4.4 Westward Expansion, Native American Resistance & the Second Industrial Revolution

Westward Expansion, Native American Resistance & the Second Industrial Revolution

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States underwent a profound economic and spatial transformation. Settlers, stimulated by federal legislation and continental railroad lines, surged into the Great Plains and the Far West, displacing indigenous nations whose ancestral cultures were intimately bound to the land. Simultaneously, the nation experienced the Second Industrial Revolution, evolving from an agrarian society into the world's preeminent industrial manufacturing power. While corporate titans amassed unprecedented fortunes, millions of industrial laborers, rural homesteaders, and displaced Native Americans contended with the turbulent realities of the Gilded Age.

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Manifest Destiny and Territorial Expansion

The philosophical foundation for nineteenth-century territorial expansion was the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Coined in 1845 by newspaper editor John L. O'Sullivan, the term expressed the popular belief that the United States was divinely ordained by Providence to expand its democratic institutions, capitalist economy, and Protestant Anglo-Saxon civilization across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

Continental Territorial Acquisitions

Between 1845 and 1853, the United States acquired over a million square miles through annexation, international treaties, and armed conquest:

• Texas Annexation (1845): After winning independence from Mexico in 1836, the Republic of Texas sought admission into the United States. Congress annexed Texas by joint resolution in December 1845, provoking the Mexican government to sever diplomatic ties over disputed border boundaries between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande.
• The Oregon Treaty (1846): Under the expansionist administration of President James K. Polk, the United States resolved a longstanding joint occupation dispute with Great Britain. Despite aggressive Democratic campaign slogans demanding "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!", Polk negotiated a treaty dividing the Pacific Northwest along the 49th parallel, securing modern Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
• The Mexican-American War and the Mexican Cession (1846–1848): Following border skirmishes along the Rio Grande, Congress declared war on Mexico in May 1846. American military forces commanded by Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott captured Mexico City in September 1847. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848):
  1. Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas.
  2. Mexico ceded over 500,000 square miles—the Mexican Cession, encompassing present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.
  3. The United States paid Mexico $15 million and assumed $3.25 million in claims by American citizens against Mexico.
• The California Gold Rush (1849): The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in January 1848 brought over 300,000 migrants ("Forty-Niners") to California, accelerating its application for statehood and prompting the Compromise of 1850.
• The Gadsden Purchase (1853): The U.S. purchased a 29,670-square-mile strip of land in southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico for $10 million to facilitate construction of a southern transcontinental railroad route.

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Federal Settlement Policies and the Transcontinental Railroad

During the Civil War, the Republican-controlled Congress enacted legislation designed to integrate the western territories into the national commercial economy.

The Homestead Act of 1862

Signed by President Lincoln, the Homestead Act of 1862 offered 160 acres of surveyed public land to any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who was the head of a family and had never borne arms against the United States. Settlers paid a small registration fee and were required to live on the land, construct a dwelling, and cultivate and improve the acreage for five years to receive full legal title. The act prompted hundreds of thousands of native-born Americans, European immigrants, single women, and African Americans fleeing Southern racial terror (known as "Exodusters") to settle on the Great Plains.

The Transcontinental Railroad and Immigrant Labor

The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 chartered two corporate enterprises to build the nation's first continuous transcontinental rail line:

• The Central Pacific Railroad began construction in Sacramento, California, building eastward over the granite cliffs of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The Central Pacific's workforce was 80% to 90% Chinese immigrant laborers, who performed perilous labor handling nitroglycerin explosives, carving mountain tunnels, and enduring brutal winter avalanches while receiving lower wages than white workers.
• The Union Pacific Railroad built westward from Omaha, Nebraska, laying track across the Great Plains. Its workforce was composed primarily of Irish immigrants, former Union and Confederate soldiers, and African Americans.

On May 10, 1869, the two rail lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah, where a ceremonial golden spike was driven to mark the railroad's completion. The transcontinental railroad transformed the national economy, cutting cross-country travel time from six months to six days, stimulating commercial agriculture, and accelerating the settlement of the West.

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The Plains Wars, Native American Dispossession, and Assimilation

The construction of railroads and the influx of white homesteaders, miners, and cattle ranchers directly threatened the nomadic cultures of Native American nations on the Great Plains, including the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa.

Ecological Warfare: Extermination of the Buffalo

The traditional nomadic lifestyle of the Plains Indians centered entirely on the American bison (buffalo), which supplied meat for food, hides for clothing and tepees, sinews for bowstrings, and bones for tools. Recognizing this dependence, the federal government and U.S. Army actively encouraged the systematic slaughter of buffalo herds by commercial hide hunters and railroad passengers. Between 1870 and 1883, the Great Plains buffalo population plummeted from an estimated 30 million to fewer than 1,000, destroying the economic foundation of Plains Indian culture and leaving tribes with little choice but to relocate to government reservations.

Major Military Conflicts

• Sand Creek Massacre (1864): Colorado territory militia under Colonel John Chivington attacked a peaceful camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho who had negotiated peace terms, butchering over 150 women, children, and elderly men.
• Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876): Following the discovery of gold in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, the U.S. government ordered the Lakota Sioux to abandon their treaty-guaranteed lands. In June 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry into an ambush near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. Over 2,000 Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors led by Crazy Horse and inspired by Sitting Bull completely surrounded and wiped out Custer and all 260 men under his direct command. While a monumental indigenous victory, the battle prompted swift federal military retaliation that forced tribes onto reservations.
• Wounded Knee Massacre (1890): In 1890, the Ghost Dance movement spread across western reservations. Originating with the Paiute prophet Wovoka, the spiritual movement promised that performing the sacred dance would bring back ancestors, restore the buffalo, and cause white settlers to disappear. Fearing an armed uprising, federal authorities dispatched the reconstituted 7th Cavalry to disarm a band of Miniconjou Lakota led by Chief Big Foot. On December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, a shot was fired during disarmament, and soldiers unleashed rapid-fire Hotchkiss artillery guns, slaughtering nearly 300 Lakota men, women, and children. Wounded Knee marked the tragic end of four centuries of armed Native American military resistance on the North American continent.

Forced Cultural Assimilation and the Dawes Act

With armed resistance broken, federal policy shifted toward aggressive cultural assimilation designed to eradicate indigenous identity:

• The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 (General Allotment Act): Designed to destroy communal tribal identity, the act dissolved tribal ownership of reservation lands, dividing communal reservations into individual family parcels (160 acres to household heads, 80 acres to single adults). Indigenous individuals who accepted allotments and adopted "the habits of civilized life" were granted U.S. citizenship. Remaining reservation lands not allotted to tribal members were declared "surplus" and sold by the federal government to white settlers, land speculators, and railroad corporations. Between 1887 and 1934, Native American landholdings plummeted from 138 million acres to just 48 million acres—a catastrophic loss of nearly two-thirds of their remaining territorial base.
• Indian Boarding Schools: The federal government funded off-reservation boarding schools, spearheaded by the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, founded in 1879 by Richard Henry Pratt, whose philosophy was "Kill the Indian, and Save the Man." Native children were forcibly removed from their families, had their traditional hair shorn, were stripped of indigenous clothing, were punished for speaking their native languages, and were forced to adopt English names, Christianity, and manual trades.

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The Second Industrial Revolution and Corporate Capitalism

Between 1870 and 1914, the United States underwent the Second Industrial Revolution, propelled by breakthroughs in heavy industry, communication, and energy.

Technological Innovations

• The Bessemer Process: Developed by Henry Bessemer, this technique injected air into molten iron to burn off impurities, enabling the cheap, mass production of steel. Stronger and more flexible than iron, steel formed the rails of transcontinental railroads, structural girders for urban skyscrapers, and cables for suspension bridges.
• Petroleum and Refining: Following Edwin Drake's successful 1859 oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, petroleum refining expanded rapidly, producing kerosene for lamps and lubricants for industrial machinery.
• Electricity: Thomas Edison patented the incandescent light bulb in 1879 and established the first central power station on Pearl Street in New York City (1882). Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse pioneered alternating current (AC) electrical transmission, enabling electric power to travel hundreds of miles to illuminate cities and operate electric factory machinery around the clock.

Corporate Titans and Business Consolidation

Industrial expansion encouraged the formation of powerful corporate monopolies and trusts led by visionary, ruthless entrepreneurs known as "Captains of Industry" by admirers and "Robber Barons" by critics:

• Andrew Carnegie (Carnegie Steel): Carnegie pioneered vertical integration, a business model in which a single corporation controls every operational phase of the production process—from raw material extraction to finished distribution. Carnegie purchased iron ore mines in Minnesota, coal fields in Pennsylvania, Great Lakes transport ships, railroads, and massive blast furnaces in Pittsburgh, eliminating middleman profits and producing steel at costs competitors could not match.
• John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil): Rockefeller dominated petroleum refining through horizontal integration, a strategy where a company acquires, merges with, or bankrupts competing firms operating at the same stage of production. By using predatory pricing and negotiating secret railroad freight rebates, Standard Oil absorbed competitors until controlling over 90% of U.S. oil refining capacity. In 1882, Rockefeller pioneered the corporate trust, an arrangement where stockholders in multiple companies transferred shares to a single board of trustees who managed the entire industry, establishing a virtual monopoly.
• J. Pierpont Morgan: The preeminent investment banker of the Gilded Age, Morgan financed industrial consolidation. In 1901, Morgan purchased Carnegie Steel for $480 million and merged it with competing steel mills to establish the United States Steel Corporation, the world's first billion-dollar corporation.

Ideological Rationalizations of Wealth

• Social Darwinism: Intellectuals like Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner misapplied Charles Darwin's biological theories of natural selection to human society. They argued that economic competition was a struggle for the "survival of the fittest," asserting that immense wealth demonstrated superior individual talent while poverty was the natural outcome of individual laziness or weakness. Social Darwinists vigorously opposed government business regulation and public welfare.
• The Gospel of Wealth (1889): In an influential essay, Andrew Carnegie argued that while economic inequality was an inevitable byproduct of industrial capitalism, wealthy elites held a moral obligation to act as "trustees" for their surplus wealth. Carnegie asserted that millionaires should distribute their fortunes during their lifetimes for the public good by funding enduring institutions like universities, public libraries (funding over 2,500 libraries worldwide), and concert halls, while firmly rejecting direct charity or wage increases.

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Industrial Labor, Urban Tenements, and Labor Strikes

While corporate profits soared, working-class Americans experienced harsh industrial realities. Factory laborers typically worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, in poorly lit, unventilated, and hazardous workplaces with no health insurance, overtime pay, or workers' compensation for injuries. By 1900, over 1.7 million children under age 16 worked in factories, coal breakers, and textile mills for wages far lower than adult men. In cities, working families lived in overcrowded, unventilated, and unsanitary dumbbell tenements documented by photojournalist Jacob Riis in his 1890 work How the Other Half Lives.

The Rise of Organized Labor

To counter the power of industrial corporations, workers formed national labor unions:

• The Knights of Labor (founded 1869): Led by Terence V. Powderly, the Knights pursued a broad vision of industrial democracy. The union welcomed all "producers"—skilled and unskilled laborers, women, and African Americans (though excluding Chinese immigrants, bankers, and lawyers). The Knights campaigned for an 8-hour workday, the abolition of child labor, equal pay for women, and worker-owned cooperative factories.
• The American Federation of Labor (AFL, founded 1886): Led by Samuel Gompers, the AFL adopted a pragmatic philosophy known as "bread-and-butter unionism." Unlike the Knights, the AFL was an alliance of craft unions composed strictly of skilled white male workers. Gompers rejected utopian political reforms, focusing narrowly on tangible workplace improvements: higher wages, an 8-hour workday, and safer working conditions achieved through collective bargaining and strikes.

Landmark Labor Conflicts

Employer hostility, wage reductions, and government intervention provoked explosive industrial strikes during the Gilded Age:

• The Great Railroad Strike of 1877: When major rail lines slashed wages for the third time in a year, railroad workers in West Virginia launched a spontaneous strike that halted rail traffic nationwide. Rioting erupted in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Chicago. In response, President Rutherford B. Hayes deployed federal troops to suppress the strike, setting a precedent of executive intervention on behalf of corporate management.
• The Haymarket Affair (1886): During a nationwide strike for the 8-hour workday in Chicago, a peaceful labor rally at Haymarket Square was dispersed by police when an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb, killing seven police officers. Eight anarchist labor leaders were convicted of conspiracy despite a lack of evidence. Public hysteria associated the labor movement with violent radicalism, precipitating the rapid collapse of the Knights of Labor.
• The Homestead Strike (1892): When Carnegie Steel's manager Henry Clay Frick slashed wages at the Homestead plant near Pittsburgh, union steelworkers struck. Frick locked out workers and hired 300 armed Pinkerton detectives to protect strikebreakers. A pitched gun battle erupted along the Monongahela River, killing nine workers and three Pinkertons. The Pennsylvania governor deployed 8,000 state militiamen to protect the plant, effectively crushing the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.
• The Pullman Strike (1894): During the Panic of 1893, railcar manufacturer George Pullman slashed wages by 25% while refusing to lower rents in his company-owned town of Pullman, Illinois. Eugene V. Debs led the American Railway Union in a nationwide sympathy boycott, refusing to handle any train carrying Pullman sleeping cars. When the strike paralyzed national rail commerce, President Grover Cleveland secured a sweeping federal court injunction under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and dispatched federal troops to Chicago under the pretext of ensuring the delivery of U.S. mail. Debs was jailed for contempt of court, the strike was broken, and federal injunctions became a potent legal weapon to suppress future labor strikes.