Ultimate APUSH Study Guide

By Taryn :)

“Guaranteed to score higher than a 0”

Key:

Green: Dates/Eras/Events/Doctrines

Blue: People

Red: Political Trends

Orange: Economical Trends

Purple: Social Trends

Pink: Important Places/Locations

Black: Other Important Contexts/Details

Highlighted: Culture

Content Links:

1. Section 1 +2: Early Contact and Colonization of the New World (1491-1607) [5-10% of Exam]
   1. Section Summary
2. Section 3: Conflict and American Independence (1754-1800) [10-15% of Exam]
   1. Section Summary
3. Section 4: Beginnings of Modern American Democracy (1800-1848) [10-15% of Exam]
   1. Section Summary
4. Section 5: Toward the Civil War & Reconstruction (1844-1877) [10-15% of Exam]
   1. Section Summary
5. Section 6: The Industrial Revolution (1865-1898) [10-15% of Exam]
   1. Section Summary
6. Section 7: The Early 20th Century (1890-1945) [10-15%] Exam
   1. Section Summary
7. Section 8: The Post-War Period & the Cold War (1945-1980)
   1. Section Sumary

Section 1 + 2: Early Contact and Colonization of the New World (1491-1607) [5-10% of Exam]

Pre-Colombian North America (Before 1492)

• The Pre-Columbian Era: The period before Christopher Colombus’s arrival in the New World
• Native Americans were believed to be descendants of migrants who traveled from Asia to North America via the Land Bridge from Siberia to Alaska.
• An Estimated 1 to 5 million Natives living in North America formed in highly populated urban empires (such as Aztecs)
• Maize: proved to be an important crop cultivation. Much of North America switched to reliance on it. Transition from hunting to prosperous farming cultures among Natives.

Spanish Colonization (Beginning in 1492)

• Christopher Columbus: an Italian explorer and the first European to reach North America. He was originally in search of a waterway to India but landed upon the New World in 1492. Funded by the Spanish.
• Columbian Exchange: The Contact Period, marked by the arrival of Columbus. An era in which the exchange of plants, animals, foods, communicable diseases, and ideas between Europe and the New World
• Spain was the colonial power in America for most of the 15th-16th century.
• Conquistador: the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru in the 16th century.
• Encomienda System: a labor system instituted by the Spanish crown in the American colonies. In this system, a Spanish encomendero was granted a number of native laborers who would pay tributes to him in exchange for his protection
• The Spanish Racial Caste System: a liberal mixing of cultures in Spanish colonized areas. Europeans were at the top of the hierarchy, followed by Mestizos (people with mixed European and Native blood), Zambos (mixed African and Native American heritage, and full blooded Africans at the bottom.
• Spanish Armada: Spain’s navy, one of the strongest military powers in the world at the time. A primary reason Spain kept such a great hold on the New World territory.
• Smallpox Epidemic: the disease that devastated the Native American population. Brought by the Europeans, it decimated 95% of the population.

Competition for Global Dominance

• Many European countries viewed North America as a new land for virtually endless potential for agricultural profits and mineral extraction.
• Technological advances such as the sextant (navigation tool) made the journeys easier.
• Virginia Company: an English trading company chartered by King James I on 10 April 1606 with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of America
• Jamestown: the settlement of the Virginia Company. Many of the men who settled there were ill suited to adjusting to the New World. Many were searching for gold, but didn’t work the land which lead to over half of their deaths.
• Captain John Smith: Englishman who saved Jamestown by claiming “he who will not work shall not eat”
• Juan de Sepulveda: Spanish philosopher and explorer. Sepúlveda defended the position of the colonists, although he had never been to America, claiming that some were "natural slaves"
• Bartolomé de Las Casas: A Spanish clergyman and activist who opposed the abuses committed by European colonists against the indigenous peoples of America.
• Roanoke: “The Lost Colony”. The settlement that was sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh in North Carolina. By 1590, the colony had disappeared.
• The Starving Time: The era in which the Powhatan Confederacy stopped supplying Jamestown residents with food. Nearly 90% of the Jamestown residents perished.
• John Rolfe: married Pocahontas and also pioneered the practice of growing tobacco.
• The introduction of tobacco would also lead to the development of plantation slavery.
• Many who traveled to the New World were attracted by the opportunity of indentured servitude. Indentured servants gained a small piece of property and the right to vote.
• Headright System: a system introduced by the Virginia Company in 1618. Allowed landowners to purchase fifty acres of land (a “headright”) for every immigrant whose journey they sponsored.
• House of Burgesses: an established law in which any property holding, white male could vote.

The Main Colonizing Powers

• Spain: A conquering nation that tended to enslave the colonized inhabitants. Made efforts to spread and convert the native people to Catholicism.
• France: Much friendlier with indigenous folk, allied with them
• The Netherlands: built a great trading empire in North America, founded and inhabited settlements such as New Amsterdam (Modern Day New York)
• England: Depended on Native Americans as slave labor, allies, and trading partners. Launched wars of extermination.

Pilgrims and Massachusetts Bay Company

• Puritanism: Protestant movement that desired to purify the Anglican Church of Roman Catholic practices
• Separatists: a Puritan group that believed England was so incapable of being reformed that they abandoned it. Called Pilgrims.
• Mayflower: The ship used by the Pilgrims
• Plymouth: the settlement of the Separatists
• Mayflower Compact: a basic legal system by the Pilgrims that asserted that the government’s power derives from the consent of the governed and not from God (an Absolutist view).
• Squanto: a Native American who had survived the disease epidemic, served as the Pilgrims’ interpreter and taught them the foundations for their new home
• Massachusetts Bay: Colony established by Congregational Puritans led by governor John Winthrop
• John Winthrop: Massachusetts Bay governor who urged the colonizers to be “a city upon a hill” in his famous sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity”
• Historians believe the roots of the Civil War can be traced back to the founding of the Chesapeake region and New England, as a plantation economy dependent on slave labor developed in Chesapeake regions and New England became the commercial center.
• Roger Williams: perpetrator for a major incident in Puritan colonies. A minister that taught a number of controversial principles (e.g. separation of church and system). He was banished by the Puritans.
• Anne Hutchinson: another perpetrator for a major incident, preached antinomianism, a belief that one is saved by faith and God’s grace and not by performance of good deeds.

Founding of Other Colonies (Besides Massachusetts and Virginia)

*Proprietorship - colony owned by a single person

Major Conflicts With Native Americans

Slavery in the Early Colonies

• Began when colonists from the Caribbean settled in the Carolinas. The industry expanded into large tobacco growing and rice growing operations and was in need of a larger work force.
• Southern landowners turned to enslaved Africans who did not know the land as well as Native Americans, so they were less likely to escape.
• The Middle Passage: the shipping route that brought the enslaved people to the Americas through the middle leg of the triangular trade route among the colonies, Europe, and Africa

THE AGE OF SALUTARY NEGLECT (1650-1750)

• The British treatments of the colonies during the period preceding the French and Indian War is called this or benign neglect
• They interfered little in colonial affairs and kept their distance, leaving the colonies to self govern.

English Regulation of Colonial Trade

• Mercantilism: the belief that economic power was rooted in a favorable balance of trade (that is, exporting more than you import)
• Specie: hard currency, such as gold coins
• The colonies on the North American continent were seen primarily as markets for British and West Indian goods
• England placed protective tariffs on imports in order to guarantee a favorable balance of trade on English goods
• The Navigation Acts (1651-1673): A tariff act that required the colonists to buy goods only from England, to sell certain products only to England, and to import any non-English goods via English ports.
  • This prohibited colonists from manufacturing a number of goods England already produced
• Wool Act of 1699: An act that forbade the export of wool from American colonies and importation of wool from other British colonies
  • Many protested this law (Instance of Rebellion)

• Molasses Act of 1733: an exorbitant tax upon the importation of sugar from the French West Indies (thus protecting British merchants)
  • New Englanders frequently refused to pay the tax, another early Instance of Rebellion against the Crown

Colonial Governments

• Every colony had a governor
• Governor: a man appointed by the king to rule a colony. Had powers similar to the king’s but was dependent on colonial legislatures for money and his power relied on the cooperation of the colonists.
• Bicameral Legislature: a legislature of 12/13 colonies (Pennsylvania was unicameral) that served as a two house legislature modeled after British Parliament.
  • The lower house functioned in much the same way as does modern day House of Reps. Members were directly elected and it contained the “power of the purse” (control over government salaries and tax legislation.
  • The upper house was made of appointees who served as advisors to the governor
• New England Confenderation: the colonists attempt toward centralized government, but it had no real power. However, it offered colonists the opportunity to meet and discuss their mutual problems

Major Events of the Period

• Bacon’s Rebellion: took place 1679 on Virginia’s Western frontier. Western settlers sought to band together and drive the native tribes out of the region lead by Nathaniel Bacon. Sought help from the governor, who refused, but nevertheless, Bacon and his men ashout out the natives anyways before sacking and burning Jamestown
  • Nathaniel Bacon: a wealthy immigrant, that despite his wealth, had arrived too late to settle on the coast which was primarily occupied by Natives. Died of dysentery after the Rebellion.
  • William Berkeley: A Loyalist and Virginia’s governor who refused to grant Bacon authority to raise a militia and attack nearby tribes
  • The Rebellion is significant as it preludes the Civil War (The allied free Blacks and indentured servants frightened many leading to development of Black Codes) as well as the American Revolution (Colonists sought alienation from greater powers and a desire for greater political autonomy)
• Stono Uprising: In South Carolina of 1739. The first and one of the most successful slave rebellions. 20 slaves met near the Stono River and stole guns and ammunition, killing planters and storekeepers. They attempted to flee to Florida, but many were caught and executed.
• Salem Witch Trials: Took place 1692 in New England where more than 130 “witches” were jailed or executed in Salem.
• Dominion of New England: an English government attempt to clamp down on illegal trade
• King William’s War: a war against French and Native Americans on the Canadian border which heightened regional anxieties
• Halfway Covenant: fueled by Puritans the growing uninterest in the religion. They had prior only allowed Baptism to those who had experienced God’s gift of grace, but change it to anyone could be baptized. The halfway compromise was that those who had not experienced God’s grace could not vote.
• First Great Awakening: A religious revival between the 1730s and 1740s in both the colonies and Europe
  • Johnathan Edwards: Congregationalist minister who preached predestination doctrines of Calvinism. Wrote the speech “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.
  • George Whitfield: Methodist preacher who preached Christianity based on emotionalism and spirituality that is now in modern times is clearly manifested in southern evangelism

Life in the Colonies

• Massive colonial growth: Population in 1700 — 250,000 to Population in 1750 — 1,250,000
• Over 90% of colonists lived in rural areas, the rugged but tolerable countryside
• Black people (the majority enslaved) lived predominantly in the South. Conditions for blacks were most difficult in the South with a difficult climate and labor. In the North where many lived as freemen, black people had trouble maintaining a sense of community in a relatively small black population
• City conditions were much worse than the country. Most immigrants settled in the city because of work opportunities which only exacerbated poverty and health epidemics
• All colleges at the time (prodimnently Harvard in 1636 and Yale in 1701 + Other Ivies) served primarily to train ministers so rudimentary levels of education were rare
• New England was Centered on Trade — Major City: Boston
• Middle Colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, etc.) were a little more focused on farming, called the “bread colonies” because of the wheat they produced — Major Cities: Philadelphia and New York City
• The Lower South (the Carolinas) focused on cash crops, such as tobacco and rice. Slavery was major
• Chesapeake Colonies (Maryland and Virginia) was a combination of the middle colonies and lower south. Cash crops, slavery, grain, etc. Diversified their means of economy.
• The colonies were hardly unified as they approached the events that lead them to rebel in the Revolution soon to come.

Overall Summary Of Section 1 + 2 (For Lazy People)

• Native populations in North America were not monolithic; they were diverse. Tribal groups varied widely in their economies, level of civilization, and interaction with each other and Europeans.
• The Colombian exchange revolutionized both European and Native cultures by expanding trade and technology and creation a racially mixed New World, stratified by wealth and status.
• African slavery started in this period of Early Contact, gradually replacing Native slavery and European indentured servitude
• The belief in European superiority was a key rationale for the colonization of North America
• Europeans and Native Americans vied for control of land, fur, and fishing rights during the colonization period.
• The Spanish, French, Dutch, and British had different styles of interacting with Native populations.
• Colonization of New England was largely driven by religious persecution in Europe, whereas colonization in the Chesapeake and South was driven by economic gain. This difference would also play out with regards to slavery where the agricultural; middle and southern colonies were far more dependent upon slavery.
• A number of armed conflicts occurred between colonists and Native Americans over territorial land rights, fur and fishing, and trade as the colonies grew in size and population

Section 3: Conflict and American Independence (1754-1800) [10-15% of Exam]

Albany Plan of Union (1754)

• 1754, Representatives from seven colonies met in Albany, New York to consider the Albany plan of Union developed by Benjamin Franklin
• The plan provided for an intercolonial government and a system for collecting taxes for the colonies’ defense
• Franklin also tried to negotiate a treaty with the Iroquois, but failed to gain approval

The Seven Year’s War/French and Indian War (1754-1763)

• Lasted nine years despite the name
• A result of colonial expansion and inter-European power struggles — British/Colonists vs. French + Native Americans
• The French were seen as the most congenial European power to the natives
• As English settlers moved into Ohio Valley, the French tried to stop them by building fortified outposts, trying to protect their profitable fur trade and entry spots
• A colonial contingent led by George Washington attacked a French outpost and lost badly. He surrendered there.
• England officially declared war on France in 1756
• Years went by before the British gained the oper hand and won the war, gaining. Colonial power of the continent: control of Canada and almost everything east of the Mississippi Valley
• William Pitt: the English Prime Minister during the war who supported the colonists and encouraged them to join the war effort, promising them pay and some autonomy
• Pontiac’s Rebellion: During the war’s aftermath, the English raised the price of goods sold to the Native Americans. Pontiac, the Ottawa war chief, rallied a group of tribes in the Ohio Valley and attacked colonial outposts
• Paxton Boys: a group of Scots-Irish frontiersmen in Pennsylvania who murdered several Native Americans in response to the rebellion
• Proclamation of 1763: a British instituted response that forbade settlement west of the rivers running through the Appalachians, but meant nothing because it was too late. Many had already settled there. This is often seen as the marker for the end of salutary neglect.

The “Acts”

• King George III: the new British King who believe the colonists should be responsible to help pay the debt of the French and Indian War via taxes
• George Grenville: George’s Prime Minister who assisted in taxing the colonists
• James Otis: colonist who authored the pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved which laid out the colonists’ argument against taxes and coined the phrase, “No taxation without representation.” He claimed that because the colonists did not elect the members of Parliament, they therefore are not speaking on behalf of the colonies.
• The British, on the other hand, stated that the Parliament was rooted in virtual representation, stating that their members of Parliament represented all British subjects regardless of who elected them
• Patrick Henry: drafted the Virginia Stamp Act Resolves, protesting the tax and asserting the colonists’ right to self government
• Sons of Liberty: protest groups that formed throughout the colonies
• Lord Rockingham: George III’s newly elected prime minister who opposed the Stamp Act and repealed it
• Massachusetts Circular Letter: a letter written by Samuel Adams calling to protest the new British measures in unison as united colonies
• Governors of colonies where legislatures discussed the letter dissolved these legislatures, infuriating the colonists

• After two years, Parliament repealed the Townshend duties, although not the other statutes of the Townshend Acts, and not the duty on tea.
• Protests grew tremendously
• Boston Massacre: March 5, 1770. A mob pelted a group of soldiers with rock-filled snowballs. The soldiers fired on the crowd, killing five. John Adams later defended the soldiers in court, helping to establish a tradition of giving a fair trial to all who are accused.

The Calm, and Then the Storm

• Committees of Correspondence: Colonist groups set up throughout the colonies to trade ideas and inform one another of the political mood
• Mercy Otis Warren: a friend of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams who publish pamphlets calling for a Revolution

• John Dickinson: representative of Delaware who stood ground in refraining from revolution who also publish Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania uniting the colonists against the Townshend Acts
• Boston Tea Party: December 16, 1773, a group of the Sons of Liberty, poorly disguised as Mohawks, boarded a ship and dumped its cargo into the Boston Harbor (£10,000 worth of tea).
• First Continental Congress: convened in late 1774, in which all colonies (except Georgia) gather and were represented to discuss the current climate between the colonies and Britain
• Continental Association: a plan set in motion by the Continental Congress to set up committees of observation to enforce boycott on British goods. These committees became the towns’ de facto governments. They expanded their powers from 1774 to 1775 leading acts of insubordination by collecting taxes, disrupting court sessions, and organizing militias and stockpiling weapons

The Articles of Confederation

• The Articles of Confederation: the sucky first national constitution that was not helpful whatsoever and was passed in 1777. It contained many limitations such as (but not limited to):
  • The federal government had no power to raise an army
  • It could not enforce state or individual taxation, or a military draft
  • It could not regulate trade among the states or international trade
  • It had no executive or judicial branch or any balance of power
  • The legislative branch gave each state one vote, regardless of state’s population
  • In order to pass a law, 9 of the 13 states had to agree.
  • In order to amend or change the articles, unanimous approval was needed.
• Shays’s Rebellion: A rebellion led by Daniel Shays, a revolutionary war veteran who had not received his pay, who was risking foreclosure and repossession of his farm. He attacked courthouses and weapons armories, and the federal government had no power to send forces to stop him. It took the force of private citizens to stop the revolt.
• Northwest Ordinance of 1787: ONe of the successes written under the Articles which imposed trial by jury, freedom of religion, abolishment of slavery in the northwest, changes to application for statehood, among others.

The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

• The English dispatched troops in April 1775 to confiscate weapons in Concord, Massachusetts. The troops first had to pass through Lexington, where they confronted a militia. Someone fired the first shot: “the shot heard ‘round the world”. This became the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The minutemen suffered 18 casualties, including 8 dead.
• Minutemen: a small colonial militia because they reputedly could be ready to fight at a minute’s notice
• Loyalists: government officials, devout Anglicans (members of the Church of England), merchants dependent on trade with England, and many religious and ethnic minorities who believed their chances for liberty were better with the British than the colonists.
• Patriots: mostly white Protestant property holders and gentry, especially in New England, where Puritans had long shown antagonism toward Anglicans
• Second Continental Congress: convened during the period following Lexington and Concord. Throughout the summer they prepared for war by establishing a Continental Army, printing money, and Washington was put in command to lead the army.
• Olive Branch Petition: A solution pushed by many (John Dickinson) who wanted to refrain from war, pushing for reconciliation with Britain on July 5, 1755 following the Battle of Bunker Hill. The king refused to even read it.

The Declaration of Independence

• Common Sense: a pamphlet published in January of 1776 by Thomas Paine who advocated for colonial independence and the merits of republicanism over the monarchy. Used as a primary source of “propaganda” for the colonist cause. More than 100,000 copies were sold in the first three months.
• Thomas Jefferson: America’s third president and famed drafter of the Declaration.
• The Declaration of Independence: a document signed on July 4, 1776 that enumerated the colonies’ grievances against the crown and articulate principle of individual liberty and natural rights, as well the government's fundamental responsibility to serve the people.
• The Battle of Saratoga (October 17, 1777): a turning point in the war. An American victory that ended British prominence in New York, was used as a recruitment tool, and caused the French to finally support the American cause and make a Franco-American Alliance.
• The Battle of Yorktown (October 1781): The war’s final and conclusive battle that claimed American victory. British general, Cornwallis, was trapped by the French navy on the York River and Washington’s army via land. The British surrendered.
• Other Major Battles:
  • Battle of Trenton (December 26, 1776) - Ambush on the British After Washington crossed the Delaware
  • Battle of Fort Ticonderoga (1775) - the first offensive victory for American forces
  • Battle of Monmouth (June, 1778) - the largest and longest battle of the war. Had an indecisive winner.
• The Treaty of Paris (1783) - The treaty signed at the end of 1783 that granted the United States independence and generous territorial rights. Make sure you are very clear on which Treaty of Paris you are talking about because the US decided to name three different war treaties The Treaty of Paris to make it complicated for us.

A New Constitution

• Alexander Hamilton: the first Secretary of Treasury who had a yearning to put the monarchy back in place and favored a loose interpretation of the Constitution. He was especially concerned that there was no uniform commercial policy so he created the Annapolis Convention.
• Annapolis Convention: a meeting regarding creating a new foundational policy for governmental funding created by Hamilton in Maryland, but only five delegates show up! It was a flop.
• The Constitutional Convention (1787): a meeting comprised of delegates from all states except Rhode Island that met in the summer of 1787. There were 55 delegates in total and the convention lasted four months.
• The New Jersey Plan: a proposition by William Paterson who proposed that all states deserve equal representation in order to protect the security and power of the small states.
• The Virginia Plan: The brainchild of James Madison who called for an entirely new government based on the principle of checks and balances and for the number of representatives from each state be based on population. Called for a three-tiered federal government.
• The Great Compromise/Connecticut Compromise: Proposed by Roger Sherman which combined both the Virginia and New Jersey plan to include a bicameral legislature, and the Constitution. The bicameral legislature would include a lower house (House of Representatives) elected by the people, and the upper house (Senate) elected by legislators. A three branch government was designed— Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.
• Three-Fifths Compromise: delegates agreed that the international slave trade could not be ended until at least 1808. To tailor to some people’s wants of preserving the representation of enslaved people, each slave counted as three-fifths of a person.
• Anti-Federalists: opponents to the constitution who argued for a Bill of Rights.
• Federalists: argued against the need for a Bill of Rights and favored a strong federal government.
• The Federalist Papers: an anonymous and widely published series of journal entries written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay advocating for the Federalist position.

Bill of Rights Summary - Passed in 1791

Washington’s Presidency

• Washington had not sought the presidency but was unanimously voted in by the Electoral college
• Thomas Jefferson was Washington’s Secretary of State and Alexander Hamilton his Secretary of Treasury, but both largely disputed with each other.
• Hamiltonian View: strong central government and loose interpretation of the Constitution
• Jeffersonian View: weaker federal government and strict view of the Constitution (Strict Constructionists)
• National Bank: proposal for the American economy by Alexander Hamilton. The Congress approved of his idea, ut Washington was uncertain of the bank’s constitutionality
• Hamilton successfully maneuvered and solved the national debt crisis following the American Revolution.
• The French Revolution: occurred shortly after America’s newfound freedom. Jefferson wished to support the Revolution, but Hamilton did not. America remained neutral in a declaration called the Neutrality Proclamation

America’s First Party System

• Whiskey Rebellion (1791): instigated by the creation of the two party system in which Western Pennsylvania farmers resisted an excise tax on whiskey.
• Jay’s Treaty: In 1794, Washington sent John Jay to England to negotiate a treaty to evacuate the British from northwest territory. Prevented war with Britain, but made many concessions.
• Executive Privilege: established by Washington—the right of the president to withhold information when doing so would protect national security
• Treaty of San Lorenzo/Pinckney’s Treaty (1796): ratified Congress treaty that established borders between US and Spanish territory
• Farewell Address: Washington’s famous address written in part by Hamilton which warned future presidents to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” This ideal remains foundational until the World Wars.

Adam’s Presidency

• John Adams: second elected president after Washington, a federalist.
• XYZ Affair: a French bribe and report published by Adams which ultimately turned the formerly pro-French America into vehemently anti-French. He replaced those involved’s names with the letters X, Y, and Z hence the name XYZ Affair.
• Alien and Sedition Acts: passed by Adams which allowed the government to forcibly expel foreigners and jail newspaper editors for “scandalous and malicious writing”. Strictly regulated anti government speech—a clear violation of the first amendment.
• Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: an anonymous paper that argued that states had the right to judge the constitutionality of federal laws.
• Nullification: the action of a state impeding or attempting to prevent the operation and enforcement with its territory of a law

Overall Summary Of Section 3 (For Lazy People)

• Britain’s increased attempts to control the colonies and impose burdensome taxation led to the colonists’ call for independence.
• France, Britain, Spain, and the new United States vied for control of land; the borders of the new United States were constantly expanding.
• The common people had changed their view of government. The belief in egalitarianism and democracy replaced trust in monarchy and aristocracy.
• The U.S. constitution was established as a principle of checks and balances to ensure that governance was in the hands of the people and that no one entity (unlike monarchies) could have all the power.
• Differences in geography, economic growth, and foreign views shaped the emergence of the first political parties of the United States

Section 4: Beginnings of Modern American Democracy (1800-1848) [10-15% of Exam]

The Revolution of 1800

• Election of 1800: a race between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. They both received equal votes in the Electoral College. Alexander Hamilton advocated for Jefferson which ultimately caused Jefferson’s victory. It’s importance is that Jefferson was stuck with a vice president he did not want (runner up became vice president) and this was America’s first transfer of power (from Federalists to Democratic-Republicans)
• Twelfth Amendment: an Amendment that addressed the problem of the runner up serving as vice president and introduced the concept of voting for a party ticket.

THE JEFFERSONIAN REPUBLIC (1800-1823)

*The AP exam really likes referring to this time period for context for essays and stuff.

Jefferson’s First Term

• Midnight Appointments: Adam’s raging response to the lost election. Attended many midnight appointments attempting to fill as many government positions with Federalists as possible. Jefferson refused to recognize these appointments and replaced many of them.
• Marbury v. Madison: the case that confronted the midnight appointments as William Marbur, one of Adam’s appointees sued James Madison (Jefferson’s Secretary of State) for refusing to certify his appointment to the federal bench.
• John Marshall: the Chief Justice who took the case and established judicial review
• Judicial Review: the ability of the court to declare a legislative or Executive act in violation of the Constitution
• The Louisiana Purchase: a sale made by the French to Thomas Jefferson, offering a giant piece of territory west of the Mississippi for $15 million.
• The Louisiana Purchase caused a dilemma for Jefferson as he had argued for a strict interpretation of the Constitution, but nowhere in the Constitution did it authorize the president to purchase land. Jefferson took the opportunity anyway.
• Essex Junto: a Federalist group that opposed the Louisiana purchase as they feared it would lead to more democratic states. They planned to secede from the United States.
• Lewis and Clark: Jefferson’s appointed explorers who investigated the western territories and Louisiana purchase.

Jefferson’s Second Term

• Impressing Sailors: during the time that the British and French were at war and at a stalemate, the British began impressing American sailors and stopping American ships claiming that those sailors had deserted from the British navy, forcing them back into it. (Most of the time they were incorrect and had little to no proof).
• Embargo Act of 1807: an act passed by Jefferson that shut down the American import and export business to all foreign nations. This was disastrous to the US economy.
• Non-Intercourse Act of 1809: reopened American trade with most nations, but still officially banned trade with Britain & France which were the U.S’s most significant trading partners.

Madison’s Presidency & The War of 1812

• Macon’s Bill No. 2: a bill that reopened trade with France & England, however, Madison promised that if either country renounced its interference with American trade, he would cut off trade with another one. The French made that promise thereby cutting off American trade with England.
• War Hawks: an American group that saw war as an opportunity to grab territories in the west and southwest. Pro-war effort hoping to gain Canada from the British
• Henry Clay & John C. Calhoun: War hawk leaders
• Native Americans aligned with the British.
• Tecumseh: Indian chief who unified area tribes in an effort to stop American expansion into Indiana and Illinois
• American forces were ill prepared for the war. Much of the fighting went not well and in 1814, the British stormed Washington D.C. and set the White House on fire (Way to go ‘Merica)
• Treaty of Ghent: a peace treaty signed in Belgium ending the war on December 24, 1814.
• The Battle of New Orleans: General Andrew Jackson fought and won the Battle of New Orleans from January 8 until January 18, 1815. The only clear cut American victory from this war. The inspiration for the Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.
• Hartford Convention: a convention in Hartford Connecticut that proceeded the fall of the Federalist Party. It brought many new instated rules to the government such as: ⅔ majority of Congress regarding passing laws and admitting states as well as a four-year term required for presidency.
• American Manufacturing: a positive result of the war as America cut of much trade with Europe and the states became more self-sufficient by necessity.
• National Road: a road from Maryland to Ohio that Madison expanded on in his presidency
• American System: a system posed by Speaker of the House Henry Clay that included establishing protective tariffs, creating a national bank, and investing in growing infrastructure.

Monroe’s Presidency

• Era of Good Feelings: a period of unity in the United States marked by the fall of the Federalist Party and unity in only one political party. Although there was much growing tension created by economic development and increased sectionalism.
• McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): a trial that ultimately ruled that the states could not tax the National Bank, thus establishing the precedence of national law over state law. Reaffirmed the supremacy clause as the opposition was trying to challenge the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States.
• Panic of 1819: a financial scare that threw the American economy into turmoil
• John Quincy Adams: Secretary of State under Monroe who negotiate many treaties that fixed U.S. borders and opened new territories. Writer of the Monroe Doctrine.
• The Adams-Onis Treaty: an exchange where the United States acquired Florida in exchange that the United States would never try to take actions to gain Spanish-held Mexico.
• The Monroe Doctrine: a policy of mutual noninterference claiming the the Europeans are to stay out of American affairs. The Doctrine also claimed America’s right to intervene anywhere in its own hemisphere, if felt its security was threatened. No European country attempted to intercede in the Americas following Monroe’s declaration. President Monroe warned European nations that the Western hemispheres was closed to future colonization.
• The Missouri Compromise: By Henry Clay. 1. Admitted Missouri as a slave state. 2. Carved a piece out of Massachusetts—creating Maine and making it a free state. 3. Drew a line along the 36’30’ parallel across the Louisiana territory. 4. Establish the southern border of Missouri as the northernmost point which slavery would be allowed.

The Election of 1824 & John Quincy Adams’s Presidency

• Election of 1824: major turning point in presidential elections as previously, electors had been chosen by different methods, but by 1824, most states allowed voters to choose their presidential electors directly.
• Congressional Caucuses: groups of congressmen who in earlier elections had chosen their parties’ nominees and electors. This ended by 1824.
• Corrupt Bargain: Andrew Jackson received the most votes but none had won the majority, so the House of Representatives decided (and the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay supported Adams), so Adams won. Many believed this was a stolen election.

The Jackson Presidency and Jacksonian Democracy

One of the Essay questions often pertains to Jackson’s Administration or the concept of Jacksonian Democracy

• Democratic Party: a group created by Jackson who put together a support network to assure wide popular support
• Jackson’s men accused Adams of being a corrupt career politician, while Adam’s men accused Jackson of being stupid and a violent drunkard
• In 1828, Jackson won the election by a large margin—became the first president not from Virginia or having the last name Adams.
• Spoils System: trading jobs for political favors. Jackson laid off and replaced many within the political system.
• Jacksonian Democracy: Jackson’s popularity as president ushered in this era, which replaced Jeffersonian Republicanism. Jefferson had conceived a nation grounded by middle and upper-class educated property holders, whereas Jackson on the other hand benefited from universal white manhood suffrage. Jacksonian Democrats saw themselves as champions of liberty.
• Universal White Manhood Suffrage: the extension of voting rights to all white males, even those who did not own property.
• Jackson would challenge both Congress in the Supreme Court in a way no other predecessors had because of his popularity.
• Indian Removal Act: passed by Congress in 1830, removing the Cherokees.
• At Jackson’s time there were only “five civilized tribes”—one being the Cherokees. The issue became when gold was discovered on Cherokee land so many enforced the act and forced Cherokees off their land.
• The Trail of Tears: between 1835 and 1838. Thousands of Cherokees walked to Oklahoma under the supervision of the US Army. Thousands died of sickness and starvation.
• Seminole War: lasted until the late 1830s in which the Seminoles fought to stay on their land (modern day Florida).
• Nullification: the action of a state impeding or attempting to prevent the operation and enforcement within its territory of a law of the U.S
• Tariff of 1828: passed during the Adams administration—known as the “Tariff of Abominations”. Turned into a national Crisis during the Jacksonian Era.
• John C. Calhoun: a South Carolinian who was Jackson’s Vice President who argued that states who felt the 50% tariff was unfairly high, could nullify the law.
• Tariff of 1832: failed to lower tax rates to an acceptable level, South Carolina nullified the tariff.
• Force Bill: Congress authorized a bill under Jackson threatening to call troops to enforce the tariff. Stopped by Calhoun and Henry Clay.
• Second Bank of the United States (BUS): Jackson vetoed Congress’ attempts to recharter the bank
• Specie Circular: Jackson policy that ended the policy of selling government land on credit, and citizens were now required to pay “hard cash”
• Panic of 1837: a money shortage and sharp decrease in treasury caused by the Specie Circular
• Slavery grew more controversial during the Jacksonian Era.
• Nat Turner’s Rebellion: Turner, a preacher, had a vision he claimed as a sign from God to create a Black liberation movement. He rallied a gang killing 60 white people. As a result, 200 black enslaved people were executed even if they were not involved in the rebellion
• Slave Codes: slave codes were passed as a result of the rebellion by the Southern States, prohibiting Black people from congregating and learning to read. Other state laws prevented white people from questioning the legitimacy of slavery.

Election of 1836 & The Rise of the Whigs

• Whigs: An opposition party in response to the Democratic Party. They shared opposition of democratic views and supported government activism especially in social issues. Deeply religious and supported temperance movement.
• Martin Van Buren: Jackson’s vice president who had the misfortune of taking office during the Panic of 1837
• William Henry Harrison: the first Whig president He died of pneumonia a month after taking office. Whomp Whomp.
• John Tyler: Harrison’s vice president and former democrat. Began championing states’ rights, much to his own party’s chagrin. Referred to as the “president without a party”.

ECONOMIC HISTORY (1800-1860)

Beginnings of Market Economy

• Market Economy: Developments in manufacturing changed the way the business economy worked in the United States. By making it possible to mass produce goods. Market economy developed, where people trade their labor or goods for cash, which they can then use to buy other people’s labor or goods.
• Boom-and-Bust Cycles: Market economies made expel more dependent and the economy more prone to change, so these constant changes are referred to as boom-and-bust cycles
• Eli Whitney: American inventor who created the cotton gin and interchangeable parts.
• Cotton Gin: invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney. Made it easier to remove seeds from cotton but expanded the need for enslaved labor because of its labor intensity.
• Interchangeable Parts: Before the developments of advanced manufacturing, manufacturers had built weapons and other things by hand and custom fitting parts making each item unique. This was time consuming and inconvenient, so Whitney developed interchangeable parts to quickly and efficiently manufacture goods.
• Machine-Tool Industry: an industry which produced specialized machines for growing industries as a result of Whitney’s interchangeable parts.

The North & the Texile Industry

• The above developments first benefited the textile industry.
• Power Loom: an invention made in 1813 which meant textile manufacturers could produce both thread and finished fabric in their own factories efficiently.
• Samuel Slater: “the Father of the American Industrial Revolution” who designed the first American textile mills.
• Lowell System: a worker-enticement program to aid in the shortage of labor in New-England which guaranteed employees housing, cash wages, and participation in cultural and social events organized by the mill.
• Labor Unions: workers who organized to protect their interests as working conditions started to deteriorate.

Transportation: Canals, Railroads, and Steamships

• Erie Canal: completed in 1825. Funded entirely by the state of New York. It linked the Great Lakes region to New York and this to European shipping routes. So successful that by 1835, its width and depth had to be nearly doubled to handle the traffic.
• Steamships: the invention of the steam engine allowed for steamships, which traveled faster than sailing vessels, to come into play. By 1850, passengers could travel by steamship from New York to England in 10 days.
• Railroads: these redefined land travel in America. America’s first railroads were built during the 1830s, but would not be fully landmarked until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.
• Telegraph: the telegraph became a primary invention for immediate long distance communication. It was like a primitive telephone but with communication in Morse code.

Farming

• Agriculture remained by far the most common source of livelihood throughout the first half of the century.
• The Midwest became America’s chief source of grains, such as wheat and corn.
• The Northeast had difficulty with farming due to hilly terrain unsuitable for many machines.
• The South and plantations focused primarily on cotton and tobacco which were major cash crops. At this time, the majority of Southerners owned small farms, but did NOT own enslaved people.

Westward Expansion

• Manifest Destiny: Americans began to believe that they had a God-given right to the western territories. Some took the idea of Manifest Destiny to its logical conclusion and argued that Canada, Mexico, and even all of the land in the Americas eventually would be annexed by the US.
• Texas: Mexico declared independence from Spain and the new country took up what is now Texas. During a period of conflict and war, the Battle of the Alamo took place (1836). Texas became an independent country for a while, called the Republic of Texas before being admitted into the Union in 1845.
• Oregon Territory: settlers began pouring into the Oregon Territory during the 1840s, braving a six-month journey on the Oregon Trail.
• California: In 1848, the discovery of hold in the mountains set off the Gold Rush attracting more than 100,000 people to the state in just two years.

Economic Reasons for Regional Differences

• Sectional Strife: the different sections of the US (North, South, East, West) could not see eye to eye on many issues
• North: industrialized. Technological advances in communications, transportation, industry, and banking.
• South: Remained entirely agrarian. Chief crops were tobacco and cotton and they were anxious to protect slavery.
• West: economic interests were varied but were largely rooted in commercial farming, fur trapping, and real-estate speculation. Most Westerners wanted to avoid involvement in the slavery issue which they viewed as irrelevant.

SOCIAL HISTORY (1800-1860)

The North and American Cities

• Modern waste disposal, plumbing, sewers and incineration were not yet invented so large cities were extremely toxic environments. Epidemics were not only likely but inevitable.
• City Life Opportunities: Cities offered jobs—factories. Cities offered opportunities for social advancement.
• Distribution of Wealth: an elite few controlled most of the personal wealth and led lives of power and comfort.
• Middle Class: made up of tradesmen, brokers, and other professionals.
• Cult of Domesticity: the notion that was developed that men should work while women kept house and raised children. Glorified home life.
• Working Class: Factory worker, low paying crafts; women often worked at home, taking in sewing.
• In the 1840s and 50s, immigration was spreading in waves as many from Ireland and Germany came to America. Met with hostility.

The South and Rural Life

• There were few major urban centers in the South.
• Family and church were the dominant roles in social life of the South.
• New Orleans: the major city of the South at the time which relied almost entirely on waterways and trade routes.
• The wealthiest citizens formed an aristocracy of plantation owners. Plantation owners dominated the South politically, socially, and economically.
• Southern Paternalism: the belief and convincing that the slave system benefited all of its participants, including the enslaved people. This attitude relied on the perception of Black people as childlike and unable to take care of themselves.
• Slave owners almost always converted their enslaved people to Christianity who then adapted Christianity to their cultures incorporating their own religious traditions
• Many enslaved people developed subtle methods of resistance enabling them to maintain their dignity: sneaking out to meet loved ones, learning to read and write (Frederick Douglass), etc.
• Yeomen: a man holding and cultivating a small landed estate
• Landless whites: unfortunate southern settlers who either farmed as tenants or hired themselves out as manual laborers.
• Free Blacks: descendants of enslaved people freed by their owners or freed for having fought in the Revolutionary war. There were about 250,000 free blacks in the South.
• Mulattoes: biracial individuals

The West and Frontier Living

• In 1800, the frontier lay east of the Mississippi River. By 1820, nearly all of this eastern territory had attained statehood, and the frontier region consisted of much of the Louisiana Purchase.
• Forty-Niners: settlers in search of gold in California during 1849.
• Squatters: Western settlers who ignored the requirement to buy land and simply moved onto and appropriated unoccupied tract as their own.
• The western frontier was home to cattle ranchers, miners, and fur traders.
• Frontier life was rugged—settlers constantly struggled against the climate, elements, and Native American—still the frontier offered pioneers opportunities for wealth, freedom, and social advancement.

Religious and Social Movements

• Second Great Awakening: a period of religious revival mainly among Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. Church membership soared in these three different denominations. New religions like Mormons and Shakers formed during this period.
• Temperance Societies: reform group which encouraged people to sign the pledge not to drink and some of which sough outright prohibition of liquor
• *Connections for CCOT: The reform movements associated with The Second Great Awakening were a precursor to the later reform movements of the Progressive Era.
• The temperance movement was largely promoted by Protestant churches and reformers.
• Navist Movement/Know-Nothing Party: groups that battle other vices like gambling.
• Reform societies also helped with causes concerning prostitution, penitentiaries, asylums, and orphanages.
• The Shakers: a utopian group that splintered from the Quakers—believed that all other churches had grown too interested in the world and too neglectful of their afterlives. They believed the end of the world was at hand and that sex was an instrument of evil and practiced celibacy.
• Transcendentalists: a group of nonconformist Unitarian writers and philosophers who drew their inspiration from European romanticism (e.g. Nathanial Hawthorne).
• Hudson River School: the first distinct school of American art.
• The Mormons: religious group found by Joseph Smith in 1830. They made a trek to Salt Lake Valley led by Brigham Young
• National Woman Suffrage Association: founded in 1869 by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cody Stanton
• Horace Mann: instrumental in pushing for public education and education reform in general. He lengthened the school year, established the first “normal school” for teacher training, and used the first standardized books in education (Thanks Horace).

Abolitionist Movements

• Most anti slavery white people sought gradual abolition coupled with colonization, a movement to return Black people to Africa.
• American Colonization Society: established in 1816, sought to repatriate enslaved people to the newly formed country of Liberia in Africa. Many politicians such as Henry Clay, supported this cause.
• The religious and moral fervor of the Second Great Awakening persuaded more and more people that slavery was a great evil.
• Grimke Sisters: sister abolitionists from South Carolina who were early abolitionists despite growing up in a slave-holding family
• Moderates: one division of abolitionists who wanted emancipation to take place slowly and with the cooperation of slave owners
• Immediatists: wanted emancipation at once.
• William Lloyd Garrison: a white immediatist who began publishing a popular abolitionist newspaper called the Liberator in 1831 and founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.
• Some southern states banned the Liberator and others prohibited anyone from discussing slavery
• Gag Rule: a rule adopted by Congress that automatically suppressed discussion of the slave issue and prevented Congress from enacting any new legislation pertaining to slavery.
• David Walker: a free Black Bostonian whose Appeal to the Colored People of the World told all freed Black peoples to work to end slavery. The inspiration of William Lloyd Garrison.
• Frederick Douglass: an escaped slave who published the influential newspaper The North Star and the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
• Harriet Tubman: an escaped slave who returned south to repeatedly help more than 300 enslaved people via the Underground Railroad.
• Sojourner Truth: a charismatic speaker who campaigned for emancipation and women’s rights.

Overall Summary Of Section 4 (For Lazy People)

• The new United States struggled to define its ideals as boundaries changed and regional opinions clashed
• New developments in technology, agriculture, and commerce built wealth and infrastructure, transforming America from a wilderness to a developed society.
• Relationships with Britain and France were problematic, each country playing one off the other. After the War of 1812, relationships stabilized.
• Slavery became one of the most controversial issues in politics and the social sphere.
• Abolitionists, feminists, and temperance activists organized, published, and lectured to promote their ideas.

Section 5: Toward the Civil War & Reconstruction (1844-1877) [10-15% of Exam]

POLITICAL JUDICIAL ACTIVITY BEFORE THE WAR

• Election of 1844: pitted James Polk against Whig leader Henry Clay
• Whigs stood for a policy of internal improvements: building bridges, dredging harbors, digging canals, etc. Democrats tended to be expansionists set on pushing the nation’s borders.
• The election was close but Polk won.

The Polk Presidency

• Polk took office with two major goals in mind and pledged to serve only one term

Polk’s 2 Goals:

1. Restore practice of keeping government funds in the Treasury— Andrew Jackson had kept them in so-called pet banks which had disastrous results
2. Reduce Tariffs

Both were completed by 1846

• 54 '40 or Fight: Americans demanded that Polk maintain the valance after the proposed annexation of Texas by annexing the entirety of Oregon country.
• The Oregon Treaty: treaty signed with Great Britain in 1846, allowing the United States to acquire peacefully what is now Oregon, Washington, and parts of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana,
• Polk concentrated on efforts to claim the Southwest from Mexico. Tried to buy the territory, but when that failed he challenged Mexican authorities on the border of Texas, provoking a Mexican attack on American troops.
• Mexican American War: Congress granted declaration of war in 1846 beginning this conflict. The American forces won and prevailed easily,
• Wilmot Proviso: a congressional bill prohibiting the extension of slavery into any territory gained from Mexico. This bill was defeated in Congress.

The vote fell along not party lines but sectional/regional ones.

• Free-Soil Party: a regional, single issue party devoted to the goals of the Wilmot Proviso. Largely opposed to the expansion of slavery because they didn’t want white settlers to have to compete with slave labor in new territories.
• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: signed in 1848 by the end of the Mexican American War, Mexico handed over almost all of the modern southwest: Arizona, New Mexico, California, Nevada, and Utah in return for $15 million by the US. This is known as the Mexican Cession.
• Gadsden Purchase: a later purchase by the US for $10 million in 1854
• These territorial purchases however posed major problems regarding the status of slavery
• Popular Sovereignty: the concept that territories themselves would decide, by vote, whether to allow slavery within their borders

The Compromise of 1850

• Democrat Stephen Douglas and Whig Henry Clay thought out a workable solution known as the Compromise of 1850 to address all the leering problems.

Compromise of 1850:

1. California admitted as a FREE STATE
2. Slave TRADE (but not slavery) banned in Washington DC
3. Other new territories won from Mexico will decide slavery using popular sovereignty
4. New TOUGH FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

Compromise of 1850: Major Players

Henry Clay “Great Compromiser”:

• Whig Senator from Kentucky
• Drafted and formally proposed the Compromise of 1850
• Helped to clarify the final boundaries of Texas
• Originally proposed banning slavery in the entire Mexican Cession
• Wanted a stringent Fugitive Slave Act

John Calhoun:

• Democrat Senator from South Carolina
• Defender of slavery
• Opposed Compromise of 1850
• Advocate for states’ rights and secession
• Spurred notion of popular sovereignty for Mexican cession territories

Daniel Webster:

• Whig Senator from Massachusetts
• Supported the Compromise in order to preserve the Union and avert Civil War
• Risked offending his abolitionist voter base by accepting the Compromise
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin: a sentimental novel in 1852 written by Harriet Beecher Stowe—similar to the influence of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

Kansas Nebraska Act & Bleeding Kansas

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act: passed in 1854. Douglas’ proposal to repeal the MO compromise. Congress passed Kansas-Nebraska act to solve the debate and created two new territories: Kansas and Nebraska. These new territories would be ruled by popular sovereignty to decide if they would allow slavery or not.
• Caused the rise of the Republican Party (combination of northern Democrats and former Free-Soilers), destroyed the Whig party, and weakened the Democratic party.
• American Party/Know-Nothings: another American party formed which rallied around the issue of hatred of foreigners.
• Produced Bleeding Kansas as people traveled to the new territories to sway the vote their way
• John Brown: a radical abolitionist who led a raid on a pro slavery camp and killed fiver. After that, gangs from both sides remanded the territory and attacked the opposition. More than 200 people died in this event known as Bleeding Kansas.
• Preston Brooks: nephew of pro slavery Senator, Andrew Butler. Brooks savagely beat Senator Charles Sumner over the head with a cane in retaliation to a speech Sumner made attacking both the South and Butler.
• James Buchanan: Democrat representative who won the 1856 presidential Election.

Buchanan, Dred Scott, and the Election of 1860

• James Buchanan tried to maintain the status quo—working to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and opposing abolitionist activism in the South and West
• Dred Scott v. Sanford: a trail regarding Scott, a former enslaved person who declared himself a free person after his master brought him to free territory. He won the case but lost the appeal at the Supreme Court level. Because black people were not citizens, it was deemed that blacks could not testify or sue in federal courts.
• The North was unhappy with the court’s decisions as it in essence said that slavery could go anywhere and was tilted too far in the South’s favor. They feared that slavery could be forced on slaves that didn’t want slavery.
• Lincoln-Douglas Debates: presidential election debates that took place in 1858 between Democrat Stephen Douglas and Republican Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln made the “House Divided Against Itself” speech during these debates. Douglas defended popular sovereignty in what became known as the Freeport Doctrine
• Harper’s Ferry: a raid by John Brown in 1859 hoping to spark a slave revolt. It failed and Brown and his sons were executed as a result.
• When time for the 1860 election came, Northern Democrats backed Douglas and Southern Democrats backed John Breckinridge.
• Lincoln had no votes in the South, but the North held the majority of the electoral votes so Lincoln won in a landslide.
• In December of 1860, 3 months before Lincoln’s inauguration, South Carolina seceded from the Union.
• Six other states joined to form the Confederate States of America under the leadership of Jefferson Davis
• On April 12, 1861 the Confederates attacked and captured Fort Sumter. No one died but this sparked the Civil War.
• Fire-Eaters: Radical pro-slavery group that wanted secession and the creation of the Confederacy. Also sought to reinstate the international slave trade.

THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION (1860-1877)

• The Civil war was not solely (or even explicitly) about slavery.
• Border States: slave states that fought for the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware)
• Battle of Gettysburg: fought in northern Pennsylvania. Bloodiest battle. Lee’s troops suffered massive casualties and were forced to retreat.
• Gettysburg Address: four months after the Battle, Lincoln delivered a famous speech in two minutes which helped redefine the war as not only a struggle to preserve the Union but also a struggle for human equality.

The Civil War and the Confederacy

• Jefferson Davis took control of the southern economy, imposing taxes using revenues to spur industrial and urban growth.
• Southerners opposed his moves, but he declared martial law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus (a protection against improper imprisonment) so he could maintain control
• The rapid economic growth brought with it rapid inflation (300% inflation)
• Conscription of 1862: a military draft by the Confederates that required many small farmers to serve in the Confederate Army. Caused greater poverty in the country.
• Class tensions increased, leading ultimately to widespread desertion from the Confederate Army.

The Civil War and the Union

• In the North, a number of entrepreneurs became extremely wealthy; many succumbed to the temptations of greed however, overcharging the government for services and products (war profiteering)
• The North also experience inflation but not to the level of the South (only 10% to 20% annually)
• Unions: groups formed by workers worried about job security in the face of mechanization and the decreasing value of their wages
• Lincoln initiated the printing of a national currency.
• Green-Backs: government issued paper money by Salmon P. Chase which served as a precursor to modern currency

Emancipation of the Enslaved People

• The Constitution protected slavery where it already existed
• Radical Republicans: wing of Congress that wanted immediate emancipation. They introduced the confiscation acts in Congress
• Confiscation Acts: (1861) gave the government the right to seize any enslaved people used for “insurrectionary purposes.” (1862) allowed the government to liberate any enslaved person owned by someone who supported the rebellion. Lincoln refused to enforce it.
• There were other advantages of making the freedom of enslaved people one of the side effects of Union victory. One was that it kept Britain and France out of the war. Jefferson Davis had hoped that these countries would support the Confederacy to receive traded cotton.
• Battle of Antietam: fought in September 1862. The Union victory that was the platform for Lincoln’s announcement for the Emancipation Proclamation
• Emancipation Proclamation: proclamation issued by Lincoln on January 1, 1863, which stated that the government would liberate all slaves still “in rebellion”. This however did not liberate slaves in the border states or in southern counties already under control of the Union. Finally declared that the Civil War was for the Union, a war against slavery.
• Thirteenth Amendment: the constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery
• Hampton Roads Conference: a peace conference held between the United States and representatives of the unrecognized breakaway Confederate States on February 3, 1865. Negotiated a settlement on the new amendment.

The Election of 1864 and the End of the Civil War

• Lincoln won the election of 1864 against his democratic opponent, George McClellan
• As the Civil War dragged on, many small, non-slaveholding farmers resented the Confederacy and the war
• Copperheads: a group that accused Lincoln of instigating a national social revolution and criticized his administration’s policies as a thinly disguised attempt to destroy the South
• Sherman’s March: from Atlanta to the sea in the fall of 1864, the Union army burned everything in its wake and depleted the South’s material resources and morale)
• Victories throughout the summer of 1864 played a large part in Lincoln helping being reelected. A Union victory was virtually assured by spring of 1865
• Freedmen's Bureau: a government established group that helped newly liberated Black people establish a place in postwar society by helping with immediate problems of survival (food, housing, etc.)
• John Wilkes Booth: Lincoln’s assassin and actor who killed Lincoln in April of 1865 in Ford’s Theater five days after Lincoln’s inauguration
• More than 3 million men fought in the Civil war and more than 500,000 died.

Reconstruction and Johnson’s Impeachment

THERE WERE THREE MAJOR QUESTIONS REGARDING RECONSTRUCTION:

1. Under what conditions would the southern states be readmitted to the Union?
2. What would be the status of Black people in the postwar nation?
3. What should be done with the rebels?

• The reconstruction period refers to the years between 1865-1877
• Lincoln had no intention of punishing the South and wanted to end the war and reunite the nation painlessly: “With malice toward none, with charity for all”
• Ten Percent Plan: Lincoln’s plan that required 10 percent of those voters who had voted in the 1860 election to swear an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation through the Thirteenth Amendment
• Wade Davis Bill: 1864. Plan enacted by Republicans who agreed Lincoln’s plan was too lenient.
• Andrew Johnson: Lincoln’s vice president who assumed presidency after Lincoln’s death. A southerner. He opposed secession and strongly supported Lincoln during his first term. However, he SUCKED.
• Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan: called for the creation of provisional military governments to run the states until they were readmitted to the Union. It also required all southern citizens to swear a loyalty oath before receiving amnesty for the rebellion.
• The plan ultimately did not work; Johnson pardoned many of the southern elite who were supposed to have been excluded from the reunification process (bias much?).
• Black codes: southern legislation passed limiting freeman’s rights to assemble and travel, instituting curfews, and requiring Black people to carry special passes.
• Special Field Order No. 15: land seized from the Confederates (40 acres and a mule) was to be redistributed among the new freemen. It was rescinded by Andrew Johnson
• Fourteenth Amendment: Stated (1) you are a citizen if born in the US (2) states cannot deprive any individual of “life liberty or property without due process of law” (3) prevented states from denying any citizen “equal protection of law” (4) gave states the choice either to give freemen the right to vote or to stop counting them among their voting population (5) barred prominent Confederates/traitors from holding office (6) excused Confederacy’s war debt
• Swing Around the Circle: public speaking tour where Johnson campaigned against the 14th Amendment and lost.
• Military Reconstruction Act of 1867: Congress passed this act to impose martial law on the South and call for new state constitutional conventions
• The House Judiciary Committee initiated impeachment proceedings against Johnson for violating Tenure of Office Act (which stated that the president had to secure the consent of the Senate before removing his appointees once they’d been approved by that body; Johnson had fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton).
• Ulysses S. Grant: star general in the civil war who presumed office.
• The Fifteenth Amendment: proposed in 1869, required states to enfranchise black men (sorry women would have to wait until the next century.)

Failure of Reconstruction

• Reconstruction had some successes while the North occupied the South
• Reconstruction ultimately failed however: high tax rates, public opinion began disliking Reconstruction, etc.
• Opponents waged propaganda war against Reconstruction calling southerners who cooperated “scalawags” and Northerners who ran the programs “carpetbaggers”
• Gilded Age: the period following the Civil War—a name to suggest the tarnish that lay beneath a layer of gold.
• Grant’s administration was wracked with political scandals; take a look for yourself:
  • Black Friday, 1869
  • Credit Mobilier Scandal, 1872
  • New York Custom House Ring, 1872
  • Star Route Frauds, 1872-1876
  • Sanborn Incident, 1874
  • Pratt & Boyd Scandal 1875

You get the gist—lots of Scandals

• Ku Klux Klan: a terrorist group that focused on murdering black freeman
• White League: a terrorist group that focused on murdering Republicans
• Slaughter-House Cases: court cases in which the court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to the federal government, not state governments.
• United States v. Reese: a case that cleared the way for “grandfather clauses”, poll taxes, literary tests, and other restrictions on voting privileges.
• Redeemers: Democrats that regained control of the region’s state legislatures in 1876. They intended to reverse Republican reconstruction policies as they returned to power.
• The Election of 1876 was an election where both parties accused the other of fraud
• Compromise of 1877: a series of informal negotiations, a deal was struck that agree if Rutherford B. Hayes won the election, he would end military reconstruction and pull federal troops out of South Carolina and Louisiana, enabling the democrats to regain control of those states.

Black Southerners During and After Reconstruction

• Former enslaved people after the Civil War were thrust into an ambitious state of freedom. Most reacted cautiously and remained sharecroppers
• Sharecropping: Black people taking up the right and opportunity to work on someone else’s land in return for a portion of their crop
• The Freedmen's Bureau: an organization that helped new freedmen find jobs, provided money and food, and establish schools (e.g. Howard University)
• Hiram Revels & Blanche K. Bruce: the first Black Senators in the U.S. Congress elected in 1870 and 1875 respectively.
• Robert Smalls: black man from South Carolina who founded the Republican Party of that State and served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1880s.

Overall Summary Of Section 5 (For Lazy People)

• Land additions to the American West resulted in significant disputes and political compromises over how to handle the legality of slavery in added territories and states
• Regional tensions over slavery and states’ rights led to the Civil War, an event that radically changed American society and the role of the federal government in state affairs.
• Manifest Destiny and a land acquisition from Mexico spurred America to fully settle the West.
• Northern European immigrants continued to enter the country, motivated by industrial and agricultural opportunity.
• It took many years for the South to fully recover from the economic and social upheaval of the Civil War.

Section 6: The Industrial Revolution[10-15% of Exam]

THE AGE OF INVENTION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

• Thomas A. Edison: renowned inventor of the light bulb. He built his workshop in Menlo Park, New Jersey in 1876. He also made advances in power plants and allowed for widespread availability of electricity
• Age of Invention: the title for the last quarter of the 19th century which included many technological advances and greater mass production. The economy grew tremendously as a result.

Industrialization, Corporate Consolidation, and the Gospel of Wealth

• Economies of Sale: As more and faster machines became available, cost per unit decreased, causing the number of units produced to increase. The lower the costs, the cheaper they could sell their products. The cheaper the product, the more sold.
• Assembly Line Production: begun when Eli Whitney developed interchangeable parts. Required workers to perform a single task over and over.
• Factories were dangerous—more than 500,000 worker injuries in factories per year
• Corporate Consolidation: businesses that follow the path that led to greater economies of scale, which meant larger and larger businesses.
• Holding Company: a company that owned enough stock in various companies to have a controlling interest in its production.
• Monopoly: complete control over an entire industry. Created a class of extremely powerful men.
• Horizontal integration: created by monopolies within a particular industry, several smaller companies within the same industry are combined to form one larger company
• Vertical integration: only legal if the provided company does not become either a trust or a holding company. One company in vertical integration buys out all the factors of production
• Problems arose because of consolidation of power amongst the rich—businessmen borrowed huge sums and when their businesses occasionally failed, bank failure resulted.
• Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890: the passed law forbidden any “combination or conspiracy in the restraint of trade”, but this phrase was ambiguous and often twisted in different contexts.
• Andrew Carnegie: steel mogul who promoted the philosophy of Charles Farwin as an analogy sayin that business is an unrestricted competition allowing only the fittest to “survive”. This became known as Social Darwinism.
• Gospel of Wealth: the assertion by Carnegie that great wealth brought great social responsibility

Factories & City Life

• Factories cut costs in labor by hiring women, children, and immigrants
• Poverty levels in cities raised because those who could afford it moved out of the cities
• Advances in mass transportation such as railroad lines, streetcars, and subways paved the way for middle class neighborhoods
• Many immigrants settled in ethnic neighborhoods and tenements
• Blacks and Latinos were refused by many employers and force into the worst jobs.
• Political Bosses: a group of corrupt men who provided services for the poor such as helping find jobs and homes in return for votes by those helped
• Political Machines: the organizations of the political bosses
• William “Boss” Tweed: a notorious political boss who became a New York City alderman in the 1850s and embezzled millions of dollars through corruption in city construction processes. He was found guilty, but escaped prison, only to be discovered agin and died in prison.
• Knights of Labor: one of the first national labor unions founded in 1869 by Uriah Stephens, a Philadelphia tailor. After a series of unsuccessful strikes however under the leadership of Terrence Powderly, the popularity of the Knights declined.
• Haymarket Square Riot: an 1886 labor demonstration in Chicago’s Haymarket Square—a bomb went off, killing police.
• Pullman Palace Car Factory: a wage cut and increase in housing led to a strike where over 250,00 railway workers walked off the job shutting down travel in 27 states
• Eugene V. Deb’s: ARU. (American Railway Union) president who was jailed after the incident and eventually became the leader of the American Socialist Party
• American Federation of Labor: led by Samuel Gompers, concentrated on issues such as higher wages and shorter workdays. A successful approach.
• Trade Unions: unions made up entirely of workers within a single trade
• Settlement Houses: areas in poor neighborhoods that became community centers, schools, childcare center, and locations for cultural activities.
• Jane Addams: the founder of the Hull House providing English lessons for immigrants, day care for children of working mothers, and childcare classes for parents, as well as playgrounds. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1931.
• The growth of the newspaper industry by Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst—both used screaming headlines and lurid tales of scandal for the front page creating the style of yellow journalism.

Jim Crow Laws and Other Developments in the South

• In the South, agriculture continued as the main form of labor. The vast majority of Southerners were farmers
• Crop Lien System: a method designed to keep the poor in constant debt, Farmers with no cash borrowed what they needed to buy seed and tools, promising a portion of their crop as collateral which pretty much guaranteed repetitive debt.
• Jim Crow Laws: discriminatory laws passed in the South. The Surpreme court even ruled in favor of these claiming that the Fourteenth Amendment did not protect fro, discriminatory practices of privately owned businesses.
• In 1883, the Court reversed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which states that businesses and public facilities couldn’t be segregated)
• Plessy v Ferguson: a court case against mulatto Homer a Plessy in 1896 which ultimately resulted in the government claiming that it was not the federal governments role to maintain social equality. “separate but equal”
• Booker T. Washington: a southern black born into slavery—he promoted economic independence as the means which Black people could improve in society. Founded the Tuskegee Institute which gave industrial training to Black people. He was accused of being an accomodationist because he refused to press for immediate equal rights.

The Railroads and Developments in the West

• Ranching and mining were growing industries in the western frontier
• In the 2nd year of the civil war, Lincoln pledged to make a Transcontinental Railroad that would span the entirety of the United States. It was built from 1863 to 1869 by foreigners and locals alike before finally being completed in Utah.
• During the time of the railroads construction, Native American land was often disturbed causing some tribes such as the Sioux to fight back (e.g. Battle of Little Big Horn), but the federal army overpowered them in most cases.
• Nez Perce: Native American tribe in Oregon who resisted against federal power forcing them to relocate. led by Chief Joseph
• Railroad Time: the complexities of maintains railroad runnings across the country became too difficult, so Americas first time zone system was introduced.
• Turner/Frontier Thesis: created by Frederick Jackson Turner who argued that the frontier was significant in (1) Shaping the American character (2) defining American spirit (3) fostering democracy (4) and providing safety for economic distress and a place to flee for those in these situations
• Homestead Act: 1862, the federal government offered 160 acres of land to anyone who would “homestead it” (cultivate the land, build a home, and live there for 5 years).
• Morrill Land Grant Act: set aside land and provided money for agricultural colleges.
• Sierra Club: one of the first large organizations devoted to conservation in the U.S. Formed by naturalist John Muir in 1892.
• Dawes Severalty Act: an act that broke up the Native American reservations and distributed some of the land to the head of each Native American family. They allotted 160 acres of land for 25 years and the grand prize was American citizenship! It attempted to assimilate the Native Americans.
• The Ghost Dance Movement: 1889. Native American ritual inspired by the prophet Wovoka. In his prophecies, Wovoka promised followers that through ceremony and magic, federal expansion in the West would end and Native Americans would live peacefully.
• Wounded Knee Massacre: a dispute by Calvary troops intent on disarming the members of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Hundreds of Lakota were killed or injured.
• Spoils System: pioneered by Andrew Jackson in which every time a new president took office, thousands of government jobs opened and it was the president's responsibility to fill them
• Stalwarts: Republican Party split that believed all government jobs should go to loyal Republicans
• Half-Breeds: Republican Party split that thought qualified Democrats should be able to keep their jobs even after a Republican was elected
• Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act: an act signed by Chester Arthur that began dismantling of the old spoils system.

National Politics

• The presidents of this era were not corrupt, however, relatively weak
• Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, and Chester A. Arthur all concerned themselves primarily with civil service reform (Spoils system)
• Grover Cleveland believed the government governed best which governed least.
• Benjamin Harrison: he and his allies in the Capitol passed everything from the nation's first Meat Inspection Act to banning lotteries. He was an activist and the perpetrator of the Billion-Dollar Congress of 1890 (People did not like) which led to Grover Cleveland’s return to the White House
• Interstate Commerce Act: Congress’ first federal regulatory law in U.S.. history. Set up the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to supervise railroad activities and regulate unfair and unethical practices.
• Women’s Suffrage: became an important political issue in the late 19th century led by Susan B. Anthony, convincing Congress to introduce a suffrage amendment to the Constitution.
• American Suffrage Association: an organization that fought for women;s suffrage amendments to state constitutions. One success occurred in 1890 where women gained votes on school and education issues.

The Silver Issue and the Populist Movement

• A silver versus gold debate provided an issue which farmers could organize, farmers called for use of silver coins.
• Grange Movement: founded in 1867 boasted more than a million members by 1875. They started out as cooperatives with the purpose of allowing farmers to buy machinery and sell crops as a group. They died out due to lack of money.
• Farmers’ Alliances: replaced the Grangers and allowed women to be politically active. Grew into a political party called the People’s Party, the political arm of the Populist movement
• Lass Gorman’s Blancas: founded in 1889 by New Mexican farmers whose land was being taken. Their tactics were sometimes violent, and several leaders ran for political positions under the Populist Party.
• People’s Party: ran on a platform called the Omaha Platform where they supported coinage of silver, government ownership of railroads and telegraphs, graduated income tax, direct elections, and shorter work days.
• In 1893, the US entered a four-year financial crisis. This made Populist goals more popular.
• Socialists led by Eugen V. Debs gained support in 1894.
• By 1896, the Populists were poised for power and backed democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. against republican candidate William McKinley. Bryan ran his campaign on the call for free silver.

Foreign Policy: The Tariff and Imperialism

• By 1900, the US had become the leading industrial power in the world.
• The most infamous tariff passed during this period was the Tariff of Abominations (1828). This triggered the Nullification Crisis during Jackson’s first administration.
• McKinley Tariff: enacted in 1890 which raised the level of duties on imported goods almost 50 percent. It established the Wilson-Gorman Tariff which is usually considered one of the causes of the Spanish American War.
• William H. Seward: Secretary of State under Lincoln and Johnson. He engineered the purchase of Alaska and invoked the Monroe Doctrine to force France out of Mexico.
• Imperialism became a highly debated and controversial topic in the US.
• Hawaii: attracted the United States by being a port along the trade route to Asia. The economy collapsed in the 1890s and eventually, the United States annexed Hawaii.
• Cuba: a revolution in Cuba instigated by the US and a violent civil war followed. The UNited States drove Spain out and sent a fleet to the Spanish-controlled Philippines and drove the Spanish from there too. This became known as the Spanish-American War
• Treaty of Paris: ended the Spanish American War
• Platt Amendment: Provisions made by the US. To Cuba (1) Cuba. was not permitted to sign any foreign treaty without the consent of the United States, (2) the US could intervene in Cuban domestic and foreign affairs, and (3) the United States was granted land on which to build a naval. Base and coaling station
• Insular Case: the Supreme Court settled the issue to if US colonial subjects. were entitled to the same protections and privileges as citizens under the Constitution
• Open Door Policy: a policy McKInley sought for all western nations hoping to trade with Asia

Overall Summary Of Section 6 (For Lazy People)

• The Industrial Revolution changed not only industry, but also virtually every aspect of American daily life, ushering in urbanization and manufacturing, stimulating immigration and migration North.
• Large businesses stimulated economic growth and largely thrived on little to no government regulation.
• Work opportunities opened up for women and minorities—but also led to widespread child labor.
• Corruption government and corporate abuses of power led to social reformers calling for change.
• With the Industrial Revolution, railroads connected the coasts and began to bring Americans into the largely unpopulated West resulting in more conflict with Native Americans, who continued to lose their land in armed conflicts.

Section 7: The Early 20th Century [10-15% of Exam]

THE PROGRESSIVE ERA AND WORLD WAR I (1900-1920)

• Progressives: political party that built on top of the Populist achievements and adopted some of its goals (e.g. direct election of senators, opposition to monopolies, etc.) that came to dominate the first two decades of 20th-century American Politics. An urban middle-class movement which due to the majority of followers' economic standing, could devote more time to their causes.

The Progressive Movement

• Muckrakers: the name given by Theodore Roosevelt to journalists who wrote exposés of corporate greed and misconduct such as Ida Tarbell’s History of Standard Oil or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.
• NAACP: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a racial justice organization headed by W.E.B. Du Bois.
• Margaret Sanger: insist advocate who face opposition for promoting the use of contraceptives (illegal in most places at the time)
• Nineteenth Amendment: passed in 1920. Granted women the right to vote
• Robert La Follette: Wisconsin governors who implanted Progressive plans such as direct primary elections, progressive taxation, and rail regulation.
• Ballot Initiative: a system where voters could propose new laws
• Referendum: allowed the public to vote on new laws
• Recall Election: gave voters the power to remove officials from office before their terms expired.
• Theodore Roosevelt: 26th US President and the most prominent progressive leader. McKinley’s successor after his assassination in 1901.
• Sherman Antitrust Act: 1890 is a federal statute which prohibits activities that restrict interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace
• Congress also passed the Pure Food and Drug Act during this presidency.
• William Howard Taft: won the election of 1908 and succeeded Roosevelt. Spearheaded the drive for 2 amendments (16th which instituted national income tax and 17th which allowed for the direct election of senators).
• Dollar Diplomacy: Taft’s attempt to secure favorable relationships with Latin American and East Asian countries by providing monetary loans
• Roosevelt challenged Taft in the 1912 Republican primary where they split the Republican vote.
• Woodrow Wilson: another Progressive president who was a democrat whose policies were referred to as New Freedom.
• New Nationalism: policies of Teddy Roosevelt
• Federal Trade Commission: an agency created by Wilson’s to enforce the civil antitrust law.
• Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914: sought to target price discrimination and prevent the act of selling the same product to two different buyers for different prices based on the identity of the buyer.
• Federal Reserve System: agency that gave the government greater control over the nation’s finances.
• Spanish Flu: devastating epidemic that broke out in 1918.
• Red Scare: a movement heightened by the Russian Revolution. Which put Russia under Bolshevik Control. People sought to flush out anyone associated with communist and socialist practices.

Foreign Policy & U.S. Entry into World War I

• Platt Amendment: an amendment strong-armed by the Roosevelt administration that committed Cuba into accepting American control.
• For 10 of the years between 1906 & 1922, the American military occupied Cuba.
• Panama: at the time a providence of Colombia where Congress would eventually approve a plan to build a canal through.
• Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: “The Big Stick Policy” which was the title given to the scenario in which the US military presence and security in Panama was claimed to be threatened by Latin American domestic instability
• England and the US started forming an alliance as World War I came closer to its beginning.
• Woodrow Wilson won the Election of 1912 between Theodore Roosevelt (a 3rd party Candidate) and Taft, the Republican candidate.
• Wilson immediately declared neutrality in August of 1914.
• England placed a blockade on Germany which prevented shipments from the United States from entering.
• Lusitania: a passenger ship which was sunk by German submarines in 1915. It killed 1,198 passengers of which 128 were Americans.
• Wilson still claimed neutrality but put the military into a state of preparedness.
• Zimmermann Telegram: an incident in 1917 where the British intercepted a telegram from German origin minister Zimmermann to the German ambassador of Mexico, stating that if Mexico were to declare war on the United States, Germany would provide Mexico help in regaining lost territory from the Mexican War. Within a month, the United States declared war on Germany.

World War I & Its Aftermath

• Government’s power expanded during the war.
• War Industry Board (WIB): created to coordinate all faces of industrial and agricultural production, sought to guarantee that not only the United States but also the rest of the ALlies would be well supplied.
• Espionage Act: 1917. Prohibited anyone from using the US mail system to interfere with the war effort or with the draft that had been instituted under the Selective Service Act of 1917.
• The Sedition Act: 1917. Made it illegal to try to prevent the sale of war bonds or to speak disarmingly of the government. Both laws violated the spirit of the First Amendment.
• Schenck v. United States: a court case in 1919 which upheld the Espionage Act. Schenck was a socialist who was arrested and convicted for violating this act but he argued that this violated an amendment.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): a government agency headed by J. Edgar Hoover, which was created to prevent radicals from taking over.
• Palmer Raids: In April of 1919, several bombs exploded in American cities, one damaging the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.Agents raided union halls, pool halls, social clubs, and residences. Over 10,000 were arrested.
• Committee on Public Information (CPI): a wartime propaganda arm that created the image of the Germans as cold blooded, baby-killing, power-hungry Huns. Caused Americans to reject all things German (E.g. changing the name of sauerkraut).
• Wartime presented new opportunities for women in factories. At one point 20% of the factory-floor manufacturing jobs were held by women.
• Great Migration: the presence of wartime manufacturing created jobs in the north, causing many to migrate to big cities such as New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit.
• Unfortunately the war still segregated Blacks from the army, many did not see the battlefield and those who did were enlisted in the French army because Americans feared an integration in the American army.
• Fourteen Points: Wilson’s plan for world peace delivered in Congress in January of 1918. It called for free trade, lower tariffs, freedom of seas, and a League of Nations.
• Treaty of Versailles: the World War I peace treaty that forced Germany to ced German and colonial territories to the Allies, to disarm and pay huge reparations, and to admit total fault for the war, despite other nations’ roles in starting it. They were humiliated and launched into economic ruin. The Treaty of Versailles did create a League of Nations but the US never entered it.
• Article X: a contradictory article in Wilson’s proposal for the League of Nations which many believed curtailed America’s ability to act independently in foreign affairs.
• Henry Cabot Lodge: Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wilson’s political nemesis and intellectual rival, and the leader of the Republican group, the Reservationists.
• Reservationists: Republicans who were totally opposed to Wilson’s League.

THE JAZZ AGE AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1920-1933)

Pro-Business Republican Administrations

• Many Americans became more comfortable with the idea of large, successful businesses.
• Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover were three of the presidents during this time who pursued pro-business policies and surrounded themselves with like-minded advisors.
• Wilson and Race: An outspoken white supremacist. Wrote admiringly of the Ku Klux Klan and told racist jokes at Cabinet meetings.
• Teapot Dome Scandal: A scandal in which oil companies bribed the secretary of the interior in order to drill on public lands. Conservative on economic issues, Harding proved more liberal than his predecessor Wilson on issues of civil liberty.
• Coolidge easily won the election of 1924
• Welfare Capitalism: the practice where businessmen hoped that, if they offered some benefit, they could dissuade workers from organizing and demanding even more.

Modern Culture

• The invention of the automobile revolutionized American industry. They were typically expensive conveniences, but Henry Ford’s invention of the assembly lines made them affordable and gave birth to the existence of suburbs as people could now live further from the city.
• The radio also followed in revolutionary inventions. Around ten million families owned radios.
• The advertising industry grew up during the decade to hype all these new products.
• More women entered the working force to make money (up to 15% of women worked in jobs—typically “pink collared jobs which included stereotypical female work such as teaching and secretaries)
• In the “Roaring Twenties” a new female symbol arose known as flappers. Women ditched the corsets and layers for waist-less dresses worn above the knee (scandalous).
• Movies became incredibly popular during this decade.
• America gained many world-class articles during this time period such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Eugene O’Neill. They chronicled their alienation from the modern era and became known as the lost generation.
• Harlem Renaissance: a black racial development and movement writhing the largest Black neighborhood in New York City. Known for prominent figures such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, as well as the popularization of jazz music (later known as the Jazz Age). Trumpeter Louis Armstrong became one of the most popular and gifted musicians of this era.

Backlash Against Modern Culture

• The Klu Klux Klan grew to more than 5 million members and widened its targets to Blacks, Jews, and anyone who deviated from the Klan’s defined code of acceptable Christian behavior.
• Sacco and Vanzetti: two Italian immigrant anarchists who were arrested and executed on charges of murder. These accusations made America more weary of incoming immigrants.
• Emergency Quota Act: an act that set immigration quotas based on national origins and discriminated against the “new immigrants” who came from Southern and Eastern Europe to reduce “foreign influence”.
• Scopes Monkey Trial: 1925 trial on John Thomas Scopes, a substitute teacher who taught Darwin in the classroom. (Illegal in Tennessee at the time). Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan were the two attorneys arguing the case.
• Prohibition: instituted in the US by the Eighteenth Amendment which outlawed the American liquor industry. Weakened by the effectiveness of organized crime known as the Gangster Era.
• Twenty First Amendment: reinstituted alcohol and repealed Prohibition.

Herbert Hoover and the Beginning of the Great Depression

• Herbert Hoover: Republican nominee for the election of 1928
• Causes for Great Depression: Stock market crash in 1929 causing no one to want to buy goods or invest anymore. Germany’s depression eventually spread to worldwide depression. Factories had to lay off workers and made farmers’ crops worth much less on the market. Supply exceeded demand and concentration of wealth.
• Hoovervilles: shanty towns built by the homeless
• Dust Bowl: a dust filled storm caused by the prolonged drought in the Great Plains area.
• Farmers’ Holiday Association: an organization which organized demonstrations and threatened a nationwide walkout by farmers in order to raise prices.
• Hoover opposed any federal relief efforts, but as the Depression worsened he raised tariffs to help American business through the Harley-Smoot Tariff which actually worsened the economy because other countries we were trading with did the same in return.
• Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF): tens of thousands of impoverished veterans and families came to Washington to lobby for the bill. Army forces drove the people out, killing two people and injuring thousands. Killed any chance Hoover had for reelection.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt: Former NEw York Governor who argued for a more interventionist government. He won the election easily.

THE NEW DEAL AND WORLD WAR II (1934-1945)

• Roosevelt declared war on the Depression and asked for broad powers to exercise over the country. He rallied the public’s confidence: “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
• The New Deal: the implementation of Roosevelt’s sweeping reforms through the 1930s and 40s.

The First New Deal

• First One Hundred Days: the period following a Congress emergency session summoned by Roosevelt. During this time the government implanted most of the major programs associated with the First New Deal.
• Emergency Banking Relief Bill: a bill that poorly managed banks under the control of the Treasury Department and granted government licenses
• Fireside Chats: Roosevelts broadcast over the radio where he reassured the public.
• Banking Act of 1933: act that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to guarantee bank deposits.
• Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA): attempt to provide relief for the rural poor and provide payments to farmers in turn for their agreement to cut production up to one-half. The money in this program increased taxes.
• Farm Credit Act: passes to provide loans to farmers in danger of foreclosure.
• National Recovery Act (NIRA): consolidated business and coordinated their activities with the aim of eliminating overproduction
• Public Works Administration (PWA): set aside $3 billion to create jobs building roads, sewers, public housing units, and other civic necessities.
• Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC): provided grants to the states to manage their own PWA-like projects (e.g. national parks).
• Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA): Provided energy to the Tennessee Valley region (e.g. building dams) to help economically recover the region.
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): mediated labor disputes
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): regulated the stock market.

The Second New Deal

• Conservatives opposed the higher tax rates the new deal brought as well as the increase in government power over businesses.
• Leftists complained that the AAA policy of paying farmers not to grow was immoral, given that many Americans were still too poor to feed themselves.
• Socialists were gaining popularity by calling for the nationalization of business
• Schechter Poultry Corp v. United States: invalidated sections of the NIRA on the grounds that the codes created under this agency were unconstitutional
• Court-Packing: Roosevelt’s attempt to increase the size of the court from 9 justices to 15. It was rejected by Congress.
• Works Progress Administration (WPA): generated more than 8 million jobs all paid for by the government specifically in the creative areas (writing, photography, etc.)
• Social Security Administration: provided retirement benefits for many workers, specifically elderly, disabled, or families whose main provider died.
• New Deal Coalition: made up of union members, urbanites, lower class, and Black people. This swept Roosevelt back into office with a landslide victory.

Roosevelt’s Troubled Second Term

• Judicial Reorganization Bill: proposed that Roosevelt would be allowed to name a new federal judge for every sitting judge who had reached the age of 70 and had not retired.
• In 1937, the economy went into the Roosevelt Recession, a period of continually decreasing output.
• By 1938, it was evident that Europe would be at war again. Roosevelt withdrew from his New Deal programs in order to fund a military buildup.
• Fair Labor Standards Act: set a minimum wage and established the 40-hour workweek for a number of professions. The New Deal came to an end not long after this was passed.

Foreign Policy Leading Up To World War II

• Washington Conference (1921-1922): gathered eight of the world’s great powers; the resulting treaty set limits on stockpiling armaments and reaffirmed the Open Door Policy toward China.
• Kellogg—Briand Pact: signed in 1928 by 62 nations condemning ar as a means of foreign policy.
• Good Neighbor Policy: 1934. United States backs away from previous interventionist policy in Latin American and repealing the Platt Amendment.
• Protectionism: a policy where the U.S. government kept tariffs high.
• Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act: allowed the president to reduce tariffs if he felt doing so would achieve foreign policy goals. Countries granted most favored nation (MFN) trade status were eligible for the lowest tariff rate set by the US.
• Nye Commission: led by Senator Gerald Nye, in 1936 revealed unwholesome activities by American arms manufacturers who lobbied for entry into World War I via bribery and supplying fascist governments with weapons.
• Congress passed three neutrality acts regarding World War II
  • The first neutrality act prohibited sale of arms to either belligerent in the war.
  • The second neutrality act banned loans to belligerents.
  • The third neutrality act allowed arms and sales and was termed “cash and carry”. It required the Allies to (1) pay cash for their weapons and (2) come to the US to pick up their purchases and carry them away on their own ships.
• Lend-Lease Act: forced in 1941. Permitted the US to lend armaments to England, which no longer had money to buy the tools of war.
• Atlantic Charter Conference: Meeting between Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Declared the Allies’ war aims including disarmament, self-determination, freedom of the seas, and guarantees of each nation’s security.
• Tripartite Pact: when Japan entered into an alliance with Italy and Germany in 1940.
• Henry Stimson: Secretary of War who encouraged Roosevelt to wait to declare war until the Japanese attack to guarantee popular support of the war at home.
• Pearl Harbor: Japanese attack on Hawaii December 7, 1941 which caused U.S. participation in the war to begin.

World War II

• Tehran Big Three Meeting: the first meeting of the “big three” (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) in November of 1943. This is where they planned the D-Day invasion.
• D-Day: June 6, 1944. The largest amphibious attack in history where allied forces stormed Omaha beach to liberate France from axis occupation.
• The Manhattan Project of 1942: was a concentrated research and development effort to develop the first atomic bombs. Headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer, but was infiltrated by many Soviet pieces such as Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
• Labor Disputes Act of 1943: passed in reaction to the large number of strikes in essential industries. Allowed government takeover of businesses deemed necessary by national security.
• Hollywood was enlisted to create propaganda films to encourage the home front and boost morale overseas.
• Selective Training and Service Act of 1940: created the first peacetime draft in US history and gave birth to the current incarnation of the Selective Service System.
• More than a million African Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II, but worked and lived in segregated units.
• Japanese Internment Camps: from 19422 to the end of the war, fearful that the Japanese might serve as enemy agents within US borders, the government imprisoned more than 110,000 Asian Americans.

End of the War

• Yalta Conference: In February of 1945, allied leaders met at Yalta to redrew the world map and the divisions of Germany
• Iron Curtain: the Iron Curtain (As Churchill described it) descended around 1946 meaning the symbolic division of Eastern and Western Europe, the origins of the Cold War following WWII.
• United Nations: formed by the allies near the war’s end to mediate future international disputes.
• Potsdam: final allied meeting after Yalta. Instead, Harry S. Truman represented the United States as Roosevelt had died in early April.
• Truman made the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki within a period of three days which ultimately led to Japanese surrender.

Overall Summary Of Section 7 (For Lazy People)

• America transitioned from a largely rural and agricultural society to an urban industrialized society
• Land in the West was largely settled and the boundaries of the Continental United States became fixed.
• The United States became embroiled in foreign conflicts including WWI & WWII, where its involvement ultimately shifted global power toward an emphasis on political philosophy and influence.
• Isolationism and anti-immigrant sentiment collided with globalism and social reform.
• The Great Depression became the longest protracted economic challenge in American history.
• Native Americans settled on reservations as sovereign nations under the oversight of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
• Communications and transportation technologies revolutionized daily American life.

Section 8: The Postwar Period and Cold War [10-15% of Exam]

TRUMAN AND THE BEGINNING OF THE COLD WAR (1945-1953)

• Growing political tensions even during the war between the US and the Soviet Union.
• During the Cold War, America and the USSR never fought a “Cold War”, but there were many proxy wars (war instigated by a major power which does not itself come involved) like Vietnam and Korea.

Truman and Foreign Polciy

• The Soviets refused to recognize Poland as a government and within two years, the communist Soviet Union had taken over Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. They also threatened to invade Greece and Turkey.
• Truman Doctrine: statement by Truman — “I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.” The US would not instigate a war with the Soviet Union, but it would come to the defense of countries in danger of Soviet takeover. Idea of containment.
• Marshall Plan: named for Secretary of State George Marshall, the US sent more than $12 billion to Europe to help rebuild its cities and economy.
• The United States formed a mutual defense alliance with Canada and a number of countries in Western Europe called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
• In 1945, Germany had been divided into four sectors but Berlin resided mostly in Soviet territory. The Soviets imposed a blockade on Berlin to prevent the three other allied territories from merging into one country.
• National Security Council: a group of foreign affairs advisers who work for the president
• Central Intelligence Agency: the United States’ spy network
• Chinese Revolution: conflict between Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek and Communist government under Mao Zedong. Communists overthrew the nationalists whose government was exiled to Taiwan.

McCarthyism

• Red Scare: swept the nation as Truman ordered investigations of over 3 million federal employees for “security risks” pertaining to communism. Anyone thought to be tied to communism were dismissed without a hearing.
• Alger Hiss: Former State Department official who was found guilty of consorting with a communist spy
• Joseph McCarthy: demagogic Senator who claimed to have a list of more than 200 known communists working for the state department. Ruined the lives of thousands of innocent people.
• Blacklists: lists of those tainted by communist charges, which prevented the accused from working.
• Army-McCarthy Hearings: McCarthy is made to look foolish when he is accused of harboring communists. The public turned its back on him and the era of McCarthyism ended.

Truman’s Domestic Policy and the Election of 1948

• In 1946, inflation rate was nearly 20 percent
• United Mine Workers: created a miners strike in one of the most essential American industries, shutting down energy supply. Truman ordered a government seizure of the mines
• Eightieth Congress: a Republican controlled Congress in the 1946 midterm elections that was labeled the “do-nothing” Eightieth Congress (because they did nothing)
• President’s Committee on Civil Rights: convened by Harry Truman in 1948, calling for an end to segregation and more enforcement on antilynching laws
• Jackie Robinson: broke the color barrier in the MLB by being the first colored Major League Baseball player to
• Taft-Hartley Act: passed and prohibited “unions only” work environments (called closed ships), restricted labor’s right to strike, prohibited the use of union funds for political purposes, and have the government power to intervene in Union strikes.

The Korean War

• Began in June of 1950, when communist North Korea invaded the U.S.-backed South Korea.
• Truman attempted to reunify Korea
• Douglas MacArthur: U.S. commander who recommended an all-out confrontation with China. Truman disagreed and decided against MacArthur, later firing him for insubordination and publicly criticizing him. Firing MacArthur hurt Truman politically.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower: war hero who won as a Republican in the 1952 presidential election.

THE EISENHOWER YEARS (1953-1961)

• The 1950s are often depicted as a time of conformity.
• G.I. Bill of Rights: passed in June of 1944 and provided an allowance for educational and living expenses of returning soldiers and veterans who wished to earn their high school diploma or attend college.
• The 1950s introduced Beat poetry novels (“Howl”, On the Road), teen movies (The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause), and rock ‘n’ roll (Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis)

Domestic Politics in the 1950s

• New Look Army: system shaped by Eisenhower as he reduced military spending by reducing troops and buying powerful weapons systems
• Interstate Highway System begins developing during this time to make it easier to move soldiers and nuclear missiles around the countries
• Termination: a new policy that would liquidate reservations, end federal support to Native Americans, and subject them to state law. The plan ultimately failed and caused depletion and impoverishment of a number of tribes.
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: a lawsuit in 1954 brought to the attention of the Supreme Court on behalf of Linda Brown (a Black school-age child) by the NAACP. Ended segregation in schools.
• Little Rock Nine: a group of Black students who enrolled in a Little Rock high school, however the governor of Arkansas attempted to prevent them from attending school.
• Eisenhower supported the Civil Rights movements and strengthened voting rights for Blacks and punishments for crimes against Blacks.
• Montgomery Bus Boycott: began in 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man as required by the Jim Crow Laws. In the end, the Supreme Court integrated city buses in Montgomery and elsewhere.
• Greensboro, North Carolina: Black college students in 1960 organized a peaceful sit-in at a coal Woolworth’s lunch counter designated “whites only”

America Versus the Communists

• John Foster Dulles: Eisenhower’s Secretary of State
• Liberation: policy of containment that carried the threat that the United States would eventually free Eastern Europe from Soviet control.
• Massive Retaliation: coined by Dulles to describe the nuclear attack that the United States would launch if the Soviets tried anything too daring
• Deterrence: described how Soviet fear of massive retaliation would prevent their challenging the United States and led to an arms race.
• Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): definition is pretty self-explanatory—prevented the Soviets and United states from deploying nuclear weapons.
• Brinkmanship: Confrontations with the Soviet UNion to escalate toward war
• With Domino Theory: theory that if one nation fell to communism—so would the rest
• Josef Stalin died in 1953
• Nikita Khrushchev: new Soviet leader who offered hope to improve American-Soviet relations. Called for a “peaceful coexistence”, but rebellions in Poland and Hungary deferred these goals.
• The Russian launch of Sputnik motivated the US to join the Space Race and create and fund the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
• Quemoy and Matsu: Taiwan occupied islands close to the Chinese mainland. Eisenhower announced he would defend these islands and placed troops to ensure their protection.

Third World Politics

• Third World: the term given to numerous countries in Africa, Asia, and South America that broke free of European domination. They did not ally themselves with either of the two major powers and were deemed this title.
• Aswan Dam: a dam built in Egypt in 1956 where the United States attempted to offer foreign aid and gain an ally.
• Later in 1956, Israel invaded Egypt, followed by Britain and France, in an effort to gain control of the Suez Canal.
• Fidel Castro: Communist leader of Cuba

The 1960 Presidential Election

• Richard Nixon: Eisenhower’s vice president who received the Republican nomination in 1960.
• John F. Kennedy: Massachusetts senator who earned the Democrat nomination.
• Both candidates were similar in their campaigns of foreign policy—both waging against the “communist menace”.
• Lyndon Johnson: Kennedy’s choice of Vice President who helped shore up the southern vote for Kennedy who was a northern candidate. Kennedy won the election.

THE TURBULENT SIXTIES

• New Frontier: Kennedy’s name for his domestic program which connoted hope. It promised that the fight to conquer poverty, racism, and other contemporary domestic woes would be as rewarding as the efforts of the pioneers who settled the West.

Kennedy and Foreign Policy

• Cubans lived in poverty causing many Cubans to resent American wealth. Castro seized and nationalized some American property.
• Bay of Pigs Invasion: CIA plan which involved sending Cuban exiles, whom the CIA had been training since Castro’s takeover, to invade Cuba. The invasion launched in April 1961, but failed. The Cuban people did not rise up in support.
• The Berlin Wall: built to divide East and West Germany and to prevent East Germans from leaving the country.
• Cuban Missile Crisis: In October of 1962, American spy planes detected missile sites in Cuba, Kennedy immediately decided that those missiles had to be removed at any cause. A naval quarantine was issued and a nationally televised announcement demanded the Soviets to withdraw their missiles.
• Peace Corps: A philanthropic program whose mission was to provide teachers and specialists in agriculture, health care, transportion, and communications to the Third World, in the hopes of starting these fledgling communities down the road to American-style progress, a process known as nation building.

Kennedy and Domestic Policy

• Kennedy was a supporter of women’s rights and established the Equal Pay Act in 1963 which required men and women to receive equal pay for equal work
• In 1962, Kennedy enforced desegregation of two universities.
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC): led by Martin Luther King Jr., they staged sit-ins, boycotts, and other peaceful demonstrations.
• Freedom Riders: organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which staged sit-ins on buses and sat in prohibited sections.
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): did grassroots work in areas of voter registration and anti segregationist activism.
• Medgar Evers: Mississippi's NAACP director who was shot to death by an anti-integrationist in 1963.

Lyndon Johnson’s Social Agenda

• Civil Rights Act of 1964: proclamation passed by Johnson which outlawed discrimination based on a person’s race, color, religion, or gender.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): established by Johnson to enforce the employment clause of the Civil Rights Act
• Voting Rights Act of 1965: signed by Johnson to crack down on states that denied Black people’s rights to vote despite the Fifteenth Amendment.
• Economic Opportunity Act: appropriated nearly $1 billion for poverty relief.
• Project Head Start: one of Johnson’s programs to form his War on Poverty; prepared underprivileged children for early schooling.
• Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA): acted as a domestic Peace Corps
• Legal Services for the Poor: guaranteed legal counsel to those who could not afford their own lawyers.
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): increased federal aid to low-income apartment renters, and built more federal housing projects, as well as established Medicare and Medicaid.
• Great Society: the term given to Johnson’s social agenda—the most sweeping change in the U.S. government since the New Deal.

The Civil Rights Movement

• Earl Warren: Chief Justice who held the Warren Court, a brief moment in history where the Supreme Court was extremely Liberal. They worked to enforce voting rights for Blacks and forced states to redraw congressional districts so that minorities would receive greater representation.
• Miranda v. Arizona: a court case in which the court ruled that, upon arrest, a suspect must be advised of his or her right to remain silent and to consult with a lawyer.
• In the South, the KKK and other racists began to bomb Black churches and the homes of civil rights activists with seeming impunity.
• Malcolm X: a minister of the Nation of Islam who urged Black people to claim their rights by “any means necessary”. He was later assassinated.
• Black Power: a separatist, radical program whose main, forefront leaders were titled the Black Panthers.

The New Left, Feminism, and the Counterculture

• Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): a program formed in 1962 which laid out the leftist platform called the Port Huron Statement which set the tone for other progressive groups on college campuses. These groups became known as the New Left.
• New Left Ideals: elimination of poverty, racism, and an end to Cold War politics.
• Beat Movement: a culturally rebellious movement often associated with Beat Writers such as Allen Ginsburg, William, Burroughs and Jack Kerouac whose works championed bohemian lifestyles, drug use, and nontraditional styles of art.
• The Feminine Mystique: written by Betty Friedan and openly challenged many people’s assumptions about women’s place in society
• National Organization for Women (NOW): formed in 1966 to fight for legislative changes.
• Stonewall Riots: an event at which gays fought back against police in New York City
• Roe v. Wade: 1973 court case which enabled women to obtain. abortions in all 50 states within the first trimester.
• Counterculture: a term labeled to those who live an unconventional lifestyle in contrast to the staid mainstream culture (e.g. Hippies)
• Rachel Carson: an American Marine Biologist who wrote the seminal work of nonfiction, Silent Spring, which brought awareness to the widespread use of the chemical pesticide DDT, leading to its eventual ban.
• Clean Air Act: passed in 1955, the first law to control the use of airborne contaminants.

American Involvement in Vietnam, World War II-1963

• The United States had maintained an economic and military presence for almost 25 years.
• Vietminh: the nationalist Vietnamese resistance led by Ho Chi Minh,
• Japan Invaded Vietnam during World War II and ended previous French control of the country. After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Ho drafted the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence.
• The United States did not recognize Vietnamese independence nor the legitimacy of Ho’s government.
• Vietnam fought a war for independence against the French from 1946 to 1954, when the French were defeated at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Truman continued to aid the French.
• Geneva Accords: meeting in which all involved parties gathered in 1954 in Geneva, Switzerland, to draw up divisions of Vietnam. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel, with Communist forces controlling the North and the (so-called) Democratic forces controlling the South.
• Ngo Dinh Diem: South Vietnamese leader whom the US made an alliance with. America helped him push Bao Dai (whom the US thought was too weak to control the country
• Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO): a NATO-like organization between Britain, France, Thailand, Australia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and New Zealand to provide for South Vietnam’s defense against Communist takeover.
• Diem turned into a vicious leader, imprisoning political enemies, closing newspapers that criticized the government, and persecuting Buddhist monks.
• Vietcong: the name given to the communist South Vietnamese insurgents.

American Involvement in Vietnam, 1963-1968

• In 1964, the US supported a second coup in Vietnam.
• The US Army began bombing the neighboring country of Laos which the North Vietnamese were shipping weapons through to the Vietcong.
• Gulf of Tonkin: an incident in which two Americans destroyer ships were shot by the North Vietnamese ((this claim was never confirmed to be accurate however)
• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: passed by Congress and allowed the resident to take any measures he deemed necessary to protect American interests in the region.
• The Americans entered the war in 1965, but more than 30,000 men fled to Canada to avoid the military draft.
• Tet Offensive: launched by the North Vietnamese in 1968 which caused tremendous damage on American forces and nearly captured the American embassy in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon.
• My Lai Massacre: 1968. Took place in a small village in South Vietnam, where US soldiers abused, tortured, and murdered an estimated 347 to 594 innocent civilians, including women, children, and elders.

The Summer of 1968 and the 1968 Election

• Johnson withdrew from the presidential race leaving the race between Robert Kennedy - the democrat and JFK’s brother and Richard Nixon - former vice president and Republican nominee.
• In April 1968, a white assassin killed Martin Luther King Jr.
• In June of 1968, the frontrunner for the democratic nomination Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Alabama governor George Wallace ran a segregationist third party campaign.
• Nixon won in one of the closest elections in history.

The Counter Counterculture

• Phyllis Schlafly: a notable Conservative leader who lobbied against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the constitution.

Nixon, “Vietnamization”, and Detente

• Henry Kissinger: Secretary of State who ended American involvement in Vietnam in 1973 through completed negotiations for a peace treaty.
• The negotiated peace however, crumbled almost as soon as American troops vacated the country. Vietnam became overpowered by Communist rule.
• War Powers Resolution: passed by Congress in 1973. Prevented any future president from involving military in another undeclared war. Also required the president to obtain congressional approval for any troop commitment lasting longer than 60 days.
• Nixon traveled to Communist China and eased tensions between the countries.
• Détente: a policy of “openness” that called for countries to respect each other’s differences and cooperations more closely.
• Nixon Doctrine: announced that the US would withdraw from many of its overseas troop commitments, relying instead on alliances with local governments to check the spread of communism.

Nixon’s Domestic Policy

• Kent State University: college in which four protestors were shot by national guardsmen by heightened political tensions.
• Nixon won re-election in 1972 in a landslide against liberal Senator George McGovern

Watergate and Nixon’s Resignation

• Pentagon Papers: a published report made by two major newspapers which covered a top-secret government study of the history of US involvement in Vietnam. Nixon fought aggressively to prevent their publication. He put together a team of investigators called the plumbers.
• Watergate Hotel: an incident in which the plumbers completed a botched burglary of Democratic headquarters. They were eventually all arrested. Many advisors resigned and Nixon was found having secretly taped all conversations in the White HOuse, many of them concerning Watergate.
• Nixon resigned in 1974 and his Vice President, Gerald Ford, succeeded him almost immediately and granted Nixon a presidential pardon, thereby preventing a trial.

Gerald Ford

• Was Nixon’s replacement for his first vice president, Spiro Agnew, who had resigned in the face of impending criminal charges.
• Under his leadership came inflation and increasing unemployment rate.
• Ran for president in 1976, but lost to Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter

• Department of Energy: a cabinet-level government agency created by Carter to research alternative sources of power
• Three Mile Island: a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant that failed and released radioactive materials into the atmosphere.
• Carter brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt which had been a previously fought tension through the Six Day War in which Israel took control of the Sinai Peninsula, a desert region belonging to Egypt.
• Camp David: Jimmy Carter invited the two leaders of Israel and Egypt to broker an agreement between the two nations.

Overall Summary Of Section 8 (For Lazy People)

• After World War II, American life was economically prosperous—while fears of communism dictated foreign policy.
• Left-wing liberalism promoted both a larger role for government in society and changing social norms
• As industry and population grew, environmental concerns became more pressing.
• Years of segregation, inequalities, and mounting racial injustices led to a nationwide push for racial equality and reform culminating in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

That’s It. Good Job If You Made It All The Way Through & Best of Luck on the Exam!!