Copyright 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

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Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.Chapter 16 The Conquest of the Far West Learning Objectives •Detail the effects of ethnic, racial, and cultural prejudice on western society.•Describe the three major industries important to western development and discuss their importance for the region’s economic transformation.•Describe the romantic image of the West as it was expressed in art, literature, and popular culture.•Explain how the actions and policies of the federal government affected the fate of western Indians.•Describe the significance of the idea of the “frontier” in American history.Chapter Overview Far from being empty and unknown, significant parts of what would become the western United States were populated by Indians and Mexicans long before the post–Civil War boom in Anglo- European settlement. Even after the waves of white occupation, and faced with significant prejudice from those whites, large numbers of Mexicans and Asian Americans continued to live in the West.White settlement developed in initial boom and decline patterns in three industries that would do much to shape the region in the long run: mining, ranching, and commercial agriculture. Asians, Mexicans, and African Americans provided much of the labor force for these industries.In the late nineteenth century, the South and West were underdeveloped regions with an almost colonial relationship to the industrial, heavily populated Northeast and Midwest. Except for a few pockets in the Far West, the frontier line of agricultural settlement in 1860 stopped at the eastern edge of the Great Plains. Hostile Plains Indians and an unfamiliar environment combined to discourage advance. By the end of the century, the Indian barrier to white settlement had been removed, cattlemen and miners had spearheaded development, and railroads had brought farmers, who, despite nagging difficulties, had made significant adaptations to the Great Plains.Themes •The varied and vibrant ethnic and racial cultures that characterized the American West, and how Anglo-European whites enforced their dominant role by the latter part of the nineteenth century American History Connecting with the Past 15e (Volume 2) Alan Brinkley (Instructor Manual All Chapters, 100% Original Verified, A+ Grade) (Lecture Notes Only) 1 / 4

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Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.• The transformation of the Far West from a sparsely populated region of Indians and various early settlers of European and Asian background into a part of the nation’s capitalistic economy • The closing of the frontier as Indian resistance was eliminated, miners and cowboys spearheaded settlements, and railroads opened the area for intensive development • The development of mining, ranching, and commercial farming as the three major industries of the West • The problems faced by farmers as the agricultural sector entered a relative decline

Lecture Strategies

The New Western History The West is similarly diverse in geography, similarly elusive in definition. Patricia Limerick’s A Legacy of Conquest discusses the various myths and images of the West, as well as summarizes the major topics as seen through the eyes of the new western history. Rich details of that new view of the West are available in Richard White’s It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West. Another approach to a lecture would be to begin by contrasting the images of individual initiative—the cowboy, the prospector, or the prairie farmer—with the realities of corporate control of key resources. White and Limerick develop that idea. So too do they point out that the ideal of Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier democracy—one characterized by individualism, self-reliance, and decentralized authority— might apply in Wisconsin where he grew up, but it bears scant relationship to a region dominated by technology, corporate capitalism, and government regulation. Finally, in a land where stereotypes of cowboys and miners abound, there is good anecdotal material about women’s experiences in Limerick, in White, in Dee Brown’s The Gentle Tamers, and in Joanna Stratton’s Pioneer Women.

Teaching Suggestions

Economic Opportunity versus Personal Freedom One hundred years ago, the West symbolized opportunity and freedom, and that conception of the West is still thriving today. Donald Worster, in his provocative essay collection, Under Western Skies, describes two dreams that animate our sense of the West: “one of a life of nature, the other with machines; one of a life in the past, the other in the future.” He goes on to add, “If the West has any spiritual claim to uniqueness, I believe it lies in the intensity of devotion to those opposing dreams.” A discussion could invite students to explore how and why two ideals that brought so many people to the region—one of economic opportunity, the other of personal freedom—so often clash.

Contrasting Indian and White Cultures Students should enjoy discussing the contrasts between Indian cultures and their own.The ecological implications of contrasting white and Indian values are especially relevant today, although we should all try to resist the somewhat facile conceit of painting Indians as 2 / 4

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Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.proto-ecologists. A more nuanced view is developed in William Cronon’s Changes in the Land.Though it applies specifically to colonial New England and is becoming a bit dated, the ideas have general validity. In discussing the struggle between Indian and white cultures, students should be able to consider the relative importance of military, economic, social, and environmental factors in determining the outcome of the struggle between whites and Indians in the West.

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Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.Chapter 17 Industrial Supremacy

Learning Objectives

• Identify some of the business and industrial titans of the late nineteenth century and evaluate their contribution to America’s industrial growth.• Describe the changes that took place in late-nineteenth-century corporate organization and their effect on the national economy.• Explain how Social Darwinism attempted to justify the social consequences of industrial capitalism.• Describe workers’ response to industrial growth and the new economy.

Chapter Overview

Although some economists place the industrial “take-off” of America in the years before the Civil War, it was in the three decades following that great conflict that the United States became the world’s leading industrial power. A fortunate combination of sufficient raw materials, adequate labor, enviable technological accomplishments, effective business leadership, nationwide markets, and supportive state and national governments boosted America past its international rivals. The industrial transformation had a profound impact on the lives of the millions of workers who made the production revolution possible. Some who were distrustful of industrial power turned toward socialism; others tried to organize workers into powerful unions.But, in these early years of industrial conflict, the forces of business usually triumphed.

Themes

• How various factors (raw materials, labor supply, technology, business organization, growing markets, and friendly governments) combined to thrust the United States into worldwide industrial leadership • How this explosion of industrial capitalism was both extolled for its accomplishments and attacked for its excesses • How American workers, who on the average benefited, reacted to the physical and psychological realities of the new economic order

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