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Industrialization is a period of social and economic change that tries to take the focus off agriculture and create reliance on manufacturing.

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Lewis and Clark expedition was the United States expedition to explore the North American West. This was to help survey Missouri and the Columbia rivers and finding connecting routes.

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The New Deal was =a series of work programs, financial reforms, and regulations enacted between 1933 and 1939.

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Tycoons are people who made large sums of money through multiple lines of enterprise.

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What Is a Tycoon?

A tycoon is a prominent figure in a particular industry who has amassed substantial wealth and power while building a business empire. Tycoons are often identified in industries that have economic prominence.

Tycoons have traditionally been associated with steel production, railroads, oil, and mining, but more modern tycoons have been closely associated with technology and Internet companies. The word tycoon is based on taikun, a Japanese term used to describe shoguns.

Key Takeaways

Understanding Tycoons

Referring to owners of large businesses as tycoons became popular during the Industrial Revolution when small-scale manufacturing gave way to mechanized manufacturing on an industrial scale. Tycoons were both popularized and demonized during the Gilded Age, a term coined by Mark Twain to describe the period after the Civil War that saw the rise of the robber barons and America's first large multi-national companies.

While robber baron was a clearly negative label for these industrialists, tycoon could be used to imply vast holdings more than anti-competitive and corrupt business practices. However, public opinion on the business practices of some tycoons eventually led to more stringent regulation around critical issues of child labor and monopolies.

The Industrial Tycoons

During the Gilded Age, a number of entrepreneurs amassed unparalleled amounts of wealth through aggressive business deals that created massive companies. These companies when on to dominate the American economy in a way that was historically unprecedented. John D. Rockefeller was the world's first billionaire thanks to the fledgling oil industry of the 1860s and shrewd acquisitions.

Rockefeller diversified his oil holdings by refining one product into several, including kerosene for lamps, paraffin for candles, and petroleum jelly, to medical supply companies. He also made acquisitions up and down the energy value chain, making it very difficult for his competitors to operate without also padding his bottom line.

Andrew Carnegie similarly built his empire as a steel magnate through a series of good investments. When Carnegie needed a way to transport iron ore from mines, he purchased a railroad company. When he saw the steel business outpacing iron on shipping volumes, Carnegie pivoted and began buying up steel mills and vertically integrating so that he held more of the supply chain.

Carnegie's steel was sold to companies that manufactured railroads, train cars, ships, and automobiles, almost all of which exploded in production over his lifetime. In 1901, Carnegie sold U.S. Steel to banking tycoon J.P. Morgan for $480 million.

While Rockefeller and Carnegie were the wealthiest tycoons of their age, there were many others. These include industrial tycoons whose businesses peaked later, like Henry Ford, as well as some of the earlier tycoons like rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and the proto-tech entrepreneur Thomas Edison.

Modern Tycoons

Plenty of men and women have risen to tycoon status in more recent memory. Bill Gates founded Microsoft in the 1970s, and his technology company took off in the 1990s as personal computers became more affordable. Gates's personal wealth was pegged at around $129 billion in 2022. This is more than social media tycoon Mark Zuckerberg's $63 billion fortune but less than Amazon's Jeff Bezos' $135 billion.

Not every tycoon is purely in technology now, however. Oprah Winfrey has amassed her fortune through her popular television talk show that inspired millions of people thanks to her daily conversations on topics such as spirituality, literature, and health. She had earned more than $900 million by the start of the 21st century and is now worth $2.5 billion as of 2022. This is largely due to her taking an ownership role in the content she has produced and oversaw as her career has continued to grow.

Are Wealthy Investors Tycoons?

Warren Buffett, nicknamed the Oracle of Omaha, frequently ranks as one of the world's wealthiest people, as do some of his investing peers, like George Soros. While there are many investors who have built fortunes making the right call time after time, they are generally not considered tycoons-nor are they considered entrepreneurs for that matter. Investing is less about building an empire than it is about spotting the next empire being built and the company best positioned to do it.

How to Become a Successful Entrepreneur

Successful entrepreneurs tend to have a strong sense of vision and the ability to delay gratification. Starting a business often means long, thankless hours for little pay and no guarantee of success, so the ability to make sacrifices and hard decisions is absolutely essential in the early stages of a startup. These qualities do not guarantee success, but success is much harder to reach without them.

Otherwise, organizational and leadership skills are also essential for business success. Running a successful company means coordinating the resources of many different people with different skills, and it is important to avoid interpersonal conflict.

What Is the Difference Between a Tycoon and a Billionaire?

A tycoon is generally considered to be someone with a dominant or even monopolistic power within their industry. A billionaire is simply someone whose net worth is over one billion dollars, regardless of how they attained their wealth. There are many billionaires who are retired or do not dominate one industry in the same way that a tycoon does. Bill Gates, for example, is currently a billionaire, but no longer a software tycoon.

What Is the Difference Between a Mogul and a Tycoon?

Like a tycoon, a mogul is someone with a great deal of power or influence in a certain area of business. Neither mogul nor tycoon has any formal definition, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably to describe powerful business people or CEOs.

How Do I Become a Tycoon?

Business tycoons tend to have strong organizational and leadership skills, as well as the ability to make hard decisions and sacrifices. Business leaders who want to reach tycoon status will need to put in lots of late nights and weekends to build their business, with no certainty of success.

Who Is a Modern-Day Tycoon?

Today, tycoons are typically associated with the technology industry, such as Facebook or Amazon. These companies have great power within their industries and are sometimes accused of monopolistic practices. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos are sometimes considered tycoons.

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Tycoon: Who They Are, Different Types, FAQ

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A tycoon is a prominent figure in a particular industry who has built up substantial wealth and power while building their business empire.

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Moving to another country permanently or for a lengthy period of time. They leave their native nation in search of fresh possibilities, to get away from, problems, or to be with family.

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The process of change from a handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing.

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Made fortune by monopolizing large industries in unethical ways such as exploiting workers or not paying attention to their customers or competition.

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A machine that quickly separates cotton fibers from their seeds.

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The Emancipation Proclamation was a speech given by Abraham Lincoln declaring that all people held as slaves within rebellious states should be freed.

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Lead the expansion in the 19th century of the American Steel Industry.

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A publisher, author, inventor, scientist, and diplomat. He helped shape the American revolution and the new nation.

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The fugitive slave act allowed slave-hunters to take potential slaves without due process of law. It also banned people from helping escaped fugitives.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist author who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin which showed how bad slavery was.

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The civil rights movement fought for racial justice from the 1950's-60's.

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Is a political and social movement that aims to abolish gender discrimination and guarantee women's equal rights, opportunity, and treatment.

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A social movement that sought to end wars, minimize violence, and achieve world peace.

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America was destined (by God) to expand from sea to shining sea (transcontinental nation) and spread democracy and capitalism.

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The Great Depression was a severe and protracted economic catastrophe that engulfed most of the world, including the United States, in the 1930s. It was characterized by a severe drop in economic activity, widespread joblessness, bank failures, and business closures. Up until the start of World War II, the effects of the Depression had catastrophic social and economic effects, causing widespread poverty and suffering.

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The Gilded Age was a time in American history that occurred in the later part of the nineteenth century (approximately the 1870s to the early 1900s). It was characterized by both economic expansion and outward prosperity, as well as underlying social issues and wealth inequality. It was a period of quick growth in manufacturing, urbanization, and the rise of wealthy corporate tycoons, while many common people struggled with hard labor and poverty. The word "gilded" implies that deeper problems are hidden beneath a thin veneer of gold.

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Rockefeller was a powerful businessman who ruled the oil industry as king.

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Harriet was an abolitionist and social activist. She was known as the "Moses" of her people for helping lead slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Harriet Tubman." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Harriet Tubman." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/harriet-tubman.

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Known as the "Moses of her people," Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad. Discover more about her on womenshistory.org.

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John Brown worked to end slavery and raised money for this. He tried to make a plan to fight for their freedom, but his plan did not succeed and some died from their attack.

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The 19th-century American movement to settle and expand the country's territory westward, driven by the idea of manifest destiny and economic opportunities.

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The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the U.S. from the French First Republic in 1803.

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What was the Louisiana Purchase?

What was the impact of the Louisiana Purchase?

Where was the Louisiana Purchase signed?

Was the Louisiana Purchase constitutional?

How did the Louisiana Purchase affect Native American peoples?

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Louisiana Purchase, western half of the Mississippi River basin purchased in 1803 from France by the United States; at less than three cents per acre for 828,000 square miles (2,144,520 square km), it was the greatest land bargain in U.S. history. The purchase doubled the size of the United States, greatly strengthened the country materially and strategically, provided a powerful impetus to westward expansion, and confirmed the doctrine of implied powers of the federal Constitution.

The Louisiana Territory under Spanish and French rule

The Louisiana Territory had been the object of Old World interest for many years before 1803. Explorations and scattered settlements in the 17th and 18th centuries had given France control over the river and title to most of the Mississippi valley.

U.S. History Highlights: Part One

The first serious disruption of French control over Louisiana came during the Seven Years' War. In 1762 France ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain and in 1763 transferred virtually all of its remaining possessions in North America to Great Britain. This arrangement, however, proved temporary. French power rebounded under the subsequent military leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, and on October 1, 1800, Napoleon induced a reluctant King Charles IV of Spain to agree, for a consideration, to cede Louisiana back to France. King Charles gave at least his verbal assent on the condition that France would never alienate the territory to a third power. With this treaty of retrocession, known as the Treaty of San Ildefonso (confirmed March 21, 1801), would go not only the growing and commercially significant port of New Orleans but the strategic mouth of the Mississippi River.

Reports of the supposed retrocession soon were received by the U.S. government with deep misgivings. During the preceding 12 years, Americans had streamed westward into the valleys of the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Ohio rivers. The very existence of these new settlers depended on their right to use the Mississippi River freely and to make transshipment of their exports at New Orleans. By terms of the Treaty of San Lorenzo, Spain, in 1795, had granted to the United States the right to ship goods originating in American ports through the mouth of the Mississippi without paying duty and also the right of deposit, or temporary storage, of American goods at New Orleans for transshipment. But in 1802 Spain in effect revoked the right of deposit, and so it was in an atmosphere of growing tension in the West that Pres. Thomas Jefferson was confronted with the prospect of a new, wily, and more powerful keeper of the strategic window to the Gulf of Mexico.

Negotiations between France and the United States

Jefferson instructed Robert R. Livingston, the U.S. minister at Paris, to take two steps: (1) to approach Napoleon's minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, with the object of preventing the retrocession in the event this act had not yet been completed; and (2) to try to purchase at least New Orleans if the property had actually been transferred from Spain to France. Direct negotiations with Talleyrand, however, appeared to be all but impossible. For months Livingston had to be content with tantalizing glimmerings of a possible deal between France and the United States. But even these faded as news of the Spanish governor's revocation of the right of deposit reached the U.S. minister. With this intelligence he had good reasons for thinking the worst: that Napoleon Bonaparte may have been responsible for this unfortunate act and that his next move might be to close the Mississippi River entirely to the Americans. Livingston had but one trump to play, and he played it with a flourish. He made it known that a rapprochement with Great Britain might, after all, best serve the interests of his country, and at that particular moment an Anglo-American rapprochement was about the least of Napoleon's desires.

There are good reasons to believe that French failure in Santo Domingo (the island of Hispaniola), the imminence of renewed war with Great Britain, and financial stringencies may all have prompted Napoleon in 1803 to offer for sale to the United States the entire Louisiana Territory. At this juncture, James Monroe arrived in Paris as Jefferson's minister plenipotentiary; and even though the two American ministers possessed neither instructions nor authority to purchase the whole of Louisiana, the negotiations that followed-with Franƈois, marquis de Barbé-Marbois, minister for the treasury, acting for Napoleon-moved swiftly to a conclusion.

Defining the purchase

A treaty was signed on May 2 but was antedated to April 30. By its terms the Louisiana Territory, in the form France had received it from Spain, was sold to the United States. For this vast domain the United States agreed to pay $11,250,000 outright and assumed claims of its citizens against France in the amount of $3,750,000. Interest payments incidental to the final settlement made the total price $27,267,622.

Precisely what the United States had purchased was unclear. The wording of the treaty was vague; it did not clearly describe the boundaries. It gave no assurances that West Florida was to be considered a part of Louisiana; neither did it delineate the southwest boundary. The American negotiators were fully aware of this.

But before the United States could establish fixed boundaries to Louisiana there arose a basic question concerning the constitutionality of the purchase. Did the Constitution of the United States provide for an act of this kind? The president, in principle a strict constructionist, thought that an amendment to the Constitution might be required to legalize the transaction; but, after due consideration and considerable oratory, the Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 24 to 7.

The setting of fixed boundaries awaited negotiations with Spain and Great Britain. The exasperating dispute with Spain over the ownership of West Florida and Texas was finally settled by the purchase of the Floridas from Spain in 1819 and the establishment of a fixed southwest boundary line. This line followed the Sabine River from the Gulf of Mexico to the parallel of 32° N; ran thence due north to the Red River, following this stream to the meridian 100° W; thence north to the Arkansas River and along this stream to its source; thence north or south, as the case might be (the source of the Arkansas was not then known), to the parallel of 42° N and west along this line to the Pacific Ocean. The northern boundary was amicably established by an Anglo-American convention in 1818. It established the 49° parallel N between the Lake of the Woods and the Rocky Mountains as the American-Canadian border. The Rocky (then referred to as "Stony") Mountains were accepted as the western limit of the Louisiana Territory, and the Mississippi River was considered for all practical purposes the eastern boundary of the great purchase. Much of the territory turned out to contain rich mineral resources, productive soil, valuable grazing land, forests, and wildlife resources of inestimable value. Out of this empire were carved in their entirety the states of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma; in addition, the area included most of the land in Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Minnesota.

Adam Augustyn.

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Louisiana Purchase | Definition, Date, Cost, History, Map, States, Significance, & Facts

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Louisiana Purchase, western half of the Mississippi River basin purchased in 1803 from France by the United States. The purchase doubled the size of the United States, greatly strengthened the country materially and strategically, and provided a powerful impetus to westward expansion.

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The process of people moving from rural to urban areas, forming cities with higher population density.

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The supreme law of the United States is the United States Constitution, which is referred to as the Constitution. It was approved in 1788 after being adopted in 1787. The Constitution lays down the legal framework of the American government, detailing its organization, prerogatives, and rights of its people. The constitution is made up of a preamble and seven articles that cover a range of topics related to government, such as the division of powers among the legislative, executive, and judicial departments and the defense of individual rights through amendments like the Bill of Rights. The most important document in American democracy is the Constitution.

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Frederick Douglass escaped slavery from Maryland and then became an activist, author, and public speaker.

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Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826): Founding Father, third U.S. President, and author of the Declaration of Independence.

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https://www.royal.uk/george-iii

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-king-george-III/

King George was in power during the American Revolution.

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The ten initial amendments of the US Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. It became law in 1791 and is an essential component of the Constitution, ensuring that all Americans have basic rights and protections. These liberties include the right to carry arms, the right to be free of oppressive searches and seizures, the freedom of speech, religion, and the press, as well as other rights. The foundation of American democracy and individual liberties is the Bill of Rights.

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Involuntary servitude and slavery were outlawed in the United States by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1865, with an exception of punishment for crimes. It was a significant amendment in American history because it intended to abolish the system of slavery and free those who were held in it.

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The 19th amendment gave women the right to vote in the United States.

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Description of 13 colonies, looks at resources, economies, and climate

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Colonies - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut

Climate/Geography - Colonists in the New England colonies endured bitterly cold wintersand mild summers. Land was flat close to the coastline but became hilly and mountainous farther inland. Soil was generally poor and rocky, making farming difficult. Cold winters reduced the spread of disease.

Religion - The New England colonies were dominated by the Puritans, reformers seeking to "purify" Christianity, who came over from England to practice religion without persecution. Puritans followed strict rules and were intolerant of other religions, eventually absorbing the separatist Pilgrims in Massachusetts by 1629. Life in New England was dominated by church, and there were severe consequences for those who failed to attend, or, those who spoke out against the Puritan ways. Singing and celebrating holidays were among things prohibited in Puritan New England.

Economy - New England's economy was largely dependent on the ocean. Fishing(especially codfish) was most important to the New England economy, though whaling, trapping, shipbuilding, and logging were important also. Eventually, many New England shippers grew wealthy buying slaves from West Africa in return for rum, and selling the slaves to the West Indies in return for molasses. This process was called the "triangular trade."

Important Founders:
William Bradford (Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts)
William Bradford was an English Separatist (Pilgrim) leader in Plymouth Colony. He was a signer of the Mayflower Compact and served as Plymouth Colony Governor five times covering about thirty years between 1621 and 1657.

Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson (Rhode Island)
Williams and Hutchinson were residents of Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony. They began to preach ideals that the Puritans didn't agree with. Williams came first and was banished. He went south and founded Rhode Island. Hutchinson came later and when she was banished, she joined Williams in Rhode Island.

Thomas Hooker
Thomas Hooker was a prominent Puritan colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after disagreeing with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He believed in government by the people, for the people. Connecticut ratified the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut which would be the f irst written constitution in America. It marked the beginnings of American democracy, and Thomas Hooker was a major influence on it. The government of the United States today is more similar to that of Connecticut than to that of any of the other thirteen colonies.

Middle Colonies
Colonies- New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware

Climate/Geography - The Middle colonies spanned the Mid-Atlantic region of America and were moderate in climate with warm summers and cold winters. Geography ranged from coastal plains along the coastline, rolling hills in the middle, and mountains farther inland. This area had good coastal harbors for shipping, and it was also convenient to be centrally located. Climate and land were ideal for agriculture. These colonies were known as the " breadbasket" because of the large amounts of barley, wheat, oats, and rye that were grown here.

Religion - Religion in the Middle Colonies was varied as no single religion seemed to dominate the entire region largely due to Quaker beliefs of equality. Religious tolerance attracted immigrants from a wide-range of foreign countries who practiced many different religions. Quakers, Catholics, Jews, Lutherans and Presbyterians were among those religious groups that had significant numbers in the Middle Colonies.

Economy - The Middle Colonies enjoyed a successful and diverse economy. Largely agricultural, farms in this region grew numerous kinds of crops, most notably grains and oats. Logging, shipbuilding, textiles production, and paper-making were also important in the Middle Colonies. Big cities such as Philadelphia and New York were major shipping hubs, and craftsmen such as blacksmiths, silversmiths, cobblers, wheelwrights, wigmakers, milliners, and others contributed to the economies of such cities.

Important Founders:
William Penn (Pennsylvania) William Penn was born in London, England. He was educated in theology and the law. In his twenties he converted to the Quaker religion and was jailed several times for his resistance to the Church of England. In 1681, he received a royal charter to form a new colony in America, to be named Pennsylvania; he envisioned this territory as a peaceful refuge for members of all religious beliefs ( religious tolerance).

Southern Colonies
Colonies- Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia

Climate/Geography - The Southern Colonies enjoyed warm climate with hot summers and mild winters. Geography ranged from coastal plains in the east to rolling hills farther inland. The westernmost regions were mountainous. The soil was perfect for farming and the growing season was longer than in any other region. Hot summers, however, propagated diseases such as malaria and yellow fever.

Religion - Most people in the Southern Colonies were Anglican (Baptist or Presbyterian), though most of the original settlers from the Maryland colony were Catholic, as Lord Baltimore founded it as a refuge for English Catholics. Religion did not have the same impact on communities as in the New England colonies or the Mid-Atlantic colonies because people lived on plantations that were often distant and spread out from one another.

Economy - The Southern economy was almost entirely based on farming. Rice, indigo, tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton were cash crops. Crops were grown on large plantations where slaves and indentured servants worked the land. In fact, Charleston, South Carolina became one of the centers of the American slave trade in the 1700′s.

Important Founders:
James Oglethorpe ( Georgia) As visionary, social reformer, and military leader, James Oglethorpe conceived of and implemented his plan to establish the colony of Georgia as a haven for debtors. His idea began when a friend was placed in prison for not being able to pay his debts which resulted in Oglethorpe's friend dying of smallpoxs that he contracted from another prisoner. As a result, Oglethorpe began a campaign for prison reform. Prison reform did not, however, solve the larger plight of the large number of poor people in England. Oglethorpe and several colleagues from the jails committee began exploring the possibility of creating a new colony in America. They believed that if given a chance, England's "worthy poor" could be transformed into farmers, merchants, and artisans.

13 Colonies Foldable

Create a 4 page foldable over the 13 Colonies; each set of colonies, the New England, Middle and Southern, should take up a left and right hand side of a page as shown in the picture to the left. Create a map of each region, and put it on the left. Fill the right side with the information below on the left.

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Colonies - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut Climate/Geography - Colonists in the New England colonies endured bitterly cold wintersand mild summers. Land was flat close to the coastline but became hilly and mountainous farther inland. Soil was generally poor and rocky, making farming difficult. Cold winters reduced the spread of disease.

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The separation of groups based on characteristics such as race and sex.

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This amendment allows people to vote and not be denied based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.
To former abolitionists and to the Radical Republicans in Congress who fashioned Reconstruction after the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, enacted in 1870, appeared to signify the fulfillment of all promises to African Americans. Set free by the 13th amendment, with citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, Black males were given the vote by the 15th Amendment. In retrospect, it can be seen that the 15th Amendment was in reality only another step in the struggle for equality that would continue for more than a century before African Americans could begin to participate fully in American public and civic life.

African Americans exercised the right to vote and held office in many Southern states through the 1880s, but in the early 1890s, steps were taken to ensure subsequent "white supremacy." Literacy tests for the vote, "grandfather clauses" excluding from the franchise all whose ancestors had not voted in the 1860s, and other devices to disenfranchise African Americans were written into the laws of former Confederate states.

Social and economic segregation were added to Black America's loss of political power. In 1896, the Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson legalized "separate but equal" facilities for the races. For more than 50 years, the overwhelming majority of African American citizens were reduced to second-class citizenship under the "Jim Crow" segregation system. During that time, African Americans sought to secure their rights and improve their position through organizations such as National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League and through the individual efforts of reformers like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and A. Philip Randolph.

The most direct attack on the problem of African American disenfranchisement came in 1965. Prompted by reports of continuing discriminatory voting practices in many Southern states, President Lyndon B. Johnson, himself a southerner, urged Congress on March 15, 1965, to pass legislation "which will make it impossible to thwart the 15th Amendment." He reminded Congress that "we cannot have government for all the people until we first make certain it is government of and by all the people."

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, extended in 1970, 1975, and 1982, abolished all remaining deterrents to exercising the right to vote and authorized federal supervision of voter registration where necessary. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the act involving federal oversight of voting rules in nine states.

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15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights (1870)

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: The House Joint Resolution Proposing the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, December 7, 1868; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1999; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.

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While Andrew Jackson was president of the United States in 1830, a contentious federal statute known as the Indian Removal Act was passed. The Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole) and other Native American tribes living in the Southeast were given permission to be forcibly relocated to areas west of the Mississippi River, in what is now Oklahoma. The removal caused the forcible relocation of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans and the destruction of their ancestral homelands, resulting in great suffering, misery, and deaths along which came to be known as the Trail of Tears. It proved to be a tragic and painful episode in American history.

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Native American tribes, especially the Cherokee Nation, were brutally forcibly relocated on the Trail of Tears in the late 1830s from their native territories in the southeast of the United States to modern-day Oklahoma. Depending on the precise paths taken by various parties, the Trail of Tears' overall length varied, but it often stretched between 800 and 1,000 miles (1,300 and 1,600 kilometers). This journey was tragically characterized by great pain, illness, malnutrition, and death, and it is still remembered in American history.

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A doctrine that came to be known as "Separate but equal."

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Overview of Native American Cultures in the United States by looking at different regions.

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The Arctic

The Arctic culture area, a cold, flat, treeless region (actually a frozen desert) near the Arctic Circle in present-day Alaska, Canada and Greenland, was home to the Inuit and the Aleut. Both groups spoke, and continue to speak, dialects descended from what scholars call the Eskimo-Aleut language family.

Because it is such an inhospitable landscape, the Arctic's population was comparatively small and scattered. Some of its peoples, especially the Inuit in the northern part of the region, were nomads, following seals, polar bears and other game as they migrated across the tundra. In the southern part of the region, the Aleut were a bit more settled, living in small fishing villages along the shore.

Did you know? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That's about 1.5 percent of the population.

The Inuit and Aleut had a great deal in common. Many lived in dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber (or, in the North, ice blocks). They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats (kayaks in Inuit; baidarkas in Aleut).

By the time the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, decades of oppression and exposure to European diseases had taken their toll: The native population had dropped to just 2,500; the descendants of these survivors still make their homes in the area today.

The Subarctic

The Subarctic culture area, mostly composed of swampy, piney forests (taiga) and waterlogged tundra, stretched across much of inland Alaska and Canada. Scholars have divided the region's people into two language groups: the Athabaskan speakers at its western end, among them the Tsattine (Beaver), Gwich'in (or Kuchin) and the Deg Xinag (formerly-and pejoratively-known as the Ingalik), and the Algonquian speakers at its eastern end, including the Cree, the Ojibwa and the Naskapi.

In the Subarctic, travel was difficult-toboggans, snowshoes and lightweight canoes were the primary means of transportation-and population was sparse. In general, the peoples of the Subarctic did not form large permanent settlements; instead, small family groups stuck together as they traipsed after herds of caribou. They lived in small, easy-to-move tents and lean-tos, and when it grew too cold to hunt they hunkered into underground dugouts.

The growth of the fur trade in the 17th and 18th centuries disrupted the Subarctic way of life-now, instead of hunting and gathering for subsistence, the Indians focused on supplying pelts to the European traders-and eventually led to the displacement and extermination of many of the region's native communities.

The Northeast

The Northeast culture area, one of the first to have sustained contact with Europeans, stretched from present-day Canada's Atlantic coast to North Carolina and inland to the Mississippi River valley. Its inhabitants were members of two main groups: Iroquoian speakers (these included the Cayuga, Oneida, Erie, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora), most of whom lived along inland rivers and lakes in fortified, politically stable villages, and the more numerous Algonquian speakers (these included the Pequot, Fox, Shawnee, Wampanoag, Delaware and Menominee) who lived in small farming and fishing villages along the ocean. There, they grew crops like corn, beans and vegetables.

Life in the Northeast culture area was already fraught with conflict-the Iroquoian groups tended to be rather aggressive and warlike, and bands and villages outside of their allied confederacies were never safe from their raids-and it grew more complicated when European colonizers arrived. Colonial wars repeatedly forced the region's Indigenous people to take sides, pitting the Iroquois groups against their Algonquian neighbors. Meanwhile, as white settlement pressed westward, it eventually displaced both sets of Indigenous people from their lands.

The Southeast

The Southeast culture area, north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Northeast, was a humid, fertile agricultural region. Many of its natives were expert farmers-they grew staple crops like maize, beans, squash, tobacco and sunflower-who organized their lives around small ceremonial and market villages known as hamlets. Perhaps the most familiar of the Southeastern Indigenous peoples are the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, sometimes called the Five Civilized Tribes, some of whom spoke a variant of the Muskogean language.

By the time the U.S. had won its independence from Britain, the Southeast culture area had already lost many of its native people to disease and displacement. In 1830, the federal Indian Removal Act compelled the relocation of what remained of the Five Civilized Tribes so that white settlers could have their land. Between 1830 and 1838, federal officials forced nearly 100,000 Indigenous people out of the southern states and into "Indian Territory" (later Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee called this frequently deadly trek the Trail of Tears.

The Plains

The Plains culture area comprises the vast prairie region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Before the arrival of European traders and explorers, its inhabitants-speakers of Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Uto-Aztecan and Athabaskan languages-were relatively settled hunters and farmers. After European contact, and especially after Spanish colonists brought horses to the region in the 18th century, the peoples of the Great Plains became much more nomadic.

Groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche and Arapaho used horses to pursue great herds of buffalo across the prairie. The most common dwelling for these hunters was the cone-shaped teepee, a bison-skin tent that could be folded up and carried anywhere. Plains Indians are also known for their elaborately feathered war bonnets.

As white traders and settlers moved west across the Plains region, they brought many damaging things with them: commercial goods, like knives and kettles, which Indigenous people came to depend on; guns; and disease. By the end of the 19th century, white sport hunters had nearly exterminated the area's buffalo herds. With settlers encroaching on their lands and no way to make money, the Plains natives were forced onto government reservations.

The Southwest

The peoples of the Southwest culture area, a huge desert region in present-day Arizona and New Mexico (along with parts of Colorado, Utah, Texas and Mexico) developed two distinct ways of life.

Sedentary farmers such as the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma grew crops like corn, beans and squash. Many lived in permanent settlements, known as pueblos, built of stone and adobe. These pueblos featured great multistory dwellings that resembled apartment houses. At their centers, many of these villages also had large ceremonial pit houses, or kivas.

Other Southwestern peoples, such as the Navajo and the Apache, were more nomadic. They survived by hunting, gathering and raiding their more established neighbors for their crops. Because these groups were always on the move, their homes were much less permanent than the pueblos. For instance, the Navajo fashioned their iconic eastward-facing round houses, known as hogans, out of materials like mud and bark.

By the time the southwestern territories became a part of the United States after the Mexican War, many of the region's native people had already been killed. (Spanish colonists and missionaries had enslaved many of the Pueblo Indians, for example, working them to death on vast Spanish ranches known as encomiendas.) During the second half of the 19th century, the federal government resettled most of the region's remaining natives onto reservations.

The Great Basin

The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes. Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects (the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example), foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals. Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush. Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership (what little there was) was informal.

After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives. After white prospectors discovered gold and silver in the region in the mid-19th century, most of the Great Basin's people lost their land and, frequently, their lives.

California

Before European contact, the temperate California area had more people than any other North American landscape at the time, with approximately 300,000 people in the mid-16th century. It's estimated that 100 different tribes and groups spoke more than 200 dialects. These languages were derived from the Penutian (the Maidu, Miwok and Yokuts), the Hokan (the Chumash, Pomo, Salinas and Shasta), the Uto-Aztecan (the Tubabulabal, Serrano and Kinatemuk) and the Athapaskan (the Hupa, among others). Many of the "Mission Indians" who were driven out of the Southwest by Spanish colonization also spoke Uto-Aztecan dialects.

Despite this great diversity, many native Californians lived very similar lives. They did not practice much agriculture. Instead, they organized themselves into small, family-based bands of hunter-gatherers known as tribelets. Inter-tribelet relationships, based on well-established systems of trade and common rights, were generally peaceful.

Spanish explorers infiltrated the California region in the middle of the 16th century. In 1769, the cleric Junipero Serra established a mission at San Diego, inaugurating a particularly brutal period in which forced labor, disease and assimilation nearly exterminated the culture area's native population.

The Northwest Coast

The Northwest Coast culture area, along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to the top of Northern California, has a mild climate and an abundance of natural resources. In particular, the ocean and the region's rivers provided almost everything its people needed-salmon, especially, but also whales, sea otters, seals and fish and shellfish of all kinds. As a result, unlike many other hunter-gatherers who struggled to eke out a living and were forced to follow animal herds from place to place, the Indians of the Pacific Northwest were secure enough to build permanent villages that housed hundreds of people apiece.

Those villages operated according to a rigidly stratified social structure, more sophisticated than any outside of Mexico and Central America. A person's status was determined by his closeness to the village's chief and reinforced by the number of possessions-blankets, shells and skins, canoes and even slaves-he had at his disposal. (Goods like these played an important role in the potlatch, an elaborate gift-giving ceremony designed to affirm these class divisions.)

Prominent groups in the region included the Athapaskan Haida and Tlingit; the Penutian Chinook, Tsimshian and Coos; the Wakashan Kwakiutl and Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka); and the Salishan Coast Salish.

The Plateau

The Plateau culture area sat in the Columbia and Fraser River basins at the intersection of the Subarctic, the Plains, the Great Basin, California and the Northwest Coast (present-day Idaho, Montana and eastern Oregon and Washington). Most of its people lived in small, peaceful villages along streams and riverbanks and survived by fishing for salmon and trout, hunting and gathering wild berries, roots and nuts.

In the southern Plateau region, the great majority spoke languages derived from the Penutian (the Klamath, Klikitat, Modoc, Nez Perce, Walla Walla and Yakima or Yakama). North of the Columbia River, most (the Skitswish (Coeur d'Alene), Salish (Flathead), Spokane and Columbia) spoke Salishan dialects.

In the 18th century, other native groups brought horses to the Plateau. The region's inhabitants quickly integrated the animals into their economy, expanding the radius of their hunts and acting as traders and emissaries between the Northwest and the Plains.

In 1805, the explorers Lewis and Clark passed through the area, followed by increasing numbers of white settlers. By the end of the 19th century, most of the remaining members of Plateau tribes had been cleared from their lands and resettled in government reservations.

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Native American Cultures - Facts, Regions & Tribes

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Native Americans, also known as American Indians and Indigenous Americans, are the indigenous peoples of the United States. By the time European adventurers arrived in the 15th century A.D., scholars estimate that more than 50 million Native Americans were already living in the Americas - 10 million in the area that would become the United States.

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The four main points of this amendment include citizenship rights, equal protection, apportionment, and civil war debt.

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Amendment XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

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All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.