Cattle towns are settlements thats existence depended on the trade in free-range cattle. These cowtowns provided facilities for the herds driven up from the south their sale, their transportation to urban meatpackers, to midwestern cattle feeders, or to the ranchers of the Central and Northern Plains. While their main commodity was cattle, horses destined for ranch use provided an important secondary profit. Although Ogallala, Nebraska, was also a noted cattle town, the most famous were those of post–Civil War Kansas, each served by a trail from Texas. The first was Abilene, organized as a market for Texas stock in 1867. It flourished until farmers overran its outer ranges, ending its access to the trail. Ellsworth and Wichita then assumed …show more content…
roles as major cattle towns. From 1872 through 1875 these two–urged on by rival railroads–competed for the trade. Ultimately, rural settlement closed them both. Dodge City became a cattle town in 1876. A severe drought, temporarily retarding the advance of the agricultural frontier, extended its life as a Texas cattle market until 1885. Caldwell flourished from 1880 through 1885. Kansas finally closed its borders to direct importation of Texas cattle, ending the careers of both Dodge and Caldwell. Local politics at the cattle towns tended to center on conflict between critics and defenders of the cattle trade.
Critics consisted of two groups. Farmers feared trampled crops and the fatal effects of "Texas fever" on domestic livestock. Many townspeople opposed the saloons, professional gambling, and prostitution apparently required by cattlemen and off-duty cowboys. Businessmen invariably closed ranks against outlying farmers but tended to factionalize on moral reform. Three political positions emerged. Traditionalists fond of a lingering frontier ambience resisted all change. Moderate reformers, mainly leading business and professional men, favored ameliorative measures: multiple police officers to enforce tough gun control laws, thus ensuring that good order accompanied commercial sin; monthly tax assessments on saloonkeepers, gamblers, and prostitutes to help finance close police supervision (police salaries typically constituted a town's largest budget item); and, as far as possible, the segregation of brothels and dance houses from the main business district. Finally, there were the radical reformers, chiefly evangelicals who grew increasingly active after Kansas adopted liquor prohibition in 1880. With the saloons of Dodge and Caldwell now egregiously illegal, local opponents of all social immorality rallied under the antiliquor banner. Although women reportedly comprised the hard core of antiliquor crusaders, a male element eventually resorted to violence to …show more content…
achieve reform. In 1885 arsonists destroyed much of Dodge City's business district in an apparent attempt to rid it of saloons and brothels; simultaneously, a group lynched a Caldwell bootlegger as a warning to other violators of the liquor law. But the legendary street homicide associated with the cattle towns has been very much overdrawn by novelists, screenwriters, and journalists.
Between 1870 and 1885, including justifiable killings by the police, only forty-five adults died violently at the five major Kansas cattle towns, an average of 1.5 fatalities per cowboy season. Recent efforts by scholars to exaggerate this low body count through the use of criminologists' "per 100,000 population" ratio have proved statistically fallacious. Nobody died in a Hollywood-style duel. Fewer than a third of the victims returned fire; a number were not even armed. Four deaths were accidental shootings. Famous "bad men" (the term "gunfighter" had not yet been innovated) accounted for few deaths. John Wesley Hardin killed a man snoring too loudly in an adjoining hotel room; Wyatt Earp (or another policemen) killed a carousing cowboy; Bat Masterson dispatched the murderer of his brother; Wild Bill Hickok killed two men, one a security guard, by mistake. In large part, the low cattle town body count resulted from businessmen's fear of violence, which not only could escalate into property damage but could also deter the in-migration of substantial citizens and capital investment. But potential violence always presented something of a quandary for cattle town elites. Business leaders felt it necessary to suppress the disorder to which drunken and high-spirited visitors were prone but to do so without causing Texas drovers to take
their business elsewhere. Only the end of cattle trading in each town resolved this dilemma.
Farmers began to cultivate vast areas of needed crops such as wheat, cotton, and even corn. Document D shows a picture of The Wheat Harvest in 1880, with men on earlier tractors and over 20-30 horses pulling the tractor along the long and wide fields of wheat. As farmers started to accumilate their goods, they needed to be able to transfer the goods across states, maybe from Illinios to Kansas, or Cheyenne to Ohmaha. Some farmers chose to use cattle trails to transport their goods. Document B demonstrates a good mapping of the major railroads in 1870 and 1890. Although cattle trails weren't used in 1890, this document shows the existent of several cattle trails leading into Chyenne, San Antonio, Kansas City and other towns nearby the named ones in 1870. So, farmers began to transport their goods by railroads, which were publically used in Germany by 1550 and migrated to the United States with the help of Colonel John Stevens in 1826. In 1890, railroads expanded not only from California, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada, but up along to Washington, Montana, Michigan, down to New Mexico and Arizona as well. Eastern States such as New Jersey, Tennesse, Virginia and many others were filled with existing railroads prior to 1870, as Colonel John Stevens started out his railroad revolutionzing movement in New Jersey in 1815.
"Chapter 2 Western Settlement and the Frontier." Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays. Ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. 3rd ed. Vol. II: Since 1865. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 37-68. Print.
While the western frontier was still new and untamed, the western hero often took on the role of a vigilante. The vigilante’s role in the frontier was that of extralegal verve which was used to restrain criminal threats to the civil peace and opulence of a local community. Vigilantism was typical to the settler-state societies of the western frontier where the structures and powers of government were at first very feeble and weak. The typical cowboy hero had a willingness to use this extralegal verve. The Virginian demonstrated this throughout with his interactions with Trampas, most notably in the interactions leading up to the shoot out and during the shoot-out itself. “Others struggled with Trampas, and his bullet smashed the ceiling before they could drag the pistol from him… Yet the Virginian stood quiet by the...
Technology in this time period allowed for more crops to be produced. The use of new farm equipment was one of the things that generated more production. Document D shows a combine, a piece of farm equipment that harvests grain, being pulled by many horses. The use of the combine to trigger an increase in agricultural production as shown in Document A. Also with the invention of the grain elevator more farmers had the ability to store grain in bulk. Another technological advancement that developed during this time would be the railroad system. The railroads linked the farms to the big cities as shown in Document B. “Cowboys”, usually in Texas, herded cattle hundreds of miles along cattle trails, such as the Chisholm Trail, and the western trail, to cow towns along railroads. A drawback to the railroads, though, would be the “Robber Barons”, such as C. Vanderbilt, who had monopolistic power over the railroads. Things like cattle would be taken to factories more likely in Chicago as depicted in Document F. The packaged meat would then go into a railroad car that was possibly refrig...
The prohibition movement did have its fair share of supporters however. The most active in the movement was the Women's Christian Temperance Union. They worked hard in campaigning towards this amendment and gathered, what is now believed today, as to be biased statistics. For example one area that the WCTU attacked was the saloons and in particular the sale of distilled spirits, hard alcohol. The WCTU claimed drinking during prohibition was down 30% as opposed to pre-prohibition. However as a percentage to total alcohol sales the consumption of distilled spirits was up from 50% (pre-prohibition) to an astonishing 89% during prohibition. "Most estimates place the potency of prohibition-era products at 150+ percent of the potency of products produced either before or after prohibition (qtd. In Henry Lee 202)
On December 14, 1853, Augustus C. Dodge of Iowa introduced a bill in the Senate. The bill proposed organizing the Nebraska territory, which also included an area that would become the state of Kansas. His bill was referred to the Committee of the Territories, which was chaired by Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.
Prohibition originated in the nineteenth century but fully gained recognition in the twentieth century. The Prohibition was originally known as the Temperance Movement. In the 1820s and 1830s, a wave of religious revivalism developed in the United States, leading to increased calls for temperance, as well as other reform movements such as the abolition of slavery (“Prohibition”). These reforms were often led by middle class women. The abolition of slavery became a more important topic of debate until after the Civil War. By the turn of the century, temperance societies were a common thing throughout the communities in the United States (“Prohibition”). Women advocated the unity of the family, and they believed alcohol prevented such a thing. Drunken husbands only brought about negativity to the home, and women could not support that behavior. Suffragists, in their pursuit for voting rights, also sought to eliminate alcohol from the home. Small-scale legislation had been passed in several states, but no national laws had been enacted. On January 29, 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified by Congress; it banned t...
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
The hopes of the prohibitionist were dreams of a healthier and more successful nation. Their dreams were spun from the idea of shutting out the alcohol industry and enforcing large industries and stressing family values. The eighteenth amendment consisted of the end of sales, production, transportation, as for importation and exportation of intoxicating liquors. Their imaginations were large and very hopeful. The prohibitionists felt that alcohol is a slow poison of their community. They felt that if the liquor industry was shut out that Americans would spend their hard earned money in the clothing, food, and shoe industries therefore boosting the American economy. Many felt, “Seeing what a sober nation can do is indeed a noble experiment and one that has never yet been tried, (Crowther, 11) Prohibition was a test of the strength of the nation and an attempt at cleaning up societies evils. These reformers denounce alcohol as a danger to society as well as to the human body. Some ethnic hopes of prohibition was to regulate the foreigners whose backgrounds consisted on the use of alcohol for religious purposes. And try to enforce an American valued society upon them. Many reformists felt that ending the use of alcohol would protect American homes and families. They felt that alcohol use was the root of their family’s destruction. Many women felt that their husbands would waste a lot of their income on the purchase of alcohol and not on family needs. Alcohol was often known as a “poison, or sin”. Another hope for the eighteenth amendment was to reduce the crime and death rate. Many people felt that drunkenness was the cause of many of the nations crimes. Prohibitionist felt very passionately on their cause and were often called “dry’s.” They felt their battle was justified and that, “it is manifest destiny that alcohol will not survive the scrutiny,”(Darrow and Yarros, 20).
in an attempt to try to persuade people to stop drinking. Two and a half million dollars raised in the effort to stop the drinking, came from the middle and poor classes because these were the people most affected by the problem. The Anti-Saloon League had an effect on a great many people. By 1917, a full twenty five states were
This prohibition was looked upon differently by different people, one of the biggest groups supporting it, also recognized as the group that coordinated it was The Anti-Saloon League. The Anti-Saloon League was a political pressure group founded in 1893 that drew much of its support from protestant churches in the rural and southern areas of the United States. Since the Anti-Saloon League was a religious group that worked with churches they believed that their actions were for God and used this to justify their actions. The Anti-Saloon League also had connections across the United States which were used in gathering resource for the prohibition fight. The Anti-Saloon League spread their anti-alcohol sentiments across the United States using the influence of the churches and even established the American Issue Publishing Company to achieve their goals. (potsdam.edu, anti-saloon league)
The Anti-Saloon League’s objective was to have a law in every state banning the manufacture and sales of alcohol. Formed in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1893, the Anti-Saloon League was the single-...
The cowboys of the frontier have long captured the imagination of the American public. Americans, faced with the reality of an increasingly industrialized society, love the image of a man living out in the wilderness fending for himself against the dangers of the unknown. By the end of the 19th century there were few renegade Indians left in the country and the vast expanse of open land to the west of the Mississippi was rapidly filling with settlers.
The Anti-Saloon League was the leading organization for National Prohibition in the United States established in 1893. It was a non-partisan political pressure group and was a single-issue lobbying group that had places across the United States to work with churches in marshaling resources for the fight of prohibition. The South and some rural areas is where primary base of support was among Protestant churches. Volstead Act is known as enabling legislation it set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined any type of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. Consumption and private ownership of alcohol was not made illegal under federal law; however, local laws in many areas were stricter, with some places banning possession outright.
Few Hollywood film makers have captured America’s Wild West history as depicted in the movies, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Most Western movies had fairly simple but very similar plots, including personal conflicts, land rights, crimes and of course, failed romances that typically led to drinking more alcoholic beverages than could respectfully be consumed by any one person, as they attempted to drown their sorrows away. The 1958 Rio Bravo and 1967 El Dorado Western movies directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne have a similar theme and plot. They tell the story of a sheriff and three of his deputies, as they stand alone against adversity in the name of the law. Western movies like these two have forever left a memorable and lasting impressions in the memory of every viewer, with its gunfighters, action filled saloons and sardonic showdowns all in the name of masculinity, revenge and unlawful aggressive behavior. Featuring some of the most famous backdrops in the world ranging from the rustic Red Rock Mountains of Monument Valley in Utah, to the jagged snow capped Mountain tops of the Teton Range in Wyoming, gun-slinging cowboys out in search of mischief and most often at their own misfortune traveled far and wide, seeking one dangerous encounter after another, and unfortunately, ending in their own demise.