CHAPTER REVIEW
Rapid Review Guide
To achieve the perfect 5, you should be able to explain the following:
• The Homestead Act and the Morrill Land-Grant Act encouraged thousands to go westward to acquire land for farming.
• Farming on the Great Plains proved to be very difficult and was oftentimes accomplished by help from one’s neighbor; many farmers were not successful on the Great Plains.
• Bonanza farms were part of a transformation of agriculture that began in the late 1860s.
• Western states were the first states where women received the vote.
• Mining and lumbering also attracted many settlers to the West.
• Native American tribes were gradually forced off of their lands because of American expansion to the west; some resistance to this by
Native Americans diet take place, such as at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and through the Ghost Dances.
• The 1887 Dawes Act did much to break up the remaining Native American tribal lands.
• American farmers organized beginning in the late 1860s though the Grange, through the Farmer’s Alliances, and eventually through the Populist party.
• Dime-store novels of the era and the Turner Thesis present contrasting views of western settlement and its overall impact on American society.
Time Line
1848: California Gold Rush
1859: Silver Discovered in Comstock, Nevada
1862: Homestead Act, Morrill Land-Grand Act
Department of Agriculture created by Congress
1867: Founding of the Grange
1869: Transcontinental Railroad completed
1870s: Popularity of Deadwood Dick, stories by Bret Harte, and other dime-store novels on the West
1874: Barbed wire invented by Joseph Glidden
1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn
1879: Exoduster movement leaves South for the Great Plains
1880s: Large movement of immigrants westward
1883: “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” begins
1886: Beginnings of harsh weather that will help destroy the cattle industry
1887: Dawes Act
1889: Indian territories open for white settlement
1890: Massacre at Wounded Knee Wyoming women get the vote
High point of political influence of the Farmer’s Alliances
1893: Beginning of great depression of the 1890s
Publication of the Turner Thesis
1896: William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech
Review Questions
1. Those farmers who were successful on the Great Plains
A. came to the West as single men, without families
B. utilized many farming techniques they had learned in the East
C. personified the spirit of rugged individualism
D. relied on the assistance of other settlers around them
E. personified the image of the yeoman farmer of Thomas Jefferson
(Correct Answer: D. Almost every diary of memoir from individuals who lived on the plains noted that rugged individualism was not enough to be successful.)
2. Exodusters were
A. newly arrived miners in Oregon
B. Southern blacks who went west to settle
C. settlers who went to Washington state to be part of the lumbering industry
D. those who “dusted” or cleaned crops on bonanza farms
E. immigrants who went west to farm
(Correct Answer: B. This group went west to farm in 1879 and modeled their journey after the journey of the Israelites fleeing Egypt to the Promised Land.)
3. The Dawes Act
A. tried to turn Native Americans into farmers who would farm their own individual plots only
B. protected Native American land from further encroachment
C. broke up large Native American reservations into smaller ones
D. made Ghost Dances illegal
E. made the further killing of buffalo by Western settlers illegal
(Correct Answer: A. The Dawes Act tried to “civilize” Native Americans and destroy their tribal lands.)
4. The organization that expressed the views of farmers to the largest national audience was
A. the Greenback party
B. the Populist party
C. the Grange
D. the Colored Farmer’s National Alliance
E. the Farmer’s Alliances
(Correct Answer: B. The Populist party platform was intended to appeal to all workers in society, including those in the city. The policies of the Populist Party were heard nationwide in the 1892 presidential election; however, because of the power of the Democratic party in the South, the Populist presidential candidate received only 1 million votes in the election.)
5. The Turner thesis
A. agreed with accounts of the West in the dime-store novels of the 1870s concerning the character of western expansion
B. emphasized the diversity of those who traveled west
C. takes into account the massacre of Native Americans
D. notes the impact of western expansion on the American character
E. emphasized the “hard living” that went on in many western settlements
(Correct Answer: D. Turner himself would later revise his thesis based on some of the characteristics of western expansion noted in the other possible answers.)