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OurDocuments.gov. Featuring 100 milestone documents of American history from the National Archives. Includes images of original primary source documents, lesson plans, teacher and student competitions, and educational resources.

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What Was the Homestead Act?

In a July 4, 1861, speech, Lincoln told the nation the purpose of America's government was "to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life."

He followed through with the passage of the Homestead Act, which remained active for 124 years until it was repealed in 1976, and resulted in 10 percent of U.S. land-or 270 million acres-to be claimed and settled.

The incentive to move and settle on Western territory was open to all U.S. citizens, or intended citizens, and resulted in 4 million homestead claims, although 1.6 million deeds in 30 states were actually officially obtained. Montana, followed by North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska had the most successful claims.

But to achieve this, thousands of Native Americans were forced from their lands and onto Indian reservations to make way for homesteaders.

During a speech made in Ohio in February 1861, Lincoln said the act was "worthy of consideration, and that the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefiting his condition."

After it passed Congress, Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862.

Requirements of the Homestead Act

To make a claim, homesteaders paid a filing fee of $18: a $10 fee to make a temporary claim on the land, $2 for commission to the land agent and an additional $6 final payment to receive an official patent on the land. Land titles could also be purchased from the government for $1.25 per acre following six months of proven residency.

Additional requirements included five years of continuous residence on the land, building a home on it, farming the land and making improvements. Homesteaders, who had to be the head of a household or 21 years of age and had to certify they had never borne arms against the United States, also needed two neighbors or friends to attest to the government that they had fulfilled the requirements. Union soldiers could shave off time served in the Civil War from the five-year residency requirement.
WATCH: Matthew Pinsker on the Homestead Act
Land Speculators and the Homestead Act

Of course, there were those who took advantage of homesteading. According to the National Archives, a limited number of farmers and laborers could afford to build a farm, which included access to tools, crops, livestock and more.

"In the end, most of those who purchased land under the act came from areas quite close to their new homesteads (Iowans moved to Nebraska, Minnesotans to South Dakota, and so on)," the agency states. "Unfortunately, the act was framed so ambiguously that it seemed to invite fraud, and early modifications by Congress only compounded the problem. Most of the land went to speculators, cattlemen, miners, lumbermen, and railroads."

Other loopholes included building the required 12-by-14 dwelling in inches, rather than feet, since the exact measurement wasn't specified. A shortage of investigators also allowed false claims to be approved. And unpredictable weather, water shortages and remoteness led many homesteaders to abandon their claims well before the five-year mark.

But with improvements in rail lines and growing populations, new towns and states were created. "One hundred years ago the Congress passed the Homestead Act," President John F. Kennedy said in his message on conservation, sent to Congress in 1962, "probably the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted."

Repeal of the Homestead Act

Homesteading virtually came to a screeching halt with the enactment of the Taylor Grazing Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, which regulated grazing on federal public lands and authorized the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to apportion grazing districts.

In 1976, the Homestead Act was repealed with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which stated "public lands be retained in Federal ownership." The act authorized the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to manage federal lands. Homesteading was still allowed for another decade in Alaska, until 1986.

In 1974, a Vietnam War veteran and native of California named Kenneth Deardorff filed a homestead claim on 80 acres of land on the Stony River in southwestern Alaska. After fulfilling all the requirements of the act and living and working on the land for over a decade, Deardorff received his patent in May 1988. He was the last person to receive the title to land claimed under the Civil War-era act.

Today, the Homestead National Historical Park outside Beatrice, Nebraska, commemorates the Homestead Act. Why the tiny midwest town? That's where Daniel Freeman, deemed the first homesteader to file a claim (on Jan. 1, 1863) by the Department of the Interior, established his homestead site.

Sources

Homestead Act (1862). National Archives.
Homestead Act: Primary Documents in American History. Library of Congress.
Landmark Legislation: The Homestead Act of 1862. United States Senate.
FREE LAND was the Cry! Homestead National Historical Park. National Park Service.

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Homestead Act: 1862 Date & Definition - HISTORY

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In a July 4, 1861, speech, Lincoln told the nation the purpose of America's government was "to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life."

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President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

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Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

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July 3, 1863: The third day of Gettysburg marked a change in the tide of the war.

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America's Civil War: Images of Peace at Appomattox

No one knows for certain how the myth was born. But no one can deny that it was enduringly appealing and slow to die. As Ulysses S. Grant would put it years later, 'like many other stories, it would be very good if it was only true.

The legend was that on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lt. Gen. Grant, not inside the McLean House in Appomattox Court House, Va., but outdoors, in an apple orchard somewhere outside the village. It was a romantic story, conjuring up a picture of rival commanders on horseback solemnly stacking their arms before opposing lines of blue and gray. It was also entirely false.

Nonetheless, throughout the mid-1860s the tale of the apple orchard surrender was repeatedly introduced, colorfully illustrated and widely distributed to an accepting public by the nation's most imaginative purveyors of popular culture: the publishers of popular prints. To America's engravers and lithographers falls the dubious honor of having perpetuated the myth by vivifying it in a seldom-remembered body of gaudy prints for American parlors, taverns and clubhouses.

In the years before the advent of motion pictures, radio and TV, picture publishers had considerable power, coloring public perception of the events of the day. Illustrations forged images of the news and the newsmakers - whether realistically depicted or not - into the collective consciousness of the national audience. So it was with the Appomattox story.

But how did the apple orchard surrender tale get started? As Grant conceded, it was one of those little fictions based on a slight foundation of fact. And it was reinforced by an incidental but much-noticed follow-up to the historic surrender.

As memoir writers on both sides of the Civil War would later recount, Confederate forces were actually occupying a hillside that embraced an apple grove on April 9, 1865. Grant related in his memoirs how a dirt road ran diagonally up that hillside, and how so many Rebel supply wagons had traveled the trail that their wheels had cut through the protruding roots of an apple tree, creating a makeshift embankment along the supply route. It was on this embankment, Grant was told, that his Confederate counterpart was sitting, his back against an apple tree, when he finally decided the time had come to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia.

Union Brevet Brig. Gen. Horace Porter recalled a similar scene. Porter wrote that Lee was lying down by the roadside on a blanket which had been spread over a few fence rails on the ground under an apple-tree, which was part of an orchard.

Reverence for the iconic Robert E. Lee continued for many years after his death in 1870. Charles Walker's 1893 lithograph commemorates the general's simple and heartfelt farewell to his troops: You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection (Library of Congress).

Not surprisingly, Confederate writers chose to present a more active Lee: not a broken man lying on the ground, accepting the inevitable, but a mass of energy and resolve, resisting overwhelming forces until he wisely perceived the futility of struggling on. Colonel William W. Blackford, who had been an aide to Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart until the general's death in May 1864, was present at Appomattox. He remembered an apple orchard guarded by a line of sentinels, where Lee could be found on surrender day pacing backwards and forwards...looking like a caged lion.

Blackford's recollection was of a Lee quite unlike the idealized character later immortalized in popular prints and literature. To be sure, the general was the embodiment of all that was grand and noble in man in his full-dress uniform, complete with sword and sash. But he was also in one of his savage moods, Blackford remembered, and when these moods were on him, it was safer to keep out of his way. Lee that day was anything but the oft-portrayed stoic, dignified commander, made still more dignified by his gallantry in defeat.

Lee had good reason to fume, according to his aide, Colonel Charles Marshall. On April 8, wrote Marshall, Lee had proposed meeting Grant on the old stage road to Richmond, between the picket lines of the two armies, to discuss not surrender but peace. Grant made no reply to the invitation, but the next morning, Lee and two of his officers rode under a flag of truce toward the specified rendezvous. The men in the last hours of the Confederacy cheered General Lee to the echo, Colonel Marshall remembered, as they had cheered him many a time before. He waved his hand to suppress the cheering, because he was afraid the sound might attract the ire of the enemy, and we rode on through the line.

To Lee's disappointment, Grant never showed up. Instead, a Union staff officer delivered a note Grant had written to Lee. Grant had no authority to discuss the subject of peace, it said, only surrender. Marshall read the letter to Lee, and after a few moments' reflection, the Confederate commander made his most difficult decision. Well, write a letter to General Grant, he told Marshall, and ask him to meet me to deal with the question of the surrender of my army.

Even though Grant refused to meet Lee on the morning of April 9, at least one printmaker immortalized the event-that-never-was with a large lithograph of the Meeting of Generals Grant and Lee Prepatory to the Surrender of General Lee. Nearly a year would pass between surrender day and the publication of the print. But for artist P.S. Duval of Philadelphia and his publisher, Joseph Hoover (both experienced professionals who by then surely knew better), the dramatic appeal of the ride along the old stage road must have seemed irresistible.

What happened after Lee sent his message to Grant has been confirmed by memoirists of both North and South. The best account is probably that of Marshall, who was dispatched to Appomattox to find a place suitable for the surrender meeting. There, he encountered Wilmer McLean, a man...who used to live on the first battle field of Manassas, at a house about a mile from the Manassas Junction. He didn't like the war, and having seen the first battle of Manassas, he thought he would get away where there wouldn't be any more fighting.

In the end, the man who didn't like the war provided the place to end it - not as he first suggested, at a nearby home that Marshall thought all dilapidated, but in his own very comfortable house. Within minutes, in the 20-by-16 1/2-foot McLean parlor, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant.

Lee arrived first, looking to one observer quite bald and wearing one of the side locks of his hair thrown across the upper portion of his forehead, which is as white and as fair as a woman's. Nonetheless, to his aide Armistead L. Long, even vanquished, Lee was yet a victor....Under the accumulation of difficulties his courage seemed to expand...his presence inspired the weak and weary with renewed energy....Those who watched his face to catch a glimpse of what was passing in his mind could gather thence no trace of his inner sentiments.

His image stands out clearly before me, Long wrote years later. Just after he had signed the surrender papers and emerged from the McLean House, Lee suddenly seemed to Long older, grayer, more quiet and reserved...very tired. But he would not be so portrayed.

The orchard myth was a popular subject for printmakers. P.S. Duval's orchard scene is an early example of the myth in print. (Library of Congress).

Northern printmakers were the only such artisans to produce Appomattox surrender scenes. They also produced most of the portraits of Lee, Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson and Confederate President Jefferson Davis in the postwar era. But they were not aggressive researchers. Many searched no further for contemporary descriptions of Lee's appearance at Appomattox than the New York Herald's report of April 14: Lee looked very much jaded and worn, but nevertheless, presented the same magnificent physique for which he had always been noted....During the whole interview he was retired and dignified to a degree bordering on taciturnity, but was free from all exhibition of temper or mortification. His demeanor was that of a thoroughly possessed gentleman who had a very disagreeable duty to perform, but was determined to get through it as well and as soon as he could.

Grant, who arrived after Lee, looked to one witness as though he had had a pretty bad time. He came dressed in a sack coat and a loose fatigue blouse. In sharp contrast to Lee's glorious new full-dress uniform, Grant wore no side arms: Lee wore his magnificent gold-handled ceremonial sword. Grant appeared somewhat dusty and a little soiled. Lee was impeccable and grand, now and forever the perfect knight of legend, exuding gallantry in defeat. The simple truth was that Grant had garbed himself in what he called a rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the stripes of a Lieutenant-General, because his own stock of fancy uniforms had not yet arrived at his headquarters. This ironic contrast between the simplicity of the victor and the grandeur of the vanquished would be pointedly reflected in many prints of Appomattox and would grow into a legend in American history.

The events inside the McLean parlor were formal and unemotional. After some conversation, Lee asked Grant to put his surrender terms in writing. Grant's aide, Colonel Ely S. Parker, brought a small table from one corner of the room, and Grant sat down and wrote out the conditions of surrender on field note paper, which produced a copy as the original was written. When he finished, Grant rose and carried his draft to Lee, who remained seated elsewhere in the parlor. Lee offered some comments, including his well-known appeal that his soldiers be allowed to keep their horses, a request to which Grant consented immediately. Grant then asked Colonel Parker to recopy the terms of surrender. Parker took the desk to a far corner of the room and began to rewrite the official document while Grant took another seat and, like Lee, waited patiently. Other officers in the room, including Marshall and Union Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, exchanged pleasantries while they waited.

When Parker finished his transcription, Colonel Marshall took his seat to write out Lee's reply. The general admonished his aide not to begin the answer in the customary way. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt.... Don't say, `I have the honor,' said Lee. Just say, `I accept these terms.'

Finally the surrender papers were signed by both generals, their aides handing them separate copies and then exchanging them so each commander could sign two. After a few more moments of conversation, during which Grant finally explained why he wore a field uniform that was no match for his rival's, Lee left the McLean House.

Such was the history of the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army. There was no theatrical display about it, Marshall observed. It was in itself perhaps the greatest tragedy that ever occurred in the history of the world, but it was the simplest, plainest, and most thoroughly devoid of any attempt at effect, that you can imagine.

But Marshall did not realize what could be imagined by America's printmakers. Besides, the story had not really ended. There was to be a dramatic coda that would add another layer of confusion to the surrender story.

Wilmer McLean, owner of the house where the surrender was signed, commissioned this print as a way to raise money to pay for property damage that occurred during the war. Lee is accompanied by two aides, while Grant is surrounded by the cream of the Union officer corps, including George Custer, Philip Sheridan, George Meade and Edward Ord. McLean's hopes for restitution were in vain; he abandoned the property in 1867, and the house was sold at public auction two years later (Library of Congress).

The Lee of legend (and popular illustrations) had already been created by the time the generals returned from the true site of the surrender ceremony. All along his route, he was hailed with such cries as I love you just as well as ever, General by his loyal, tearful troops. Though truly a fine and noble man, Lee had become even more: the gallant cavalier who bravely fought a war he had not sought, and who surrendered with all the grace of a gentleman, though he had confided he would rather die a thousand deaths than do so.

The day after the surrender, Grant declared, I would like to see General Lee again. This time they did meet on horseback, chatting for half an hour near the old Confederate headquarters as staff officers hovered nearby. It was an incidental meeting, an anticlimactic footnote to the historic day that preceded it. But it seems that stories of this second encounter stimulated a lingering belief that Lee actually surrendered in such a setting.

Had the printmakers supplied Appomattox scenes more quickly, the legend might never have grown. Only two printmakers issued Appomattox scenes in 1865, and both erred, if at all, on the side of understatement. Most depictions were delayed until 1866 or 1867. So it remains one of the great mysteries of Civil War iconography why such a newsworthy event was not portrayed more quickly. Perhaps time was needed for passions to cool, and for Northern calls for Lee's punishment to quiet down. It may be that some months had to pass before any Northern engraver or lithographer could feel safe portraying former enemy Robert E. Lee, even in defeat.

Southern printmakers provided no Appomattox scenes. They had been all but ruined by the war, driven out of business by chronic shortages of paper and ink, or compelled to focus on official work such as Confederate postage stamps and currency. By the time the war ended, the Southern print industry was, for all intents and purposes, a memory. And even had it survived, bitter recollections of Lee's surrender and scenes of Appomattox would not have appealed to its customers.

Northern printmakers, denied access to the Southern audience for four years, gradually began supplying the images of the Lost Cause that they could never have been produced while the cause lived. During the late 1860s and throughout the '70s and '80s, parlor portraits of the principal heroes of the Confederate experience - Lee, Jackson and Davis - would be published by men in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, men who had been enemies of the South just a few years earlier.

The appearance of these portraits and the first engravings and lithographs of Lee's surrender signaled the beginning of the Northern effort to portray the Confederate image for profit. But along with the opportunities for profit came a challenge. It seemed difficult to market accurate prints of a surrender that was so simple and set in such mundane surroundings. Most solved this dilemma by providing imagined scenes of the purported apple orchard peace conference.

Among the more common orchard peace conference pictures, one of the most typical is the overdramatically titled Capitulation and Surrender of Robt. E. Lee & His Army at Appomattox. More restrained efforts are described as scenes of the Grant and Lee meeting, but their implicit message is the same: They are meant to suggest the actual surrender.

Lee actually returned to the orchard after signing the peace terms, and stood under an apple tree for the rest of the afternoon seeing visitors. After the soldiers left, Colonel Blackford remembered, the tree General Lee stood under was carried off by relic hunters. But print audiences had no reason to be concerned about this vandalism. For months afterward, the legendary tree would appear and reappear in purported re-creations of a scene that had never taken place.

In James Queen's 1866 lithograph, Lee is shown reading the surrender terms beneath the ubiquitous apple tree while Grant gestures grandly to the rival armies encamped in the distance. The portraits of the generals are excellent; the setting is pure invention.

Another effort, by Philadelphia's Joseph Hoover, makes Lee appear almost eager to surrender, reaching out for the terms in Grant's hand. Again the scene is outdoors, and to add to the mythicizing, both Lee and Grant are shown in resplendent fancy dress uniforms, Grant wearing a sword, something he rarely did anywhere. Still another outdoor interpretation suggests that the surrender occurred in winter, an error arising perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps to emphasize the hardships the soldiers had suffered. Two other prints, one likely copied from the other, contend that Grant handed the surrender terms to Lee.

But no popular print of the apple orchard surrender exaggerated quite as grandiosely as Kurz & Allison's lithograph of the Capitulation and Surrender of Robt. E. Lee & His Army. The symbolic scene shows both Union and Confederate armies crowded into the orchard, actually meeting en masse for the surrender. Stereotypically tattered and wounded Confederates on one side of the scene are contrasted with hearty-looking Union troops behind Grant. To add to the absurdity of the picture, Lee is shown publicly surrendering his sword to Grant. Grant later characterized the much talked of surrender of Lee's sword and my handing it back as the purest romance. To printmakers such as Chicago's audience-wise Louis Kurz, though, truth was not the test of a good picture; sales appeal was.

Currier & Ives' two straightforward Appomattox lithographs were exceptions. But the work of these celebrated New York printmakers was not devoid of inaccuracy. Both their 1865 and 1873 prints depict Grant and Lee sharing a single table, though they did not do so. And the scenes suggest, by showing Lee's sword on the table, that he surrendered it.

The only evidence that any printmaker completely understood the chronology of events that unfolded at and near Appomattox Court House on April 9 and 10, 1865, comes in a rare lithograph by one-time Currier & Ives artist Louis Maurer. It shows Grant and Lee meeting outdoors on horseback, but declares in its caption that the encounter occurred the day after surrender. Maruer modeled the print on a beautiful watercolor by Otto Boetticher, a Prussian-born Union soldier and military artist. Maurer's adaptation remains one of the least-known but best-realized Appomattox prints. It portrays the two great adversaries planning for peace as grandly as they had waged a war.

Other painters attempted depictions of the surrender itself, with decidedly mixed results. Alonzo Chappel's Surrender of General Lee was engraved for a book by Johnson & Fry of New York in 1865, but it misrepresents the McLean parlor as little more than a barracks. A much later Chappel painting became the model for The Surrender of General Lee, adapted for W.K. Steele of New York and featuring an accurate depiction of the room's furnishings. The print proved popular enough to inspire a copy, but such a poor one that A. Lauder's print of Peace seems more a parody than a piracy.

About the same time, a Mrs. M.F. Cocheu produced a design that pictures the opening and closing events of the war as Alpha (the attack on Fort Sumter) and Omega (Lee's surrender). But in her ludicrous vision of the surrender, Lee, wearing a plumed hat, stands beneath an apple tree next to a rail fence, in full view of a wooden cabin; Grant appears to be smoking a cigar.

It is no wonder that some printmakers eschewed interpretive choices altogether. W. Webber's Appomattox print for J.H. Bufford, for example, celebrated the village of Appomattox Court House, not the event, while another printmaker made the centerpiece of his design a map of the area, adding no portraiture at all.

Of course, there were printmakers who succeeded in dealing seriously and inventively with the surrender and its immediate impact on Southern troops. Both Burk & McFettridge of Philadelphia and Charles H. Walker of Washington, D.C., issued prints immortalizing the simple farewell address Lee gave to his troops the day after his meeting with Grant in the McLean House. The Burk & McFettridge print, issued in 1883, features a wreathed portrait of Lee, flanked by a symbolic handshake sealing the reunification. Walker's more ambitious lithograph, issued 10 years later, included portraits of Lee in uniform astride his famous horse, Traveller, and in civilian clothes, along with a beautifully realized central scene of Lee surrounded by his loyal troops, as he returns tearfully to camp after the surrender.

Perhaps no print attempted more ambitiously to portray the surrender in its proper location, and with as many of its central characters as possible, than Major & Knapp's 1867 lithograph of The Room in the McLean House, at Appomattox C.H., in which GEN. LEE Surrendered to GEN. GRANT. Commissioned as a fundraising device by Wilmer McLean, the print contains portraits of the personalities meticulously copied from period photographs. The portrayal of Lee and two aides is modeled after a photograph for which the general had reluctantly posed on the back porch of his Richmond house a week after the surrender.

The Major & Knapp original slightly exaggerates the size of McLean's parlor, probably to accommodate figures of generals such as George Armstrong Custer, Philip Sheridan and George Gordon Meade. Its most glaring error is its identification of the man writing out the surrender terms as General Wesley Merritt instead of Colonel Ely Parker. Overall, though, save for the symbolic inclusion of so many military personalities, the print is perhaps the finest of all interpretations of the solemn moments during which Lee and Grant waited while the instruments of surrender were finalized.

Having McLean directly involved (he copyrighted the lithograph) undoubtedly contributed to the print's truthfulness. But the unfortunate man who had fled Manassas to avoid the dangers of war ironically found himself ruined by peace. Union officers had all but plundered his parlor after Grant and Lee left. Tables and chairs were carried off and pictures removed from the walls, with small sums of money thrown at their owner by the souvenir hunters.

McLean hoped to regain some of his losses through sales of the Major & Knapp print. But despite the picture's high quality, it apparently failed to earn McLean the fortune he had anticipated. Within a few years he abandoned his Appomattox home, and by the end of the century it had crumbled into ruins. It would not be reconstructed until after World War II.

The surrender did Wilmer McLean little good, but it did wonders for Robert E. Lee. Nothing Lee did in the field would inspire as many prints as his surrender. Remarkably, the same was true of Ulysses S. Grant. But it was Lee who may have gained the most from the prints' proliferation after the war. Appomattox prints helped elevate his image and make it palatable to both the South and the North. The mere fact that he had given up the rebellion at Appomattox helped to cleanse Lee in the North, where all print production would originate, encouraging his depiction with all the dignity eyewitnesses ascribed to him.

Thus, even though Appomattox prints were really Grant prints intended for jubilant Northerners, Lee's inclusion in the scenes put him on equal footing with the victor, perhaps because there could be little glory for Grant unless it could be shown that he had defeated a worthy foe. But this is not to underestimate the Appomattox prints' impact on Grant, for he was their true hero, Lee only their implied one. And Appomattox prints may well have helped Grant win election to the presidency in 1868. They did, however, help Lee become an American again, and in time an American hero.

Intentionally or not, these popular graphics for the family parlor also helped elevate Lee to a status shared by no other figure of the Confederacy: a living symbol of reconciliation. By depicting him unbowed before Grant, printmakers demonstrated that reunion could be accomplished without subjugation. Appomattox prints showed Lee in surrender but not in humiliation, and thus made Lee an icon of peace, not defeat.

As one of his field commanders would ask in a Lee eulogy delivered five years later, What man could have laid down his sword at the feet of a victorious general with greater dignity than he did at Appomattox? Even Northern historian Charles Francis Adams Jr. would term the surrender the most creditable episode in American history - an episode without blemish - imposing, dignified, simple, heroic. So it would always seem in Appomattox prints, even the most fanciful among them.

Appomattox prints took a potentially humiliating event in Robert E. Lee's life and transformed it into something of a triumph. Perhaps Grant himself sensed this, for the man the prints were supposed to celebrate disapproved of the entire genre. When a committee of Congress approached him soon after the war to propose a painting of the surrender for the Capitol Rotunda, Grant refused. He said he would never play a role in producing a picture commemorating a victory in which his own countrymen had been vanquished.

In a way, Appomattox scenes pleased neither the conquered nor the conquering heroes. But they certainly pleased the people.

This article was written by Harold Holzer, Gabor S.Boritt and Mark E. Neely Jr. and originally published in the Janurary 2006 issue of Civil War Times Magazine.

For more great articles, be sure to subscribe to Civil War Times magazine today!

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Information about The Battle & Surrender At Appomattox Courthouse, one of the last Civil War Battles of the American Civil War Appomattox Courthouse Battle Facts Location: Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia Dates: April 9, 1865 Generals: Union: Ulysses S. Grant | Confederate: Robert E. Lee Soldiers Engaged: Union Army: 120,000 | Confederate Army: 30,000 Outcome: Union Victory [...]

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dFt. Sumter http://www.historynet.com/appomattox-court-house-battle

Emancipation Proclamation
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation

Battle of Gettysgurg https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/UhdAjb8j3ANAiCMqcCiJFmnyj58=/768x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Fort-Sumer-1861bombardment-4500-56a488685f9b58b7d0d76f31.jpg

Appomattox Courthouse https://www.pbs.org/video/the-civil-war-the-civil-war-gettysburg/

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Ten Percent Plan http://images.slideplayer.com/37/10736531/slides/slide_2.jpg

Wade Davis Bill
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=37

13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpiH2b923pc

Plessy v Ferguson http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/jim-crow/

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The Reconstruction Amendments: The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

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The Gold Rush https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/aiX7OlzpyYimehNS7YpdwQkEBNo=/768x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/California-gold-rush-camp-3000-3x2gty-5685a7595f9b586a9e1ec527.jpg

Homestead and Morrill Acts https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/homestead-act

The Long Walk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUKCA966BFc

The Massacre at Wounded Knee http://www.ushistory.org/us/40e.asp

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During Reconstruction, the federal government expanded the vote to blacks in the South, and provided some equal protection to black citizens. As Reconstruction failed, however, white supremacists began to use violence and intimidation to oppress blacks. When whites re-gained control of Southern states' governments, they began to enact laws that oppressed blacks through segregation and disenfranchisement.

Though the 1875 Civil Rights Act had stated that all races were entitled to equal treatment in public accommodations, an 1883 Supreme Court decision clarified that the law did not apply to private persons or corporations. Confusion about the legality of segregation continued until it was challenged by Homer Plessy.

In 1892, in a planned act of civil disobedience, Plessy boarded a train in New Orleans and sat in the car reserved for whites only. Plessy, a man who was one-eighth black, but classified as black by Louisiana law, refused to leave in order to trigger a case about the legality of segregation. In 1896, after years of trials appeals, the Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" was fair, and was not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment requiring equal protection to all. This ruling signaled the federal government's and North's unwillingness to challenge segregation or the oppression of blacks in the South.

After the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, segregation became even more ensconced through a battery of Southern laws and social customs known as "Jim Crow." Schools, theaters, restaurants, and transportation cars were segregated. Poll taxes, literacy requirements, and grandfather clauses not only prevented blacks from voting, but also made them ineligible to serve on jury pools or run for office. "Separate but equal" and Jim Crow remained unchallenged until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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Jim Crow & Plessy v. Ferguson | Themes | Slavery by Another Name | PBS

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During Reconstruction, the federal government expanded the vote to blacks in the South, and provided some equal protection to black citizens. As Reconstruction failed, however, white supremacists began to use violence and intimidation to oppress blacks. When whites re-gained control of Southern states' governments, they began to enact laws that oppressed blacks through segregation and disenfranchisement.

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The Wounded Knee Massacre [ushistory.org]

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The Gilded Age was marked by increased mechanization in manufacturing. Businesses searched for cheaper and more efficient ways to create products. Corporate officials used various techniques, such as timing their workers with stopwatches and using stop-motion photography, to study the production process and improve efficiency. Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that the use of more advanced machinery could improve efficiency in steel production by requiring workers to make fewer motions in less time. His redesign increased the speed of factory machines and the productivity of factories while undercutting the need for skilled labor. Factories became an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. Machine shops, comprised of highly skilled workers and engineers, grew rapidly. The number of unskilled and skilled workers increased as their wage rates grew. Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise.

Railroad Companies and Management

Railroads gave rise to the development of modern management techniques, such as the use of clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems. Railroad companies systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men at age 18-21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor, or station agent at age 40 or so. Career tracks were offered to skilled blue-collar workers and white-collar managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing, and trade. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing, especially in northern cities. Extensive national networks for transportation and communication were created. The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the 1900s, the United States had the highest per capita income and industrial production in the world, with per capita incomes double those of Germany and France, and 50 percent higher than those of Britain.

Bell's telephone transmitter (microphone) consisted of a double electromagnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on a ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its middle. A funnel-shaped mouthpiece directed the voice sounds upon the membrane, and as it vibrated, the soft iron "armature" induced corresponding currents in the coils of the electromagnet. After traversing the wire, these currents passed through the receiver, which consisted of an electromagnet in a tubular metal can that had one end partially closed by a thin circular disc of soft iron. When the undulatory current passed through the coil of this electromagnet, the disc vibrated, thereby creating sound waves in the air.

The first long-distance telephone call was made on August 10, 1876, by Bell from the family homestead in Brantford, Ontario, to his assistant located in Paris, Ontario, some 10 miles away. In June 1876, Bell exhibited a telephone prototype at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

The telephone was instrumental to modernization and labor. It aided in the development of suburbs and the separation of homes and businesses, but also became the reason for the separation between women occupying the private sphere and men in the public sphere. This would continue to isolate women and the home.

Women were regarded as the most frequent users of the telephone. As a means of liberation, it enabled women to work in the telecommunications sector as receptionists and operators. The autonomy was celebrated as women were able to develop new relationships and nurture preexisting ones in their private lives. Social relations are essential to the access and usage of telephone networks.

The Lightbulb

Thomas Edison's major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and was the first institution set up for the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation. Most of the inventions produced there were legally attributed to Edison, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction.

Edison did not invent the first electric lightbulb, but rather the first commercially practical incandescent light. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others such as Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer, William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan, and Heinrich Göbel had developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps. These early bulbs had an extremely short life, were expensive to produce, or drew a high electric current, making them difficult to produce on a large commercial scale.

By 1879, Edison had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, dating back to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application. He was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting lightbulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

Electric lighting in factories greatly improved working conditions, eliminating the heat and pollution caused by gas lighting, and reducing the fire hazard to the extent that the cost of electricity for lighting often was offset by the reduction in fire insurance premiums. Electric light was much brighter than that of oil or gas lamps, and there was no soot. Although early electricity was very expensive compared to today, it was far cheaper and more convenient than oil or gas lighting.

Electricity

In 1831 and 1832, Michael Faraday discovered the operating principle of electromagnetic generators. The principle, later called "Faraday's Law," is that an electromotive force is generated in an electrical conductor that is subjected to a varying magnetic flux, as for example, in a wire moving through a magnetic field.

The improvements in electrical-generation technology increased the efficiency and reliability greatly in the nineteenth century. The first magnetos only converted a few percent of mechanical energy to electricity. By the end of the nineteenth century, the highest efficiencies were more than 90 percent.

In the early days of commercial electric power, transmission of electric power at the same voltage as used by lighting and mechanical loads restricted the distance between generating plant and consumers. In 1882, generation was with direct current (DC), which could not easily be increased in voltage for long-distance transmission. Different classes of loads (for example, lighting, fixed motors, and traction/railway systems) required different voltages, and so used different generators and circuits.

Due to this specialization of lines and because transmission was inefficient for low-voltage high-current circuits, generators needed to be near their loads. It seemed, at the time, that the industry would develop into what is now known as a "distributed generation system," with large numbers of small generators located near their loads.

The transmission of electric power with alternate current (AC) became possible in 1881 after Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs built what they called the "secondary generator," an early transformer provided with 1:1 turn ratio and open magnetic circuit.

The "War of Currents"

Edison's true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits by establishing mass-production systems and obtaining intellectual-property rights. George Westinghouse became an adversary of Edison when he promoted the direct current (DC) for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system invented by Nikola Tesla and promoted by Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and cheaper wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users.

The problem with DC was that power plants could only deliver DC electricity economically to customers within about one and a half miles (about 2.4 km) from the generating station, so that it only was suitable for central business districts. When George Westinghouse suggested using high-voltage AC instead, as it could carry electricity hundreds of miles with only marginal loss of power, Edison waged a "War of Currents" to prevent the adoption of the AC system.

The war against AC involved Edison in the development and promotion of the electric chair (using AC) as an attempt to portray AC as having greater lethal potential than DC. Edison continued to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison's employees publicly electrocuted animals to demonstrate the dangers of AC. On one of the more notable occasions, Edison's workers electrocuted Topsy the elephant at Luna Park, near Coney Island, after she had killed several men and her owners wanted her put to death.

AC eventually replaced DC in most instances of generation and power distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Though widespread use of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists today primarily in long-distance high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems.

Lochner's appeal was based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides the following: "... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In a series of cases starting with Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court established that the Due Process Clause (found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments) is not merely a procedural guarantee, but also a substantive limitation on the type of control the government may exercise over individuals. Although this interpretation of the Due Process Clause is a controversial one, it had become firmly embedded in American jurisprudence by the end of the nineteenth century. Lochner argued that the right to freely contract was one of the rights encompassed by substantive due process.

By a five to four vote, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the law was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding it was a labor law attempting to regulate the terms of employment, and calling it an, "unreasonable, unnecessary, and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract." Seven years earlier, the Supreme Court had accepted the argument that the Due Process Clause protected the right to contract in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897). Justice Rufus Peckham wrote for the majority, while Justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., filed dissents.

Justice Harlan's dissent argued that the Court gave insufficient weight to the state's argument that the law was a valid health measure addressing a legitimate state interest. Justice Holmes's famous dissent criticized the decision for discarding sound constitutional interpretation in favor of personal beliefs. Although it was only three paragraphs long, Holmes's dissent is well remembered and often quoted. In it, Holmes accused the majority of judicial activism, claiming that the case was, "decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain." He also attacked the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the unbridled liberty of contract, writing that, "[t]he Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer 's Social Statics. " This was a reference to a book in which Spencer advocated a strict laissez-faire economic philosophy.

The term "laissez-faire" refers to an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from government interference such as regulations, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies. The term is part of a larger French phrase and literally translates to "let (it/them) do," but in this context, usually means to "let go." Laissez-faire, a product of the Enlightenment, was, "conceived as the way to unleash human potential through the restoration of a natural system, a system unhindered by the restrictions of government." In a similar vein, Adam Smith viewed the economy as a natural system and the market as an organic part of that system. Smith saw laissez-faire as a moral program, and the market its instrument to ensure men the rights of natural law. By extension, free markets become a reflection of the natural system of liberty.

Lochner v. New York was one of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Court's history, giving its name to what is known as the "Lochner Era." During the Lochner Era, the Supreme Court issued several controversial decisions invalidating progressive federal and state statutes that sought to regulate working conditions during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Thus, this era could be characterized as laissez-faire. The Lochner era often is considered to have ended with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), in which the Supreme Court took a much broader view of the government's power to regulate economic activities.

Robber Barons and the Captains of Industry

The term "robber baron" was applied to powerful nineteenth-century industrialists who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth. On the other hand, "captains of industry" were business leaders whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributed positively to the country in some way.

Robber Barons

"Robber baron" is a derogatory term used for some powerful nineteenth-century American businessmen. By the 1890s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth. These "questionable practices" usually included a perception that they offered their products at extremely low prices as to pay their workers very poorly and buying out the competitors that couldn't keep up. Once there was no competition, the businessmen would hike prices far above the original level. It combines the notions of criminality ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy ("baron").

The term derives from the medieval German lords who legally charged tolls on ships traversing the Rhine without adding anything of value. U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson popularized the term during the Great Depression in a 1934 book by the same title. He attributed the phrase to an 1880 antimonopoly pamphlet about railroad magnates. Josephson alleged that like the German antecedents, American big businessmen amassed huge fortunes immorally, unethically, and unjustly. The theme was popular during the Great Depression, a time of public scorn for the abuses of big business.

Captains of Industry

Robber barons were contrasted with "captains of industry," a term originally used in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution describing a business leader whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributes positively to the country in some way. This might have been through increased productivity, expansion of markets, providing more jobs, or acts of philanthropy. Some nineteenth-century industrialists who were called "captains of industry" overlap with those called "robber barons," however. These include people such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller. The positive term was coined by Thomas Carlyle in his 1843 book, Past and Present.

John Davison Rockefeller was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded the Standard Oil Company and aggressively ran it until he officially retired in 1897. As kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, Rockefeller's wealth soared, and he became the world's richest man and first American worth more than a billion dollars. Adjusting for inflation, he is often regarded as the richest person in American history.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the most important philanthropists of his era. With the fortune he made from the steel industry, he built Carnegie Hall; later he turned to philanthropy and interests in education, founding the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Carnegie gave most of his money to establish many libraries, schools, and universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries, as well as to establish a pension fund for former employees. He often is regarded as the second-richest man in history after John D. Rockefeller.

John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker, and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892, Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric. After financing the creation of the Federal Steel Company, he merged in 1901 with the Carnegie Steel Company and several other steel and iron businesses, including Consolidated Steel and Wire Company, to form the United States Steel Corporation. At the height of Morgan's career during the early 1900s, he and his partners had financial investments in many large corporations and were accused by critics of controlling the nation's high finance. He directed the banking coalition that stopped the Panic of 1907. He was the leading financier of the Progressive Era, and his dedication to efficiency and modernization helped transform American business.

Trusts and Antitrust Laws

During the late nineteenth century, hundreds of small short-line railroads were being bought up and consolidated into giant systems. Separate laws and policies emerged regarding railroads and financial concerns such as banks and insurance companies. The railroads soon discovered that their pools lacked enforcement power. Those who nominally agreed to be bound by the pooling arrangement could-and often did-cheat. So leaders within the railroad business and beyond began looking for ways to control and manage their increasingly large industry holdings.

The corporate form of business enterprise allowed for potentially immense accumulations of capital to be under the control of a small number of managers; but in the 1870s and 1880s, the corporation was not yet established as the dominant legal form of operation. To overcome these disadvantages, clever lawyers for John D. Rockefeller organized his Standard Oil of Ohio as a common-law trust. Trustees were given corporate stock certificates of various companies; by combining numerous corporations into the trust, the trustees could effectively manage and control an entire industry. Within a decade, the Cotton Trust, Lead Trust, Sugar Trust, and Whiskey Trust-along with oil, telephone, steel, and tobacco trusts-had become, or were in the process of becoming, monopolies.

Consumers howled in protest. The political parties got the message: In 1888, both Republicans and Democrats put an antitrust plank in their platforms. In 1889, the new president, Republican Benjamin Harrison, condemned monopolies as "dangerous conspiracies" and called for legislation to address the tendency of monopolies to "crush out" competition.

The result was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, sponsored by Senator John Sherman, of Ohio. Its two key sections forbade combinations in restraint of trade and monopolizing. The purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Act is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect consumers from abuses. Senator Sherman and other sponsors declared that the act had roots in a common-law policy that frowned on monopolies. To an extent, it did, but it added something quite important for the future of business and the U.S. economy: the power of the federal government to enforce a national policy against monopoly and restraints of trade. Nevertheless, passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act did not end the public clamor; 15 years passed before a national administration began to enforce the act, when President Theodore Roosevelt, known as "the Trustbuster," sent his attorney general after the Northern Securities Corporation, a transportation holding company.

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The Gilded Age was marked by increased mechanization in manufacturing. Businesses searched for cheaper and more efficient ways to create products. Corporate officials used various techniques, such as timing their workers with stopwatches and using stop-motion photography, to study the production process and improve efficiency.

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Second Industrial Revolution https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-second-industrial-revolution/

Inventions: Light Bulb, Telephone, Automobile, and Airplane   https://slideplayer.com/slide/1485085/

The Rise of Big Business https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/RiseBigBusiness

The Rise of Labor Movement https://image.slidesharecdn.com/6-150311103156-conversion-gate01/95/hogans-history-rise-of-labor-unions-2-638.jpg?cb=1427357910

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Inventions: Light Bulb, Telephone, Automobile, and Airplane   

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Inventions: Light Bulb, Telephone, Automobile, and Airplane   

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Chapter 4, Lesson 1 Inventors Change the World - ppt video online download

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Industry and Immigration Topic Industry and Immigration

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The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity. Big business firms broke themselves into different functions, or "departments," and used managers to coordinate the work of departments, and "middle managers" to coordinate work among departments.

Railroads were the first "big businesses" in the United States. After railroad companies began to operate on tracks that stretched for fifty and more miles, their owners soon realized that they had to divide responsibilities among different managers, with coordination of the various functions of the company--from soliciting business, to operating trains, to maintaining facilities, to financing everything. By the 1850s railroad executives were perfecting systems of managerial control over their ever more complex firms.

After the railroads pioneered the formation of "big business," big businesses appeared in manufacturing and distribution.

Big city department stores were a form of "big business." They combined many different retail operations in one organization, and placed them together in one building. By 1912 department stores were principal features of the downtown districts of every city.

Still other big businesses, mail order firms such as Sears, Roebuck, were by 1912 serving rural areas and small towns.

Thus when Americans shopped in 1912, they were likely to encounter a "big business." In their stores, moreover, they were likely to find products manufactured by "big businesses."

The "big business" form of organization spread rapidly in manufacturing industries after about 1870.

In some lines of manufacturing, there were advantages to have a single organization control raw materials, transportation, fabrication, and distribution. When he sold his steel company in 1901, for example, Andrew Carnegie was the most efficient--and the wealthiest--steel maker in the world. Carnegie steel had control over sources of coal, coke, and iron ore. Carnegie steel exercised control over ships and railroads that brought raw materials to its mills in the Pittsburgh district. Carnegie insisted on his mill remaining the most advanced of their day. Not only did Carnegie Steel manufacture steel, the company also produced finished products like railroad rails and bridge girders. All of these operations were in a single managerial organization. Managers controlled the flow of materials. Carnegie Steel was so efficient that it could undercut all of its competitors and still make large profits.

Meatpacking was another industry that witnessed the rise and perfection of "big business" forms. After 1870, several Chicago meatpackers built huge, complex organizations for purchasing animals, butchering them, and distributing meat to markets all across the nation. Their companies used all of the byproducts of the animals they slaughtered. Skins went into leather goods, hoofs into glue, bones into fertilizer, and fat into soap. One wag commented that the only part of the hog the Chicago packers did not use and sell was the squeal!

By the end of the nineteenth century, Standard Oil, led by John D. Rockefeller, dominated the refining and distribution of petroleum products in the United States, and extended its reach well beyond the nation's borders.

When an entrepreneur like Carnegie was successful in building an efficient organization to control manufacturing processes, he drove competitors out of business. A steel maker either had to compete by mimicking Carnegie's managerial techniques, or go into a niche, or specialized, market that the big steel companies did not enter. In the case of meatpacking, by 1900 thousands of local butchers found themselves squeezed, because they were less efficient than the Chicago packers. Small shopkeepers sometimes faced ruin from large department store competitors. These businesses following older, more traditional practices sometimes fueled popular sentiment to "bust" the trusts.

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The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity.

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American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War)
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/american-imperialism/

Immigration and Growth of Cities  https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=titegSf7jgY

Political Corruption and Progressive Government Reform
http://picturethis.museumca.org/timeline/progressive-era-1890-1920s/progressive-political-reform/info

Woman's Rights https://images.theconversation.com/files/209024/original/file-20180306-146671-haxeo6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip

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American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War)

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American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War)

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Whatever its origins, American imperialism experienced its pinnacle from the late 1800s through the years following World War II. During this "Age of Imperialism," the United States exerted political, social, and economic control over countries such as the Philippines, Cuba, Germany, Austria, Korea, and Japan.

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Political Corruption and Progressive Government Reform

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Political Corruption and Progressive Government Reform

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The American voting public of the early 1900s was accustomed to the tenet that the best government was the least government. Progressive era politics changed that belief when government corruption became commonplace. Reformers like Teddy Roosevelt in Washington and Governor Hiram Johnson in California responded to an epidemic of political and civic corruption by expanding the role of government in regulating the economy and in giving citizens, for the first time, direct access to the legislative process.

Between 1910 and 1914, under Governor Hiram Johnson's political leadership the California legislature expanded state government first by breaking the economic and political power of the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP). The reform legislature passed the Stetson-Eshelman Act, which increased the state Railroad Commission's authority and power to fix passenger and freight rates; thus ending Southern Pacific Railroad's (SP) crushing monopolistic practices. With the Public Utilities Act and the creation of the Public Utility Commission (PUC), the agency's commissioners had the authority over the railroads as well as all public utilities.

The legislators also halted the political power of SP with the passage of reform mechanisms giving voters direct access to government and the legislative process. The initiative allowed voters to pass legislation; the referendum allowed the public's veto of existing legislation; and the recall permitted the removal of elected officials. The direct primary, the popular election of U.S. senators, and cross-filing for Republican and Democratic candidates changed the control over who got elected from party bosses to the voters. In passing these measures, Governor Johnson and the legislature had achieved the political goal of engaging ordinary citizens in participatory democracy. The systemic power of SP was over, but the government's role in shaping its citizens' quality of life was still growing.

In order to address workers' fears of losing their livelihood through sickness or job-related accidents, the legislature passed the Workmen's Compensation, Insurance, and Safety Act in 1913, which in turn set up an Industrial Accident Commission and State Compensation Insurance Fund. This was ground-breaking work by government, which had only recently been in the business of protecting only business interests. Setting additional precedents, the legislature curtailed child labor, and also set an 8-hour day and minimum wage for female industrial workers.

In the field of education, Hiram Johnson's reform government called for teacher pensions, free textbooks for public school children, the creation of a comprehensive curriculum, and mandatory kindergartens. The kindergarten movement, begun in Germany in the 1830s, found a ready American enthusiasm by women reformers who believed that kindergarten was as important an educational experience as college. By 1878, the first free public kindergarten was established in San Francisco. Enthusiastic financial support led to still more kindergartens, so that by 1894, 235 more of them were set up nationally and globally, based on the California model. Public university education also received the attention of reform initially through the generosity of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of publisher William Randolph Hearst. In the 1890s her financial support of the University of California, Berkeley made possible the construction of the outdoor Greek Theater, a women's gymnasium, a university museum and the Department of Anthropology. The University of California continued its academic growth through the appointment of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who, over a 19-year period, established twenty new departments.

Neither progressive politicians nor unions helped minority laborers in the nation and in California. Blacks were excluded from union membership. Chinese were excluded from immigrating to the U. S. In 1907 Japan agreed through a Gentlemen's Agreement reached with President Roosevelt not to issue passports to Japanese workers, thus also eliminating Japanese from the American work force. Japanese in California, through the passage of the Alien Land Law, were prohibited from owning land in the state. Women, however, fared better. In addition to legislation improved their working conditions, they also received the right to vote. While Governor Johnson did not openly endorse the Amendment that would grant suffrage, he did help get it on the ballot. It passed by 3,587 votes.

Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson all promoted political, economic, social, and moral reforms on the national front. Passage of several acts expanded the Interstate Commerce Commission. Taft created the Department of Labor. Two economic regulatory agencies were created: the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission. Four constitutional amendments were also ratified: the 16th introduced a federal income tax, the 17th allowed for the direct election of U.S. Senators. The 18th established prohibition, and the 19th allowed women the right to vote. Such economic and political reforms under the aegis of an expanded government were necessary, the progressives argued, to restore the values of the American dream for all Americans.

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Progressive Era: 1890-1920s: Progressive Political Reform

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The American voting public of the early 1900s was accustomed to the tenet that the best government was the least government. Progressive era politics changed that belief when government corruption became commonplace.

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The Assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand 

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The Assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand 

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World War I was less than one year old when British writer H. G. Wells lamented the fate of humanity at the hands of "man's increasing power of destruction" (H. G. Wells, "Civilization at the Breaking Point," New York Times, May 27, 1915, 2). Although considered a father of science fiction, Wells was observing something all too real-technology had changed the face of combat in World War I and ultimately accounted for an unprecedented loss of human life.

[Detail] "Huge siege guns of the Central Powers used in the smashing of forts." War of the Nations, 110.

Infantry warfare had depended upon hand-to-hand combat. World War I popularized the use of the machine gun-capable of bringing down row after row of soldiers from a distance on the battlefield. This weapon, along with barbed wire and mines, made movement across open land both difficult and dangerous. Thus trench warfare was born. The British introduced tanks in 1916; they were used with airplanes and artillery to advance the front. The advent of chemical warfare added to the soldier's perils.

"French, British, and German Types of Battle Tanks." War of the Nations, 167.

Sea and airborne weapons made killing from a distance more effective as well. Guns mounted on ships were able to strike targets up to twenty miles inland. The stealth and speed of German submarines gave Germany a considerable advantage in its dominance of the North Sea. Although airplanes were technologically crude, they offered a psychological advantage. Fighter pilot aces such as Manfred von Richthofen, Germany's "Red Baron," became celebrities and heroes, capturing the world's imagination with their daring and thrilling mid-air maneuvers.

[Detail] "The Insidious and Deadly Gas That Creeps Noiselessly Down Toward the Foe." War of the Nations, 210.

Newspapers charted the public's reaction-horror and vengeance-to these technological advancements. A few weeks after the Germans first used poison gas in Ypres, Belgium, on April 22, 1915, a London newswire to the New York Times described the brutal details of the attack and the immediate effects on the soldiers, concluding: "It is without doubt the most awful form of scientific torture." Yet a Daily Chronicle [London] editorial urged Britain to retaliate with poison gas use of its own (quoted in New York Times, May 7, 1915, 2). In fact, Germany claimed that the Allies were already using mines charged with poison gas. So horrified were people by chemical warfare that the use of poison gases was banned for future wars, although not until 1925.

When Germany's plan for a swift military victory went unrealized, the pace of war bogged down. Both sides tried to break this stalemate through the use of force. In previous wars, victory was achieved through territorial supremacy; in World War I it was accomplished by simply outlasting the opponent-a "war of attrition." When fighting first broke out in August 1914, many hoped the war would be short-lived; few predicted a conflict that would last for more than four years and scar an entire generation with its unprecedented brutality.

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Military Technology in World War I | Articles & Essays | Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures, 1914-1919 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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World War I was less than one year old when British writer H. G. Wells lamented the fate of humanity at the hands of "man's increasing power of destruction" (H. G. Wells, "Civilization at the Breaking Point," New York Times, May 27, 1915, 2).

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https://d3idks24kkd2lv.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Featured-Image-Attack-II-1.jpg

https://www.loc.gov/collections/world-war-i-rotogravures/articles-and-essays/military-technology-in-world-war-i/

https://study.com/academy/lesson/american-involvement-in-world-war-i-how-the-war-changed-after-americas-entry.html

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/post-world-war-i-peace-conference-begins-in-paris

https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/beyond-the-textbook/24073

https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2017/12/05/today-in-history-alcohol-prohibition-repealed/

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How Was Peace Established at the End of WWI

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How Was Peace Established at the End of WWI

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On January 18, 1919, in Paris, France, some of the most powerful people in the world meet to begin the long, complicated negotiations that would officially mark the end of the First World War.

Leaders of the victorious Allied powers-France, Great Britain, the United States and Italy-would make most of the crucial decisions in Paris over the next six months. For most of the conference, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson struggled to support his idea of a "peace without victory" and make sure that Germany, the leader of the Central Powers and the major loser of the war, was not treated too harshly. On the other hand, Prime Ministers Georges Clemenceau of France and David Lloyd George of Britain argued that punishing Germany adequately and ensuring its weakness was the only way to justify the immense costs of the war. In the end, Wilson compromised on the treatment of Germany in order to push through the creation of his pet project, an international peacekeeping organization called the League of Nations.
WATCH: Did WWI Lead to WWII?
Representatives from Germany were excluded from the peace conference until May, when they arrived in Paris and were presented with a draft of the Versailles Treaty. Having put great faith in Wilson's promises, the Germans were deeply frustrated and disillusioned by the treaty, which required them to forfeit a great deal of territory and pay reparations. Even worse, the infamous Article 231 forced Germany to accept sole blame for the war. This was a bitter pill many Germans could not swallow.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, five years to the day after a Serbian nationalist's bullet ended the life of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and sparked the beginning of World War I. In the decades to come, anger and resentment of the treaty and its authors festered in Germany. Extremists like Adolf Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Party capitalized on these emotions to gain power, a process that led almost directly to the exact thing Wilson and the other negotiators in Paris in 1919 had wanted to prevent-a second, equally devastating global war.
SEE MORE: World War I-in Color

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Post-World War I peace conference begins in Paris

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On January 18, 1919, in Paris, France, some of the most powerful people in the world meet to begin the long, complicated negotiations that would officially mark the end of the First World War. Leaders of the victorious Allied powers-France, Great Britain, the United States and Italy-would make most of the crucial decisions in Paris over the next six months.

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Some textbooks address the implications of these changes. As a powerful symbol of modernity, the automobile represented individual freedom, mobility, and independence. The car also linked the profound economic changes (especially the rise of big business) to the pursuit of personal happiness through consumption.

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Today in History: Alcohol Prohibition Repealed | | Tenth Amendment Center

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On December 5, 1933, the 18th amendment was repealed by the 21st amendment, ending alcohol prohibition. What most people don't know is that state and local nullification created the atmosphere where this repeal was inevitable. After the 18th amendment, nearly every state passed laws to enforce prohibition under the Volstead Act., because it was widely accepted that they had an obligation to do so.

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Black Tuesday/Stock Market Crash of 1929

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Black Tuesday/Stock Market Crash of 1929

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Black Tuesday was the fourth and last day of the stock market crash of 1929. It took place on October 29, 1929.﻿ Investors traded a record 16.4 million shares. They lost $14 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, worth $206 billion in 2019 dollars.﻿ ﻿﻿

On Black Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 12% closing at 230.﻿﻿

After the crash, the Dow continued sliding for three more years. It finally bottomed on July 8, 1932, closing at 41.22.﻿﻿ All told, it lost almost 90% of its value since its high on September 3, 1929. In fact, it didn't reach that high again for 25 years until November 23, 1954. Losses from the stock market crash helped create the Great Depression.

What Happened

Panicked sellers were shouting, "Sell! Sell!" so loudly that no one heard the bell ring. In a half hour, they sold three million shares and lost $2 million.

As the day wore on, the Dow fell to 212.33. The ticker tape that announced stock prices was hours behind. That meant investors didn't know how much they were losing. They frantically called their brokers. When they couldn't get through, they sent telegrams. Western Union said its volume of telegrams tripled that day.

Back then, traders physically wrote orders on pieces of paper. There were so many trades that the orders backed up. Traders just stuffed them into trash cans. Fistfights broke out, and one trader collapsed. Once revived, he was put back to work. Members of the NYSE board were afraid to close the market because it might make the panic even worse.

The prominent banks of the day tried to stop the crash. Morgan Bank, Chase National Bank, and National City Bank of New York bought shares of stocks. They wanted to restore confidence in the stock market. Instead, the intervention signaled the exact opposite. Investors saw it as a sign that the banks had panicked.

Part of the panic that caused Black Tuesday resulted from how investors played the stock market in the 1920s. They didn't have instant access to information via the internet. Stock prices were printed by a ticker tape machine onto a strip of paper. As share prices dropped the ticker tapes literally could not keep up with the pace. Panic ensued because no one knew how bad it was.

There was pandemonium on the floor of the stock exchange. Buyers roared and screamed. Some collapsed onto the ground when they got bad news about a stock price. Crowds formed outside of the NYSE. The police were called to keep order.

The other reason for the panic was the new method for buying stocks, called buying on margin. Investors could place huge stock orders with only 10% to 20% down. They used the money they borrowed from their brokers. When stock prices fell, the brokers called in the loans. Many people found paying off the loans wiped out their entire life savings.

How It Helped Cause the Great Depression

Black Tuesday's losses destroyed confidence in the economy. That loss of confidence led to the Great Depression. In those days, people believed the stock market was the economy. What was good for Wall Street was thought to be good for Main Street.

The stock market crash created bank runs. People withdrew all their savings at once. Many banks didn't have enough cash on hand and were forced to close. There was no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure savings.

Investors abandoned the stock market and started putting their money in commodities. As a result, gold prices soared. At that time, the United States was on the gold standard and promised to honor each dollar with its value in gold. As people began turning in dollars for gold, the U.S. government began to worry that it would run out of gold.

The Federal Reserve tried to come to the rescue by increasing the value of the dollar. It did this by raising interest rates, which reduced liquidity to businesses. However, without funds to grow, companies started laying off employees. That created a vicious downward economic spiral that became the Great Depression.

Statistics

In Depth: Effects of the Great Depression | Timeline of the Great Depression

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What day was Black Tuesday?

Black Tuesday occurred on October 29, 1929. Some 16 million shares were traded that day as the stock market lost billions of dollars in value.

What's the difference between Black Thursday and Black Tuesday?

Black Thursday occurred on the Thursday before Black Tuesday. It marked the start of the stock market crash that ended with Black Tuesday.

The Balance uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

1. Iowa.gov. " Crowds Outside of the New York Stock Exchange, 1929."

2. DaveManuel.com. " Inflation Calculator 2019."

3. Virginia Commonwealth University. " Stock Market Crash of October 1929."

4. Federal Reserve History. " Stock Market Crash of 1929."

5. Michele Cagan. " Stock Market 101: From Bull and Bear Markets to Dividends, Shares and Margin - Your Essential Guide to the Stock Market," Page 64. Adams Media, 2016.

6. Peter Eisenstadt, Laura-Eve Ross. " The Encyclopedia of New York State," Page 374. Syracuse University Press, 1995.

7. The University of Connecticut. " The Stock Market Crash - The Roaring 20s."

8. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. " Learning Bank - Deposit Insurance."

9. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. " The Gold Standard and Price Inflation."

10. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. " Here's Why the U.S. No Longer Follows a Gold Standard."

11. Federal Reserve Board. " Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke, Money, Gold, and the Great Depression."

12. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. " Historical Timeline."

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Black Tuesday was the fourth and last day of the stock market crash of 1929. It took place on October 29, 1929.﻿ Investors traded a record 16.4 million shares. They lost $14 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, worth $206 billion in 2019 dollars.﻿ ﻿﻿ On Black Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 12% closing at 230.﻿﻿ After the crash, the Dow continued sliding for three more years.

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https://www.thebalance.com/black-tuesday-definition-cause-kickoff-to-depression-3305819

http://www.ushistory.org/us/48.asp

https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/new-deal

http://kenburns.com/films/dust-bowl/

https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/world-war-2.cfm

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Dorothea Lange was employed by the Farm Security Administration to document the Depression through the camera lens. Her bleak photos captured the desperation of the era, as evidenced through this portrait of an 18-year-old migrant worker and her child.

"Once I built a railroad, I made it run.
I made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?"

At the end of the 1920s, the United States boasted the largest economy in the world. With the destruction wrought by World War I, Europeans struggled while Americans flourished. Upon succeeding to the Presidency, Herbert Hoover predicted that the United States would soon see the day when poverty was eliminated. Then, in a moment of apparent triumph, everything fell apart. The stock market crash of 1929 touched off a chain of events that plunged the United States into its longest, deepest economic crisis of its history.

Nine thousand banks failed during the months following the stock market crash of 1929.

It is far too simplistic to view the stock market crash as the single cause of the Great Depression. A healthy economy can recover from such a contraction. Long-term underlying causes sent the nation into a downward spiral of despair. First, American firms earned record profits during the 1920s and reinvested much of these funds into expansion. By 1929, companies had expanded to the bubble point. Workers could no longer continue to fuel further expansion, so a slowdown was inevitable. While corporate profits, skyrocketed, wages increased incrementally, which widened the distribution of wealth.

The richest one percent of Americans owned over a third of all American assets. Such wealth concentrated in the hands of a few limits economic growth. The wealthy tended to save money that might have been put back into the economy if it were spread among the middle and lower classes. Middle class Americans had already stretched their debt capacities by purchasing automobiles and household appliances on installment plans.

The unprecedented prosperity of the 1920s was suddenly gone, the Great Depression was upon the nation, and breadlines became a common sight.

There were fundamental structural weaknesses in the American economic system. Banks operated without guarantees to their customers, creating a climate of panic when times got tough. Few regulations were placed on banks and they lent money to those who speculated recklessly in stocks. Agricultural prices had already been low during the 1920s, leaving farmers unable to spark any sort of recovery. When the Depression spread across the Atlantic, Europeans bought fewer American products, worsening the slide.

When President Hoover was inaugurated, the American economy was a house of cards. Unable to provide the proper relief from hard times, his popularity decreased as more and more Americans lost their jobs. His minimalist approach to government intervention made little impact . The economy shrank with each successive year of his Presidency. As middle class Americans stood in the same soup lines previously graced only by the nation's poorest, the entire social fabric of America was forever altered.

"Brother, can you spare a dime?"

The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, a film by Ken Burns, chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the "Great Plow-Up," followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation.

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Jesse H. Jones
Next to the President, no man in the government and probably in the United States wields greater powers. - Saturday Evening Post November 1940 article on Jesse Jones, Chairman of FDR's Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

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Dorothea Lange was employed by the Farm Security Administration to document the Depression through the camera lens. Her bleak photos captured the desperation of the era, as evidenced through this portrait of an 18-year-old migrant worker and her child.

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New Deal - Programs, Social Security & FDR

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The New Deal was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans. A Second New Deal was put in place shortly thereafter as a way to continue the country’s economic recovery.

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"Let me tell ya how it was. I don't care who describes that to you, nobody can tell it any worse than what it was. And no one exaggerates that; there is no way for it to be exaggerated. It was that bad."
- Don Wells, Boise City, Oklahoma

It was the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history-in which the heedless actions of thousands of individual farmers, encouraged by their government and influenced by global markets, resulted in a collective tragedy that nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation.

It was a decade-long natural catastrophe of Biblical proportions-encompassing 100 million acres in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico-when the skies withheld their rains, when plagues of grasshoppers descended on parched fields, when bewildered families huddled in dark rooms while angry winds shook their homes and pillars of dust choked out the mid-day sun.

And it was an epic of human pain and suffering-a crucible of dust, drought and Depression, when normally self-reliant fathers found themselves unable to provide for their families; when even the most vigilant mothers were unable to stop the dirt that invaded their houses from killing their children by "dust pneumonia;" when thousands of desperate Americans were torn from their homes and forced on the road in an exodus unlike anything the United States has ever seen.

But the story of the Dust Bowl is also the story of heroic perseverance-of a resilient people who, against all odds, somehow managed to endure one unimaginable hardship after another to hold onto their lives, their land and the ones they loved.

And it is both a study of the roles and limits of government, as well as a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us-a lesson we ignore at our peril.

The Dust Bowl, a two-part, four-hour documentary from Ken Burns, chronicles this critical moment in American history in all its complexities and profound human drama. It is part oral history, using compelling interviews of 26 survivors of those hard times-what will probably be the last recorded testimony of the generation that lived through the Dust Bowl. Filled with seldom seen movie footage, previously unpublished photographs, the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the observations of two remarkable women who left behind eloquent written accounts, the film is also a historical accounting of what happened and why during the 1930s on the southern Plains.

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"Let me tell ya how it was. I don't care who describes that to you, nobody can tell it any worse than what it was. And no one exaggerates that; there is no way for it to be exaggerated. It was that bad." - Don Wells, Boise City, Oklahoma It was the worst man-made ...

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The roots of World War II, which eventually pitted Germany, Japan, and Italy (the Axis) against the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union (the Allies), lay in the militaristic ideologies and expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan.

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The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

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The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s