Summary of U.S. Social History from 1790 to 1898 - SAT Subject Test in United States History

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant who arrived in America in 1848 and built one of the largest companies of the nineteenth century. He sold the Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan at the turn of the century and retired to a life of philanthropy. In his article Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie argues that it is the duty of the newly-made wealthy industrial class to redistribute their riches back to the poor. Carnegie focused his energy on educational institutions—particularly schools, libraries, research centers, and universities.

In the United States, during the Reconstruction Era, the South passed a series of Jim Crow laws, which were designed to resist the integration of freed slaves into the political and social process. Included amongst these was the Grandfather Clause and the Literary requirements, which imposed restrictions on who could vote and who could not. Both were designed to prevent blacks from voting. The poll tax was similarly designed to prevent African-Americans from voting. It required a small payment to be made in order to vote, which had the effect of disenfranchising African-Americans, Native Americans, and poor whites. Poll taxes were not deemed unconstitutional until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Dorothea Dix was a very famous female American activist who campaigned heavily for the humane and conscientious treatment of individuals with mental disabilities. She lobbied state and national institutions throughout the antebellum era and successfully created the first ever American insane asylums.

The Rough Riders is the name given to a volunteer cavalry organization that was organized by Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Leonard Wood during the Spanish-American War and the conflict for Cuban independence. They were one of several volunteer organizations that President McKinley set up to help remedy the deficiency of manpower available to the United States military—in the years following the Civil War there was a chronic shortage of men willing to serve in the armed forces. The group was mostly organized in the south and southwest, consisting of men and college-aged boys from Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Rough Riders were one of the few volunteer organizations to see action in the conflict, fighting in numerous battles, including the battle of San Juan Hill.

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law and decreed that the residents of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories could vote whether to enter the Union as free or slave states. In the immediate aftermath of the bill, large groups of both pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers moved to the Kansas Territory. For the next 6 years, Kansas saw a variety of violent conflicts and political maneuvers over the issue. Eventually, Kansas entered the Union as a free state in January of 1861, three months before the Civil War started at Fort Sumter.

Roger Williams was a puritan clergyman who came early to Massachusetts Bay Colony, in February of 1631. Almost instantly, Williams' radical egalitarian theology and politics aroused the ire of Boston's leading citizens. He became a complete separatist, advocating for the cutting off of the "true church" from the Church of England. Massachusetts Bay's leaders exiled Williams from Boston, and initially went north to the small Salem colony, but also had to leave there. Eventually, Williams went south to the are now known as Rhode Island, and established a colony truly based on religious freedom, and offered asylum there to any people fleeing religious persecution.

The “Five Civilized Tribes” were the Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw. They were so-called by European settlers and the citizens of the early American republic because they were willing to adopt European customs and maintained generally peaceful relations with the settlers. The Lakota tribe resided in what is now modern day North and South Dakota and throughout the nineteenth century fought occasional conflicts with the United States Army.

The Trail of Tears is the name usually given to the forced relocation of several Native American populations from the Southeastern United States to what is now Oklahoma. It followed the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson. Many Native Americans suffered from disease and starvation during the trail, hence the name “Trail of Tears.”

The doubling of the U.S. population from 1790 to 1820 was primarily the result of reproduction. It was not until after the early 1820s that immigration numbers began to dramatically increase.

During the 19th century, the Germans and the Irish were the largest immigrant populations in the United States. The Irish Potato Famine during the 1840s led to an increase in the already high Irish immigration numbers, and the 1848 revolutions in Germany led to an even greater increase in the already higher German immigration numbers. From 1840-1880 Germany supplied the greatest number of immigrants to the United States.

All four of these were social reform movements that began in the period before the American Civil War. Other reforms during the antebellum period include prison reforms, mental hospital reforms, education reforms, Protestant revivalism, and more.