Mohonk Conference, 1885

Which of the following federal policies of the late nineteenth century was most directly aligned with the goals expressed in the excerpt?

"The old free-and-easy system of cattle-raising on the public domain is rapidly drawing to a close. The great cattle trail is blocked by farms and wire fences... To succeed today, the cattleman must buy his land, fence it with barbed wire, and cultivate crops to feed his stock during the severe winters. The business is falling into the hands of foreign syndicates and large corporations, who can afford to purchase immense tracts of land..."

— Frank Wilkeson, "The Cattle Industry of the Plains," *Harper's New Monthly Magazine*, 1886

Which of the following historical developments in the American West during the late nineteenth century is most directly reflected in the excerpt?

"This civil service law is the biggest fraud of the age. It is the curse of the nation. There can’t be no real patriotism while it lasts. How can you expect a man to work for his country and his party when he finds that if he gets a job, he has to go through a civil service examination...?"

— George Washington Plunkitt, Tammany Hall leader, recorded in 1905

Which of the following historical developments during the late nineteenth century most directly challenged the political system defended by Plunkitt in the excerpt?

An 1883 political cartoon titled 'The Tournament of Today' depicts a jousting match. On one side, a giant knight labeled 'Monopoly' rides a powerful, armor-clad steam locomotive and wields a lance labeled 'Subsidized Press.' On the other side, a laborer wearing a paper hat and apron rides a scrawny, skeletal mule labeled 'Labor' and wields a lance labeled 'Strike.' Wealthy individuals watch the contest from decorated boxes in the background.

The power imbalance depicted in the cartoon most directly contributed to which of the following developments in the late nineteenth century?

"We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."

— Supreme Court Majority Opinion, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Which of the following was the direct consequence of the Supreme Court decision excerpted above?

Read the following excerpt from Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address in 1895:

"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

Which of the following statements best reflects the strategy advocated by Booker T. Washington in this excerpt?

Read the excerpt below carefully.

'The colored people of Memphis have did the only thing they could do to defend themselves. They have systematically stayed off the street cars... and have emigrated by the thousands to the West. The white merchants and railway companies are beginning to feel the loss of their trade and labor. This movement shows that the Negro has a weapon in his own hands—his labor and his patronage—which, if properly used, can force the South to respect his rights and protect his life.'
— Ida B. Wells, *Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases*, 1892

The strategies of resistance described in the excerpt most directly challenge which of the following contemporary approaches to achieving civil rights?