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76. What is "the Gold Rush" and what states are famous for it?
The Gold Rush was a period in American history marked by mass hysteria concerning a gold discovery in Northern California. The period is also marked by mass migrations into California by people, almost exclusively men, seeking an easy fortune. Although few of them struck it rich, their presence was an important stimulus to economic growth. Agriculture, commerce, transportation, and industry grew rapidly to meet the needs of the settlers; mining, too, soon became big business as corporations replaced the individual prospector.
Portuguese Flat, California, was a mining camp of the early 1850s during the California Gold Rush, consisting largely of Portuguese miners, located about 35 miles north of Redding.
Gold was also discovered in Alaska in the 1870s
77. What name is used to refer to the people who went to California to look for gold during the Gold Rush?
forty-niners
The 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in California lured thousands of gold seekers, known as Forty-Niners, to the West. They flocked to California in 1849. Reportedly, there were about forty thousand of them. .
78. When did the war between the North and the South take place? 1861-1865.
79. What were the causes of the Civil War?
The question of slavery was being debated. The industrial North wanted the agricultural South to abolish slavery. 1861 – 11 states left the Union and proclaimed themselves an independent nation – The Confederate States of America. The Civil War has begun.
80. Comment on the terms "Confederate states" and "Union states".
The Confederate States of America (CSA, also known as the Confederacy) was the political entity originally formed on February 4, 1861 by Southern slave states.
81. What was the decisive battle of the Civil War? The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), fought in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of the Gettysburg Campaign, was the largest battle ever fought in North America, and is generally considered to be the turning point of the American Civil War.
82. Comment on the term "the Gettysburg Address".
The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech, was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863, four and one-half months after the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Although Lincoln's carefully crafted address was secondary to other presentations that day, it ultimately was regarded as one of the great speeches in American history. By invoking the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln redefined the Civil War as not merely a struggle for Union, but instead as "a new birth of freedom" for the United States and its people.
83. What are the names of the generals that led the Union troops and the Confederate troops during the Civil War?
Ulysses Simpson Grant (The Union States), Robert E. Lee (The Confederacy).
84. When was slavery abolished? Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
85. What happened during the Period of Reconstruction?
Reconstruction was the period after the American Civil War when the southern states of the defeated Confederacy, which had seceded from the United States, were reintegrated into the Union. The destructiveness of the Union invasion and defeat of the South, attacks on civilian targets and destruction of infrastructure, followed by exploitive economic policies in the defeated region after the war, caused lasting bitterness among Southerners toward the U.S. government. Abraham Lincoln had endorsed a lenient plan for reconstruction, but the immense human cost of the war and the social changes wrought by it led Congress to resist readmitting the rebel states without first imposing preconditions. A series of laws, passed by the Federal government, established the conditions and procedures for reintegrating the southern states.
Much of the impetus for Reconstruction involved the question of civil rights for the freed slaves in the southern states. In response to efforts by southern states to deny civil rights to the freed slaves, Congress enacted a civil rights act in 1866 (and again in 1875). This led to conflict with President Andrew Johnson, who vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866; however, his veto was overridden. This failure of the federal government to effectively reunite the country contributed to the government's failure for many decades to enforce the civil rights of the formerly enslaved African-Americans in the South.
During the period of Reconstruction there was considerable upheaval in southern society. Northerners who moved south to participate in Southern governments; were called carpetbaggers by southerners, and were widely perceived as being motivated by graft and corruption, while locals who participated in these governments were called scalawags. Republicans took control of all state governorships and state legislatures, often installing blacks into positions of power. These events led to the formation of the original Ku Klux Klan, in 1866; but it lasted for only three years.
Three constitutional amendments were passed in the wake of the Civil War: the thirteenth, which abolished slavery; the fourteenth, which granted civil rights to African Americans; and the fifteenth, which extended the franchise to freed citizens. The fourteenth amendment was opposed by the southern states, and as a precondition of readmission to the Union, they were required to accept it (or the fifteenth after passage of the fourteenth).
All Southern states were readmitted by 1870, but Reconstruction continued until 1877.
The end of Reconstruction essentially marked the demise of the brief period of civil rights for African Americans. Within a few years after Reconstruction ended, the South created a segregated society, with whites and blacks going their own ways, and with whites in firm political control.
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