West/Immigration
By: Andrew White
Morrill Act
The Morrill was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1862. Officially titled An Act Donating Public Lands to the Several States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, the Morrill Act provided each state with 30,000 acres of Federal land for each member in their Congressional delegation. The land was then sold by the states and the proceeds used to fund public colleges that focused on agriculture and the mechanical arts. Sixty nine colleges were funded by these land grants, including Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Dawes Act
Adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891, and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. The Act was named for its creator, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes of Massachusetts. The stated objective of the Dawes Act was to stimulate assimilation of Indians into mainstream of American society. Individual ownership of land on the European American model was seen as an essential step. The act also provided what the government would classify as excess Indian reservation lands remaining after allotments, and sell those lands on the open market, allowing purchase and settlement by non Native Americans
Ellis Island
Located in Upper New York Bay between New York and New Jersey, was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States as the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with land reclamation between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the site of Fort Gibson and later a naval magazine. The island was made part of the Statue of Liberty Monument in 1965, and has hosted a museum of immigration since 1990. Long considered part of New York, in 1998 the United States Supreme Court decision found that most of the island is in New Jersey.
Helen Hunt Jackson
An American poet and writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She described the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor. Her novel Ramona dramatized the federal government's mistreatment of Native Americans in Southern California after the Mexican American War and attracted considerable attention to her cause. Commercially popular, it was estimated to have been reprinted 300 times and most readers liked its romantic and picturesque qualities rather than its political content. The novel was so popular that it attracted many tourists to Southern California who wanted to see places from the book.