Industrial capitalism brought wealth and it brought poverty; it created owners and investors and it created employees. But whether winners or losers in the new economy, all Americans reckoned in some way with their new industrial world.
While the Gilded Age seem like a distant past it built the U.S. and shaped the way the country was built. The modern era lives in the reminiscence of the gilded age. Both era’s brought great wealth and poverty.
When local police forces would not or could not suppress the strikes, governors called out state militias to break them and restore rail service
I believe calling in the militia added fuel to the strikes. I believe that people would have eventually calmed down. That “Robber Baron’s” and Union heads would worked out a deal. The militia killed people who weren’t involved. That turned from a rail worker problem to an everyone problem.
Black farmers often turned to sharecropping
Sharecropping was slavery lite. In the sense that while the were “paid” they still were under the same harsh conditions as before.
Black delegates actively participated in revising state constitutions. One of the most significant accomplishments of these conventions was the establishment of a public school system.
I believe that the black delegates tried there best to create a space for newly freed Africans. To make sure laws reflected the nations they wished to live in. Also creating a public school system after not being able to access to reading was a amazing feat.
Many southern governments enacted legislation that reestablished antebellum power relationships. South Carolina and Mississippi passed laws known as Black Codes to regulate Black behavior and impose social and economic control.
This passage shows how committed the south was to restoring the life that the were use to having. The used laws to enact the old was of the south, it was a new era of salvery. If not in name but in action.