A New South and a New West

1
A New South and a New West

• Colonial Economics Race in Post-Bellum America,
  1865-1914

2
The New South

• Focus on Industrial Production along side of
  agriculture
• Major industries were textiles (by 1920 more
  cloth produced in south than new England),
  Tobacco (9/10s of U. S. Cigarette Production by
  1904), Coal (4.6 million tons in 186049.3
  million by 1900), Iron/Steel, and Lumber.

3
Notice anything about these industries?

• Extractive
• Most value added outside of region
• Part of Colonial EconomicsPittsburgh Plus
• Both south and west were incorporated in to U. S.
  Capitalist nexus but on terms that harmed the
  environment and altered lifeways.

4
Henry GradyApostle of the New South
The Old South rested everything on slavery and
agriculture, unconscious that these could neither
give nor maintain healthy growth. The New South
presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs
leading in the popular movements social system
compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the
surface but stronger at the core - a hundred
farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every
palace, and a diversified industry that meets the
complex needs of this complex age. --Henry
Grady, 1886
5
Reality of New South

• Racism compelled segregation
• Farm Tenancy rates averaged 60 in lower south
• Crop Lien system was especially noxious, but
  seemingly the only available response to the lack
  of cash or credit.

6
Bourbon Redeemers

• Conservative folk who wielded power locally and
  had ties to northern capital
• Retrenchment(public school per pupil
  expenditures fell from 10.27 in 1870 to 7.63 in
  1890)
• Convict Leasing system is poster child for
  retrenchment policy (David Oshinsky, Worse than
  Slavery).

7
Disfranchisement Segregation

• Didnt happen all at once but key decade proved
  to be 1890s.
• New Constitutions and Vote Dilutionary Devices
  reduced black voting (and poor white too) to less
  than 4 of eligible total.
• Railroad Cars were the real contested terrain
  --led to Plessey doctrine of Separate but equal.

8
Rise of Lynching

• No Federal Law Enforcement
• 1890 to 1899187.5 lynchings per year82 in the
  South (blacks were 67.8 of the victims.
• 1900 to 190992.5 lynchings per year92 in the
  South (blacks were 88.6 of the victims)

9
Benefits of Segregation

• Separate African American Schools and Churches
• African American Leadership class
• Doctrine of uplift

10
Major African American LeadersIda B. Wells,
Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois
11
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)

• Journalist and Educator in Memphis
• Had to expatriate to New York
• Led nationwide Anti-Lynching Crusade

12
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

• Atlanta Compromisework first, rights later
• Tuskegee Institute
• Actively challenged Alabamas 1901 Constitution
  which disfranchised blacks.

13
W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963)

• David Levering Lewis is his best biographer
• Agitation for Political Rights
• Helped form NAACP
• Eventually became a socialist and emigrated to
  Ghana

14
Dominant White View in North and South

• It is necessary that this principle
  (segregation) be applied in every relation of
  southern life. God all mighty drew the color
  line and it cannot be obliterated. The Negro
  must stay on his side of the line and the white
  man must stay on his side, and the sooner both
  races recognize this fact and accept it, the
  better it will be for both.
• Richmond Times, Jan. 12, 1900

15
Post-Civil War West

• Incorporation and colonial economics
  characterized the structural changes for the
  west.
• Native People were placed on reservations, most
  by 1876
• West became locus for enclaves of non-English
  European immigrants, as well as Exodusters from
  Kentucky and Tennessee

16
Las Gorras Blancas

• Throughout west, indigenous people resisted
  Gringoization
• Major loss was of ejidos and other communal
  rights, some that were supposed to be guaranteed
  by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
• In San Miguel County, New Mexico, las gorras
  blancas , led by Juan Jose Herrera, cut fences,
  burned railroad ties, created other impediments
  to market, capitalist, gringo nexus.

17
From Sand Creek to Wounded Knee

• Sand Creek Massacre led to Plains Wars that ended
  in 1867
• Washita Massacre in 1868 renewed wars
• Completion of Railroads gave U. S. Army
  (including the Buffalo Soldiers) advantage over
  indians
• Battle of Little Big Horn (June 1876) was last
  hurrah for Native Peoples
• Geronimo and Chiricuhua were on reservations by
  1886
• Wovoka and Ghost Dance spread among reservations
• Army over-reaction led to Wounded Knee Massacre
  of December 1890

18
Geronimo (1829-1909)
19
Do-Gooders Do In the Indians

• Churches selected Indian Agentsin name of
  moralitywho tried to make Methodist sod-busters
  out of Indians. This is how Nathan Cooke Meeker
  got to Colorado
• Goverment abuses of Indians were chronicled by
  Helen Hunt Jackson (A Century of Dishonor)
• Dawes Severalty Act (1887)160 acres to Indian
  familiescontrary to tribal, collective ethic,
  and most of the available land was not conducive
  to productive agriculture.

20
Cattle Culture

• Cattle raised on public domain for free were
  driven to points adjacent to railroadsfirst sold
  to railroad crews and later shipped for slaughter
  in Chicago
• Barbed Wire led to range wars and range law and
  fence law disputes

21
Other Features of the West

• Westering Women and rural isolation
• Railroads did as much as Homestead Act of 1862
  promoted western settlement (474 million acres of
  public domain placed in private hands by both.)
• Other important governmental policies and the
  west Morrill Land Grant College Actag.
  Experiment stations Transcontinental Railroad
  Legislation1862.

22
Frederick Jackson Turner and The Significance of
the Frontier in American History (1893)

• Rightly focused on importance of west, but got
  everything else wrong
• Affected consciousness of U. S. Elites If the
  west was source of the rugged, frontier
  individualism and the west was gone, what would
  happen to American values.
• Popularity of sports and dime novelsNed
  Buntline, for example

23
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932)