US History Review Notes

Maize Cultivation's Impact on Native American Societies

• Maize cultivation spread throughout South America, Central America, Mexico, and the Southwest.
• Increased populations.
• Allowed for more diverse, complex societies.
• Facilitated the formation of trade-based economies.

Development of Slavery in European Colonies

• Portugal initiated involvement in the West African slave trade in the 15th century.
  • Sought labor for sugar plantations off the African coast.
  • The profitability of this trade set a precedent.
• Precedent influenced the implementation of systems like:
  • Encomienda: Native slave labor in Spanish colonies.
  • Asiento: African slave labor in Spanish colonies.

Qualities of European Colonies in North America

• French Colonies
  • Relationships with Native Americans: Friendly.
  • Growth: Struggled to attract settlers.
  • Aims: Trade.
• Spanish Colonies
  • Relationships with Native Americans: Enslavement and conflict.
  • Growth: Struggled to attract settlers.
  • Aims: Conquering.
• English Colonies
  • Relationships with Native Americans: Varied, but generally exploitative.
  • Growth: Significant migration due to economic struggles in England.
  • Aims: Raw materials and economic prosperity.

Jamestown

• First permanent English settlement in America.
• Operated as a joint-stock colony initially.
• Experienced difficulties:
  • Outbreaks of disease.
  • Poor agricultural planning.
  • Conflicts with the Powhatan natives.
• The Crown (James I) assumed control due to these issues.
• Virginia was established as a result.

Characteristics of the New England Colonies

• Economy: Mostly dependent on fishing, lumber, and the slave trade.
• Settlement: Formed by Puritans, known for:
  • Strict moral standards.
  • Low religious toleration.
• Settlement Patterns:
  • Mostly spread-out, church-centric towns.
  • Featured important port cities.

Characteristics of the Middle Colonies

• Workforce: Diversity, including traders, artisans, and farmers.
• Settlement: Settled by Quakers, who:
  • Believed religious authority was found within everyone.
  • Supported religious equality and diversity.
• Government: Had early representative governments, as seen in Pennsylvania.

Characteristics of the Southern Colonies

• Geography and Economy: Plantation-centric.
• Cash Crops: Rice, indigo, and tobacco.
• Social Structure:
  • Wealthy landowners dominated the government.
  • The rest of the population was typically enslaved or comprised of freed indentured servants.

Effects of the Navigation Acts

• Applied mercantilist policies to colonial trade.
• Established strong British control over American trade.
• Enforcement: Rarely enforced until salutary neglect ended in the mid-1700s.

Metacom's War

• A bloody war between many native tribes of southern New England, organized by the Wampanoag chief Metacom (King Philip).
• Fought against English settlers encroaching on native land.
• Ended in colonial victory.
• Resulted in the end of most Native American resistance in New England.

Significance of Bacon's Rebellion

• Highlighted sharp class differences in Virginia.
• Damaged relations between natives and settlers.
• Encouraged a shift from indentured servitude to enslaved labor to prevent future rebellion.

First Great Awakening

• A movement of fervent expression of religious feeling among the American masses, though it started in Europe, in the 1730s and 1740s.
• Unique for both its passion and accessibility.

Unique Qualities of the American Colonies Compared to Europe in the 1700s

• Higher levels of religious toleration.
• Lack of a hereditary aristocracy.
• Opportunities for white social mobility.

Effects of the French and Indian War

• Established Britain's dominance.
• Gave American colonies security against the fear of attack.
  • Britain obtained Spanish Florida and French Canada.
• Led to distaste for Britain's military planning.
• Resulted in an abandonment of salutary neglect that increased resentment.

Pontiac's Rebellion & Effects

• A native attack against colonial settlements on the western frontier.
• Resulted in the Proclamation of 1763.
  • Set a limit on colonial expansion.
  • Angered colonists.
  • Colonists believed that their efforts fighting in British wars deserved rewarding in the form of expansion

Colonial Anger Towards the Sugar, Stamp, and Quartering Acts (1764-65)

• Colonists faced higher prices from tariffs.
• Colonists had to directly pay taxes and provide for quartered soldiers.
• Angered them by going against the salutary neglect and relative economic freedom that they were used to.

Townshend Acts (1767)

• Enacted duties on imports of tea, glass, and paper.
• Allowed the search of private homes for smuggled goods.

Colonial Protest Against the Tea Act (1773)

• Buying cheaper but still taxed British tea would effectively recognize Parliament's right to tax them.

Coercive/Intolerable Acts (1774)

• A series of acts punishing the people of Boston for their defiance (in the Boston Tea Party).
  • Suspended trade.
  • Inhibited their legislature.
  • Brought American trials to Britain.

Actions of the First Continental Congress

• Protested against Parliament's infringement on colonial rights.
• Planned resistance (boycotts) against the Intolerable Acts.
• Petitioned the king for their repeal.

Lexington and Concord

• A British effort to seize colonial military supplies in Concord, Massachusetts, that was stopped by attacks by colonial militiamen.
• Ended in British humiliation.

Turning Point of the Revolutionary War (1777)

• The American victory at the Battle of Saratoga humiliated the British.
• Convinced France to officially join the Americans, supplying them with military resources and training.

Republican Motherhood

• A new view of women's status in society following the Revolutionary War that emerged from the combination of the influence of its ideals and active engagement in it.
• Called for educating women so that they could teach their children the values of the new republic.

Effects of the Revolutionary War on Slavery

• Its ideals of equality temporarily decreased slavery in the colonies.
• The introduction of the cotton gin in 1793 increased the demand for low-cost labor and brought the practice back in full force.

Shay's Rebellion

• An uprising of Massachusetts farmers against the state's high taxes and oppressive debt policy.
• Signaled the need for a new stable and consistent constitution in place of the weak Articles of Confederation.

Creation of the Electoral College

• Delegates feared that too much democracy might lead to mob rule.

Hamilton's Financial Plan

• The federal government would pay the national debt and assume the war debt of the states.
• Impose high tariffs on imports.
• Create a national bank.

Proclamation of Neutrality

• Washington's declaration that the US would not aid in the French Revolution.
• He believed the country was not strong enough to enter a European war.

Effects of the XYZ Affair

• Anger against France and their diplomats that enabled the Federalists to win a congressional majority in 1798.
• Thereafter, they passed the Naturalization and Alien Acts (making conditions more difficult for immigrants who were more likely to vote Democratic-Republican) and the Sedition Act, which made it illegal for editors to criticize the federal government.

Population Changes in Post-Revolution America

• Westward movement as people settled in new states and forced Native Americans out of them.
• An increase in the birth rate.
• The growth of the slave trade with industrialization.
• Lower European immigration as conditions on the continent stabilized.

Jefferson's Economy

• Kept Hamilton's bank & debt-repayment to maintain Federalist support.
• Repealed some taxes.
• Limited government interference in the economy.

Effects of the Louisiana Purchase

• Doubled the size of the US.
• Removed a European presence from its borders.
• Increased support for Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans.

Effects of the Missouri Compromise

• Preserved sectional balance for more than 30 years, allowing the nation to mature.
• Divided people between sectionalism (loyalty to a region) and nationalism.

Causes of the War of 1812

• British impressment of American soldiers into the British navy.
• British aid to natives in conflicts with Americans.
• The US desire for British colonial land.

Effects of the War of 1812

• While it ended in an effective stalemate, it increased nationalism, foreign respect, and US claims to the west, as well as catalyzed the Federalists' decline.

Adams-Onís Treaty (1819)

• An agreement between the US and Spain after Andrew Jackson's seizure of their forts in Florida that gave the US Florida and Spanish claims to the Oregon Territory and conceded claims to Texas to Spain.

Eli Whitney

• An inventor that introduced the cotton gin, which heavily influenced the economy of the South, and the idea of interchangeable parts for rifles that became the basis for mass production methods.

Effects of the Market Revolution

• Expanded infrastructure and interstate connection.
• Switched farming from subsistence- to profit-based.
• Made cotton cultivation the main business of the South.
• Caused exponential population growth from immigration and the slave trade.

Andrew Jackson's Campaign Strategies

• Smearing John Quincy Adams himself in addition to his campaign.
• Used his reputation as a war hero to get support.
• Posed himself as a symbol of the common man/working class.

Jacksonian Financial Policies

• Vetoed a recharter of the national bank.
• Transferred federal funds to state banks.
• Forced western lands to be purchased in gold and silver after speculation (ultimately devaluing the banknote).

Mountain Men

• White Americans who served as guides for settlers crossing into the Oregon Territory in the 1840s.

American Identity in the Early 1800s

• Centered around romanticism and nationalism.
• Imbued with patriotism.
• Inspired by ideals of prosperity and expansion.

Causes of the Second Great Awakening

• An emphasis on democracy/the common man that made less formal services popular.
• The fear of greed and sin from the Market Revolution.
• The romantic movement.

Effects of the Second Great Awakening

• Revived Calvinist ideas.
• Methodists, Baptists, and Mormons emerged.
• Growth in social reform movements.

Antebellum Reform Ideals

• Temperance (reducing drinking and alcoholism).
• The construction of asylums, disabled schools, and better prisons (believing structure and discipline would bring about moral reform).
• The formation of free public schools (to teach literacy and moral virtues in an industrial society) and growth of higher education.
• Cult of domesticity (the view of women as moral leaders in the home).

King Cotton

• A term to describe the Antebellum South, considered its own region ruled by the demands of the textile industry for cotton and centered around a quasi-feudalistic culture defensive of and dependent on slavery.

Causes of Manifest Destiny

• Nationalism.
• Population increase.
• Economic, social, and technological developments.
• The desire by some to spread slavery.

Effects of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848)

• Acquisition of territory including New Mexico and California (Mexican Cession).
• Defined the border of Texas.
• Deepened sectional divides as arguments erupted over how to admit the states (slave or free).

Gadsden Purchase (1853)

• America's acquisition of a small strip of land that became southern New Mexico & Arizona from Mexico.

Free-Soil Movement

• A political movement against the expansion of slavery into western territories, sometimes due to abolitionism and other times simply due to a desire for greater white opportunity in the new territory.

Nativism

• The opposition of many Americans to the influx of immigration in the mid-1800s.
• Rooted in a desire to protect their culture.
• Their Protestantism clashing with the immigrants' Roman Catholicism.
• The fear that immigrants would take their jobs for lower wages.

Bleeding Kansas

• The bloodshed that resulted from proslavery and abolitionist groups fighting to admit Kansas as slave or free after popular sovereignty was declared.

Dred Scott v. Sanford

• A SCOTUS decision that ruled that African Americans were not citizens but instead property and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.

Causes of the Secession Crisis

• Immense sectional tensions (especially over westward expansion).
• Lincoln's election.
• Southern paranoia from John Brown's raid and the growing abolitionist movements.

Effects of Fort Sumter (1861)

• Caused Lincoln to assemble an army.
• Rallied Northerners who wanted to preserve the Union.
• Led the last 4 loyal Southern states to secede.

Confederacy Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths:
  • Defensive rather than offensive.
  • Shorter distances between bases.
  • Experienced leaders.
  • A coastline that was difficult to blockade.
• Weaknesses:
  • Smaller population.
  • Reliance on foreign countries for cotton trade.
  • Lack of an established or centralized government.

Union Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths:
  • Economic dominance.
  • Loyal navy.
  • Large population.
  • Established central government.
• Weaknesses:
  • The greater cost in time, money, and soldiers of conquering territory.

Factors Turning the Tide of the Civil War Towards the Union

• Britain withdrew support when they found cotton elsewhere.
• Starving soldiers began to desert the Confederate army.
• Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation raised Union morale despite only freeing slaves in the Union.
• The Battle of Gettysburg was a decisive Union victory.

Effect of the Union Blockade on the Outcome of the Civil War

• It devastated the South's economy by cutting off their main source of income (the foreign cotton trade), ultimately weakening them so that the Union could win by attrition.

Conscription Act (1863)

• The Civil War law that instituted the first national war draft, although it provided loopholes for wealthy people that led to some riots of poor whites and immigrant laborers.

Economic Effects of the Civil War

• While costly (in lives and money) and inflationary, it encouraged industrialization, stimulated the growth of the Northern and Western economies, consolidated capital into corporations, and increased civilian employment with the government.

Presidential Reconstruction

• The period during which Lincoln and Johnson worked reconstruction, with generally forgiving actions.
• Lincoln sought to give latitude to states rejoining to unify the Union more easily.
• Johnson was sympathetic to black codes and Southern politicians.

Civil Rights Act (1866)

• A law, passed by a Republican Congress over Johnson's veto, that granted citizenship and a federal guarantee of natural rights to African Americans.

Factors Contributing to the End of Radical Reconstruction

• Southern conservatives known as "Redeemers" retook government control.
• Southern legislatures adopted black codes.
• Sharecropping reestablished a similar system of agriculture and African American dependence.
• Troops withdrew from occupying and rebuilding the South.

Comstock Lode

• A deposit of metal in Nevada that yielded rich amounts of money and drove many migrants and immigrants to it in a mining boom like many in the West.

Failures of the New South

• While railroads expanded into the South, most profits went to the North.
• The South failed to fund technical public education, making it difficult to hold high-paying jobs.
• Systems like sharecropping based on racial and class discrimination kept many locked in poverty.

Effects of Railroads

• They encouraged mass production/industrialization and mass consumption by more easily connecting urban centers.
• Led to the creation of standardized time zones.
• Involved the government in some business affairs.

Gilded Age

• The period of time after the Civil War and before the 1900s in which America industrialized (creating a new focus on wealth, consumerism, and glamor).
• Marked by a laissez-faire economy, deadlocked government, and a widening class gap.

How Industrialization increased American Involvement in National Affairs

• They sought business and market opportunities in other countries, and were able to communicate with said countries through the transatlantic telegraph cable.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• A national strike of workers across industries against wage cuts by railroad companies that expressed worker discontent and achieved mixed results, with some reforms but also more union-busting.

Why did Immigration Spike during the Gilded Age?

• Growing poverty of farmers, overcrowding, and restrictive governments in Europe.
• The US's reputation for freedom and their abundance of industrial jobs.

Characteristics of Gilded Age Politics

• Major parties avoided taking stands on controversial issues.
• Policies were largely complacent and conservative.
• The spoils system gave many supporters of campaigns government jobs.
• Politics became centered on winning elections by opinion rather than policy and providing jobs to faithful party members.

Populist Party

• A legislatively successful third party during the Gilded Age that called for power to the common voter/worker and income taxes, united poor blacks and whites, and ultimately fused with the Democratic Party in the election of 1896.

How did Women's Roles Change in the Gilded Age?

• Many working-class women were forced to work long hours to support their family.
• While most middle-class women remained in the home (cult of domesticity), some ventured into clerical and teaching professions.
• Women's rights activists also began to organize during this era as social reforms gained steam in the later part of the era.

Why Was Imperialism Popular in Early-20th Century America?

• Nationalism leading to the belief that the US was socially dominant.
• The desire for a new frontier.
• The potential of new overseas markets.
• The desire to compete with Europe.

What were Arguments Against Imperialism?

• Some believed in self-determination and anti-colonialism.
• Some were isolationist, others did not want America to encapsulate "lesser" races.
• Others disagreed with the view of racial superiority on which imperialism was built.
• Still others did not want the US to pay for the naval expansion required for this new territory.

Effects of the Spanish-American War

• US acquisition of the Philippines (which led to a revolt for Filipino independence)
• Increased involvement of the US in Latin American affairs.
• The loosening of regional tensions due to nationalism's unifying effect.

Theodore Roosevelt's Foreign Policy

• He was an expansionist and internationalist.
• He acquired territory for and commanded the construction of the Panama Canal, interfered in Latin America many times, and maintained diplomatic relations with Japan.

Progressivism

• A movement in the 1900s that gained popularity with Roosevelt's election and advocated for limiting big business, improving democracy, and using the government to advance social justice, but believed in moderate rather than radical change unlike populists.

Woodrow Wilson's Domestic Reform Policy

• Wilson supported segregation and believed that reform could be achieved through limiting the power of government rather than involving it in affairs.

Why Did America Join WWI?

• Germany violated a pledge to stop firing on their ships and tried to recruit Mexico.
• The government wanted to stop WWI so they could focus instead on halting the rise of communism in Eastern Europe.
• They had invested money and weapons already in the Triple Entente (Allies).

Immigration Post-WWI

• Nativists used the war as an excuse to spout anti-immigration rhetoric.
• In appeasement, the government passed restrictions/quotas on immigration designed to limit "undesirable" countries' immigrants.

Great Migration (20th Century)

• The mass movement during WWI of African Americans from the South to the North to fill factory jobs left behind by drafted men.

First Red Scare

• American paranoia about communism following the Russian Revolution that spread xenophobic ideas and temporarily maintained WWI's free speech limitations.

Causes of the Roaring Twenties

• The assembly line and electricity increased efficiency.
• Consumerism rose.
• The automobile changed industry and cities.

Causes of the Great Depression

• Uneven income distribution that lowered demand.
• Overproduction (high supply).
• Excessive loaning.
• The gold standard.
• High tariffs.
• Speculation.

Why Did Speculation Contribute to the Stock Market Crash?

• People just wanted to own stocks & did not care what underlied them, investing large amounts of their money. When stock prices plunged because of overselling, people lost incredible amounts of money because their assets were worth less.

Why Did Europe Suffer During the Great Depression?

• The US, under the Dawes Plan, had made an agreement with Europe to fund Germany's WWI reparations so that the Allies could repay their loans (which the US could collect interest on). This crippled Europe's economy, a problem made worse by the steep Hawley-Smoot Tariff that caused Europe to impose tariffs on the US and chaos all around.

FDR's First 100 Days

• Implementing relief and recovery programs: held bank holidays (which allowed the government to assess which should stay open), repealed prohibition to raise tax money, and hosted the first fireside chat to reassure and educate listeners.

Effects of the New Deal

• Caused a major shift in the Democratic Party by bringing many African Americans over to it, formed the foundations of modern liberalism, and instituted a welfare state.

Causes of US Isolationism

• American nationalism.
• Fear of another total war.
• Slow loan repayment from the Allies that made the US distrustful.

Cash and Carry Policy

• An early WWII US policy that gave a warring country US arms if it paid upfront and transported them itself (technically maintaining US neutrality but in reality favoring Great Britain).

Domestic Effects of WWII

• The end of the Great Depression and widespread unemployment.
• An increase in the national debt.
• Unity that temporarily dissolved some racial tensions.
• Increased involvement of women and African Americans in the workforce.
• A softening of regional differences.

Berlin Blockade

• A result of growing tensions between the US and Soviet Union and Stalin's decision to communize East Germany, which was resolved by a US effort to airlift supplies for nearly a year.
• The event considered the beginning of the Cold War.

Effects of the Korean War

• Militarily, it ended in a stalemate and boundaries between the communist North and democratic South returning to their pre-war state.
• Domestically, though it maintained Truman's policy of containment, it earned him criticism for being "soft on communism".

McCarthy Hearings (Second Red Scare)

• A post-WWII fight against the idea of communism infiltrating the government, spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy who held aggressive congressional hearings to "weed out" communists.

Characteristics of Post-War Society (1950s)

• High standard of living.
• Consumerism.
• Conformity.
• Reforms that aided returning white soldiers but disadvantaged black soldiers, widening the racial wealth gap.
• Increase in advertising.
• White-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar laborers.

Eisenhower's Political Approach

• Modern fiscal conservative.
• Focused on balancing the budget with a businesslike administration.
• Encouraged the construction of interstate highways, creating jobs.

Effects of the 1973 Oil Embargo

• Caused a shortage worldwide.
• The loss of US manufacturing jobs (as the US switched to more efficient Japanese cars).
• A decrease in the US's high standard of living.

Iran Hostage Crisis

• The taking of US embassy members hostage in Iran (after Iranians overthrew their US-installed monarch and he was taken in by the US for care).

Gulf of Tonkin

• A congressional resolution that allowed LBJ to take "necessary measures" to protect US interests in Vietnam without declaring war, expanding presidential power.

Effects of the Tet Offensive

• While it was a military failure for the Vietcong, it demoralized Americans who heard of it and lost faith in LBJ and the Vietnam War.
• Led LBJ to move towards peace talks.

Vietnamization

• Nixon's strategy to shift Vietnam War combat efforts to South Vietnamese troops and withdraw US presence.

Great Society Program

• LBJ's expansion of the New Deal that expanded food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and education; abolished immigration quotas; and funded public housing/transit, but was difficult to maintain due to high Vietnam War taxes.

Legislation of the Civil Rights Era

• The Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination.
• 24th Amendment, ending poll taxes.
• Voting Rights Act, ending black suffrage restrictions.

Other Social Movements Gaining Traction During the 1960s/70s

• Feminism.
• Latin American rights.
• Native American self-determination.
• Gay rights.
• Environmental conservation.
• Better treatment of criminal defendants.

Causes of the Conservative Resurgence

• The counterculture movement.
• Economic struggles.
• Religious fear of moral decay.
• Tension created by failures in Vietnam, MLK's assassination, and a split in the Democratic Party caused by RFK's assassination.

Effects of Watergate

• Loss of faith in the government.
• Investigation of the CIA and executive department.
• Fear of imperial presidencies.

Characteristics of the Ford and Carter Presidencies

• Poor economy.
• Struggles in the Middle East.
• Informality that appealed to voters suspicious of the government following the Watergate scandal.

Effects of Reaganomics

• Reduced federal spending.
• Deregulated industry.
• Widened the income gap between the rich and poor.
• (Combined with high military spending) his tax cuts put the US into debt.

Iran-Contra Affair

• A scandal during Reagan's presidency in which he sold Iran missiles to fight Iraq for releasing the hostages of the Iran hostage crisis, and then used those profits to fund the Contras (a right-wing non-communist dictatorship) in Nicaragua.

Operation Desert Storm

• An attack on Iraq during H.W. Bush's presidency that sought to weaken them after Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

Post-Cold War Regional Shifts

• The South and West gained population & power with migration, strengthening conservative presence and Roman Catholic/Hispanic culture throughout the US.