The Development of Great Plains

• How and why did Republicans create an integrated economy during and after the civil war? 
• In what ways did farming mining and ranching shape 

Incorporating the West 

• Land Acts: Homestead Act (1862)
  • Land to those willing to move west and improve the property 
• Morrill Act (1862)
  • Allowed states to sell land and use $ for colleges and universities 
• Mining Empires 
  • Comstock Lode -- Nevada 
  • Timber industries grew in the NW -- altered the environment 
• Cattlemen on the Plains 
  • Cattle Ranches 
    • Long Drive -- herding cattle hundreds of miles north to RRs to sell 
    • Barbed wire allowed farmers to abandon the Long Drive 
    • Blizzard of 1886 - 1887 left many cowboys broke 

The Republican Vision 

• During Civil War: rigorous of federal power 
  • Hindered by 1873 depression, just like Reconstruction 
• The New Union and the World 
  • Looks towards Asia, Latin America (1894)
• …