US History Module 3 The Gilded Age and Building an Empire

Gilded: not special, something wrapped in gold, corruption

Grant Administration = most corrupted

(not Grant himself but the administration because he was a bad judge of character, didn’t know about corruption)

big business grew, better machinery

Rockefeller - Standard Oil Company, gasoline for cars, automobile culture

Railroads —>

  • need for steel

  • Chinese immigrants brought in to West Coast for railroad building

  • 1920’s, everyone can buy cars —> building highways, no need for railroads anymore

  • caused issues for other industries

  • powered by steam engine

  • farmers went into debt in buying expensive machinery, specializing in cash crops

  • cash crops: grow stuff for stuff other than food

  • railroads control you because they’re everywhere, high cost of shipping

Urbanization

  • new jobs for mechanics or in the factory

  • After 1940s, Los Angeles population explode

Political Bosses

  • Immigrant’s vote is very important to them, sense of freedom

  • 1887, Chinese immigrants needed legal forms or couldn’t come in

  • William Boss Tweed —> gives workers and in return gets contract for building, gives immigrants jobs and in return they give him a vote, doesn’t have to bid for contract, trying to sway immigrant votes, corrupted

Hiram Revel - first African American elected to Senate

Restrictions put on African Americans to vote (literacy tests, have to pay)

Plessy vs Ferguson: have to give all education to everyone (but still segregated) seperate but equal

Brown v Board: ended Plessy vs Ferguson

Conquest of West:

Dawes Act: congressmen believed that tribal Native American communities was stopping them from becoming Americans, severed bonds to privatized reservation —> third of reservation lands lost. Only 10 years, then cut it off.

Victorian style came from England to make themselves look fancier

New Things:

baseball

football

circus

newspaper ads

medicine

Currency Issues:

  • 1880’s discussion: tariffs (protect certain type of industry)

  • Currency: stay on gold or silver standard?

  • Civil Service: problem with McKinley getting shot

  • Politics were boring, but corrupt, gilded

American Imperialism

  • conquering land in America

  • Empire = taking over

  • American Culture: frontiersmen, cowboy (25 years of history) defined by Fredrick Jackson Turner

  • talk about expanding America and also opposition (nowhere in Constitution about expanding)

  • free market capitalism/system - industries boom then people stop buying and it crashes

  • start selling to Asia to avoid financial crash

  • 1890- America changed because of money

  • Alfred Mahan - writes blueprint to what America should do in the new century, we need open water Navy, battleships, control sea lanes and Pacific and new canals, bases that control access to these things, access to Asia markets

  • Hearst bans weed

Spanish American War

  • no loss of ships

  • acquire Puerto Rico, Guam, Marianas, Philippines

  • This is what makes America an Empire

  • When Spain discovers gold, they can now trade with China, as a result, Spain is arrogant then collapses (oppressive against Cubans)

  • Hearse and Nobel: political, wanted American intervention, flared American imagination

  • USS Maine, brings us into Spanish American War, coal accident

  • Destruction of Maine leads to Spanish American War

  • Theodore Roosevelt assistant secretary of navy: agrees that we need access to canal, Pacific base, Asian base, navy do everything (sends pacific fleet to Manila, Philippines)

  • segregated army units in war

Philippine War

  • Americans thought they were fighting with Filipinos against Spain but Filipinos thought they were fighting for their freedom

  • a lot more casualties than Spanish American War

  • Opposition: all this was not in the Constitution

  • Support: economy depends on it, racist

  • Woodrow Wilson: Anti-Semitic, superiority

Hawai’i

  • reciprocity: ability to sell without taxing

  • treaty of annexation (2/3 majority vote of congress)

  • Pearl Harbor, deep water, pristine for naval base (Schofield saw it)

  • America wants to tax Hawaii

  • Bayonet Constitution renegotiation on reciprocity and they want Pearl harbor in return (forced on Kalakaua to sign)

  • Federal government didn’t know that they were drafting a new constitution

  • American businessmen in Hawaii, not America (yet)

  • Honolulu Rifles (militia in Hawaii)

  • Power went to rich sugar businessmen

  • Harrison, Blaine, Stevens (want empire)

    • Steven and Blaine: Steven became annexationist (wanted America to take over)

  • 1891 (McKinley tariff negates reciprocity treaty) sugar industry is getting tired (if they just joined America, it would be ok)

  • overthrow based on a lie, illegal landing of troops

  • Dole and Thurston (political mechanisms, believes that Hawaii’s future is within their hands

  • Dole is more sympathetic towards Hawaiian community, duty to take care of Hawaii (still racist)

  • Thurston: racist (darwinist)