The Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890

This video can also be accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7fZonjD1M

Why did this massacre happen?

Although the video ends somewhat abruptly, here’s the rest of the story of what happened to the baby: http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1996/2/1996_2_38.shtml

The Significance of the Frontier in American History

Here it is plus the questions: Turner’s Frontier Thesis + questions

This is here because somebody whose name rhymes with “Zach” didn’t come and get it, that turkey.

The story of the Apache Wars

Chief Joseph Surrenders, 1877

Here is the link. The speech is very brief– perhaps 200 words– but is considered one of the great speeches of American history. Go to http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/joseph.htm

The Battle of the Little Big Horn– “Custer’s Last Stand”

A brief summary (although the narrator calls him “Custard!”) of the aftermath of the fall of Custer and the 7th Cavalry in the summer of 1876.

What was the public and military response to this infamous defeat of US Army troops?

This video can also be accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzTB6pkzxRg

The Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange

Ideas and Movements, The Patrons of Husbandry

Oliver Hudson Kelley was an employee of the Department of Agriculture in the 1860s. He made an official trip through the South and was astounded by the lack of sound agricultural practices he encountered. Joining with other interested individuals in 1867, Kelley formed the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, a fraternal organization complete with its own secret rituals. Local affiliates were known as “granges” and the members as “grangers.” In its early years, the Grange was devoted to educational events and social gatherings.

Growth was slow in the early years, but the attraction of social events was considerable. Farm life in the 19th century was marked by a tedium and isolation that usually was relieved only by church functions and the weekly trips to town for supplies.

Following the Panic of 1873, the Grange spread rapidly throughout the farm belt, since farmers in all areas were plagued by low prices for their products, growing indebtedness and discriminatory treatment by the railroads. These concerns helped to transform the Grange into a political force.

National Grange

Grange influence was particularly strong in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, where political pressure yielded a series of “Granger laws” designed to give legislative assistance to the farmers. Those laws received an initial blessing from the Supreme Court in Munn v. Illinois (1876), but a later counteroffensive by the railroads brought the Wabash case (1886), which wiped out those gains.

During the 1870s, the Grangers advocated programs such as the following:

* Cooperative purchasing ventures as a means to obtain lower prices on farm equipment and supplies

* Pooling of savings as an alternative to dependence on corrupt banks, an early form of credit union

* Cooperative grain elevators to hold non-perishable crops until the optimal times to sell

* An abortive effort to manufacture farm equipment; this venture depleted the Granger organization’s funds and was instrumental in its decline.

A major shortcoming of the movement was the failure to address what was probably the root cause of many farm ills—overproduction. There were too many farmers and too much productive land; the advent of new, mechanized equipment only exacerbated the difficulties. A few perceptive individuals recognized that flooding the market with produce only depressed prices further. Mary Elizabeth Lease of Kansas, one of the nation’s first female attorneys, traveled to grange halls and urged the farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.” Such pleas went largely unheeded, since most farmers preferred to blame the politicians, judges and bankers for their plight.

The Grange as a political force peaked around 1875, then gradually declined. New organizations with more potent messages emerged, including the Greenback Party of the 1870s, the Farmers’ Alliances of the 1880s and the Populist Party of the 1890s.

The Grange had played an important role by demonstrating that farmers were capable of organizing and advocating a political agenda. After witnessing the eclipse of its advocacy efforts by other groups, the Grange reverted to its original educational and social events. These have sustained the organization to the present day.

Here is their website — the section that talks about their history! (Yes, they still exist!)

The Wizard of Oz– a parable on Populism?

This is a link (http://www.amphigory.com/oz.htm) to the article that theorized that the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum was actually an extended allegory about Populism.

Was Wm. Jennings Bryan the Cowardly Lion, because he opposed imperialism?

Who was the Wicked Witch of the East?

Who represented Coxey’s Army?

Who’s the Wizard?

Is the Emerald City really green?

Whoa.

Written assignment for next class

In approximately 300 words, summarize the significance of the frontier in the development of Americans’ sense of identity. There are specific words I will be looking for, so …um, be like, you know, SPECIFIC.

Please write in either black or blue ink or type. Please do not email me this assignment.

The Populists and what they stood for

The Populists (or People’s Party) burst onto the political stage in the election of 1892. They supported increasing the power of the working class and the farmers against the interests of the wealthy, who were more politically powerful– even before 19892, money was the lifeblood of politics.

Their first statement of goals was the Omaha Platform of 1892. Make sure you are familiar with the contents of this document.

Why were each of these items important to the Populists?

Public ownership of the railroads, steamship lines and telephone and telegraph systems: this would stop the practice of unfair rates for small farmers versus the volume discounts secured by large landholders and other sorts of political corruption that the railroads had certainly practiced. Rightly or wrongly, the farmers blamed the railroads for much of their problems. The costs of shipping in general cut into the farmers’ livelihoods. In general, the monopolies of the telephone and telegraph companies also was seen as a threat to their economic wellbeing.

Free and unlimited coinage of silver: From this website: “Before 1873 anyone who brought 3.7125 grains of silver to the mint could receive a legal-tender silver dollar, and the campaign for free silver fought for a return of these conditions.

“Between the mid-1830s and 1873 the market price of silver exceeded the mint price of $1.29 cents per ounce; therefore, very little silver found its way to the mint. Silver dollars had largely disappeared from circulation when Congress enacted the Coinage Act of 1873, an act that made no provision for the coinage of silver, and put the United States on an unofficial gold standard. Proponents of free silver later condemned the act as the “Crime of ’73.”

“The deletion of the silver dollar drew little attention at the time, but the United States was already in the clutches of a deflationary downswing that would last three decades. From 1870 until 1896 prices plunged 50 percent, a deflationary wave that hit hard at farmers in the West and South, where debt incidence stood at high levels.

“These groups quite rightly saw that a return to free and unlimited coinage of silver would raise the domestic money stock, raise prices, and reduce their debt burden. Much of the populist flavor of the free silver movement came from the hopes it lifted among large numbers of low-income farmers.

“Silver prices felt an added deflationary force because the world was rushing toward a gold standard that left little role for silver as a monetary metal. Major silver discoveries in the American West further depressed the market for silver. From 1850 until 1872 the market price of an ounce of silver stood above $1.32, clearly above the mint price, but the price had slipped to $1.24 by 1874, and from there it tumbled to $0.65 by 1895. Silver-mining interests in the United States saw free silver as a way of increasing the demand for silver, and putting a floor under silver prices. They would have been delighted to sell silver to the Treasury for $1.29.”

Abolition of national banks: The populists say the national banks as the bastion of the wealthy. They wanted to see the federal government directly take over the control of the money supply (and of course, adopt inflationary policies). This was eventually accomplished during the Progressive era with the creation of the Federal Reserve System in the early 20th century.

Graduated income tax: From the founding of the US, the main source of revenue for the government were tariffs and excise taxes. These kind of taxes are often referred to by economists as “regressive” because they take up a larger proportion of poor people’s incomes than of wealthy people’s. Tariffs and excise taxes caused the prices of goods to increase, hurting the poor more than the rich. Therefore, the Populists proposed a graduated (meaning increasing in steps or increments”) income tax to take the place of tariffs. An income tax had been levied to attempt to pay for the Civil War (by both the Union and the Confederacy), but the Supreme Court in 1895 had declared an income tax unconstitutional. Therefore this would require a constitutional amendment to achieve.

Direct election of Senators: Since the founding of the US, Senators had been elected by the state legislatures. Remember, too, that Senators served the longest term of any federal elected officials– 6 years. The Populists argued that Senators were therefore interested less in the interests of the people of the states than with remaining in the good graces of the major corporations in their states, who often exercised undue influence over state legislatures– think of the power of McDonnell Douglas and Anheuser Busch back when they both had their headquarters in this state.

Although the Populists did not achieve many of their aims, they did lay the groundwork for the passage of the income tax in the 16th Amendment and the direct election of senators in the 17th Amendment, both in 1913 during the Progressive era.

Read the following websites:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rr91/1052_2002/lectures_2002/populist_movement.htm

http://lhs.lexingtonma.org/Teachers/David/LI%20US%20history/liusreview_gildedage.html

And for those of you conspiracy theorists, this makes me laugh– a claim that the 16th Amendment was never really ratified.

The Greenback Labor Party- Forerunner of the Populists

Greenback Labor Party

The Greenback Party was established in 1875. It got its name for the slang term for paper money– greenbacks– which of course were inflationary. Its main support came from farmers who were suffering from declining farm prices, high railroad rates and the government’s deflationary currency policies. Peter Cooper was the party’s presidential candidate in 1876 but he won only 81,737 votes and was easily beaten by Rutherford Hayes (4,036,298) and Samuel Tilden (4,300,590). However, the party did send 15 representatives to Congress.

In 1878 members of the Greenback Party joined with urban trade union groups to establish the Greenback Labor Party. This indicates that party leaders were trying to unite farmers with urban workers in order to build a broader base of support and increase the chance of success at the polls. James Weaver emerged as leader of the party and was its presidential candidate in 1880. During the campaign Weaver argued that the two major political parties had lost sight of their original democratic ideals of equal opportunity. He also claimed that the maintenance of the gold standard benefited banking interests but was driving farmers out of business. Weaver called for policies where all classes could share in the economic wealth of America.

The Greenback Labor Party program included the coinage of silver on a par with gold, an adequate supply of money, the taxing of government bonds, a maximum eight-hour day, the introduction of graduated income tax and opposition to railroad land grants.

Weaver obtained 308,578 votes but was beaten by James Garfield (4,454,416) and Winfield S. Hancock (4,444,952). Most of Weaver’s support came from the rural West but he was now one of the most important political figures in the United States.

After the election of 1880, the Greenback-Labor Party merged with the Democratic Party in most states. Weaver was against this policy and in 1891 helped establish the Populist Party. The party advocated the public ownership of the railroads, steamship lines and telephone and telegraph systems. It also supported the free and unlimited coinage of silver, the abolition of national banks, a system of graduated income tax and the direct election of United States Senators.