1.  "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

   This is a famous passage from a speech by Nez Perce Indian Chief Joseph.  In 1877, the tribe was ordered to give up their land in eastern Oregon and move to a reservation in Idaho.  Instead, Chief Joseph led the tribe on a 1,500 mile dash for the Canadian border, all the while being chased by the U.S. army.  He finally surrendered as his exhausted and starving tribe was trapped in the mountains just short of the border. 

2.  "In God we trusted.  In Kansas we busted."

   This saying expressed the frustration of many settlers who "busted" or went broke on farms in western states like Kansas and Nebraska in the decades after the Civil War.  The Homestead Act gave free farm land in the West to anyone who would settle on it for five years.  But when the farm land was far from water sources or roads, settlers often found it impossible to succeed.

Copyright 2006 by David Burns
www.fasttrackteaching.com

3.  "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teaming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

   These are the moving and often memorized words inscribed on  the base of the Statue of Liberty.  They are from a poem, "The New Colossus," written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 to help raise money to construct a base for the statue.  (The statue itself was a gift of the people of France to America.)  While immigrants at the time often found harsh living conditions and sometimes resentment from the native-born, these words express the powerful message of hope America held (and still holds) for most immigrants. 

4.  "So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent."

   This is a passage from one of the most widely read American books in the 1880s, titled "Progress and Poverty."  The author, Henry George, was highlighting the great puzzle of the era:  Why did such great poverty exist at a time of such great progress and wealth?  The question has been at the center of much of America's political life ever since. 

1.  An Indian of the Great Plains hunting buffalo from horseback.  The buffalo provided food and hides for the Indians.  The destruction of the vast herds by white settlers and hunters moving into the West was one of the great tragedies of the period.

2.  Trains like this, and the spread of tracks into the West, helped make possible the spread of farms into the Prairie states like Nebraska.  Because wood was scarce on the Prairie, many settlers built their first home from the sod itself.  It was cut with a special plow blade and stacked to form thick walls.

3.  The Gilded Age was the period when big industry, including steel making, became the dominant part of the American economy.  For workers, however, hours and work conditions were often long and dangerous.

Copyright 2006 by David Burns
www.fasttrackteaching.com

   These famous quotes are posted here for users of our book, Fasttrack to America's Past, and to help all teachers and students of American history.  You may download this page to transparency film, to paper, or to computer media for noncommercial educational use only, provided:

• You make no changes, additions, or alterations of any kind.
• You leave the copyright and source information visible and legible on all copies.

   Copyright 1998, 2006 by David Burns.                     www.fasttrackteaching.com