Final American history

1. Define the term  “Bleeding Kansas”,  and in at least 5-6 substantive sentences explain its significance in pre-Civil War America (in the course of your explanation, you should bring in specific examples from lecture and OB).

The battle between the proslavery territorial government and antislavery forces only got worse after John Brown’s actions. Each side blamed the other; pro-slavery people felt that antislavery forces were out, at any cost, to get them; antislavery forces felt exactly the same way and any potential future statehood bill was put on hold. “Bleeding Kansas” as it came to be known, symbolized the growing sectional tensions in the country.

2. Define the term  Emancipation Proclamation  and in at least 5-6 substantive sentences explain its significance in Civil War America (in the course of your explanation, you should bring in specific examples from lecture and OB).

As a result, Radical Republicans were able to gain increasing support in Congress. Lincoln, an astute politician, realized the changing sentiments in the North and grabbed on. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced his intention to sign an executive order freeing all slaves in the Confederacy and in January 1863, he did just that by signing the Emancipation Proclamation and freeing all slaves in the Confederacy except in those regions already under Union control: Tennessee, western Virginia, and southern Louisiana, where slavery would be allowed to continue.

3. Define the term  Ku Klux Klan,  and in at least 5-6 substantive sentences explain its significance in Reconstruction America (in the course of your explanation, you should bring in specific examples from lecture and OB, as well as DBM #9).

This is a video showing the reconstruction of Tennessee. The episode begins with a song with words on the screen talking about slaves being enslaved, then freed then enslaved. A female narrator begins narrating, and she talks about President Abraham Lincoln as a republican. A male voice imitates Lincoln addressing the public. Johnson makes a speech after being in office, after the death of Lincoln. Johnson was against the African Americans being freed as slaves. Johnson did not want the African Americans to be treated equally with the whites.

The video talks about the Ku Klux clan, which was racist as well. The Ku Klux Klan, even after the clan disintegrated, the African Americans were still degraded. The video contains different opinions of people. Its primary focus is on slavery, as shown when the episode begins. The video ends with the African American community escaping and beginning a life somewhere else, supporting each other.

According to the video, the Ku Klux Klan was a hate group in America, which was an American white supremacist hate group. The main target of the Ku Klux Klan was the African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan advocated for extremist positions such as anti-immigration, white nationalism, amongst others. The Ku Klux Klan physically assaulted and murdered African Americans, together with their friends, who were active politically. The Ku Klux Klan was active during the late 1860s. Near 1872, the Ku Klux Klan was disintegrated; this, however, was not the end of the African Americans being prosecuted and mistreated.

4. Define the term  “Anti-Chinese Sentiment” , and in at least 5-6 substantive sentences explain its significance in post-Civil War America and beyond (in the course of your explanation, you should bring in specific examples from lecture (particularly the two illustrations about the Chinese in Lecture 10) and OB).

Similarly, immigrants also came from countries like Mexico, Japan and China, in the hopes of creating a better life and these non-white settlers also found times were difficult in the west. These groups were often marginalized because of their race and ethnicity, but none more so than the Chinese. The Chinese came over around the same time as the Europeans were coming over in the mid-19th century. China was an incredibly impoverished country at this time and many Chinese immigrated in the hope of finding something better. After the gold rush hit in the late 1840s, the Chinese began immigrating in large numbers and by 1880, “more than 200,000 Chinese had settled in the United States, mostly in California where they constituted nearly a tenth of the population.”14 Most Chinese came to work in the mines and were seen, early on, by white settlers as industrious and hard-working. But as it became clear that the Chinese were proving to be even more hard-working and industrious than themselves, whites began to view the Chinese in a hostile, racist manner. White settlers quickly came to resent Chinese miners and this view soon made it into the state legislature. For example, in 1852, California’s legislature began taxing Chinese and other non-white miners in an attempt to get them out of the mines, quickly driving the Chinese, as well as other minority groups like Mexicans, out of prospecting. Since the Chinese could no longer get mining jobs, they began pursuing employment in agriculture and with the railroad construction companies. By the 1870s, over half of California’s agricultural workers were Chinese, and when work on the transcontinental railroad began in 1865, scores of Chinese immigrants began work on building this railroad, proving to labor managers their hard-working and industrious nature. But the working conditions on the railroad lines were horrible and dangerous and in 1866, Chinese workers went on strike for better working conditions and fairer compensation. The railroad managers were not sympathetic and the strike ultimately failed. Those Chinese who stayed on as employees were forced to accept awful wages and conditions. And in 1869 when the construction of the transcontinental railroad was completed, thousands of Chinese were out of work. This effectively pushed Chinese immigrants into big cities, where they created their own communities, culture and work. As their communities gained strength, numbers, and a viable economy, whites’ hostility to the Chinese resurfaced and was expressed in legislation against the Chinese like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which stopped Chinese immigration to the US for ten years and prohibited the naturalization of those Chinese citizens already here. Similarly, hostility was expressed through violence, such as the invasion of Chinatown in Rock Springs, Wyoming. This goes back to what I said last time about racism coming from fear of losing one’s social, political and economic power/status.