Reconstruction

1865-1877

Issues after Civil war - Helping the freedmen, reintegrating the South, infrastructure

• Oh but we have lincoln zaddy to help us out!! 

  • John Wilkes booth - killed Lincoln, snuck into president’s booth at a play

  • Lincoln’s plan- the 10% plan, bring southern states back into the union after 10% pledged loyalty to union and ratified 13th amendment (lenient, the southerners never rlly left, don’t exacerbate the tensions)

    • This allowed Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their male population took loyalty oaths

• Now the prez is andrew johnson, who is a southerner

  • Attempted to carry out Lincoln’s plan but like, he was a southerner and wasn’t that interested in racial equality, stood by as white redeemers did their work

  • He lets all the southern states back in the union

    • The issue: since AA’s (african americans) are counted as full people, the southern populations skyrocket, causing the south to have a lot of people in congress

    • So the republicans r like wtf ?!?!? and initiate congressional reconstruction, before the southerners came in, where they pass all the reconstruction amendments

      • extended the freedmen’s bureau to help the black people

        • Freedmens Bureau: provided food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced Southerners, including newly freed African Americans.

      • civil rights act of 1866, equal protection under law and citizenship for blacks

        • Johnson tries to veto but gets overridden

• In the next congressional election, the radical republicans get the power, and initiate the military reconstruction plan

  • divide the country into 5 military districts to enforce the amendments they passed and so AA’s can enjoy their rights

  • reconstruction acts; increased requirements for states rejoining (must ratify 14th amendment + universal male suffrage) 

  • 15th amendment angers women's suffragists - how come Black men get the right to vote but we don’t?

  • AA’s get positions in power and established schools and churches, but americans have short attention spans and get lowk tired of reconstruction

• White redeemers impose restrictions on the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments 

  • 13th - sharecropping, contracts that bound Blacks to land, unlimited labor (basically slavery lolz), got a share of the harvests (ended up being indebted to land)

  • 14th - jim crow laws, separate but equal, terrorist organizations

    • plessy v ferguson = upholds separate but equal doctrine

  • 15th - poll taxes, literacy tests

• tenure of office act - president needs congressional approval to remove people from office; johnson breaks b/c he wants the radical republicans out, causes his impeachment

Gilded Age

Civil war to 1900’s

• Runs concurrently w/ reconstruction

1. Politics

• Crime, political scandals, corruption, poverty, overcrowdedness, filth, lack of women’s rights, lack of labor rights/health

• Influential people worked in business, why the gilded age presidents are referred to as the “forgettable presidents”

  • Famous businessmen: Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie

1877 - Hayes - Ends reconstruction, “his fraudulency” (cuz of the compromise)

1880 - Garfield - Dies XP

• Divided republican party

  • Stalwarts - conservative, half-breeds - progressives

  • Prez was a half-breed, VP was a stalwart

• Struggled w/ stopping the spoils system; his shooter was a person who was rejected (Charles Gatue).

1881- Arthur - Tries to stop spoils system w/ the civil service reform bill (Pendleton act)

• He thinks the spoil system killed that last president so thats why he does the pendleton act.

1884 - Cleveland - Mudslinging campaign, Pension reform

1888 - Harrison - Loses pop vote, WHH grandson, Billion dollar congress

1892 - Cleveland - Panic of 1893

• Gold shortage (US goes off the gold standard), JP Morgan solves it

1896 - McKinley - Front porch campaign, Imperialism

• Populist party = farmers (free coinage of silver, wants inflation)

2. Industrialization

• Started in England

• Mass production

• Assembly line allowed for unskilled laborers to work

Four daddies of industrialization:

1. Andrew Carnegie

   1. Industry: Steel

   2. Business model: Bessemer process (inexpensive steel making process), Vertical integration

2. Rockefeller

   1. Industry: Oil

   2. Business model: Horizontal integration (own the whole industry/all companies)

3. JP Morgan (the first billionaire)

   1. Industry: Banking

   2. Business model: Buys struggling companies and revitalizes them, Interlocking directorate (put his workers on boards of other companies)

4. Vanderbilt

   1. Industry: Railroads

   2. Business model: Just wanted to own a bunch of railroads

Women - Industrialism allowed women more job opportunities, including factory, nursing, etc; leads to smaller families (you don’t need children for farming labor)

Workers - People become “wage earners,” no longer farming, working for somebody else, went through dangerous/unhealthy conditions

• Led ppl to form labor unions - Wanted fair working conditions

  • Better pay, shorter hours, better conditions - bread and butter unionism

  • Not many ppl joined, scared they would be fired

Edison - Invented lightbulb and phonograph, came up with modern-day research and development, invented the electric chair (woah!!)

Important gilded age inventions: Lightbulb, typewriters, airplane, telephone

3. Cities

• Skyscraper cities - made possible by steel and elevators

• A lot of people lived in tiny cramped tenement houses

• People moving in were immigrants, came thru ellis island (a lot of immigrants btw)

  • People like Jane Addams helped immigrants (look at progressivism)

  • A lot of nativism 

Civil rights people!

• Booker T. Washington

  • Wanted african americans self-help, gradual

• Du Bois

  • Immediate equality, policy change

4. The West

• Wanted to fill the great plains with white settlers

  • Homestead act - gives people free land in the frontier, a lot of projects failed and returned to the east

• Coercively removing Indians from the great plains

  • US gov breaks treaties with Indians and moves them to smaller settlements, killing them if they don't comply.

  • 1876 - Battle of Little Big Horn - US v Natives, US loses

  • Buffalo was disappearing from the lands, so the natives were doomed to fail to begin with (relied heavily on buffalo) Why?

    1. Hunters

    2. Railroad workers would shoot buffalo to build further and eat

    3. Tourists (“hey guys I shot a buffalo!”)

• Transcontinental Railroad - Completed by the “golden spike”

  • Encouraged merchants to get their products out there via the railroad

Why are people going out west?

1. Mining opportunities

   • the corporations are really the profitable ones

2. Cattle drives (ur a cowboy like meeeee)

3. Land to farm

   • Homestead act facilitates that; not much water/trees, bad weather, isolated

     • As a result, they made sod houses out of mud

     • Grange organization - helped people with their loneliness, organized events

1890 - Frontier is closed, less opportunity for those who failed in other places

• Frederick Jackson Turner - Writes a thesis on the importance of the frontier to democracy and history; seems to pacify/romanticize the west

Imperialism

Age of imperialism - America is more involved in world affairs, acquiring overseas territory

Early examples of Imperialism

• Caleb Cushing negotiates the Treaty of Whangia which gets the US access to chinese trading ports

• Mathew Perry went to Japan and refused to leave until Japan agreed to make a treaty to open ports, called the Treaty of Kanagawa

• Seward purchases Alaska, which people see as useless, but was proved right when gold was found

“The Influence of Sea Power Upon History” - Mahan, a very influential novel which argued that strong sea power equals a strong nation.

• The US acquired islands to have refueling ports for ships

The US and South/Central America

The US starts inserting themselves into other people’s problems 🙄

• Chile - US threatens war against Chile for the death of two marines

• Venezuela Boundary Dispute - Britain and Venezuela boundary dispute, US thought it would violate the Monroe Doctrine to claim land in the US

  • Helps Britain-American relations in the long run, started the Great Rapprochement, or reconciliation between US and Britain

The Spanish-American War

• Cubans wanted independence and revolted against Spanish, Spanish put Cubans in concentration camps, massacres, and just a lot of death

  • Exacerbated by Yellow Journalists (Pulitzer and Hearst), who propagated exaggerated or fake news

• The USS maine exploded - yellow journalists said that it was the Spanish, people wanted US intervention and war

  • Also: De Lome Letter, a spanish man’s letter bashing President McKinley.

• Dewey at Manilla - easily defeats first Spanish fleet and defeats Spain in the Philippines

• Roosevelt’s Rough Riders help get Cuban independence using vicious warfare

  • More people die from disease than battle

• Treaty of Paris - Guam, Cuba (kinda), Philippines, Puerto Rico, ended war

• “The splendid little war” - lasted a few months with few American casualties

Puerto Rico

• US invested $$ in PR’s infrastructure, public health, and education

  • Foraker Act gave them a limited degree of self-government

    • However, Insular Cases ruled that the flag outrugs the constitution, territories did not all have constitutional rights

Cuba

• Platt amendment - gave US control over cuban financial and foreign affairs (+ naval bases)

  • Eradicated yellow fever

Pacific Islands+East

Hawaii

• US gained influence in Hawaii (businesses and missionaries)

  • Sugar businesses

• McKinley tariff - raises tariffs on sugar imports, US wants to annex Hawaii to avoid these extra charges

  • Queen Lani wants national pride and native rulers

The Philippines

• Filipinos thought they would get freedom like Cuba after the war

  • When they didn’t, they insurrected

  • Insurrection costed more money and men than the Spanish-American war

    • Led by Emilio Aguinaldo, a former fighter in the war

    • US uses vicious warfare+violent tactics to capture Aguinaldo and suppress the public

China

• Split into “spheres of influence” that traded w/ exclusive countries

• Anti-foreigners, called boxers, who opposed this, started attacking foreigners

  • required international intervention

• John Hay then successfully introduced the open door note

Japan

• Russo-Japanese war - Roosevelt made the treaty between the two nations, earned the nobel peace prize

• Gentleman’s Agreement - Cali segregates schools against Japanese, US repeals law and Japanese stop sending immigrants by withholding passports

Foreign Policies (Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson)

Roosevelt - Big Stick

• Big Stick policy - speak softly and carry a big stick

  1. Keep asian countries equally powerful

  2. Connect Atlantic and Pacific

  3. Introduce the Roosevelt Corollary

  4. Gentleman’s Agreement

  5. Flaunt the empire

Taft - Dollar Diplomacy

• Where the US dollar goes, troops are sure to follow

  • Supplementing US military efforts with money from corporations

Wilson - Moral Diplomacy, New Freedom

• Moral diplomacy - interfering in another country’s affair when it is judged as morally correct to

• ANTI IMPERIALIST

  • Repealed panama canal tolls act, which made the US pay to access the canal

  • Jones Act - gave people in the philippines limited independence, agreed to free them when they established a government

  • Sent marines to Haiti - overtook finances

  • Sent marines to DR

  • Bought the virgin islands

Progressivism

Aims to fix the ills of the gilded age

Muckrakers - middle-class writers and journalists who wanted to bring social reform through writing and expose

• Jacob A. Riis - wrote “How the other half lives” exposing wealthy americans to poverty (tenement houses), forced wealthy americans to look at his photography in his lantern picture shows

• Lincoln Steffens - wrote “The Shame of Cities” that exposed city and state level corruptions, think about Boss Tweed

• Ida Tarbel - wrote “A History of the Standard Oil Company” about the corruption of Standard Oil, had a personal connection because of her father (his small business was ruined by rockefeller)

• Upton Sinclair - Aimed to promote socialism and expose poor working conditions, people took it the wrong way and focused on the unsanitary meat production

  • “I aimed for America’s heart, I hit them in the stomach”

• Henry Demarest Lloyd - wrote “Wealth Against Commonwealth” attacking standard oil

• Thornstein Veblen - wrote “The Theory of the Issue Class,” criticizing predatory wealth 

• Herbert Croly - wrote “The Promise of American Life,” impacting Roosevelt’s new nationalism policy

Political reformists + Square Deal

• Bob La Follette - Epitome of a progressive political leader, advocated for the initiative, referendum, recall, and australian ballot, primary systems, and direct senate elections

  • Initiative - voters propose laws, Referendum - voters give the final check on laws, recall - voters can recall corrupt elected officials, australian ballot - the private ballot

• Hiram W Johnson - Roosevelt’s running mate, CA governor, inspired by La Follette’s work

• Florence Kelley - Chief factory inspector who helped found the NAACP, advocated for womens labor rights and equality

• Teddy roosevelt - his domestic agenda was the square deal

  • NOT socialism - he wants to make sure everyone has equal access to opportunity

  • Consumer protection - meat inspection act (all meat must be inspected before being sent for interstate commerce), pure food and drug act (labels must accurately explain what’s in a product)

  • Conservation of natural resources

    • Newlands reclamation act - Federal money from lands used to support irrigation systems, giving individuals land in exchanged for nourishing soil

    • Forest reserve act - Gave the president powers to designate land for monuments and parks

      • Roosevelt used to save a lot of land

    • Antiquities act - Preserved historical sites

      • Devils tower - made form land from the antiquities act

    • Sierra club - founded by Muir, a conservation coalition that was very influential

    • Hetch Hetchy Valley - split conservationists into conservationists vs preservationists, Federal government built a dam in Yosemite national park against preservationists’ wishes

    • Division of Forestry: Led by Gifford Pinchot and it was responsible for the management of State-owned forests, natural areas, public hunting areas, and plant and wildlife sanctuaries.

    • Roosevelt dam - a dam made in honor of Roosevelt, set precedent b/c lots more dams were built afterwards

    • Carey act - gave land to states on the condition that it would be irrigated and improved

  • Control of corporations - TR went after the northern securities company, using the sherman antitrust act which was usually used to prosecute labor unions; also threatened employers in the Anthracite coal strike with the military for them to treat workers fairly

William Howard Taft

• Also a reformist - avid trustbuster, continued using antiquities act

• Split w/ Roosevelt

  • Suit against US steel, which Roosevelt helped merge

  • Fired Gifford Pinchot, a rooseveltian conservationist

  • Payne-Aldrich act = raises the tariff, proclaims it the best bill the party ever passed

• Dollar diplomacy - where the US dollar goes, troops are sure to follow

Election of 1912

• Roosevelt - Progressive party (bull moose party), ran on the new nationalist platform (increased regulation of trusts/monopolies)

  • Ran b/c taft made him angy

  • Effectively split the republican vote

• Wilson - Democrat, ran on new freedom platform (increased capitalist competition)

  • Won the electoral vote, but not the popular vote

Wilsonian Progressivism

• Fires every black government official- his progressivism stops at the color line

• Established the federal reserve after the panic of 1907 - modernized the banking system

  • Regional banks regulated by a chairman who can stimulate or minimize the economy

• Establishes federal trade commission to regulate monopolies/interstate commerce

  • + Clayton antitrust act - strengthened the sherman antitrust act, expanded the list of objectionable practices

• National park service - helped preserve national parks

Progressive Amendments

• 16th - legalize the income tax

• 17th - direct election of senators (as called for by reformists)\

• 18th - prohibition of alcohol

  • Two main organizations fought for temperance

    • WCTU - Women’s Christian Temperance union - alcohol interfered w/ their “sphere of influence” of the home, making their husbands abusive and bad, thus, they moved for temperance

    • Anti-Saloon league

  • Temperance caused more problems than it solved-- mob involvement and illegal smuggling

• 19th - women’s suffrage

Other Reform Movements

• Anti-child labor - Mandatory school

• Jane Addams helped immigrants with the Hull House, which gave immigrants english lessons, daycares, and social locations

• Florence Kelley helped found the NAACP for racial justice

• Labor reform - fire safety codes and safe hours

  • Prompted by the triangle shirtwaist factory fire

End of Progressive Era

• Wilson was re-elected, Bob La Follette lost 

• Federal agencies established to regulate daily life ended up hurting the people