Nativism, a movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s, was founded on anti-immigrant feeling. Many Americans felt that the arrival of the poor and disenfranchised from other countries would spell trouble for the working classes forcing them to compete and thus lowering the wages that they could expect to receive. Most Nativists did not expect immigration to fully cease, but desired to ensure that those granted immigration would be useful to the future prosperity of America. One product of this was the implementation of a literacy test to test whether arriving immigrants could read and write. 

 The Union Army saw a succession of commanders through the first three years of the war.  Most of them were easily defeated by Robert E. Lee and the Conderate forces.  Abraham Lincoln did not find a suitable general until Grant, who was made General of the Army in 1864.

The quote appears in a text issued by National Woman Suffrage Association, in the late Nineteenth Century. It has been variously attributed to both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, although most historians maintain that Susan B. Anthony is the most likely candidate. Susan B. Anthony was an extremely prominent figure in the fight for Universal Suffrage, in particular female suffrage. She began campaigning before the Civil War and was famously arrested in 1872 for voting in the Presidential Election. Susan B. Anthony would die, aged 86, in 1906 - fourteen years before the passage of Nineteenth Amendment which forever guaranteed women in the United States equal voting rights as men. 

In the United States, during the Reconstruction Era, the South passed a series of Jim Crow laws, which were designed to resist the integration of freed slaves into the political and social process. Included amongst these was the Grandfather Clause and the Literary requirements, which imposed restrictions on who could vote and who could not. Both were designed to prevent blacks from voting. The poll tax was similarly designed to prevent African-Americans from voting. It required a small payment to be made in order to vote, which had the effect of disenfranchising African-Americans, Native Americans, and poor whites. Poll taxes were not deemed unconstitutional until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. 

Dorothea Dix was a very famous female American activist who campaigned heavily for the humane and conscientious treatment of individuals with mental disabilities. She lobbied state and national institutions throughout the antebellum era and successfully created the first ever American insane asylums. 

The Rough Riders is the name given to a volunteer cavalry organization that was organized by Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Leonard Wood during the Spanish-American War and the conflict for Cuban independence. They were one of several volunteer organizations that President McKinley set up to help remedy the deficiency of manpower available to the United States military—in the years following the Civil War there was a chronic shortage of men willing to serve in the armed forces. The group was mostly organized in the south and southwest, consisting of men and college-aged boys from Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Rough Riders were one of the few volunteer organizations to see action in the conflict, fighting in numerous battles, including the battle of San Juan Hill. 

Roger Williams was a puritan clergyman who came early to Massachusetts Bay Colony, in February of 1631. Almost instantly, Williams' radical egalitarian theology and politics aroused the ire of Boston's leading citizens. He became a complete separatist, advocating for the cutting off of the "true church" from the Church of England. Massachusetts Bay's leaders exiled Williams from Boston, and initially went north to the small Salem colony, but also had to leave there. Eventually, Williams went south to the are now known as Rhode Island, and established a colony truly based on religious freedom, and offered asylum there to any people fleeing religious persecution.

The “Five Civilized Tribes” were the Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw. They were so-called by European settlers and the citizens of the early American republic because they were willing to adopt European customs and maintained generally peaceful relations with the settlers. The Lakota tribe resided in what is now modern day North and South Dakota and throughout the nineteenth century fought occasional conflicts with the United States Army. 

The Trail of Tears is the name usually given to the forced relocation of several Native American populations from the Southeastern United States to what is now Oklahoma. It followed the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson. Many Native Americans suffered from disease and starvation during the trail, hence the name “Trail of Tears.”

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant who arrived in America in 1848 and built one of the largest companies of the nineteenth century. He sold the Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan at the turn of the century and retired to a life of philanthropy. In his article Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie argues that it is the duty of the newly-made wealthy industrial class to redistribute their riches back to the poor. Carnegie focused his energy on educational institutions—particularly schools, libraries, research centers, and universities.