USH Semester 1 Final Review

Hurricane Katrina

-Bush presidency

-The levees broke causing immense flooding

-Lack of response from the White House

-FEMA made no preparations

-Revealed the ineptitude of the Bush administration in disaster management.

Housing market collapse/Great Financial Crisis

-Bush presidency

-Caused by economic practices favoring speculation, freewheeling spending, and get-rich-quick schemes

-Led to the Great Recession with rising housing prices, consumer indebtedness, issuance of risky 'subprime' mortgages, influx of cheap goods from China, and major unemployment crisis

Bank bailout/response to the Great Financial Crisis

-Obama presidency

-Obama's stimulus package of ~$800 billion aimed at saving and creating jobs, reigniting economic activity, and aiding states in balancing budgets through new government spending

Tea Party movement

-Obama presidency

-Grassroots Republican movement opposing Obama administration's legislative enactments, advocating for strict immigration policy, reducing abortion rights, and targeting undocumented immigrants

Occupy Wall Street movement

-Obama presidency

-People protested economic inequality and corporate corruption post-Economic Crisis, aimed to raise minimum wages, and highlight financial disparities between the public and the wealthiest 1%.

Affordable Care Act

-Obama presidency

-Required Americans to purchase health insurance, mandated businesses to provide it, offered subsidies to lower-income individuals, mandated insurance companies to accept all applicants, and resulted in 16 million uninsured Americans gaining medical coverage by 2015.

Shelby County v. Holder

-Obama presidency

-The Supreme Court invalidated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 2013, leading to changes in election laws in Republican-controlled states

Police killings/Ferguson/Black Lives Matter

-Obama presidency

-African American men were being killed by police for little to no reason and the officers were not being charged or punished

-Ferguson, Missouri - Michael Brown, an unarmed Black 18 year old, was shot in disputed circumstances by a white police officer who was later cleared of potential charges

-BLM Movement: national movement demanding police accountability and an end to excessive force, organized through social media

-Calls for 'defunding' police to allocate funds to social services

2016 Election

-Trump presidency

-Hillary Clinton: 2016 presidential candidate with extensive political experience, faced opposition from Bernie Sanders

-Bernie Sanders: self-proclaimed democratic socialist advocating for universal health insurance and limits on corporate political spending

-Khizr Khan's Speech: given at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, highlighting immigrant contributions and patriotism in response to Trump's anti-Muslim stance

Trump policies on immigration, climate, and taxes

-Trump presidency

-Tax cuts: massive tax reduction benefiting corporations and the wealthy, intended to stimulate economic growth but resulted in stock buybacks

-Tariffs: increased tariffs on imports to promote American manufacturing, renegotiated NAFTA, and withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement

-Immigration policies: included attacks on immigrants, failed attempts to build a border wall, and a controversial ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries

-Climate policies: withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, support for the coal industry, and efforts to weaken environmental regulations

1st Impeachment of Trump

-Trump presidency

-Charges in 2019 for soliciting foreign interference in the election, specifically pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Biden family

COVID Pandemic

-Trump presidency

-Covid-19 first announced in Wuhan, China in Jan. 2020

-WHO declared Covid a global pandemic on March 11

-US emerged as one of the countries hardest hit by Covid

-Trump Administration response: suspended travel from China, declared national emergency

-African Americans had double the Covid death rate of white Americans

-Congress passed bills providing $3 trillion in relief due to business closures

-Hospitals overcrowded, lacking essential supplies due to Covid infections

George Floyd

-Trump presidency

-Arrested on May 25, 2020, by Minneapolis police for alleged counterfeit $20 bill

-He died after being in a chokehold for almost 9 minutes

2020 Election

-Trump presidency

-Highest turnout since 1900 with nearly 2/3 of eligible voters casting ballots

-29 states allowed early voting or expanded mail-in voting due to the pandemic

-Trump accused democratic votes of fraud due to ballot counting delays

Salutatory neglect

An English policy of relaxing the enforcement of regulations in its colonies in return for the colonies' continued economic loyalty

Stamp Act

-Passed in 1765 - Tax on anything that needed stamps (i.e. paint, books, paper, playing cards, and validating documents)

-Impact was much more widespread and serious protests began across the colonies (boycotts)

-Protests resulted in the Stamp Act being repealed but the Declaratory Act was issued: Parliament has the sovereign right to tax America "in all cases whatsoever"

"No taxation without representation"

-In response to the Stamp Act

-The colonists believed that they should not be taxed since they did not have representation in the British Parliament

Boston Massacre

The first bloodshed of the American Revolution (1770), as British guards at the Boston Customs House opened fire on a crowd killing five Americans

Intolerable Acts

-Closed Boston Harbor

-Shuttered N.E. Town Meetings

-Authorized troops to quarter in civilian houses

-Extradition to Britain

-MA colonists responded by urging their citizens to resist, arm themselves, and prepare for war

-12 of the colonies met in 1774 to coordinate resistance to British Taxes in the 1st Continental Congress

Declaration of Independence

-Document adopted on July 4, 1776

-Drafted by a committee of 56 delegates, the Second Continental Congress - main authors include: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman

-Explains why the American colonies regarded themselves as independent sovereign states

-Represents the belief that every person is born with certain rights that can never be taken away

Saratoga

-Sept. 19 - Oct. 7, 1777-Location: Stillwater, Saratoga County, New York-Climax of the Saratoga campaign -> led to the Americans winning the Revolutionary War

-British General John Burgoyne fought 2 battles where he won the first but lost the second after the Americans got reinforcements

Yorktown

-Sept. 28 - Oct. 19, 1781

-The American Continental Army with support from the French army and navy beat the British Army

-Last major land battle of the Revolutionary War in North America

-Led to the surrender of General Cornwallis and the capture of him and his army

-Prompted the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict

Articles of Confederation

-1st Constitution of the U.S. drafted in 1777

-Goal was to balance the need for national coordination of the Revolution with widespread fear that centralized political power was a danger to liberty

-Land ordinances were approved during the 1780s to define the terms that western land would be sold and settled

-Weaknesses: no executive branch, no judicial branch, no power to tax, no power to regulate trade

Constitutional Convention

1787 - Meeting in Philidelphia of the elected representatives of the thirteen original states (every state except Rhode Island) to write the Constitution of the United States

3/5 Compromise

The decision at the Constitutional convention to count slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of deciding the population and determining how many seats each state would have in Congress

Federalism

The relationship between the national government and the states

Missouri Compromise

-1819 - Congress considered a request from Missouri to draft a constitution in preparation for admission to the Union as a state

>Missouri would be authorized to draft a constitution without Tallmadge's restriction

>Maine, which prohibited slavery, would be admitted to the Union to maintain the sectional balance between free and slave states

>Slavery would be prohibited in all remaining territory within the Louisiana Purchase north of Missouri's border

-Long-term results: set the stage for future conflicts over slavery & future states

Abolitionism

An international movement that succeeded in condemning slavery as morally repugnant and abolishing it in much of the world

-The movement was especially prominent in Britain and the United States

Fredrick Douglass

-American abolitionist and writer, he escaped slavery and became a leading African American spokesman and writer

-He published the autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and founded the abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

Manifest Destiny

Articulated by John O'Sullivan, it was essentially a form of imperialistic nationalism that relied on three ideas:

-God is on our side and decreed we rule the continent (think Puritans)

-Let's bring freedom to all peoples and places on the continent

-Growing population in the east must spread westward-Manifest Destiny is sometimes considered a cause of the Civil War because it is a big reason so many new territories were added

Mexican-American War

-1846-1848

-The war between the United States and Mexico in which the United States acquired one half of the Mexican territory

Compromise of 1850

-CA admitted as a free state

-Slave trade (but not slavery) prohibited in the District of Columbia

-The fugitive slave law would be greatly strengthened

-Enlarged New Mexico territory would be admitted on the basis of popular sovereignty

-The U.S. would also pay off the massive debt Texas had accumulated while independent

Fugitive Slave Act

-Part of the Compromise of 1850

-Those accused of being fugitive slave were denied Constitutional rights

-Without rights, it was very difficult for free people to prove that they were free

-Very unpopular throughout the North - made slavery a reality in Northern towns when their neighbors were dragged off

-Infuriated Northerners who felt that they had never imposed their views on slavery on Southerners, and the South was doing that to them

Harper's Ferry Raid/John Brown

-John Brown, with the backing of northern abolitionists, took 21 men (black and white) to Harper's Ferry, VA to start an uprising of slaves

-They were attacked and captured by Col. Robert E. Lee-Brown and his men were hung on Dec. 2, 1859-The North glorifies Brown as a martyr for the cause of abolition/freedom

-Results: the South starts preparing for war, either with slave or the North, and their militia system gets serious; both sides now openly hate one another and view them as immoral or as openly attempting to get them killed

Dred Scott v. Sanford

-The Supreme Court heard the appeal of Dred Scott, a former slave who claimed that since he had travelled with his master (an army doctor), he had been freed by having lived in states where slavery had been outlawed

-In the majority opinion, Justice Roger Taney ruled both free and slave African Americans were not citizens and had no legal rights any white person was bound to honor

-He also ruled that slavery was a universal right guaranteed by the Constitution (i.e. it was on the same level as freedom of speech or religion)

Abraham Lincoln

-1809-1865

-16th President of the United States saved the Union during the Civil War and emancipated the slaves

-Was assassinated by Booth

Election of 1860

-Lincoln, the Republican candidate, won because the Democratic party was split over slavery

-As a result, the South no longer felt like it has a voice in politics and a number of states seceded from the Union

Secession

-Formal withdrawal of states or regions from a nation

-The South seceded because they worried about the eventual abolition of slavery, feared the loss of power, felt a "now or never" mentality, and they believed that they could succeed due to previous events

-This led to 7 Southern states seceding

Emancipation Proclamation

-Lincoln's attempt to liberate slaves in 1862

-It did not liberate all the slaves

-It exempted areas firmly under Union control, thus, it did not apply to the loyal border slave states that had never seceded or to areas of the Confederacy occupied by Union soldiers, such as Tennessee and parts of Virginia and Louisiana

-The vast majority of the South's slaves - over 3 million men, women, and children - were freed by the Proclamation

-However, since most of these slaves were still behind Confederate lines, their liberation would have to await Union victories

Battle of Gettysburg

-1863

-The turning point of the War that made it clear the North would win

-50,000 people died, and the South lost its chance to invade the North

Total war (Grant/Sherman)

-A military strategy employed by Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War

-It involved striking not only military targets but also the economic infrastructure supporting the Confederacy

Reconstruction

The process of the U.S. adjusting to the consequences of the Civil War

Freedman's Bureau

-It was supposed to ensure the former slaves' rights and freedom

-It provided education, land, safety, etc. to the free people

-They were supposed to give out the land plots that the U.S. had acquired

-The Bureau was shut down by Johnson because he didn't provide funding

13th Amendment

-Passed by President Abraham Lincoln

-It abolished slavery

Black Codes

-They recognized that slavery was abolished but still kept the former slaves under their control

-The white southerners would take African American children in as "apprentices"

-They kept the former slaves in poverty and subordination

Congressional Reconstruction/Radical Republicans

-The Republican representatives started a revolution within the House where the clerk didn't call any of the Confederate states' representatives

-They established the principle of birthright citizenship

-This led to Southern states having to allow African American men the right to vote

-The new Southern States' governments were forced to ratify the 14th Amendment

14th Amendment

-Declares that everyone has to be treated equally under the law

-It bans people from voting if they are traitors

-Enacts birthright citizenship

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

-A secret group whose goal was to restore white supremacy

-They used threats, violence (i.e. lynching, kidnapping, hanging, whipping, mutilation, murder, etc.), and fear tactics to try to keep Black men from voting

-They were fought by the government imposing heavy penalties against terrorist organizations, declaring martial law, and using military force to suppress them

Sharecropping

A system in which landowners leased a few acres of land to farmworkers in return for a portion of their crops

Lost Cause narrative/Dunning School

-Published in 1866

-It argued that the war was the South defending themselves against the aggressive North

-It said that the North was trying to suppress the South's rights to slaves

Compromise of 1877

-Hayes's representatives agreed to recognize Democratic control of the entire South and to avoid further intervention in local affairs

-Democrats promised not to dispute Hayes's right to office and to respect the civil and political rights of African Americans

Johnson v. M'Intosh

Ruled private citizens could not purchase lands from Native Americans because the Native Americans did not own the land and were only permitted to live on it

Worcester v. Georgia

The Supreme Court ruled that only the federal government had the power to work with the Indigenous tribes

The Homestead Act

Ruled that Americans could apply for a grant of 160 acres of land in the west which they could keep as theirs if they lived on and improved the land over 5 years

The Dawes Act

-A law that tried to settle the legal status of Indigenous Peoples through assimilation

-The law allowed the President to dissolve tribal entities and government, thus taking all land in reservations and dividing it into 160 acre plots to be given to heads of households

Jim Crow laws

Southern states as well as many western ones passed a series of laws which restricted Civil Rights for Black Americans and culminated in systematized separation of races (segregation) and exclusion from public life

Plessy v. Ferguson

Declared segregation constitutional saying that "separate but equal" is not inherently discrimination

Laissez-Faire Economics

The government should be limited and not interfere in the economy and free markets should determine as much as possible

Coroporations

Business organizations that sell stock in a company, to raise large amounts of capital

-Pooling of resources

-Allows you to generate more money and lower the risk of being involved

Monopolies

When a single company achieves control of an entire market

-Possible only by being the most efficient and ruthless

-Once they corner the market, they can charge virtually whatever they want