Understanding American History (Research Paper Sample)

Terms and Understanding of America’s History in 1800s NAME Course INSTITUTION DATE The Dawes Severalty Act, named after its creator, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes sought to allot pieces of land to American-Indians, and a possible grant of United States citizenship for those who lived separately from the tribe. Adopted in 1887, the Act’s objective demonstrated interests of lifting Native Americans out of poverty and consequent assimilation into the mainstream American society by the basis of establishing sustainable subsistence farming on the European-American model. Subsequent amendments to the Act achieved milestones of breaking-up tribal governments and communal land ownership and distribution in severalty to individual households of tribal members within the Indian reservations. The act enables the understanding of America’s land ownership history and the culmination of America’s efforts of reuniting Americans with non-Americans and development of early railroads. The Pullman national-wide strike of 1894 took place in Chicago with conflicts pitted to the American Railway Union, the government of the United States and the main railroads, where about 4000 company workers demonstrated to the wage reduction. Named after George Pullman, an industrialist who ostensibly created a model community in south side of Chicago, Illinois, the strike addressed wage cut and absence of democracy in Pullman town and the paternalistic control of the workers in his company. This led to the designation of Labor Day as a federal holiday in a bid to conciliate organized labor after the strike that oversaw appointment of a commission to study and analyse the causes of the 1894 strike. Also, the strike demonstrated the political craftsmanship between the republicans and democrats in Cleveland, more so between the North- Eastern pro-business wing and the southern and western populists, with the former showing prowess. Knights of Labor, led by Terrence Powderly and formed on December 28, 1869 represented the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor that sought to create room for negotiations and the general working conditions. Owing to the rapid economic and social transformations of 1800s, the labor organization acted as a labor union in their bid to uplift the social and cultural status of the general workers and to reject socialism and anarchism in the long run. Historically, the organization’s credibility is marked by their demand for 8-hour day working program, programs adopted by the majority of companies in United States to date, and in the promotion of ethics of republicanism among the producers. In a broader perspective, the organization brought about the aspects of sovereignty and rejected aristocracy and inherited power by establishing values that called liberty and unalienable rights. The main objective was to vilify corruption and promote independence in individual performance. The gilded age, coined by Mark Twain, satirized the social problems experienced in the United States between 1870s and 1900 emanating from a thin gold gilding as a result of expansive industrialization. Satirical as it was, and the fact that the American wages were above par in relation to other European countries, the rapid economic growth could not address abject poverty. An influx of European migration to the United States brought about an increasing labor force to work on rail roads and industries led to increased inequalities in the labor market with the factory system, mining and finance taking precedence. This resulted into two major national-wide depressions, the panic of 1873 and the panic of 1893 that brought about the increased social and political upheavals due to the disruption of the economic growth patterns and marginalization of some areas such as the south part of the United States after the civil war. Consequently, political landscapes and the rise of trade and labor unions came into place in a bid to control urban politics and the need to address dominant cultural issues such as prohibition, education, and racial ethnic groups and to economically uplift the economically devastated areas through tariffs and money supply (Mathews & Paul, 201). In the following picture dated 10th M...