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neurologyYou need to know

• Between 1789 and 1900, the United States changed from a republic on the Atlantic seaboard into a continental power that claimed authority from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
• American expansion was driven by land hunger, population growth, security fears, economic profit and the belief that the nation had a special right to spread westwards.
• Many white Americans described expansion as progress, but it depended on taking land already occupied, used or claimed by others.
• Between 1789 and 1900, federal power grew because presidents, Congress, courts and the army all played larger roles in organising territory, enforcing policy and deciding who belonged within the nation.
• In the nineteenth-century United States, government action and private enterprise usually worked together, because public policy opened opportunities that planters, speculators, railroad companies, ranchers and industrialists then turned into profit.
• The nineteenth-century American West was shaped as much by capitalism as by pioneer settlement, because cotton, gold, cattle, railroads and industry all turned land, labour and natural resources into commodities.
• Westward expansion repeatedly reopened the question of slavery, because each major gain of territory raised arguments about whether enslaved labour would expand with it.
• In the nineteenth-century United States, short-term compromises often delayed deeper conflicts, because agreements over territory, slavery and Indigenous land usually failed once the balance of power changed.
• The American Civil War showed that disputes over slavery were also disputes over political power, because control of western territories affected the balance between free and slave states in the Union.
• The making of America involved both voluntary migration and forced movement, because settlers, Mormons, prospectors and immigrants moved by choice while enslaved people and Indigenous communities were moved by coercion.
• Transport and communication changed the scale of expansion, because trails, river routes, railroads and telegraphs tied distant regions more closely to eastern markets and federal control.
• The nineteenth-century American West was not separate from the rest of the United States, because developments there were connected to southern cotton, northern finance, urban industry and migration from both Europe and other parts of the United States.
• Indigenous peoples were never a single culture or political bloc, yet American policy often treated them mainly as obstacles to settlement and profit.
• Between 1789 and 1900, Indigenous sovereignty was steadily reduced, moving from treaty relationships towards reservations, allotment and direct federal control.
• Agreements with Indigenous peoples were rarely secure, because white economic interests repeatedly overrode treaty promises when land, minerals or transport routes were at stake.
• In the nineteenth-century American frontier, conflict grew from competition over land, water, hunting grounds, labour and movement, not simply from cultural misunderstanding.
• In the making of America, the destruction of Indigenous independence came through law, settlement, military force and environmental change, not through battles alone.
• Between 1789 and 1900, race shaped access to land, safety and political power, because white Americans were usually best placed to benefit from expansion while Indigenous Americans and African Americans faced coercion and exclusion.
• African Americans moved from slavery to legal freedom and citizenship, but white supremacy adapted rather than disappeared, using segregation, disenfranchisement, violence and economic dependence to preserve inequality.
• The meaning of freedom was unequal, because white settlers often linked liberty to landownership while African Americans struggled to secure rights promised in law and Indigenous peoples fought to preserve autonomy from the United States.
• Ideas about citizenship widened during the nineteenth century, but by 1900 the United States still did not treat all people within its borders as equal members of the nation.
• Economic growth created both opportunity and insecurity, because expansion produced wealth for business owners and some settlers while leaving many workers, farmers and minority communities vulnerable to debt, poverty and exploitation.
• Mass migration and urban growth helped turn the United States into an industrial power, but they also sharpened arguments about race, class and who could share fully in American life.
• By 1900, the United States was larger, richer and more connected than in 1789, but its growth had been built on unresolved tensions over race, citizenship, federal authority and the ownership of land and labour.
• In 1789, the United States had 13 states and claimed land as far west as the Mississippi River, although much of that land was still controlled by Indigenous peoples.
• Between 1789 and 1838, the number of states in the United States rose from 13 to 26.
• Between 1789 and 1838, American expansion meant turning United States claims into real control through settlement, war, treaties, and new statehood.
• American expansion took land already occupied by Indigenous peoples and also reduced the power of France, Spain, and Britain in North America.
• In the Treaty of Paris of 1783, Britain ceded land east of the Mississippi to the United States without consulting the Indigenous nations living there.
• Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, creating the Northwest Territory north of the Ohio River.
• In 1790, Congress created the Southwest Territory south of the Ohio River.
• American settlers moved into the Northwest and Southwest Territories to farm, speculate in land, and build new communities.
• In the early United States, cheap land attracted settlers west while expansion promised more trade, resources, tax revenue and security against European rivals.
• George Washington saw Indigenous resistance and continuing British influence in the Great Lakes region as threats to American control of the Northwest.
• Indigenous nations including the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, and Ojibwe joined the Northwestern Confederacy to resist American settlement.
• The United States defeated the Northwestern Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.
• The Treaty of Greenville in 1795 forced Indigenous nations to surrender much of present-day Ohio.
• Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan were later created from Northwest Territory land.
• Tennessee was created from the Southwest Territory in 1796.
• United States western lands south of Tennessee were organised separately and later became states such as Mississippi and Alabama.
• In the early nineteenth-century United States, control of the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans mattered because western farmers needed them to send goods to market.
• In 1803, Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France for $15 million.
• The Louisiana Purchase roughly doubled the size of the United States and gave it control of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi.
• Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase without consulting the Indigenous peoples who lived across the Louisiana territory.
• The Louisiana Purchase later provided land for states including Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, as well as parts of other states.
• Spain ceded Florida to the United States in the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.
• In 1818, Britain and the United States agreed on the 49th parallel as the boundary from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.
• By 1838, the United States had expanded by purchase, settlement, and force into a much larger continental power.
• Between 1789 and 1838, American expansion was driven by population growth, land hunger, trade needs, national security and the ambition to make the United States more powerful.
• Before 1793, slavery already existed across the southern United States and was used mainly on tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations.
• After American independence, states in the northern United States gradually abolished slavery, but states in the southern United States kept it and defended it.
• The invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin in 1793 transformed the economy of the southern United States.
• The cotton gin cleaned short-staple cotton far faster than hand processing, making inland cotton cultivation across the Deep South much more profitable.
• Cotton still had to be planted, weeded and picked by hand, so faster processing increased demand for enslaved labour rather than reducing it.
• Planters expanded cotton plantations into Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and later Arkansas.
• Cotton plantations depended on large numbers of enslaved workers and strict control by enslavers.
• The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 added huge areas of land that could be used for plantation agriculture.
• Expansion into Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida gave slaveholders fresh land for cotton growing.
• By the 1830s, the main cotton-growing region was known as the Deep South or the Cotton Kingdom.
• By 1820, cotton was the most valuable export produced by the United States and made up about 40 per cent of all United States exports.
• Southern wealth and political influence became closely tied to cotton and slavery.
• Congress banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, but the ban did not end slavery inside the United States.
• Children born to enslaved mothers were also legally enslaved, so the enslaved population continued to grow.
• A large domestic slave trade developed from the Upper South, especially Virginia and Maryland, to the Deep South.
• Traders sold enslaved people south-west to supply labour for new cotton plantations.
• Families were regularly split up by sales in the domestic slave trade.
• New Orleans became a major market for both cotton and enslaved people.
• As new territories sought statehood, Americans argued over whether slavery should expand westwards.
• Many northerners feared that more slave states would give the South greater power in Congress and in presidential elections.
• The Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
• The Missouri Compromise banned slavery north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase, except for Missouri.
• The Missouri Compromise reduced immediate conflict, but it showed that westward expansion and slavery were now inseparable political issues.
• The demand for more cotton land increased pressure to remove Indigenous peoples from the south-eastern United States.
• Eastern North America was home to many Indigenous nations long before European settlement.
• From the seventeenth century onwards, war, disease, and land seizure pushed many Indigenous communities further west.
• After 1783, the United States claimed land to the Mississippi River, although Indigenous peoples still lived across it.
• The federal government created the Northwest Territory in 1787 and encouraged white settlement there.
• Land from the Northwest Territory later became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
• White settlement in the Northwest forced many Indigenous peoples to surrender land or move further west.
• In 1790, the United States created the Southwest Territory, which later became Tennessee.
• White settlement spread into frontier areas that later became Mississippi and Alabama.
• In the south-eastern United States, pressure on Indigenous land increased as cotton planting became more profitable after 1793.
• Many white settlers, land speculators, and slaveholders wanted Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole land.
• In the early nineteenth-century south-east, some Indigenous nations resisted American expansion by force, including Red Stick Creek fighters defeated by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814.
• The Treaty of Fort Jackson forced the Creeks to surrender about 23 million acres.
• The Seminoles resisted pressure in Spanish Florida and later in American Florida.
• Some Indigenous nations in the south-east, especially the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole, tried accommodation instead of war.
• The Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole traded with Americans and some communities built farms, schools, churches, newspapers and written laws.
• White Americans often called the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole the Five Civilised Tribes.
• The label "Five Civilised Tribes" was ethnocentric and did not protect the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole from removal.
• By the 1820s, states in the southern United States wanted direct control of Indigenous land inside their borders.
• Georgia was especially determined to seize Cherokee land, while President Andrew Jackson supported removal to open the south-eastern United States to cotton farmers and slaveholders.
• Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830.
• The Indian Removal Act authorised the president to negotiate treaties exchanging eastern lands for land west of the Mississippi.
• In practice, many Indian removal treaties were forced or signed under heavy pressure.
• Indigenous peoples removed under the Indian Removal Act were sent to Indian Territory, in what later became most of Oklahoma.
• In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831, the Supreme Court called the Cherokee a domestic dependent nation and refused to treat them as a foreign state.
• In Worcester v. Georgia in 1832, the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia had no right to impose its laws inside Cherokee territory.
• Jackson did not enforce that ruling, so Georgia and the federal government continued to press for removal.
• Some Seminole leaders signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832, agreeing to removal.
• Many Seminoles rejected the Treaty of Payne's Landing, saying it had not been accepted properly by their people.
• Resistance to removal led to the Second Seminole War in 1835.
• Black Seminoles and other escaped African Americans fought alongside the Seminoles.
• The Second Seminole War was long, expensive, and difficult for the United States Army.
• In 1837, United States forces captured the Seminole leader Osceola under a flag of truce.
• Osceola died in prison, but Seminole resistance continued.
• By 1838, many Seminoles had been removed west, though some remained in Florida.
• In 1832, Creek leaders signed the Treaty of Cusseta, which divided Creek land into allotments and opened much of it to white seizure.
• White settlers and land speculators quickly encroached on Creek land, often illegally.
• After violence in 1836, the United States Army forced thousands of Creeks west to Indian Territory.
• By 1837, more than 15,000 Creeks had been removed.
• In 1835, a small group of Cherokee signed the Treaty of New Echota, agreeing to removal.
• Most Cherokee rejected the Treaty of New Echota and argued that the signers had no authority to sell Cherokee land.
• In 1838, federal troops forced about 16,000 Cherokee to march west.
• The forced Cherokee march of 1838 became known as the Trail of Tears.
• Around 4,000 Cherokee died from disease, hunger, and exposure during the march.
• By the late 1830s, around 46,000 Indigenous people had been removed from the south-east.
• Removal opened millions of acres of fertile land to white settlers and cotton planters.
• Indian removal policy linked westward expansion directly to the growth of slavery in the south.
• The Great Plains stretched from Canada to Texas and were home to many different Indigenous nations.
• Plains peoples did not all live in the same way, so Europeans were wrong to treat them as a single group.
• Some Plains peoples, such as the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne, were nomadic and followed the bison herds.
• Some other Plains peoples, such as the Mandan and Hidatsa, lived in more permanent villages near rivers and combined farming with hunting.
• Settled Plains peoples grew crops such as corn, beans and squash.
• The Sioux were a large nation of related groups rather than one small tribe.
• The three main Sioux groupings were the Dakota, Nakota and Lakota.
• The Lakota were the western Sioux and became one of the most powerful peoples of the Plains by the mid-nineteenth century.
• Plains peoples often lived in bands made up of linked families.
• Band membership could change, which meant Plains politics was flexible rather than rigid.
• Many Plains groups made major decisions through discussion and agreement rather than by simple orders from one ruler.
• Chiefs led by reputation, skill, generosity and bravery, not by absolute power.
• Many Plains tribes recognised both peace chiefs for everyday leadership and war chiefs for fighting.
• In many Plains societies, councils of elders and respected men discussed important issues such as war, peace and movement.
• In many Plains societies, warrior societies helped to defend the group and keep order during hunts and migrations.
• Europeans often misunderstood Plains leadership because they expected one leader to speak for everybody.
• European misunderstanding of Plains leadership made treaty-making difficult because one chief could not always bind every band.
• Bison were central to the economy and culture of many Plains peoples because they provided food, hides for clothing and tipi covers, bones and horns for tools, sinew for thread and dung for fuel.
• Successful bison hunting was essential to the survival of many nomadic Plains peoples.
• Nomadic Plains peoples often lived in tipis because they could be taken down quickly and moved easily.
• In nomadic Plains societies, household goods could be carried by dogs and later by horses using a travois.
• Plains religions were closely connected to the natural world.
• Many Sioux believed in Wakan Tanka, a sacred spiritual power often translated as the Great Spirit.
• The Lakota believed that spiritual power was present in people, animals and places.
• Vision quests were used to seek guidance and spiritual protection.
• The Sun Dance was a major Lakota ceremony that renewed spiritual strength and the relationship between the people and the natural world.
• Sacred pipes were used in ceremonies and agreements.
• Among Plains peoples, some places were regarded as holy.
• The Black Hills were sacred to the Lakota Sioux.
• Plains societies usually had distinct roles for men and women.
• In many Plains societies, men mainly hunted, fought and protected the camp.
• In many Plains societies, women prepared food, made clothing, worked hides, put up the tipi and raised children.
• In many Plains communities, women controlled the home and its contents even though formal political leadership was usually male.
• Some powerful men had more than one wife, but family life still depended heavily on women's labour and skills.
• Horses reached the Plains from the Spanish south-west through trade, capture and breeding, transforming bison hunting, mobility, wealth and military power.
• Guns obtained through trade with Europeans changed Plains hunting and warfare further.
• The Lakota Sioux originally lived further east in woodland country near the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes.
• As the Lakota moved west, they relied less on farming and more on mounted bison hunting.
• By the 1830s, many Lakota bands were fully nomadic and organised their lives around the seasonal movement of bison.
• Lakota wealth and status were strongly linked to horses.
• The Lakota fought some neighbouring peoples, especially the Crow and Pawnee, over hunting grounds and horses.
• Alliances and trade links also existed between Plains peoples, including between the Lakota and Cheyenne.
• Competition over hunting grounds, horses and prestige could lead to conflict between Plains peoples.
• From the 1830s, more Americans looked west because of hardship in the East and the hope of new opportunities.
• The economic depression that followed the Panic of 1837 caused bank failures, business collapse, unemployment and debt.
• Many families looked west for cheap land and a fresh start, while Oregon was promoted as fertile farmland and California offered trade, ranching and Pacific access.
• Manifest Destiny was the belief that Americans were destined by God to spread across the continent.
• Manifest Destiny gave westward migration a moral justification in the minds of many white Americans.
• Westward migration also damaged Indigenous peoples because settlers crossed tribal lands and used up resources.
• Before the main trails were established, migrants could go west by sea around Cape Horn.
• The sea route to the far west around Cape Horn was very slow and expensive, while the Panama route also involved delay, discomfort and disease.
• Overland travel became the most practical route to the far west for most migrant families.
• The South Pass through the Rocky Mountains made wagon travel across the Rockies possible.
• Explorers and fur trappers helped identify and publicise routes to the far west.
• The Oregon Trail ran from Missouri across the Plains and Rockies to Oregon Country.
• The California Trail followed much of the Oregon Trail before turning south-west towards California.
• Migrants usually travelled in wagon trains for safety and cooperation.
• Most wagons were pulled by oxen because oxen were cheaper and tougher than horses.
• Many migrants walked beside their wagons for much of the journey to save the animals' strength.
• Families had to carry food, tools, medicines, spare parts and household goods for a journey that could last months.
• Timing mattered because migrants needed to leave in spring and cross the mountains before winter snow.
• River crossings, cholera, accidents with wagons, guns and livestock, heat, dust, exhaustion and shortages of food or clean water made overland migration dangerous.
• Many overland migrants feared attacks from Native Americans, but disease and accidents killed far more migrants than fighting did.
• Some migrants traded with Indigenous peoples for food, horses or local knowledge.
• Government reports and guidebooks encouraged more people to travel west.
• John C. Fremont's reports helped convince Americans that the journey to Oregon and California was possible.
• Oregon attracted missionaries as well as farmers.
• By the 1840s, large wagon trains were travelling to Oregon every year.
• Oregon was especially attractive because settlers expected fertile land in the Willamette Valley.
• California migrants faced an extra challenge because they had to cross deserts and the Sierra Nevada after leaving the main trail.
• On the overland trails to California, taking shortcuts could be disastrous.
• In 1846 the Donner Party took the Hastings Cutoff, was trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada and suffered starvation.
• The Donner disaster showed how dangerous late departure and poor route choices could be.
• The Mormon faith was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830.
• Mormons faced hostility because their beliefs, close-knit communities and political influence alarmed many non-Mormons.
• Joseph Smith and his followers moved repeatedly before settling at Nauvoo in Illinois.
• Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob in 1844.
• After Smith's death, Brigham Young became the main Mormon leader.
• Brigham Young decided that the Mormons should migrate far west to build a new community.
• The Mormon migration began from Nauvoo in 1846.
• The first stage of the Mormon migration from Nauvoo in 1846 was badly affected by cold weather, mud and sickness.
• Many Mormons spent the winter of 1846-1847 at Winter Quarters near Omaha.
• The Mormon Trail followed part of the Oregon Trail before turning towards the Great Salt Lake.
• Mormon wagon companies were organised into smaller groups with leaders and a range of practical skills.
• In 1847 Brigham Young led an advance party west towards the Salt Lake Valley.
• The Salt Lake Valley was then in Mexican territory and was far from the main centres of American settlement.
• Brigham Young chose the Salt Lake Valley because its isolation gave the Mormons a better chance to avoid persecution.
• The Mormon pioneers reached the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847.
• The Mormon pioneers carried seeds, tools and equipment so they could begin farming quickly in the dry Salt Lake Valley.
• Mormons made farming possible in the Salt Lake Valley by digging irrigation channels from mountain streams to their fields.
• Brigham Young organised settlement carefully, with strong Church leadership, shared labour and strict discipline.
• Salt Lake City was planned rather than growing chaotically like many frontier settlements.
• After 1848 the Mormon settlement became part of the United States, and in 1850 Congress created Utah Territory.
• Mormon communities sent out new settlements to secure more land and support the centre at Salt Lake City.
• Mormon settlement in Utah succeeded because of planning, cooperation, irrigation and strong leadership.
• Gold was discovered by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in January 1848.
• James Marshall's discovery came just as California was being transferred from Mexico to the United States after the Mexican-American War.
• News of the gold discovery spread slowly at first but exploded after President Polk confirmed it at the end of 1848.
• In 1849, tens of thousands travelled to California hoping to get rich.
• Migrants who travelled to California in 1849 became known as 49ers.
• People reached California overland on the California Trail, by sea around Cape Horn, or by sea and land through Panama.
• Early miners searched mainly for placer gold lying close to the surface in riverbeds.
• Simple methods such as panning and using cradles could find placer gold at first, but mining needed more equipment, money and organised labour as easy surface gold ran out.
• Mining camps and boomtowns appeared very quickly near the California goldfields, and San Francisco grew rapidly from a small settlement into a major port.
• Prices in mining districts were very high, so merchants and shopkeepers often made steadier profits than miners.
• A few California Gold Rush prospectors became rich, but many unsuccessful miners stayed and helped California's farms, towns and businesses grow.
• The Gold Rush brought rapid population growth and helped California become a state in 1850.
• The Gold Rush encouraged further westward migration by making the far west seem reachable and profitable.
• Law and order was weak in many California Gold Rush camps, so theft, gambling, drinking and vigilante justice were common.
• Indigenous Californians suffered catastrophic losses of land, food sources and life because miners drove them off their territory and many settlers used extreme violence.
• Gold mining in California damaged rivers, forests and landscapes.
• In 1858, gold was found near Cherry Creek and the South Platte River in Kansas Territory.
• The 1858-1859 rush became known as the Pikes Peak Gold Rush because Pikes Peak was the best-known landmark in the region.
• In 1859, large numbers of prospectors, nicknamed Fifty-Niners, headed for the Rockies.
• Pikes Peak was closer to the eastern states than California, so the journey was quicker and cheaper.
• The slogan Pikes Peak or Bust showed the hopes of migrants heading to the Pikes Peak goldfields.
• The Pikes Peak Gold Rush led to new mining camps and helped settlements such as Denver and Auraria to grow.
• Some Pikes Peak migrants failed as miners but stayed as farmers, traders or transport workers, helping turn the central Rockies and nearby Plains into a place of permanent settlement.
• Demand from Pikes Peak miners encouraged farming, freighting and other businesses in the surrounding region.
• The Pikes Peak Gold Rush increased pressure for better government, law enforcement and transport links in the area.
• In 1861 the federal government created Colorado Territory partly because the population had risen so quickly.
• The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 had recognised large areas of Plains land as belonging to Indigenous peoples, including Cheyenne and Arapaho hunting grounds.
• The arrival of miners and settlers during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush broke the spirit of the Fort Laramie Treaty agreements and increased conflict on the Plains.
• The Pikes Peak Gold Rush therefore increased white settlement, weakened treaty boundaries and intensified tension with Indigenous peoples.
• By the mid-19th century, the northern and southern United States had developed different economies, societies and political priorities.
• The northern United States was increasingly urban and industrial, with wage labour, small farms and expanding transport links.
• The southern United States remained mainly rural and agricultural, and much of its wealth depended on cotton grown on large plantations.
• Enslaved labour was central to the southern economy, so many southern leaders saw any threat to slavery as a threat to their prosperity and status.
• Slavery was less important to the northern economy, but northerners were divided between abolitionists who wanted slavery ended and others who mainly wanted to stop it spreading west.
• In the United States, westward expansion made slavery more divisive because each new territory raised the question of whether it would join the Union as a free state or a slave state.
• The Missouri Compromise of 1820 tried to calm the issue by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and by banning slavery north of 36 degrees 30 minutes in the Louisiana Purchase territory.
• The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act showed that the US Congress was still trying to balance free and slave interests, but they increased bitterness in both sections.
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise line and allowed settlers in Kansas and Nebraska to decide the slavery issue by popular sovereignty.
• Rival pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers fought in Bleeding Kansas, which convinced many Americans that compromise over slavery was breaking down.
• In the Dred Scott case of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that enslaved people were property and that Congress had no right to ban slavery in the territories.
• The Dred Scott ruling angered many northerners because it suggested that slavery could spread into any western territory.
• The Republican Party grew quickly in the 1850s because it opposed the extension of slavery into the territories.
• Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate in 1860, did not promise to abolish slavery in the states where it already existed, but he did oppose its expansion.
• Many southerners feared that stopping slavery from expanding would eventually weaken and destroy slavery altogether.
• Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election without carrying a single southern state, which convinced many southern leaders that they had lost influence in the Union.
• South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, and six more Deep South states followed before Lincoln took office.
• The seceded Deep South states formed the Confederate States of America in February 1861 and chose Jefferson Davis as their president.
• Lincoln insisted that secession was illegal and that the Union must be preserved.
• Tension focused on federal forts in the seceded states, especially Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour.
• On 12 April 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter.
• Lincoln then called for volunteers to crush the Confederate rebellion, and this led four more southern states to join the Confederacy.
• The attack on Fort Sumter marked the start of the American Civil War.
• At the start of the American Civil War, Lincoln's main aim was to preserve the Union rather than to end slavery everywhere at once.
• Slavery still existed in the border slave states that remained loyal to the Union, including Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware.
• Lincoln moved cautiously because he feared that harsh anti-slavery measures might push the loyal border slave states into the Confederacy.
• African Americans in the northern United States were legally free, but they still faced segregation, discrimination and restricted job opportunities.
• In the southern United States, about 4 million African Americans were enslaved, could be bought and sold, and had no legal freedom.
• In the southern United States during the Civil War, enslaved African Americans often lived under strict supervision, received no wages, and risked violence if they resisted or tried to learn to read.
• As Union armies advanced into the South, many enslaved people escaped to Union lines in search of protection and freedom.
• Union generals first had to decide whether escaped enslaved people reaching Union lines should be returned to slaveholders or kept by the army.
• In 1861, General Benjamin Butler treated escaped enslaved people as contraband of war, arguing that they could be confiscated like enemy property.
• The US Congress supported Butler's contraband policy through the Confiscation Acts, which reduced the chance that escaped enslaved people would be returned.
• Many African Americans in Union camps worked as labourers, cooks, nurses, teamsters and scouts before they were accepted as soldiers.
• At first, black men were largely barred from the Union Army because of racist assumptions and an old militia law that limited service to white men.
• Growing military pressure and the flight of enslaved people made emancipation and black enlistment more attractive to the Union government.
• In September 1862, Lincoln announced a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation warning that enslaved people in states still in rebellion would be declared free if the Confederacy did not surrender.
• The Emancipation Proclamation came into effect on 1 January 1863.
• The Emancipation Proclamation did not free enslaved people in the loyal border states, but it made ending slavery a central Union war aim.
• After 1863, African American men could enlist officially in the Union armed forces.
• The 54th Massachusetts was one of the first famous black regiments, and its assault on Fort Wagner showed the courage of black soldiers.
• By the end of the American Civil War, about 180,000 African American men had served in the Union Army and about 20,000 had served in the Union Navy.
• Black soldiers helped the Union by adding badly needed manpower and by weakening the labour system that supported the Confederacy.
• Black Union troops were usually placed in segregated units led by white officers.
• Black Union soldiers were at first paid less than white soldiers and often given fatigue duties, although Congress later granted equal pay in 1864.
• If captured by Confederates, black soldiers risked being murdered or forced back into slavery rather than treated as ordinary prisoners of war.
• Military service gave many African American men a stronger claim to citizenship, but wartime service did not end racism or guarantee equality.
• The Civil War ended in spring 1865 with Union victory and the defeat of the Confederacy.
• The American Civil War killed about 750,000 to 800,000 people and devastated much of the southern economy and transport network.
• Emancipation left about 4 million formerly enslaved people free, but freedom did not automatically bring land, money or security.
• The US Congress passed the 13th Amendment in January 1865, and it was ratified in December 1865, abolishing slavery throughout the United States.
• Lincoln expected Reconstruction to restore the Union and build some protection for the formerly enslaved, but he was assassinated in April 1865.
• Andrew Johnson became president and favoured a quick, lenient restoration of the southern states.
• Johnson allowed most former Confederates to regain property and political influence after taking loyalty oaths or receiving pardons.
• Under Johnson's approach, new southern state governments were quickly formed, often under the control of the same white elite as before the war.
• The new southern state governments introduced Black Codes to control African American labour and limit black freedom.
• Black Codes varied by state, but they commonly restricted movement, weapons ownership, jury service and access to better-paid work.
• Some southern states used vagrancy laws and labour contracts to force African Americans back into plantation work.
• The Black Codes and coercive labour laws meant that legal freedom often fell far short of real freedom.
• The US Congress rejected Johnson's approach and moved towards Radical Reconstruction.
• The Freedmen's Bureau tried to provide food, education, medical help and legal support to former slaves and poor southern whites.
• Under the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, the former Confederate states were divided into military districts and had to accept the 14th Amendment and write new constitutions recognising black male suffrage before readmission.
• The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, made African Americans citizens and said states could not deny them equal protection of the laws.
• During Radical Reconstruction, African American men voted in large numbers and some were elected to state legislatures and to Congress.
• Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce from Mississippi became the first African American senators.
• The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, said that the right to vote could not be denied because of race, colour or previous condition of servitude.
• Reconstruction brought genuine political gains, even though it did not give African Americans social equality or economic independence.
• Many formerly enslaved people hoped to receive land of their own after the Civil War, but most became sharecroppers, renting small plots from white landowners and paying rent with a share of the crop.
• Sharecropping trapped many African American families in debt because poor harvests, high interest and unfair accounts left them owing money year after year.
• White supremacist groups formed to destroy Reconstruction and restore white Democratic control.
• The Ku Klux Klan used beatings, murders, threats and night raids to terrorise African Americans and their white supporters.
• The White League and similar groups used open violence and intimidation to break up Republican meetings and suppress black voting.
• In places such as Louisiana, paramilitary violence showed that federal law was hard to enforce on the ground.
• Northern commitment to Reconstruction weakened in the 1870s because of political fatigue, racism, economic problems and accusations of corruption.
• US Supreme Court decisions in the 1870s narrowed the effect of the 14th and 15th Amendments and made it harder for the federal government to protect African American rights.
• As federal protection for African American rights weakened, southern Democrats regained power and reduced black political participation.
• The disputed presidential election of 1876 helped bring Reconstruction to an end.
• In 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the last southern states still under Republican control.
• The end of Reconstruction left African Americans exposed to segregation, intimidation, restricted voting rights and continued economic dependence.
• Before 1861, the North and South disagreed about how the West should develop.
• Northern politicians wanted western land to be settled by small free farmers.
• Southern politicians wanted more slave-based plantation agriculture in new territories.
• Northern and Southern politicians both wanted a transcontinental railroad, but they disagreed about its route.
• Disagreement over western development and the railroad route delayed major federal action on western settlement before the Civil War.
• Southern secession in 1861 removed the strongest opposition to a northern railroad route.
• Abraham Lincoln wanted westward expansion to bind the Union together politically and economically.
• Abraham Lincoln wanted westward expansion to increase food production and strengthen federal control across the interior of the United States.
• Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862.
• The Homestead Act allowed eligible settlers to gain ownership of 160 acres of public land after paying a small fee, living on it and improving it for five years.
• Eligible Homestead Act claimants included women, formerly enslaved people, immigrants intending to become citizens and many ex-soldiers.
• Native Americans were not allowed to claim homesteads on land that had often been taken from Indigenous peoples.
• Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862.
• The Pacific Railroad Act authorised a transcontinental railroad linking the Missouri Valley to the Pacific coast.
• The US federal government offered railroad companies loans and large land grants to encourage construction.
• Federal support for the transcontinental railroad helped turn Plains land into a source of profit for private companies.
• The Pacific Railroad Act supported the taking of Indigenous land along the railroad route.
• Construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad began in 1863.
• The Union Pacific built west from Omaha, Nebraska.
• The Central Pacific built east from Sacramento, California.
• The First Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, on 10 May 1869.
• A telegraph line ran alongside the transcontinental railroad, helping communication across the continent.
• The Homestead Act and the transcontinental railroad worked together to attract white settlement onto the Plains.
• White settlement on the Plains was exploitative because land used by Plains Indians was redefined by the federal government as farmland, transport land, and private business property.
• A transcontinental railroad was too expensive and risky for private companies to build without federal surveys, loans, land grants and the promise of future profits from land sales.
• Railroad companies received federal loans that rose from 16,000 dollars per mile on flat land to 48,000 dollars per mile in mountainous areas.
• Railroad companies received large stretches of public land along the railroad route, which they could sell to settlers and investors for profit.
• The completed transcontinental railroad ran for about 1,900 miles from Omaha to Sacramento, with the ceremonial meeting point at Promontory Summit.
• The Central Pacific faced the hardest mountain work in the Sierra Nevada.
• The Union Pacific built across open plains and had to protect workers and track from attacks by Plains Indians.
• Railroad construction was dangerous, exhausting, and poorly regulated.
• Railroad workers lived in temporary camps that moved forward as the railroad advanced.
• Blasting tunnels, handling explosives, laying track at speed and living in overcrowded camps caused many deaths, injuries and diseases among railroad workers.
• The Central Pacific relied heavily on Chinese labourers, with about 12,000 employed on the railroad.
• Many Union Pacific workers were Irish immigrants and former soldiers.
• The completion ceremony for the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 was marked by the driving of a ceremonial golden spike.
• The completed First Transcontinental Railroad cut journey times sharply and made travel, trade and mail across the American West faster and cheaper.
• Railroad companies advertised land in the United States and Europe to attract more settlers.
• New stations and railheads encouraged the growth of towns on the Plains.
• The transcontinental railroad also made it easier for soldiers, hunters, and settlers to move into Indigenous land.
• Rail access helped accelerate the destruction of the bison herds because hunters could reach the Plains more easily and ship hides east.
• Cattle and the beef trade played a major part in the development of the West after the Civil War.
• During the American Civil War, many Texas ranchers left their herds behind and cattle numbers grew.
• By 1865, Texas had millions of longhorn cattle that were worth little in Texas itself.
• Beef sold for much higher prices in northern cities, army posts, and western mining settlements.
• Ranchers could make large profits only if they could move cattle to rail connections.
• Cowboys drove herds north from Texas along trails such as the Chisholm Trail.
• Some cattle drives supplied army forts, mining camps, and railroad workers on the way.
• Joseph McCoy helped create Abilene as the first major cow town in 1867 by building stockyards next to the Kansas Pacific Railroad.
• Abilene showed how a railhead could turn a Plains settlement into a centre of the cattle trade.
• Towns such as Ellsworth and Dodge City grew because railheads linked the cattle trade to eastern markets.
• In cow towns, cattle were penned, sold, and loaded onto trains for eastern markets.
• Cowboys were paid at the end of a cattle drive, and their spending in cow towns helped saloons, hotels, shops, gambling halls, blacksmiths, merchants and railway businesses to grow.
• Cow towns linked the Plains directly to the national market economy.
• Many cow towns became notorious for drinking, gambling, prostitution and gun violence because they expanded faster than local government and policing.
• Marshals and sheriffs introduced gun controls and firmer law enforcement in the 1870s.
• As marshals and sheriffs imposed firmer law enforcement, many cow towns became less chaotic and more settled.
• Cow towns declined when railroads spread further south and west, allowing ranchers to raise cattle on the Plains and use shorter drives instead of relying on Kansas railheads.
• The growth of fenced ranches weakened the old cattle-drive economy.
• In 1859, John W. Iliff showed that cattle could be raised successfully on the Plains.
• Plains ranching was cheaper than long drives from Texas because grass on the open range was free and railheads were closer.
• Iliff became very wealthy by selling beef to miners, railroad crews, and western towns.
• Other ranchers copied Iliff's example and placed huge herds on the Plains.
• In the open range system, cattle roamed across unfenced land and were identified by brands.
• Cowboys rounded up cattle for sorting, branding, and shipment.
• Wealthy owners and investors who controlled very large herds became known as cattle barons.
• Open range ranching treated Plains land, grass, and water as resources to be taken for profit.
• The rapid spread of ranching turned much of the Plains from Indigenous hunting land into commercial grazing land.
• Cattle competed with bison for pasture and water.
• Plains Indians depended heavily on bison for food, clothing, shelter, and trade.
• As cattle numbers rose and bison numbers fell, Indigenous communities lost a vital basis of their way of life.
• Ranchers often demanded military protection when conflict broke out with Plains Indians.
• Military protection for ranchers drew the US Army more deeply into Plains affairs.
• Attacks on Indigenous camps increased violence on the Plains.
• The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 was carried out by Colorado militia, not a regular US Army force.
• At Sand Creek, Cheyenne and Arapaho people, including many women and children, were killed.
• Events such as Sand Creek deepened mistrust and made later Plains wars more likely.
• Many Americans and Europeans were attracted to the Plains by the chance to own land under the Homestead Act or buy western land advertised by railroad companies.
• Life on the Plains was much harsher than the advertisements suggested.
• Homesteaders often arrived on isolated, treeless Plains grassland where many families built sod houses because timber was scarce.
• On the Plains, water, neighbours, shops, doctors and schools could be many miles away, especially for homesteaders living away from rivers and streams.
• On the Plains, extreme heat, bitter cold, strong winds, blizzards, prairie fires, drought and pests could destroy homes, crops and food supplies.
• The tough prairie sod was difficult to cut with ordinary ploughs.
• Because Plains farming income was uncertain, many homesteaders fell into debt or gave up.
• Nearly half of homestead claims were abandoned.
• New technology and farming methods made farming on the Plains more possible.
• The steel sod-buster plough could cut through thick grass roots, while wind pumps and deep drilling helped Plains families reach groundwater.
• Barbed wire, patented in 1874, let farmers fence land more cheaply and protect crops from wandering cattle.
• New crops such as Turkey Red wheat and dry farming methods helped some Plains farmers adapt to dry conditions.
• Even with new technology and farming methods, success for Plains homesteaders still depended on hard work, luck, and enough money to survive bad years.
• White settlement, railroad building, ranching, and mining all pushed into land used by Plains Indians.
• The US government made treaties when it needed peace and broke them when white economic interests became more important.
• Competition for land, water, hunting grounds, and travel routes made conflict on the Plains more likely.
• The destruction of the bison herds further weakened Indigenous independence.
• In 1851, the Dakota Sioux signed treaties with the United States government in Minnesota.
• Under the 1851 treaties, the Dakota Sioux gave up millions of acres in return for annuities, goods, and a reservation.
• After the 1851 treaties, white settlement in Minnesota grew quickly.
• The Dakota reservation in Minnesota became too small and unproductive to support the population properly.
• Corrupt Indian agents and traders in Minnesota delayed or stole Dakota payments and supplies.
• Hunger worsened in 1862 when promised annuities and food supplies did not arrive.
• After a small clash killed white settlers, Little Crow agreed to lead a wider uprising.
• Dakota warriors attacked settlements and army posts in Minnesota in August 1862.
• US forces eventually defeated the Dakota at Wood Lake.
• After Little Crow's War, 38 Dakota men were executed and many Dakota people were expelled from Minnesota.
• Little Crow's War showed how broken promises, land loss, and starvation could trigger conflict.
• In 1862, gold was discovered in Montana.
• Prospectors used the Bozeman Trail as a shortcut to the Montana goldfields.
• The Bozeman Trail crossed the Powder River country, which the Lakota regarded as their hunting land.
• To protect travellers, the US Army built forts along the Bozeman Trail in 1866.
• Red Cloud saw the Bozeman Trail forts as proof that the United States planned permanent occupation.
• Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fighters attacked forts, wagon trains, and soldiers.
• In December 1866, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fighters wiped out Fetterman's force near Fort Phil Kearny.
• Red Cloud's War showed that the US Army could not secure the Bozeman Trail at an acceptable cost.
• In the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the United States agreed to close the Bozeman Trail and abandon the forts.
• Red Cloud's War was a rare clear victory for Plains Indians.
• The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 recognised the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation and protected surrounding hunting land.
• In 1874, Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills and reported that gold was present.
• After Custer's 1874 expedition, thousands of miners entered the Black Hills illegally.
• The US government failed to keep the miners out and then tried to buy the Black Hills.
• Many Sioux leaders refused to sell land they considered sacred.
• In late 1875, the US government ordered all Sioux and Cheyenne bands to report to reservations by the end of January 1876.
• The January 1876 deadline was unrealistic because many Sioux and Cheyenne bands were away on winter hunts.
• Sioux and Cheyenne bands that did not return were treated as hostile.
• In 1876, Lakota and Cheyenne forces defeated Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
• The victory at the Little Bighorn shocked the United States, but it did not end the war.
• The US Army sent larger forces, attacked villages and food supplies, and kept up pressure through winter campaigning.
• After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull fled to Canada while Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877 and was later killed.
• In 1877, Congress forced the Sioux to give up the Black Hills.
• The Great Sioux War ended with further loss of Indigenous land and the destruction of effective armed resistance on the northern Plains.
• After the Plains Wars, most Plains tribes were forced onto reservations and could no longer move freely across the Plains.
• Forced reservation life ended the nomadic lifestyle on which tribes such as the Sioux and Cheyenne had depended.
• Reservation land was much smaller than traditional hunting grounds, often poor quality and unable to support the Plains peoples' former buffalo-hunting economy.
• Many Plains peoples had little experience of settled farming, so families who had once followed the buffalo often depended on US government rations and annuities.
• Corrupt reservation agents sometimes stole food or delayed rations, which increased hunger and resentment.
• Overcrowding, weak diets and poor sanitation made disease more common on reservations.
• The US government increasingly treated Native Americans as subjects of US law rather than members of independent nations.
• In 1871 the federal government stopped making treaties with tribes, showing that it no longer recognised them as separate nations.
• The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty had said that no more Sioux land could be taken without the agreement of three quarters of adult Sioux men.
• Despite the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, the US seized the Black Hills in 1877 without the agreement it had promised to obtain.
• In the 1880s, US-supervised tribal councils weakened the authority of traditional chiefs on reservations.
• From 1883, Courts of Indian Offences punished behaviour such as traditional ceremonies, taking power away from chiefs and medicine men.
• Indian police enforced reservation rules, and many Plains people saw them as agents of the government rather than defenders of the tribe.
• By 1885, serious offences on reservations could be tried in federal courts, which further reduced self-government.
• The US government tried to assimilate Native Americans by replacing tribal authority with obedience to US law.
• Education was a key part of the US government's policy of assimilating Native Americans.
• Native American children were sent to boarding schools or day schools where they were expected to speak English, adopt Christianity and abandon tribal customs.
• Many Native American children were taken far from their families, had their hair cut, clothes changed and names replaced to cut them off from tribal life.
• Native American pupils were punished for speaking their own language or practising tribal customs.
• Parents on reservations who resisted sending their children to assimilation schools could be threatened with the loss of rations.
• Even when Native American students adapted to school life, they still faced prejudice outside the reservation.
• The destruction of the buffalo herds was as important as the reservation system in breaking Plains peoples' independence.
• White hunters killed buffalo on a huge scale for hides, meat and sport, while railway companies encouraged buffalo hunting to feed passengers and clear tracks.
• Some US army officers supported buffalo slaughter because they knew it would make Plains resistance harder.
• By the mid-1880s the great buffalo herds had almost disappeared.
• Without buffalo, Plains peoples lost their main source of food, clothing, shelter and tools as well as an important part of Plains religion, culture and status.
• As buffalo numbers collapsed, more Plains Native Americans had little choice but to stay on reservations and depend on the US government.
• The end of buffalo hunting changed Plains gender roles because men could no longer gain status in the old warrior-hunter tradition and women's work with food and hides was transformed.
• Life on reservations transformed Native American work, diet, education, leadership and family life.
• By the 1880s many white Americans agreed that Native Americans should no longer live as separate Plains peoples.
• Some white Americans wanted assimilation, claiming Native Americans should become farmers, Christians and English speakers.
• Many other white Americans still supported harsh military control because they saw Native Americans as a threat.
• In the late nineteenth-century United States, humanitarian reformers criticised corruption and suffering on Native American reservations.
• Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor, published in 1881, exposed the government's broken promises to Native Americans.
• Many white reformers wanted assimilation rather than the survival of tribal independence, and groups such as the Indian Rights Association believed private farms and citizenship would 'civilise' Native Americans.
• The Dawes Act of 1887 aimed to break up tribal landholding and replace it with individual farms.
• Under the Dawes Act, heads of families could receive 160 acres, single adults 80 acres and children 40 acres.
• Land was allotted to individuals, not tribes, which weakened communal ownership and tribal authority.
• Under the Dawes Act, allotment was linked to the promise of US citizenship after a period of government control.
• Supporters of the Dawes Act said private farming would make Native Americans self-supporting.
• The federal government supported the Dawes Act because 'surplus' land left after allotment could be sold to white settlers and railroad companies.
• In 1889 the Great Sioux Reservation was split into smaller reservations and large areas of 'surplus' land were opened to settlement.
• The breakup of the Great Sioux Reservation in 1889 weakened the Sioux land base.
• Much allotted land was too dry, too small or too poor for successful farming, and many Native Americans lacked tools, seed, livestock and money.
• Some Native American families failed on their allotments, became even more dependent on government help, or were cheated or pressured into selling their land.
• By 1900, Native Americans had lost a huge amount of land through allotment and the sale of surplus land.
• The Dawes Act reduced Native American land, self-government and economic independence.
• Hardship on reservations in the late 1880s encouraged new religious movements such as the Ghost Dance.
• In 1889, Wovoka, a Paiute holy man, taught that the Ghost Dance would renew the world, restore the buffalo, return dead relatives and end white domination.
• Many Plains people adopted the Ghost Dance because they hoped it would end suffering and recover their lost way of life.
• Wovoka's message was peaceful, but white officials misunderstood the movement as a threat.
• Fear of the Ghost Dance led the US government to send more troops to reservations in 1890.
• Sitting Bull was killed in December 1890 when Indian police tried to arrest him because officials feared his influence.
• After Sitting Bull's death in December 1890, many of his followers joined Big Foot's Miniconjou Sioux band.
• US soldiers intercepted Big Foot's band at Wounded Knee Creek and tried to disarm them.
• At Wounded Knee, a shot was fired during the disarming, and US troops opened fire with rifles and Hotchkiss guns.
• Around 150 to 300 Sioux were killed at Wounded Knee, many of them women and children.
• Many white Americans welcomed the Wounded Knee massacre because they believed the 'Indian problem' had finally been solved.
• Wounded Knee is often seen as the end of organised armed resistance by Plains peoples.
• For Native Americans, Wounded Knee showed how far independence had been destroyed by military force, allotment and reservation control.
• After slavery ended, African Americans were citizens in law but still faced severe racism.
• Reconstruction effectively ended in 1877 when federal troops were withdrawn from the South, allowing white Democratic governments to regain control.
• After 1877, southern state governments restricted African American rights despite the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
• Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation in railway carriages, waiting rooms, schools, restaurants and other public places.
• Jim Crow laws claimed facilities could be separate but equal, but in practice black facilities were usually much worse.
• Under Jim Crow laws, black schools often had less money, fewer books, shorter terms and poorer buildings.
• In the post-Reconstruction South, poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidation stopped many African American men voting, so political citizenship existed in law but was often denied in practice.
• The Supreme Court strengthened segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
• In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that 'separate but equal' was constitutional, giving legal backing to Jim Crow.
• Most African Americans in the South remained poor after slavery ended, and falling cotton prices made life even harder for southern farmers in the late nineteenth century.
• Many African Americans became sharecroppers or tenant farmers on land owned by white landlords.
• Sharecropping kept many black families in a cycle of poverty and dependence because landlords controlled rent, tools and credit.
• Racist violence was used to enforce white control in the South.
• Lynching was murder without legal trial, often carried out by mobs that could torture, burn or hang victims.
• African Americans could be lynched for minor accusations, economic success or simply challenging white authority.
• Hundreds of lynchings took place in the 1890s, showing how weak legal protection really was.
• Federal action weakened the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s, but white supremacist terror did not disappear.
• Local mobs and racist groups continued to use threats and murder to uphold white supremacy.
• Northern states had fewer segregation laws, but African Americans there still faced job discrimination, poor housing and prejudice.
• Many African Americans in the North lived in overcrowded, lower-quality segregated neighbourhoods because of custom, poverty and discrimination in the housing market.
• African Americans usually got the worst paid and least secure jobs in northern towns and cities.
• Some African Americans tried to escape southern poverty and violence by moving west or north.
• About 40,000 Exodusters moved to Kansas in the late 1870s and early 1880s.
• Exodusters hoped Kansas would offer land, better wages, greater safety and the freedom symbolised by the Homestead Act.
• Many Exodusters were still poor after moving, but some achieved more independence than they had known in the South.
• Ida B. Wells became one of the most important critics of lynching in the 1890s.
• After three of her friends were lynched in Memphis in 1892, Ida B. Wells investigated mob violence and showed that lynching was often used to keep African Americans fearful.
• Ida B. Wells used journalism and speaking tours to expose racial violence in the United States and abroad.
• Booker T. Washington argued that African Americans should improve their position through education, hard work and economic self-help.
• At the Tuskegee Institute, Washington promoted vocational training as a practical route out of poverty.
• Supporters of Booker T. Washington admired his emphasis on self-improvement and economic progress, but critics said his approach accepted segregation too readily and did not challenge the loss of political rights strongly enough.
• The growth of a black middle class of teachers, ministers, doctors and lawyers by 1900 showed that some African Americans achieved progress within a society still shaped by racism and unequal opportunities.
• After 1877 the United States entered a period of rapid industrial growth.
• Railways linked raw materials, factories and markets across the country.
• Rich supplies of coal, iron, oil and other minerals helped industry expand quickly.
• New technology such as the Bessemer process and refrigeration helped production grow.
• Large corporations could raise huge sums of money by selling shares.
• Federal governments usually followed laissez-faire ideas and did little to regulate big business before 1900.
• In many industries, a small number of giant firms came to dominate the market.
• Some businessmen used horizontal integration to buy out rivals and reduce competition.
• Many businessmen used vertical integration to control raw materials, transport and production.
• Supporters called leading businessmen captains of industry because they created jobs and wealth.
• Critics called leading businessmen robber barons because they used ruthless methods to crush rivals and exploit workers.
• Andrew Carnegie built a huge steel business and used vertical integration to cut costs.
• John D. Rockefeller built Standard Oil into a near-monopoly through aggressive takeovers and price-cutting.
• The growth of big business showed how wealth and power were becoming concentrated in fewer hands.
• The number of large cities rose sharply in the late nineteenth century.
• Chicago became one of the fastest-growing cities in America.
• Chicago's position on rail and water routes made it a major centre of trade and industry.
• Chicago's population rose from about 300,000 in 1870 to around 1.7 million by 1900.
• Rapid urban growth increased demand for housing, transport, food and fuel.
• Cities offered jobs, but they also produced overcrowding, pollution and poor sanitation.
• Many working-class families lived in cramped tenements or subdivided housing.
• Fires, disease and polluted water were constant dangers in fast-growing cities.
• Chicago became the centre of the meat-packing industry.
• Cattle raised on the Plains were transported by rail to Chicago stockyards and slaughterhouses.
• Firms such as Armour and Swift used division of labour to process meat quickly and cheaply.
• Refrigerated railway cars helped Chicago meat reach markets across the country.
• Meat-packing showed how new transport, technology and mass production made big business possible.
• The open-range cattle industry was badly hit by the winter of 1886-87, known as the Great Die Up.
• Overstocking had already weakened cattle herds by leaving too little grass on the Plains.
• Extreme cold and deep snow then killed huge numbers of cattle.
• Many ranchers were ruined by the losses of 1886-87.
• After the Great Die Up of 1886-87, cattle ranching shifted towards smaller fenced ranches and better-bred herds.
• Barbed wire made it easier to fence land and control stock.
• The shift to smaller fenced ranches showed that western industries were becoming more organised and business-like.
• Millions of migrants were attracted to the United States by the promise of jobs, land and a better life.
• Steamships made transatlantic travel faster, cheaper and more regular than before.
• By the 1890s many new immigrants were coming from southern and eastern Europe.
• Large numbers of Italians, Poles and Russian Jews arrived during this period.
• Many immigrants entered through Ellis Island, which opened in 1892.
• At Ellis Island, officials checked arrivals for illness, criminal records and whether they were likely to become a public burden.
• Most immigrants who passed inspection at Ellis Island went on to cities where work was available.
• Immigrants helped supply the labour force needed by factories, railways and construction.
• Many newcomers formed ethnic neighbourhoods that preserved language, religion and culture.
• Some older-stock Americans resented new immigrants because of religion, language and competition for jobs.
• Hostility towards new immigrants in the late nineteenth century was known as nativism.
• The American Protective Association, founded in 1887, campaigned especially against Catholic immigrants.
• Chinese immigrants on the west coast faced especially harsh hostility and legal discrimination.
• Many Chinese migrants were confined to Chinatowns and excluded from many jobs and social settings.
• The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first major federal law to ban immigration from a specific nationality.
• Mass migration helped the US economy grow, but it also sharpened tensions over race, religion and national identity.

• Explain how land hunger, trade, security fears and Manifest Destiny drove American expansion between 1789 and 1900.
• Trace how the United States turned territorial claims into control through purchase, war, treaties, settlement and statehood.
• Connect westward expansion to the growth of cotton, the domestic slave trade and the spread of plantation slavery.
• Explain why each major territorial gain reopened arguments about slavery and political power.
• Analyse how short-term compromises over slavery and territory delayed but deepened sectional conflict.
• Trace how Indigenous sovereignty was reduced through treaties, court rulings, removal laws, military force and settlement.
• Compare Indigenous resistance and accommodation in response to American expansion.
• Analyse the consequences of removal for Cherokee, Creek and Seminole communities and for white settlers and slaveholders.
• Describe how Plains peoples organised leadership, economy, belief and family life without treating them as a single culture.
• Explain how horses, bison and mobility shaped life for Lakota and other Plains peoples.
• Compare motives, routes and risks for migrants moving to Oregon, California, Utah and the Rockies.
• Explain why Mormon settlement in Utah succeeded despite environmental and political difficulties.
• Distinguish between the experiences of miners, merchants, settlers and Indigenous peoples during the California and Pikes Peak gold rushes.
• Connect territorial expansion in the 1850s to the breakdown of compromise and the outbreak of the Civil War.
• Trace how Union war aims changed from preserving the Union to attacking slavery and recruiting African American soldiers.
• Analyse how emancipation, military service and constitutional change altered African American status during and after the Civil War.
• Explain why Reconstruction produced both political gains and continuing economic dependence for African Americans.
• Trace continuity and change in race relations from slavery to Black Codes, sharecropping, white supremacist violence and restricted voting rights.
• Trace how federal policies such as the Homestead Act and Pacific Railroad Act expanded settlement, private profit and federal control on the Plains.
• Analyse how railroads, telegraphs and land grants linked western settlement to national markets and government authority.