Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) won the presidency in 1877 on the Republican ticket after an embattled election. Charges of voting fraud and disputed electoral votes led to the Compromise of 1877 in which the Democrats accepted Hayes’s presidency and Hayes removed federal troops from the South. Hayes’s first year in office was marked by the Great Railway Strike of 1877, when he called in federal troops to help suppress rioters in strike regions. The next year Hayes vetoed the Bland-Allison Act, which restored coinage of the silver dollar....
Willa Cather (1873–1847) was a writer whose work often focused on immigrants and settlers of the American frontier. Cather was born in Virginia but at age ten moved with her family to Nebraska, where she lived among immigrant settlers and attended the University of Nebraska. Cather’s most famous novel, O Pioneers!, was published in 1913, and like many of her works, it told the story of immigrants making their way on the Great Plains.
Conservationists are concerned with the managed use of natural resources. Where nature “preservationists” aim to permanently set aside lands to be kept safe from human disturbance and development, conservationists aim to carefully manage the use of lands and natural resources while protecting against their overuse. Conservationists try to ensure that natural resources yield the greatest benefit to current generations while maintaining their potential for the use of future generations.
John Muir (1838–1914) was a wilderness preservationist whose influence helped lead to the establishment of national parks. Muir was also a founder of the Sierra Club, which was formed in 1892 to preserve the Sierra Nevada wilderness.