APUSHING P

APUSH Study Guide

  • Hernan Cortes → Spanish Conquest of Aztecs/Incas


Unit 1: Three Worlds Collide—Europe, Africa, and the Americas (1491-1607)

  • Question: Societal makeup of the Americas before the Europeans arrived? Once the Europeans arrived, how did that affect them?

  • “New World” - American Indians, Europeans, West Africans meet on North American continent

  • Things that separated Native Americans from Europeans

    • Polytheism: worship of natural world / animal

    • Women’s roles in society

      • Matrilineal: Women played a much more important role in Native American lives

  • Native American Societies before European contact

    • The natives of the Americas were diverse and had diverse societies based on the environments they lived in

    • Southwest (Pueblo)

      • Maize cultivation

      • Lived in small towns/pueblos

      • Four Corners region: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico

      • Climatic change dispersed the Pueblo peoples

    • Great Basin / Great Plain Region (Shoshone, Paiute, Ute / American Indians)

      • Great Basin: between Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada Mountains

      • “Desert Culture”

      • Great Plains: Mississippi River to Rocky Mountains

        • Hunter gatherers → hunted buffalo (stereotypical Indians)

        • Small kinship bands

        • Sioux, Blackfoot, Arapaho, Cheyenne

    • East (Algonquian & Iroquois)

      • Agricultural and hunter-gatherer economies

      • Algonquian Peoples

        • Hunted, fished, and grew corn

      • Iroquois League

        • Confederation of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas

        • One of the most powerful forces in pre-contact era

        • Settled, permanent villages

        • Matrilineal society: descent pass through mother’s line

        • Three sisters: corns, beans, squash

      • Pacific Northwest (Chinook)

        • Present-day California

        • Foraging, hunting, and fishing

        • Longhouses 

  • European Exploration in Americas

    • The Crusades: series of religious wars

      • Goal was to secure Christian control of the “Holy Land”

      • Wanted to find new trade routes with the East

    • The Black Death (1300s)

      • Pandemic outbreak of bubonic plague

      • Reduced European population by 30-60%

    • Renaissance (1400s)

      • Inspired people to explore and map new areas

      • Johannes Gutenberg’s Printing Press

    • Protestant Reformation (1500s)

      • Martin Luther and John Calvin led breaks with the Roman Catholic Church → believed the church had drifted from its mission

      • King Henry VII — led a break with Rome

      • Catholic Church 

  • Columbian Exchange (1500s)

    • Transfer of items between East and West

    • America: Tomatoes, potatoes, maize, turkey, corn, cacao, gold, silver

      • Revolutionized agriculture in Europe

    • Europe: Wheat, rice, soybeans, cattle, pigs, horses, European people, slaves, disease (smallpox)

      • Enormous effect of disease on Native American societies

  • Economic Impact of Conquest

    • Influx of gold and silver → Spanish inflation

    • Increase in taxes in Spain

    • Spain went into debt

  • Technological Advances → Maritime technology

    • Compass, astrolabe, quadrant, hourglass → aided sailors in travel

    • Caravels: Portugal’s ships designed for carrying cargo through rough voyages

  • Joint-Stock Companies

    • European model developed in the 1500s

    • Investors pool their money to fund a venture (company)

    • Limited liability: shareholders are only liable to face value of their share

  • Portugal and Spain led New World exploration

  • Portugal

    • Prince Henry the Navigator → searched for new trade routes to Asia

    • Moved down the coast of Africa and established trading posts → Indian Ocean Trade Network

      • Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488

      • Vasco de Gama reached India in 1498

  • Spain

    • Christopher Columbus

      • Italian sailor seeking Spanish sponsorship to sail west to find wealth in Asia

      • Spanish monarchs Ferdenand and Isabella persuaded by wealth

      • Sailed west across Atlantic ocean in 1492

      • Niña, Pinta, and Santa María

      • Landed in San Salvador, Caribbean and found great wealth

      • Called the people “Indians” (thought he reached the East Indies)

  • Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

    • Longitudinal line through Atlantic Ocean and South America (exploration)

    • Portugal granted lands to east of the line

    • Spain granted remainder

  • Conquistadores (1500s)

    • Brutal fighting in Americas over Spanish dominance in New World

  • New World people did not have immunity to germs from Old World settlers

    • Smallpox → 50-90% of native peoples of Americas died between 1500 and 1650

  • Encomienda System

    • System to extract gold and silver and ship to Spain

    • The encomienda was an exploitive feudal arrangement in which the Spanish crown granted a person not only land but a specified number of natives as well

      • Encomenderos brutalized their laborers

  • After Bartolomé de las Casas published his incendiary account of Spanish abuses (The Destruction of the Indies), Spanish authorities abolished the encomienda and replaced it with the repartimiento (1549)

    • The repartimiento was intended as a milder system but still replicated the abuses of the older system and Native Americans continued to be exploited by the Spanish

  • Spain and African Slave Trade

    • Captured Africans thought of as slaves for life and considered property (1500)

    • “Maroon Communities” — Africans who had escaped from slavery in the New World and established independent communities

      • Palmares (Brazil Maroon Community)

  • Casta System (Hierarchical society)

    • The Spanish tolerated (and sometimes even encouraged) interracial marriage because there were not enough Spanish women in the New World to support the natural growth of a purely Spanish population

    • Peninsulares → Spaniards born in Spain

    • Criollos → Spaniards born in the New World

    • Mestizos → Spanish and Native American blood

    • Mulattoes → Spanish and African blood

    • Native Americans

    • African Americans

  • Poor relationship between Natives and Europeans

    • American Indian societies were matrilineal 

    • European societies were patrilineal 

    • American Indians believed in communal ownership of land

    • European believed in private ownership of land

  • Many Natives adopted Christianity or Catholicism

  • Europeans believed they were superior to Native Americans (racist views)

    • “Pure blood” - degree of pure blood determined standing in hierarchy 

    • Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda believed American Indains were of an inferior order and could not perform duties past manual labor

  • Fierce competition for wealth between Portugal, France, and England

    • Societal and economic shift in European states

    • Shift from Feudalism to Capitalism

      • Feudalism: peasants lived and worked on noble’s land for protection 

      • Capitalism: economic system based on private ownership & free exchange


Unit 2: The English Colonial World (1607-1763)

  • England, Spain, the Netherlands, and France all set sights on North American colonies

  • All 13 colonies were under the British Crown and practiced Protestantism

    • All fought with American Indians as well

  • Spain’s New World Colonies

    • 2 administrative units: Viceroyalty of New Spain (headquartered in Mexico City) and Viceroyalty of Peru (South America and headquartered in Lima)

    • Spain insisted on pushing Catholicism onto American Indians

  • French and Dutch Colonies

    • France and the Netherlands had colonies as trading outposts

    • France had vast colonies throughout the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley

      • Port Royal (1605) and Quebec (1608) in Canada founded by Samuel de Champlain

      • Late 17th century, France developed settlements in New Orleans

    • France depended on diplomacy with the American Indians because they had few colonists in the New World

      • Interracial marriage was common too

        • Children of marriages known as Métis

    • Dutch established small settlements in the Caribbean

      • The Dutch seized many Portuguese forts and plantations, allowing them to participate in the Atlantic slave trade with their massive fleet of merchant ships

    • Dutch West India Company → Dutch company to develop colonies in North America

  • New Amsterdam (most important settlement of New Netherland) established in 1624 in New York Harbor

    • Thriving trade in beaver furs and commercial seaport town

    • King Charles II of England overthrew the settlement and granted the Dutch colony to his brother James, Duke of York

    • New Amsterdam renamed as New York in 1664

  • English Colonial Patterns

    • English migrated substantially to the New World

    • English merchants established joint-stock companies (e.g. East India Company)

      • Claimed exclusive trading rights in certain areas

      • England also faced population surplus → greater demand for manufactured goods (new markets)

    • English colonization of Ireland foreshadowed colonization of the New World

      • Brutal subjugation and superiority to others

  • British Colonies

    • By the 1700s, British North American colonies stretched from Georgia to Massachusetts (back then included Maine)

    • British were settler colonies compared to Spanish colonies

  • The Chesapeake & the Upper South

    • Relied on labor-intensive tobacco 

    • Jamestown (1607) 

      • The Virginia Company (joint-stock company) funded expedition to Jamestown

      • Nearly collapsed initially

      • Did not know how to establish a community and grow crops

      • “Starving time” - winter of 1609-1610

      • Local Algonquian-speaking people, led by chief Powhatan, father of Pocahantas, had poor relations with English

      • English initiated raids for food (violent encounters)

      • Began cultivating tobacco (John Rolfe) → became hugely profitable and demanded in England

      • Exported more than 35 million lbs of tobacco a year

      • Tobacco required a lot of land and labor

      • Headright Policy: new immigrants come to the Chesapeake region and get 50 acres of land

      • Indentured servitude: immigrant signs a contract to work as an indentured servant for 4-7 years in exchange for free passage

    • Maryland

      • Cultivated tobacco as well

      • First proprietary colony

        • Proprietor (owner) of a colony would be accountable to the monarch

        • George Calvert — hoped to create a refuge for Catholics

    • North Carolina (1663)

      • Founded by wealthy plantation owners who migrated from Barbados

      • Resembled sugar economy in Barbados

  • New England Colonies

    • Driven by religious reasons rather than economic gain

    • Puritanism

      • Protestant Reformation (16th century)

        • Martin Luther and John Calvin broke ties with the Catholic Church due to theological reasons

        • King Henry VIII of England broke with the Catholic Church due to political control

        • Puritans sought a full reformation and wanted the Church of England (supposedly a Protestant Church) to be “purified” of Catholic practices

      • Puritanism was derived from Calvinism 

        • Calvinists believed in predestination

        • Though people can’t change God’s plan, God had a “calling” as to what the individual was intended to do

        • Community was of importance

    • Plymouth and the Mayflower

      • Pilgrims, a group of Protestants sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and arrived in America

    • Massachusetts Bay Colony / “A City Upon a Hill” (1630)

      • Puritans eager to leave England

      • King Charles I sought to suppress religious practices of Puritans in England

      • John Winthrop became the leader of Massachusetts Bay Colony (present day Boston)

      • The colony was a “city upon a hill” — shine like an example to the world

      • Great Migration of 20,000 + settlers by 1640

      • The colony attracted families and middlemen workers

    • New Hampshire

      • Small fishing villages

      • Claimed by Massachusetts (separated again in 1679)

    • Rhode Island / Roger Williams

      • Roger Williams, Puritan minister, concerned about the mistreatment of Indians by Puritans

      • Was banished in 1636 for advocating the separation of church and state

      • Founded the colony of Rhode Island 

    • Anne Hutchinson (1637)

      • Became involved in the Antinomian controversy (faith over moral law)

      • Anne began to hold weeknight meetings in her home, first to expand on the previous Sunday’s sermons and later to expound her own religious ideas (very close to Antinomian beliefs)

        • Women were also supposed to solely be “supportive and submissive” during this time period, as believed by John Winthrop

      • The leaders believe that Anne created a disturbance in their previously peaceful town

      • Anne believed in the Covenant of Grace

        • Salvation is not earned through deeds, but rather predetermined

        • Emphasized personal revelation

      • Anne believed that anyone who was faithful could go to Heaven, even those who sinned, not adhering to the laws

      • Like Martin Luther, she denied that salvation could be earned through good deeds

      • Accused Boston clergymen of placing undue emphasis on good behavior

      • Though Puritanism was straying away from Calvinism

      • Declared God “revealed” divine truth directly to individual believers 

        • Denounced as heretical

      • Magistrates hated her because of her sex

      • Was given a trial and told those judging her they were doomed forever

    • Downfall of Puritanism

      • By the end of 17th century, Puritan leaders saw a decline in church membership

    • Halfway Covenant (1662)

      • Allow for partial church membership for those who couldn’t demonstrate a conversion experience

    • Salem Witch Trials (1692)

      • Salem witch trials in Massachusetts demonstrate division in the Puritan community

      • Propelled out of social conflicts between Indians and English

      • Began when three young Salem Village children suffered from strange fits that contorted their bodies

        • Accused with being associated with the devil

      • English settlers had long believed that the Indians of North America were devil-worshippers

      • 200+ people were accused of practicing witchcraft

  • The Middle Colonies

    • Most diverse colonies in British North America

    • Thriving export economy based on cultivation of cereal crops

    • Pennsylvania

      • King Charles II granted William Penn a large amount of land to cover debt that the King owed to Penn’s father

      • William Penn was a devout Quaker

    • Quakerism

      • Non-hierarchical → saw everyone as equals/“friends”

      • No sermons, just casual “meetings” 

      • The Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 — declaration of protest against religious persecution of Quakers → allowed free practice of religion

    • New Jersey / Delaware

      • Initially settled by the Dutch

      • Duke of York gave adjacent land to his friends who established NJ colony in 1664

      • Sweden developed a trading post and colony in Delaware in 1638

        • Netherlands took over Sweden’s holding and English took over New Netherland in 1664

    • New York

      • New York was a part of New Amsterdam which the English took over

      • Slave labor was popular in NY, unlike other northern port cities

  • The Lower South and Colonies of West Indies

    • Longer growing seasons and exported staple crops

    • Reliant on the slave-labor system → enslaved Africans made up the majority of population

    • West Indies

      • Barbados was the most profitable colony

      • Settled by English colonists in 1630s

      • Sold sugar produced from sugarcane

        • Very labor intensive crop

    • Carolina

      • Planters who migrated from Barbados settled in the Carolinas

      • Established in 1663 by King Charles II

      • Primary crop was rice

      • Eventually, northern part and southern part of Carolina split (1712)

        • South Carolina was declared a royal colony who continued economic planting system

    • Georgia

      • Last of the 13 colonies

  • Evolution of Self-Governance in Colonial North America

    • Attempts at democracy

    • Colonies ruled by a corporation or proprietor → eventually became royal colonies under the British Crown

    • Colonial legislature dealing with local matters

  • Town Meetings in New England

    • Meetings where “selectmen” made important decisions

  • Virginia House of Burgesses 

    • Created by the Virginia Company in 1619

    • Representative assembly

    • Only wealthy men could vote for representation


  • Transatlantic Trade

    • Late 17th century and 18th century saw growth in Atlantic economy

    • More exchange of goods

  • Triangle Trade

    • Items traded between England, Africa, and America

      • England traded manufactured items

      • Africa traded African slaves

    • African Slave Trade

      • Slave trafficking in sub-Saharan Africa became prominent

      • European traders set up operations along Africa’s coast

      • Trade worsened ethnic tensions and destabilized the region

      • Most slaves were young males

      • “Middle passage” — most horrific part of the journey

    • Tobacco, Indigo, Rice, Sugar, and Slavery

      • North American colonies developed economies based on local agriculture (tobacco in Virginia and rice in South) in 18th century

      • South and West Indies relied heavily on slave labor → sugar islands were the most profitable

    • Fur Trade in North American Interior

      • French, Dutch, and English expanded into the interior for fur trade

      • Interacted more with Native American groups

      • Fur trade destabilized native societies

    • Wheat, Indentured Servants, and Redemptioners in the Middle Colonies

      • PA & NY colonies — German and Scots-Irish settlers cultivated wheat and cereals

      • Middle colonies relied more on indentured servants and “redemptioners” (redemptioners faced harsher conditions that indentured servants)

    • Fish and Lumber in New England

      • Farmed and fished for local consumption 

      • New England engaged in trade

        • E.g. distilled molasses into rum

        • Molasses Act of 1733 → placed a duty on foreign molasses to prioritize British gain

      • Few people settled in New England after Puritans dissipated

  • Expansion of transatlantic trade changed American Indian cultures

    • Diseases reshaped their communities

    • Huron people who lived in Ontario made an alliance with France, which led to more exposure to the French settlers and led to a massive epidemic of measles and smallpox

  • The Catawba

    • Attempted to survive by making themselves useful to settlers

    • Altered their traditional artisan practices to adapt to change

  • British Imperial Policies

    • In the 1680s, Britain wanted to centralize control over North American colonies → met with colonial resistance

    • Early 1700s, Britain adopted “salutary neglect” which allowed colonies to operate with minimal British interference

    • Mercantilism

      • Based on the belief that there is only limited wealth in the world

      • Nations trade to increase their wealth

        • Sought to hold colonies for raw materials

      • Colonies expected to supply raw materials to Britain and buy British manufactured goods

    • Navigation Acts

      • Laws aiming to ensure colonies supported the British economy by restricting certain “enumerated goods” to Britain only

      • Only English ships can bring goods to England, and North America can only export goods to England

        • This benefitted British manufacturers and merchants

      • 1651, 1660, 1663

      • Reformed in the 18th century when another set of Navigation acts were passed

    • Imperial Control

      • In the 17th century, most British colonies transitioned from charter/proprietary governance to royal colonies 

    • Dominion of New England (1686)

      • After King Philip’s War, King Charles II went to New England and found that colonists were not conforming with mercantilist laws

      • Formed in 1686, the Dominion merged several colonies under a single governor, Sir Edmund Andros, who enforced Anglican religious practices and mercantilist laws

        • Led to colonial dissent

      • The Dominion faced resistance for its authoritarianism

    • The Glorious Revolution (1688)

      • James II became king after King Charles II died in 1685

      • James previously converted to Catholicism

        • Protestants were unhappy about the conversion, but James’s daughter, Mary, was protestant and married William of Orange, Dutch prince who led the republic

      • In 1688, James had a child who was the new Catholic heir to the throne

      • Protestant parliamentarians rose up in the “Glorious Revolution” and invited William and Mary to become England’s monarchs

      • Glorious Revolution spilled over into the colonies 

        • Bostonians overthrew the Dominion of New England and leader Andros

    • Lax Enforcement of Mercantilist Policies

      • Britain struggle to enforce mercantilist policies

      • This led to a period of “salutary neglect” where colonies enjoyed autonomy (developed outside of strict mercantilist laws)

  • Interactions between American Indians and Europeans

    • Land and furs caused major conflict

    • North America faced instability

    • The Beaver Wars (1640 - 1701)

      • Shows the destabilizing effects of trade and European firepower

      • Dutch and French established trading posts to obtain furs from native groups

        • French aligned with Algonquian-speaking tribes with posts along the St. Lawrence River

        • Dutch aligned with Iroquois with posts along Albany

      • Dutch-allied Iroquois and French-allied Algonquian-speaking tribes faced conflict due to hopes of expansion

      • When Britain took control of New Netherland in 1664, it allied itself with the Dutch-Iroquois 

      • Beaver Wars ended in 1701 with the Great Peace of Montreal

        • Iroquois expanded its territory

  • Pequot War (1634 - 1638)

    • Pequots were Native Americans of Connecticut

    • English traders did not like Pequots because of their alliance with the Dutch

    • New Englanders massacred Pequots and drove surviving ones away, then dividing their lands

    • Initially pondered morality of taking Native American lands but then decided God wanted it for them since they were successful

      • Puritans saw the Native Americans as “savages” and inferior to them

    • Created Native American-led community of Wampanoag Christians

      • Relatively few Native Americans permitted to become full members of Puritan congregations

  • King Philip’s War / Metacom’s War (1675 - 1678)

    • The English (Puritans) were never happy with what the Wampanoags and leader Metacom

    • Metacom led a revolt 

      • Massachusetts Bay Government hired warriors who killed Metacom

    • ⅕ of English towns in MA and RI were destroyed

      • Famine, slavery, death, disease, etc.

    • Many Wampanoags were sold as slaves

  • Some New England Indians made efforts to convert to Christianity

    • Established praying towns for praying Indians

  • Pueblo Revolt / Popé’s Rebellion

    • Spanish colonies tried to cooperate with American Indians

    • Pueblo Indians in New Mexico resented the Spanish encomienda system

    • Pueblos revolted and Spanish residents fled (returned later)

  • In the mid/late 1600s, Europeans began realizing that the indentured servitude system did not provide enough workers

    • Transition to slavery

  • Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)

    • Nathaniel Bacon was a Virginian planter

    • Bacon held position on governor’s council but was shut out of Colonial Governor William Berkeley’s inner circle and differed with Berkeley on Native American policy

    • Bacon wanted the governor to support a militia to attack Native Americans on the border

    • Governor refused to grant Bacon military commission to fight Natives

      • Bacon mobilized neighbors and attacked Native Americans he could find

      • Looted and burned Jamestown

  • Slavery in British North America

    • Slavery evolved in the 17th century

    • John Casor was declared to be a slave for life in 1640

      • Major turning point toward permanent slavery

    • Partus Sequitur Ventrum: the child of a slave woman would be a slave

  • The Stono Rebellion (1739)

    • Resistance to slavery

    • Slave owners were afraid of slave rebellion

    • Stono Rebellion in South Carolina

    • Initiated by 20 slaves who killed 20 slave owners and wrecked plantations

    • Rebellion quickly put down


  • The “Great Awakening” (1730-1740)

    • Pietism: Christian movement appealing to the heart rather than the mind

    • Great Awakening was a religious revival

    • Christian leaders emphasized a spread of religion/Christianity

      • Sought for a religious conversion for everyone by the Holy Spirit

    • New England Revivalism

      • Jonathan Edwards, MA minister, encouraged religious revival leading to New England pietism

    • Whitefield’s Great Awakening

      • George Whitefield was an English minister

      • He first comes to the South but spreads to other colonies

      • Anglican churches disapprove of his messages, so he travels to Baptist and Methodist churches

      • Whitefield ignored denominational differences and allowed everyone to follow whatever religion they wished

      • Whitefiled preached that those who sinned had to seek salvation

        • Conversion experience

      • Old Lights: Conservative ministers didn’t like the conversion work between the Holy Spirit

      • New Lights: Those who converted to Pietism 

        • Founded “separatist” churches

      • Evangelism — Christianity

  • The Enlightenment (1685-1815)

    • Power of human reason to understand and shape the world

    • The Enlightenment was limited to urban, centralized areas (~5% of population)

    • Deism: belief that a God created the world but allowed the world to operate naturally without interference

      • Scientific advancements shifted away from religion

      • Deists rejected Christianity and the Bible

    • Benjamin Franklin

    • John Locke thought the government should protect “natural rights” (life, liberty, property)

    • Thomas Hobbes believed in an absolute government power

    • Enlightenment thinkers resisted imperial control

  • Anglicalization: Great Britain imprinted its culture on North American colonies

    • Increased consumerist culture in the 18th century in British colonies

    • In the 18th century, there was a print revolution, with huge demand for newspapers covering European affairs

    • Anglican Church in Great Britain began incorporating Enlightenment ideas

    • Religious tolerance began to spread as well

      • Huge growth of Christianity

  • Albany Plan (1754)

    • Plan to create a unified government for the 13 colonies under British rule

    • Rejected plan

  • French and Indian War (1754-1763)

    • Theater of the Seven Years’ War

    • Eliminated the French military and presence in North America

    • Three other wars (King William’s war, Queen Anne’s war, and King George’s war) grew out of conflicts in Europe between Great Britain and France

    • The wars intensified rivalries with American Indians

      • Paxton Boys — wanted to rid all Indians of America

        • Uprising from 1963-1964

    • Proclamation of 1763

      • Formally ended the Seven Years’ War following the Treaty of Paris, transferring French territory in North America to Britain

      • Proclamation Line: British boundary marked in the Appalachian mountains at the Eastern Continental Divide

      • British colonists were prohibited from settling west of the Proclamation line (territory gained from France)

      • British empire didn’t want to destroy relations with American Indians

      • Colonists were anxious to expand westwards

        • Led to tensions beginning the American Revolution



Unit 3: The Crisis of Empire, Revolution, and Nation Building (1754-1800)

  • After the French & Indian War/7 years war, Great Britain faced enormous costs

    • Needed money to run the colonies as well

    • Imposed excise taxes on Americans to raise money

  •  Imperial reform to raise revenue from the colonies

  • Colonists wanted to defeat the French and settle west of the Appalachians

    • British didn’t want conflict with the Native Americans if the colonists were to pursue westward expansion

  • Sugar Act of 1764:

    • Cut the tax on molasses from 6 pence to 3 pence to allow for trade so merchants could earn profit

    • With the high taxes, people bribing trade officials to bypass the tax → no revenue earned

  • End of salutary neglect

    • Strict enforcement of policies and laws

    • Americans were used to autonomy

      • In the past, colonists only had to pay taxes levied upon them by their own colonial authorities

  • The Stamp Act of 1765

  • Sparked the first great imperial crisis

  • Tax stamp on all printed items

    • Targeted the wealthy people

  • Quartering Act of 1765

    • Required colonial governments to provide shelter and food for British troops

  • All violations of acts led to trial in vice-admiralty courts (tribunal with a royally elected judge; no jury)

  • British officials would govern colonies and strict confrontation for violations

  • The Stamp Act Congress (1765)

    • Protested the loss of American rights and liberties (taxation without representation) → right to trial by jury

  • Sons of Liberty

    • Boston group protested against the Stamp Act

    • Patriot lawyers encouraged the mob protests → led by artisans and minor merchants

  • Taxation without representation

    • Colonies ruled by the British Parliament

    • Colonists were mad that they didn’t get any representation in the parliament, yet Britain was still taxing them (no actual representation)

    • Britain argued that they received virtual representation — members elected to the parliament represented everyone

  • Stamp Act was doing more harm than good for British exports

    • Popular resistance nullified the Stamp Act in 1766

    • Also reduced the tax on sugar

    • American resistance to the Stamp Act provoked military coercion

  • Declaratory Act of 1766

    • Reaffirmed Parliament’s full power

  • William Pitt was named as the new head of government → sympathetic towards America

  • Charles Townshend, Parliament official, wasn’t → passed the Townshend Act

  • Townshend Act of 1767

    • Taxes on colonial imports of paper, paint, glass, and tea

    • Townshend act earned revenue to pay salaries of officials, [instead of colonial assemblies paying Parliament officials]

    • Debate over taxation

      • External taxes → taxed by Britain

      • Internal taxes → taxed within the colonies

  • Nonimportation movement

    • Women reduced household consumption of imported goods → protest

    • Led to British societal downfall

  • British merchants petitioned to repeal Townshend duties

  • Most taxes repealed except tea

  • The Boston Massacre

    • British redcoats fired into a crowd and killed 5 townspeople

    • Repudiated parliamentary supremacy

  • Committees of Correspondence — Committees stating the rights of the colonists

    • Patriots communicated with leaders when there were threats to liberty

  • Tea Act of 1773

    • Many colonists began drinking smuggled Dutch tea due to high import taxes on British tea

    • British East India Company faced financial difficulties

    • Tea Act lowered tea tax → prevent smuggling

  • Boston Tea Party (1773)

    • Sons of Liberty frustrated with “taxation without representation” (evident through the tea act)

    • Artisans and laborers disguised as Indians broke open 342 chests of tea and threw them into the harbor

  • Coercive Acts/Intolerable Acts (1774):

    • British Parliament passed 4 laws to punish Massachusetts Bay colony for Boston Tea Party

    • Boston Port Bill: closed Boston Harbor to shipping

    • MA Government Act: revoked MA Charter and prohibited town meetings

    • Quartering Act: new shelters/barracks for British troops

    • Justice Act: allowed trials for capital crimes → moved to another jurisdiction/venue of trials

    • Quebec Act: Allowed the practice of Roman Catholicism in Quebec

  • The Continental Congress (PA in 1774)

    • Continent-wide body gathering to form response to the Coercive Acts

    • Galloway’s “Plan of Union” (failed by 1 vote)

      • Suggested a government to handle affairs within the colonies

      • Gave colonists representation, but also fulfilled taxes for Britain

    • Delegates demanded repeal of Coercive Acts

    • Suffolk Resolves (passed)

      • Belligerent stance

      • Boycott unless Coercive Acts are repealed

  • The Continental Association (1774)

    • Enforce a 3rd boycott of British goods

    • Rural network

    • Southern slave owners/planters in debt to British merchants

  • Loyalists and Neutrals

    • Many, however, opposed the Patriots movement

    • Skeptics thought Patriot leaders avoided British rule to promote their self interests

    • Sons of Liberty used violence and intimidation in boycotts → terror

    • Loyalists: those who remained loyal to the British crown (15-20%)

    • Neutralists were ambivalent about the political crisis 

  • Revolutionary War (1775-1783): 

  • New England is mad and fighting whether they are subject to British rule or if they should be an independent country

  • Shot Heard Round the World

    • General Thomas Gage, military governor of MA, receives orders about sending Redcoat troops on April 14, 1775

      • Dispatches redcoats to seize Patriot supplies at Concord

  • Minutemen, Patriot troops

  • Paul Revere and other riders warned Patriots about the rebellion 

  • Someone fires a shot → starts the Revolutionary War

  • Second Continental Congress (1775)

    • America sent a proclamation to Great Britain asking to repeal Coercive Acts (Olive Branch Petition)

      • Not accepted by Britain

    • Decide what to do with Battle of Bunker Hill:

      • Patriots seize Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill in Charlestown

      • General Gage and redcoats fail to drive Patriots off

      • British victory, but morally, American victory

  • The Great Declaration

    • Americans were still afraid to separate from Great Britain

      • Torn from king, traditions, pride in empire, religion, liberty, laws, affection, relation, language, and commerce

      • Worried that rebellion/revolution would end worse than submitting to British rule

      • Common people wouldn’t know how to rule with independence

    • Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution stating the all United Colonies were to become independent states free from British rule

  • Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776)

    • Paine called for an independent and republican form of government

    • Attacked the traditional monarchical order

    • First call for a complete break from Britain

  • Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)

    • Free market economy and invisible hand

  • Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)

    • Thomas Jefferson vilified King George III

    • European Enlightenment ideas

      • “All men are created equal”

      • “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”

    • Popular sovereignty + republican government

  • Battle of Saratoga (1777)

    • American troops are down

    • British plan to travel up North to Canada to smash Patriot resistance

      • General Howe is irresponsible

      • British General Burgoyne captures Fort Ticonderoga

    • Burgoyne is struggling in Saratoga → surrenders on Oct 17

    • France enters the war

      • Intent to weaken the British

      • Mutual agreement between France and America to aid each other should war break out between France and Britain

    • Tough winter in Valley Forge, PA

  • War moves South

    • American victory in the South

  • Victory at Yorktown

    • British general Cornwallis marches North → gives up hope in the South

    • British establish base at Yorktown to be supplied by sea, but communication was too slow

      • Cornwallis cut off from the sea

    • Washington strikes at Yorktown

    • British surrender

  • Peace of Paris (1783)

    • Peace treaty was hard to negotiate

      • Spain was allied with France but not with America → Spain still wanted power over the US

      • France also didn’t want the new country to become too powerful

    • Preliminary treaty signed 

      • Boundaries of the new nation set at the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and right above Florida

      • British agree to withdraw all troops from America

  • Many states ratified constitutions following the Second Continental Congress

    • Pennsylvania constitution of 1776: Democratic constitution

      • Unicameral legislature with complete power

    • Mixed Government: sharing of power

      • John Adams’ proposal

        • Legislative, executive, judiciary (appointed) branches

  • Women Seek a Public Voice

    • Demand for equal rights for married women

      • Couldn’t own property, enter contracts, initiate lawsuits

    • Literacy rates shot up

  • The War’s Losers

    • Loyalists: severe financial losses and mass departure

    • Native Americans: pushed out of their land so middle/low class people would have more land

    • Slaves: Southerners fought the Revolution to maintain slavery (property rights)

  • Articles of Confederation (1781)

    • Patriots envisioned a central government with limited powers (loose government)

    • Provided each state with sovereignty, freedom, and independence

      • Congress had no power unless states’ voluntarily agreed

    • Strong on paper, but weak in reality (didn’t have the power to tax)

  • Northwest Ordinance of 1784: Jefferson established the principle that territories could become states as their populations grew

  • Northwest Ordinance of 1787: Creation of states, prohibition of slavery (above the Ohio River), and appointment of governor and judges → gave Congress authority to ban slavery

  • Shay’s Rebellion (1786-7)

    • American Revolution destroyed economic/fiscal conditions

      • America cut out of markets (no longer under Britain)

    • To earn back money → tax increases and decrease in amount of paper currency

      • Massachusetts increased taxes fivefold

      • When farmers couldn’t pay their taxes and debts, creditors threatened lawsuits

    • Farmers/citizens rebelled against this → governors of MA suppressed the rebellion

    • People realized the flaws of the Articles of Confederation

  • The Constitution (1787)

    • Solved the nation’s problems and changing its Republican principles

  • Nationalists

    • Wanted strong central government

    • Wanted Congress to control trade and tariff policy

  • The Philadelphia Convention (1787)

    • 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia from every state except Rhode Island

      • Most were strong nationalists

      • Educated and propertied

    • Absence of experienced leaders → younger nationalists at the convention

      • Demanding of a strong central government

    • Virginia and New Jersey Plans

      • Virginia Plan: James Madison

        • 1) Rejected state sovereignty [favored supremacy of national authority]

        • 2) National government to be established by the people & national laws operating directly on citizens (instead of states)

        • 3) 3-tier election system [voters elected lower house → lower house elected upper house → both houses elected executive and judiciary]

  • Two flaws

    • 1) People didn’t want the national government to veto state laws

    • 2) Plan based representation in the lower house gave populous/larger states excessive power

  • New Jersey Plan

    • Gave Confederation power to raise revenue, control commerce, and make binding requisitions

    • Preserved states’ control of their own laws

    • Unicameral legislature

  • Ultimately, Virginia Plan took power

  • The Great Compromise

    • Problem: representation of large vs small states

    • Connecticut proposal

      • Upper chamber (Senate) has 2 members from each state

      • Lower chamber (House of representatives) be apportioned by population size

    • State legislatures elected upper house (senate) members and states elected electors who would choose the president

  • Slavery Issue of the Constitution

    • Southern slaveholders refused to abolish slavery

    • Fugitive clause: allowed slave holders to get ahold of slaves who fled to northern states

    • The word “slavery” was excluded from the Constitution

      • Northerners didn’t want this to be in the Constitution because people could point to this and say slavery was ingrained into the basic principles of America

    • ⅗ compromise: each slave counted as ⅗ of a person for representation and taxation purposes

      • Southerners actually wanted to give slaves full representation so they could increase southern representation

    • Northerners wanted to abolish slavery, but this couldn’t be the focus of the debate or else Southerners would leave the convention

  • New Constitution

    • Much stronger national government

    • Bicameral legislation: senate and house of representatives (electing policies)

    • Fugitive clause

    • ⅗ compromise

    • Checks and balances

    • Separation of power

  • The People Debate Ratification

    • Declared that the new constitution would take effect when ratified by 9 out of 13 states

    • Nationalists (Federalists)

      • Launched coordinated campaign to justify Philadelphia constitution

  • Antifederalists

    • Opponents of the Constitution

    • Diverse backgrounds and motives

    • Lack of individual rights 

    • Run by wealthy men

    • They wanted to keep the government close to the people → state governments

    • Worried that the constitution would recreate British rule (high-taxes, oppressive bureaucracy, etc.)

  • Federalists Respond

    • The Federalist - series of essays 

      • Influenced political leaders

  • The Constitution Ratified (1787)

    • Backcountry delegates were skeptical while coastal areas were supportive

    • Patriots opposed the new constitution and Boston artisans supported the new constitution (wanted tariff protection on imports from govt.)

    • Federalist leaders suggested 9 amendments that would be in power once the Constitution was ratified

    • Needed support from the more powerful states (e.g. Virginia, New York, etc.)


  • Federalists split into two factions (1790s)

    • Hamilton’s Federalist party favors a commercial/industrial society (modern capitalist)

    • Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican favors agrarian society (yeoman farmer - small property owners) 

  • Federalists implement Constitution

    • Election of 1788, Federalists win majority

    • George Washington became president

      • Dignity; virtuous person

    • Judiciary Act of 1789 (court system)

      • Federal district court in each state

      • 3 circuit courts to hear appeals from districts

      • Supreme Court

    • The Bill of Rights (1791)

      • Federalists kept promise to consider amendments after ratification of Constitution

      • Ten amendments approved by Congress and ratified → Bill of Rights

        • Safeguard fundamental rights

  • Hamilton’s Financial Program

    • Alexander Hamilton - secretary of the treasury

    • Wanted to be mercantile and produce industrially (powerhouse)

    • Wanted to be closely allied with Britain

      • England has the most powerful navy → they can either do us harm or do us good

      • America is militarily weak and economically dependent

    • Hamilton’s 5 point plan

    • 1) Public Credit Assumption

      • Establish the nation’s credit worthiness: proposed that US government assume and combine all states’ debt from war 

    • 2) Public Credit Redemption

      • Create a national debt: all debt is going to be gathered and new bonds are going to be issued → made it clear that people were getting their bond money back

      • Wealthy people are investing in the success of the country/government

    • 3) Create a National Bank

      • Asked Congress to charter the Bank to the United States

        • Jointly owned by private stockholders + national government

      • Provide stability

        • Make loans to merchants, handle government funds, and issue bills of credit

      • Granted 20 year charter

      • Jefferson & Madison opposed Hamilton’s financial initiatives

        • Argued that a bank wasn’t in the Constitution

        • Didn’t trust stocks/bank → skeptical

    • 4) Whiskey Tax

      • Sought revenue to pay annual interest on national debt

        • Imposed excise taxes (single item tax - whiskey)

        • Decided to impose tax on whiskey because Americans drank a lot of whiskey

        • Hurt small farmers the most (grain/wheat/rye)

        • Whiskey Rebellion (1791-4)

          • Farmers protested Hamilton’s excise tax on spirits → cut demand

          • Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion

      • American trade increased, customs revenue increased, debt decreased

    • 5) Raising Revenue Through Tariffs

      • “Report on Manufactures”

      • We should adopt mercantilist policies to adopt an industrial sector

        • 1) Raise price on other countries’ goods

        • 2) Transportation/Infrastructure funds

        • 3) Bounties → subsidies for startups

      • NOT PASSED

    • Jeffersonians didn’t support Hamilton’s financial plan because it didn’t support any of their ideals (agrarian) and none of these powers were detailed in the Constitution

      • Jeffersonians - “Strict interpretation” (of the constitution)

      • Hamiltonians - “Loose interpretation”

  • Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision

    • Hamilton’s financial measure split the Federalists into factions

      • Northern Federalists supported Hamilton → (Hamiltonian) Federalists

      • Southern Federalists didn’t (led by Madison and Jefferson) → (Jeffersonian) Democratic-Republicans

    • Jefferson’s democratic vision of American was set in a society of independent yeoman farm families

    • Supported heavy international trade

    • Wanted to be closely allied with France 

      • Britain was America’s greatest enemy; France helped America in the revolution

  • French Revolution (1789 - 1799)

    • Republicans supported; Federalists were scared

      • Republicans saw it as American principles in action

    • 1793: Shifted from constitutional monarchy to republican democracy with the execution of King Louis XVI

      • Marked the beginning of the war between France and Britain

    • Led to the outbreak of war between France and Britain

      • US has to maintain neutrality → trade with both British and France

        • Militarily weak/economically dependent

      • British and France want US to be their exclusive trading partner

    • Privateering

      • When US maintains neutrality, seen as enemy from opposing country (France saw US allied with Britain)

      • US felt a strong ideological affinity with the French Revolution → same principles as American Revolution

      • Some Americans were more inclined to side with France due to prior British impressment

    • Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793: Allowed US citizens to trade with warring countries (neutral stance)

      • America took over sugar trade between France and West Indies

      • Commercially/financially successful

    • Jay’s Treaty (1794)

      • We were drifting toward war with Britain due to impressment, seizing ships, seizing American sailors, etc.

      • Washington sent John Jay to Britain hoping to protect merchant property

      • Don’t agree to give Americans neutrality → failure

      • Passed pro-British treaty

      • Other countries (e.g. France) saw it as if we were in a coalition with Britain

      • Treaty gets Jeffersonian Republicans to unite

    • The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)

      • French Revolution inspired Haitian Revolution

      • Haiti wanted liberation from French rule

      • West Indies (Saint-Domingue) divided

        • Elite planters & slaves

      • French Revolution intensified conflict between planters and free blacks → slave uprising of 1791

        • Black Haitians led by Toussaint L’Ouverture

      • Impact on the US

        • Refugees fled Saint-Domingue and came to the US

        • Slaveholders were fearful that free blacks would “inspire” their slaves

        • Jefferson supported France → cut off trade to the rebels & imposed a trade embargo

  • Rise of Political Parties

    • First Party System: Federalists and Republicans

    • Merchant and creditors supported Federalist Party while southern planters supported Republican Party

    • Election of 1796: Federalists majority in Congress; John Adams president

      • Adams tried to imply he wasn’t a Federalist (not associated with Hamilton) when in reality he was

  • Quasi War

    • Low level naval war in the Caribbean with the French

    • France attacked American shipping due to Jay’s treaty (thought of American-British coalition)

    • Hamilton wants to go to war, but President John Adams is against war

      • Adams thinks Hamilton wants a powerful army to attack the Jeffersonians

  • XYZ Affair

    • Adams unhappy about French seizures of American ships

    • French foreign minister Talleyrand requested money from Americans to stop the seizures

    • Response: cut off trade with France and authorized American privateering

  • Federalists grew against the French Republic 

    • Wave of Republican critics

  • In response to the Republican critics, Federalists enacted 3 coercive laws that limited individual rights

  • Naturalization Act of 1798

    • Residency requirement for American citizenship: 5 → 14 years (directed towards the Irish)

      • Irish become attracted to the Jeffersonian Republican party

  • Alien Act of 1798 + Alien Enemies Act

    • Authorized deportation of foreigners

    • Worried that foreigners (Frenchmen) living in the US won’t be loyal if US goes to war with France

  • Sedition Act of 1798

    • Prohibited publication of attacks on the president or members of Congress

  • Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions

    • Declared Alien and Sedition Acts to be unauthoritative and of no force

    • Asserted that states have a right to judge national laws/nullify laws

      • State can leave the union 

  • John Adams resolves tensions between France


  • Jefferson’s Presidency (1801-1809)

    • Election of 1800 → power transferred from Federalists to Democratic Republicans peacefully

    • 1801 - 1825, 3 Republicans from Virginia served as president

      • Reversed Federalist policies & supported westward expansion

      • New positions so Federalists could be a part of the Congress

    • Marbury v. Madison (1803)

      • William Marbury never gets his commission

      • He goes to the Supreme Court

        • John Marshall (Supreme Court Federalist) voids a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 and declares Marbury going to the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional (the act is unconstitutional) → declares authority and power of the Supreme Court

      • Judicial Review — Supreme Court has the right to strike down any law in violation of the Constitution

    • Jefferson reversed other Federalist policies

      • Alien and Sedition Acts expired in 1801 → Congress refused to extend

      • Jefferson abolished all internal taxes (Whiskey tax)

      • Kept the Bank

  • Barbary Wars (1801-1805 / 1815-1816)

    • Naval war launched by Jefferson in an effort to stop attacks on American merchant ships by Barbary pirates

    • Established US Navy’s reputation

  • Jefferson and the West

    • Jefferson implemented policies that made it easier for farm families to acquire land → cut the cost to $1.25 per acre

  • The Louisiana Purchase (1803)

    • Kicked off westward expansion

    • Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to reestablish France’s American Empire

    • Napoleon forced Spain to sign a treaty that returned Louisiana to France and restricted American access to New Orleans

      • Napoleon also tried to invade Saint-Domingue

    • Jefferson questioned his pro-French policies due to Napoleon's actions

    • Napoleon feared American invasion of Louisiana because of war in Saint-Domingue and imminent war in Europe

    • Offered to sell Louisiana for $15 million

      • Constitution didn’t allow addition of new territory

      • Jefferson accepted a loose interpretation of the Constitution

    • Secessionist Schemes:

      • New England Federalists feared that western expansion would hurt their party → talked about leaving the Union

        • Won the support of Aaron Burr 

        • Led to a fight between Aaron Burr and Hamilton → led to Hamilton’s death

      • Burr also conspired with James Wilkinson (military governor of Louisiana (also Spanish spy + traitor)) 

        • Wilkinson betrayed Burr and arrested him

    • Louisiana Purchase increased party conflict and propelled secessionist schemes

  • Lewis & Clark + Sacagawea (1805)

    • Jefferson wanted to know about Louisiana

      • Sent Lewis and Clark to explore the region

      • Allowed Americans to envision a nation spanning the continent

    • Mandan Natives in the region lived by horticulture

      • Corn, beans, and squash

      • Horses, guns, iron, textiles → sold buffalo hides and dried meat

      • Threatened by the Sioux Natives

  • Conflict in the Atlantic and the West

    • France and Britain both seized American merchant ships + impressment

    • Embargo of 1807

      • Jefferson → peaceful coercion & protect American interests

      • Prohibited American ships from leaving home ports until France and Britain stopped restricting trade

      • Weakened the economy 

        • Britain and France didn’t need America, America was economically dependent

  • Leading up to the War of 1812

    • Republicans were mad at the British for trading with Ohio River Valley Indians

    • Indians and Americans turn against each other

    • Britain assisting Indians and seizing American ships → President James Madison declares war

      • Federalists in New England didn’t want war

      • Southerners and Westerners supported war

  • The War of 1812

    • Near disaster for the US

    • Prevented wider war from spreading in the East though New England Federalists opposed the war

      • Difficult to finance since Boston merchants refused to lend federal government money

    • Eventually, war turned in Britain’s favor

    • War at stalemate along Canadian frontier; lost in the Atlantic

    • US victory in the Southwest → forced Indians to give up 23 mil. acres of land

    • Federalists Oppose the War

      • Federalists are the minority party

      • Military setbacks increase opposition to war

      • Proposed to revise the Constitution

        • Amendment: limit office to single 4 yr term

        • ⅔ majority in Congress to declare war, prohibit trade, or admit new state to Union

    • Peace and Final Victory

      • Britain wants peace

        • After 20 year war with France too

      • Treaty of Ghent of 1814: retained pre war borders of the US

      • Final battle → General Jackson’s troops crushed British forces in New Orleans

  • Hartford Convention (1814-1815)

    • Series of meeting where the Federalists discussed whether or not to secede from the union

    • Decided against seceding

  • First Party System shattered

  • Republicans split into two factions:

    • National Republican party

      • Led by Henry Clay

      • Pursued Federalist-like policies

      • Second Bank of US

      • Federalist party no longer existed

    • Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party (remains)

  • Marshall’s Federalist Law

    • Federalist policies lived on due to John Marshall (Supreme Court Federalist)

    • Jurisprudence: judicial authority, supremacy of national laws, and traditional property rights

  • McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

    • Does a state have the power to tax the federal bank → NO

    • National law trumps state law when the two contradict

  • Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819: Spain gave Florida to the US; US gave Texas to Spain

    • We purchased Florida from Spain

    • Following the success of Spanish-American wars of independence against Spain

  • Adams persuaded President Monroe to declare American national policy in the Western Hemisphere

    • Monroe Doctrine: American continents can no longer be colonized

  • National faction led by Clay and Adams; Jeffersonian faction led by Martin Van Buren and Andrew Jackson



Unit 4: Antebellum America (1820-1848)

  • Antebellum Period:

  • Period before Civil War during which a diverse mix of reformers dedicated themselves to new causes

  • Focused on nation-building

  • Industrialization:

  • Cultural and economic revolution in which farms and homesteads are replaced by machines as the primary place of work for society

  • New technologies used such as cotton gin, spinning machine, steamboat, canal, and railroads/locomotives

    • Cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney

  • War of 1812 showed that we need a national bank (charter expired) and how weak our transportation system was

  • Henry Clay’s American System

    • 1) Federally funded internal improvements (e.g. roads & canals)

    • 2) Federal tariffs

    • 3) Second Bank of the United States

  • Transcendentalism (1820s-1830s):

    • Movement of writers and philosophers in New England launched by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

    • Celebrated the overthrow of old hierarchies and the spiritual power of individuals

    • About passion, mystery, self-realization, and self-reliance

    • Influenced the American Renaissance during the mid 19th century of literature and philosophy

    • Transcendentalists did not like the Market Revolution because it focused on consumption, profit, and work (money-making schemes) rather than spirituality

  • Walt Whitman:

    • Humanist and poet who helped to start the transition between transcendentalism and realism

    • Wrote many poems that discussed democracy and the celebration of the individual

      • "Leaves of Grass"

        • Highly controversial due to its overtly sexual themes

  • Loved diversity (during a time when the Irish and German immigrants were not so welcome).

  • Hudson River School:

    • US’s independent art movement founded by Thomas Cole that shared many of the same values as Transcendentalism

    • Romantic style of painting that portrayed North American nature and landscapes, helping to establish the idea of the “divinity of nature”

    • Style reflected the ideas of discovery, exploration, and settlement

  • Transportation → economic expansion

    • Mercantilism: government assisted economic development

    • Westward migration led to a need for new transportation routes

      • Congress approved funds for a National Road

      • Cumberland Road (1811-1837)

        • First major improved highway in the US

        • Made transportation to the west easier for new settlers

    • Canals:

      • Travel was slow and expensive

      • Water-borne transportation system constructed of canals and roads

      • Erie Canal

        • Stretched across New York and reaped many economic benefits, launching a huge campaign for more canals to be built across America

      • Canals were short-lived since railroads proved to be better transportation

    • Steamboats: 

      • Halved the cost of river transport

      • Increased the flow of good, people, and news

      • Government created a postal system

        • Network for exchange of information and encouraged interstate trade

    • Telegraph:

      • Samuel F. B. Morse created the first telegraph

      • Morse code: code for transmitting numbers and letters

      • Transcontinental telegraph line across the nation

  • Market Revolution (1820s-30s):

    • Northern industries were linked to western and southern farms, creating advances in agriculture, industry, communication, and transportation

    • Market economy with economic specialization

    • Before:

      • Self-sufficient farms - most things produced on farms

      • Artisan-based production

    • After:

      • Great expanded transportation/communication infrastructure 

      • Specialization/division of labor 

  • Innovations shrunk the vast spaces of North America

    • Goods sold in distant markets

    • Coordinated business activity

    • Network of information

  • Cotton Complex: Northern Industry and Southern Agriculture

    • Major economic transformation

    • Northeast: merchants and manufacturers invested in new textile mills

      • Cotton Boom: Vast demand for cotton → Southern planters poured capital into land and slaves

  • Industrial Revolution in America

    • Clothmaking used to be small-scale production

    • Turned into large-scale production with textile mills

    • American and British Advantages:

      • British textile manufacturers:

        • Efficient shipping networks → cotton at low prices 

        • Cheap labor

      • American:

        • Congress passed tariff bills that put high taxes on imported cotton

        • 1) Improved on British technology

        • 2) Cheaper source of labor - young women from farm families

          • Waltham-Lowell Labor system

          • Long, grueling, terrible working conditions

          • Gave women a sense of economic freedom

          • Rotation cycle of work

  • Wageworkers and the Labor Movement

    • Lowell Labor System falls apart when Irish immigrants come and are willing to work for lower wages

    • Artisan republicanism: ideology of production based on liberty and equality

    • Unions

      • Men weren’t happy about their wageworker status (women embraced factory work) 

      • Formed unions to bargain with their master employers

      • Split artisan class:

        • Self-employed craftsmen

        • Wage-earning workers

      • Unions were often against the law: illegal combinations

    • National Trades Union

      • First regional union of different trades

  • Era of good feeling: After the American Revolution, citizens had a sense of national identity and purpose for the nation

  • Democratic Revolution: expansion of the franchise (right to vote)

    • By the 1830s, nearly all white men could vote

  • Cult of Domesticity

    • Women should only exist in the domestic sphere

      • Women are seen as more moral than men - higher than men

    • Clear division between work life and home life

      • Earn money from work → go purchase necessities

    • Women begin having less children 

      • Children aren’t needed as much for agriculture given the market revolution

      • Mothers can now give more care to each child

  • Rise of Popular Politics

    • Notables: northern landlords/merchants and slave-owning planters

    • Wealthy families could seek office

    • Rise of Democracy

      • Equal rights rhetoric of republicanism 

        • Everyone has equal rights, so everyone should get the right to vote

      • Populism: election of men who dress simply and endorse popular rule

      • Democratic politics was often corrupt 

    • Parties

      • As notables waned, parties increased

      • Parties wove together the interests of a diverse group of people

      • Martin Van Buren (architect of party government) sought to create a political order based on party identity rather than family connections

  • Racial Exclusion

    • Women and free African American men denied the right to vote

    • Republican Motherhood:

      • Traditionally, women worked as housewives

      • Demographic transition: After 1800s, there was a sharp decline in the birth rate

        • Marriage rates lowered

        • Many women also refused to spend their lives just raising children

      • Republican Motherhood: Ideal that women should instruct their sons and care for their children

    • Slavery

      • Originally at Philadelphia Convention, delegates were lenient towards slavery for the sake of the Southerners

      • Congress outlawed the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1808

        • Northerners sought to completely abolish slavery

        • Southerners were mad, but their political clout led slavery to be a protected institute

      • Black abolitionists began speaking out against slavery

        • Hoped that slavery would die out → cotton boom led to more slavery

      • Turner Revolt (1831)

        • Virginia slave rebellion killing over 55 white people

        • Deadliest slave revolt in history

  • Missouri Compromise (1820)

    • Missouri applied for admission to the Union as a slave state in 1819

      • Congressman James Tallmadge said that Missouri could only join if they became a non-slave state

      • Northerners opposed Missouri’s entry

      • Southerners used Senate power to withhold Maine (non-slave state) from joining Union as well

      • If Missouri entered the Union, there would be an unbalanced number of slave states vs free states

    • Southerners arguing

      • 1) “equal rights” - Congress can’t have requirements for Missouri that they don’t have for other states

      • 2) Constitution guarantees state sovereignty

      • 3) Congress can’t infringe on slaveholders’ rights

    • Maine enters the Union as a free state and Missouri enters the Union as a slave state

    • Missouri Compromise Line: New 36o30’ latitude line across the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase territory such that for new states/territories joining the Union, states above the line must be free and states below the line must be slave states

      • Missouri lied above the line but was admitted as a slave state

    • Purpose: set a precedent for future states joining the Union

  • The Election of 1824

    • Politics brought “era of good feeling” to an end

    • 5 Republican candidates campaigned for president: John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson

    • John Quincy Adams

      • Secretary of state

      • Family prestige in MA → votes from New England

    • Henry Clay

      • American System

        • Mercantilist program of national economics

      • Second Bank of the US

    • Andrew Jackson

      • Hero of Battle of New Orleans → surge of patriotism after War of 1812

    • House of Representatives chose the president because there was no clear majority

      • John Quincy Adams becomes president in 1825

      • Henry Clay becomes secretary of state

  • John Quincy Adams Presidency (Whig — 1825-1829)

    • Imposed Henry Clay’s American System: tariffs, federally subsidized canals/roads, and national bank

    • Son of Federalist president John Adams

    • The Tariff Battle:

      • Tariff of 1816 placed high tariffs on English cotton cloth → New England textile industry controlled that segment of the market

  • “The Democracy” and the Election of 1828

    • Martin Van Buren (politician handling Andrew Jackson’s campaign) launched a full fledged publicity campaign

    • Jacksonians → Democrats/“The Democracy”

      • Fought for equality

    • Jackson was hostile to Native Americans → Sought to remove Indigenous tribes

    • Voted into presidency

  • Major Changes

    • America truly becomes a democracy

    • Middle class market for artwork

    • Van Buren created Democratic Party in 1829 following Jeffersonian ideals

    • Whig Party created by Henry Clay → Emerges given Hamiltonian ideas 

  • Alexis de Tocqueville

    • Thought democratic nature was the center of society

    • Convinced that America in the 1830s was at the edge of complete democracy

    • 2 types of societies:

      • Democratic/equal societies

        • Still, there’s a huge pressure of following the rest of society

        • Also, there could be isolation (individualism) because there is no need to rely on others such as the chain of connection than aristocratic society

        • Engaged, bustling society → process is valuable

      • Aristocratic/wealthy societies

        • Static society

  • Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)

    • Rotation and Decentralization

      • Rotation of officeholders when new administration took power

      • Wanted to destroy the American System 

        • Thought government economic plans were unconstitutional

    • Democrats don’t support tariffs, Whigs support tariffs

    • Tariff and Nullification

      • Expected: Jackson not supportive of tariffs because tariffs generally protect/aid American industries and manufacturing against international competition (Hamiltonian/Whigs desires)

      • Fierce opposition to high tariffs throughout the South

        • High tariffs on British imports throughout the nation to promote domestic production

        • Northerners received taxes (industries) earned from tariffs, but Southerners didn’t

        • Southerners are afraid that foreign countries are going to enact tariffs in response to US tariff → hurts cotton trade

      • Congress reenacted Tariff of Abominations in 1832

        • Tariff of 1828 raised taxes to help domestic production

          • Southerners from the Cotton Belt had to pay more for imports from Europe

        • Ordinance of Nullification: South Carolina responded by declaring Tariff of Abominations to be null

        • Proved that a state has the right to void a law passed by Congress

          • States’ rights interpretation of the Constitution

        • Jackson persuaded South Carolina to obey to national laws

          • With that, he reduces tariff rates

        • South Carolina complied due to the tariff reduction

        • Laid the groundwork for secession theory

      • Force Bill of 1833

        • Allowed POTUS to use military force against states that refused to comply with federal tax and tariff laws

    • The Bank War

      • Second Bank of the US

        • Managed under 20 year charter from federal government

        • Stabilized nation’s money supply → kept state banks from inflation

      • Henry Clay and Daniel Webster sought to recharter the national bank

        • Jackson turned against the bank: stated that Congress didn’t have constitutional authority to charter a national bank (Jeffersonian argument)

        • Vetoed the rechartering bill

          • Led him to presidential victory in 1832 

            • Gave middle class Americans opportunity to rise given that Jackson had attacked privileged corporations

      • The Bank Destroyed

        • Appointed Roger B. Taney

          • Transferred federal money to state banks

          • Jackson said his presidential victory meant the majority of the people were against the bank

          • Claim of presidential power → pursue controversial policy

        • Jackson prevented renewal of charter after expiration in 1836

        • Jackson destroyed National Banking and the American System

    • Indian Removal

      • White people in the South and Midwest demanded resettlement of Indians west of Mississippi River

        • Indians have federal boundaries for land

      • Georgia wanted to extinguish Cherokees and expropriate land

        • Fully supported by Andrew Jackson

      • Indian Removal Act of 1830

        • There existed federal treaties that helped Indians and gave them land

          • Jackson desires to support Indian removal and wants to get the federal government to be on this side

        • Created Indian Territory on national lands acquired from Louisiana Purchase

          • In turn, Indians gave up the Mississippi River

        • Jackson expelled Indians by force when they refused to leave

        • Trail of Tears

          • Treaty of Echota of 1835: Stated that Cherokees would have to resettle into Indian Territory

          • General Scott took all Cherokees that refused to move and marched them to Indian Territory (Trail of Tears)

        • US : white man’s country = Indian Territory : red man’s country

          • Distinct racial separation

    • Jackson’s Impact

      • Expanded Executive authority (President)

      • Upheld national authority through armed forces

      • Followed Jeffersonian principles

      • The Taney Court

        • Appointed Roger B. Taney as his successor

        • Taney reversed nationalist and property-rights decisions

        • Enhanced role of state governments

      • States Revise Constitutions

        • Democrats mounted their own constitutional revolutions

          • Inspired by Jackson and Taney

        • New constitutions embodied classical liberalism / laissez-faire

          • Limited government role

  • Two National Parties

    • Democrats

      • Catholic immigrants

      • Traditional protestants

      • Became the political majority → took the middle of the road stance

    • Whigs (1833)

      • Evangelical protestants

      • Whigs = pre-revolutionary American and British parties

      • Entrepreneur and enterprising individual

        • Country of self-made men

        • Called for a return to Clay’s American System

      • Calhoun’s dissent

        • Southern, poor whites (Whigs) who didn’t like low-country planters’ power (Democrats)

        • Calhoun wants to create a Southern Party

        • Single biggest force pushing back on national development

          • Said that the south would suffer if the nation became unified

        • Southern Whigs rejected Whig party enthusiasm for high tariffs and social mobility

          • John C. Calhoun → spokesperson

          • Whigs vouched for equal opportunity

          • Contradicted by slavery and wage-labor capitalism

          • Urged slave/factory owners to unite against enslaved blacks and propertyless whites

      • Anti-Masons

        • Opposed the Order of Freemasonry

          • Freemasonry: organization of men seeking moral improvement

        • Ultimately gets absorbed into the Whig party

  • Labor Politics and the Depression of 1837-1843

    • Panic of 1837

      • Andrew Jackson didn’t manage the Second National Bank well

      • Bank of England cuts flow of money to the US

      • American planters and merchants have to withdraw from domestic banks to pay debt

      • Britain → financial panic

      • American economy falls into deep depression

      • Unemployment led to an end to the union movement

      • Blamed Democrats for depression

    • Tippecanoe and Tyler Too

      • Harrison’s slogan

      • Specie Circular: required Treasury to only accept gold and silver in payment for lands (issued by Jackson)

      • Log Cabin Campaign

        • Americans turn against Van Buren

        • Whigs nominated William Henry Harrison for president

          • Protected tariffs and national bank

        • First time 2 well-organized parties competed for votes through a new style of campaigning

          • Whigs allowed women to campaign too

      • Harrison quickly dies of illness 

      • Tyler takes over

        • Ran under Whig Party → opposed Whig values

        • Vetoed Whig bills for tariffs and national bank

        • President without a party

        • This dissension period allowed Democrats to regroup and dominate

  • Origins of the Cotton South

    • World supply of cotton was small because production is labor intensive

    • Decline of Slavery (1776-1800)

      • Steep decline in slavery

      • Contradiction between liberty and slavery institution

    • North ends Slavery

      • Gradual emancipation

    • Manumission in the Chesapeake

      • Slaves expected the Revolution to bring them freedom

      • Thousands of African Americans fled

      • African Americans generally supported the Patriot cause

      • Manumission act (1782): Virginia passed an act allowing owners to free their slaves

      • Why was slavery in decline?

        • Tobacco economy was depressed

        • Some planters saw the logic behind pursuit of liberty

        • Evangelical Christianity (religion) allowed owners to see slaves as equal

    • Slavery Resurgent

      • Many advocates argued that slavery was necessary

      • However, no cash crop that supported plantation agriculture

  • Cotton Boom and Slavery

    • Cotton-growing lands were valuable real estates

    • Cotton cultivation became cornerstone of American economy

    • Upper South exports slaves

      • Chesapeake region had surplus of enslaved workers → growing domestic trade in slaves

      • Domestic slave trade → massive transplantation/migration/sale

      • Coastal Trade—Sent slaves to sugar plantations

      • Inland system—Slaves to Cotton South

    • Impact on Blacks

      • Domestic slave trade was a disaster

      • Chattel principle: slaves are movable personal property 

      • Slavery underscored the entire southern economy

        • Became more opposed in the North

    • Flourishment around periphery of South’s Cotton Belt

    • Southern apologists rejected the idea that slavery was evil (left necessary evil)

      • Calhoun (SC senator) thought slavery was a “positive good” and white elites treated naturally inferior blacks well

    • Paternalism: slave owners considering themselves to be “benevolent” masters  who treat their slaves well

  • The Settlement of Texas

    • Mexico wins independence from Spain (1821) and settles in southwestern Texas

      • Americans settled in eastern and central Texas

  • Eventually, Americans proclaim independence of Texas and legalized slavery

  • Negotiating Rights

    • Slave task system → precisely defined jobs

      • Liberty and free time

      • South Carolina, rice plantations

    • Gang-labor system → regimented lives

      • No time off

      • Sugar and cotton plantations

    • Planters feared that African Americans would rebel

    • Survival Strategies

      • Most African Americans remained on plantations

        • Revolt was futile and escape was problematic

      • Slaves pressed owners for more money from their labor

  • Second Great Awakening (1790-1830)

    • After the American Revolution, waves of religious revival

    • Idea of soul-winning and moral and philanthropic reform

    • Make the society more palatable to God

      • If Jesus were to return, would he see our society as acceptable?

      • It isn’t with the practice of extreme drinking and oppression

    • Emancipation of women and temperance

    • No national church → wall between state and church

    • Protestant Revival

    • Differences between First and Second Great Awakening

First

Second

God comes to you

You make the choice of how to live your life

Calvinist ideals

Rejection of Calvinism


  • In the north

    • Many New Englanders reject Calvinist ideals on human depravity → wanted free will

  • Second Great Awakening fostered cooperation between denominations

  • Charles Grandison Finney; Presbyterian minister

    • Adopted free will

    • Finney converted merchants and manufacturers of Rochester, NY

      • Attend church and worked hard

    • Poor people rejected Finney’s revival

  • The Benevolent Empire

    • Restore the “moral government of God” 

      • Congregational and Presbyterian ministers

      • Targeted old evils

        • Drunkenness, adultery, prostitution, etc.

      • Created large-scale organizations to encourage people to exercise self-control

    • Evangelical Protestants wanted to decrease alcohol consumption

      • American Temperance Society

      • Revivalist methods

      • Alcohol consumption decreased dramatically → successful

      • Wanted to prohibit manufacture/sale of alcohol

        • Maine Law (Maine prohibited alcohol)

  • William Lloyd Garrison

    • Published “The Liberator”, a newspaper for the Abolitionist campaign


Unit 5: Secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction (1848-1877)

  • Lead up to the Civil War was over the issue of slavery

  • Manifest destiny

    • God given destiny to possess the whole continent of America

  • Push to Pacific

    • 1) Needed more resources (e.g. Gold Rush)

    • 2) Homestead investment

    • 3) Religious refuge (Mormons)

    • Anglo-American racial superiority

      • Native Americans and Mexicans lived in the west - considered inferior

  • Oregon

    • Britain and US have joint control over the territory of Oregon

    • British merchants and American farmers

    • “Oregon Fever”: thousands of pioneers trekked to Oregon along the Oregon Trail

  • California

    • Mexico has control over the California territory, in which they inhabit alongside the Native Americans

  • Americans wanted to annex Texas 

    • Originally, Texas belonged to the Spanish, but after Mexico gained independence from the Spanish, they took over the Texas territory

    • Americans were already inhabiting Texas alongside Mexicans, but they refused to follow Mexican laws (to adopt Roman Catholicism and ban slavery)

    • Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren (Democrats) said no to annexation of Texas due to the possibility of war

  • John Tyler (Whig) becomes president

    • Works closely with John C. Calhoun to annex Texas

    • Doesn’t get anywhere

  • Election of 1844

    • Centered around expansion into Texas and Oregon

    • Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) stabbed in the back by Southern Democrats because he didn’t support annexation of Texas

    • James Polk elected as “Democratic” president

      • Desired to annex both Oregon and Texas

      • Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836

        • Mexico wasn’t happy about it

    • Texas added to the Union

      • Started Westward Expansion

  • Mexican-American War (1846-1848)

    • Cause:

      • Polk wants to try to start a war for the sake of expanding into California (Mexican territory)

      • America and Mexico disagreed on the southern border of Mexico, Western border of Texas

      • Polk called a full-fledged war after sparking a small battle on American land

    • Polk wanted to acquire Mexico’s northern provinces through revolution

      • Strong American military forces in Texas

      • Captured Bear Flag Republic of California in 1847

      • American army seized Mexican capital in 1847

        • Negotiated peace treaty

  • Whigs afraid that war/westward expansion mean the creation of more slave states

  • Wilmot Proviso (1846): Suggested a ban on slavery in territories gained from war, but it was never passed into law

    • Free Soil standpoint

  • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

    • Peace treaty from the Mexican-American war

    • US agreed to pay Mexico $15 million for ⅓ of its territory

  • Also created Oregon Territory

  • Free Soil Movement / Free Soil Party

    • Stance: Stop spread of slavery in new territories (not for sake of abolition, for westward expansion and homestead settled land)

      • If slavery were to expand to the new territories, it would be an institution stuck in America for eternity

      • If we stop the expansion of slavery, it will eventually just die out

    • Issue: if new larger states were free states, but were larger, whites in those lands had more political representation (because of ⅗ compromise)

    • Movement for more access to public lands

  • The Election of 1848

    • Lewis Cass (Democrat): popular sovereignty

    • Zachary Taylor (Whig)

      • Defended slavery in the South but not in new territories

      • His stance was unclear → victory in presidential campaign

  • 1850: Crisis and Compromise

    • California applies for statehood → debate crisis

      • 4 solutions to the problems of the country

      • 1) John C. Calhoun - Congress can’t regulate slavery, responsibility to protect slavery in new territories

        • North and South have same rights

      • 2) James Buchanan - Extend Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific

      • 3) Lewis Cass’s popular (squatter) sovereignty - citizens in territories decide slave status

      • 4) David Wilmot - Ban slavery in new territories and eventually end it

        • Congress can ban slavery

    • Compromise of 1850 - Henry Clay

      • 5 laws

      • 1) New Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

      • 2) California admitted as a free state

      • 3) Resolved boundary dispute b/w New Mexico & Texas

      • 4) Abolished slave trade (international) in District of Columbia

      • 5) Popular sovereignty in New Mexico & Utah territories

  • Gadsden Purchase of 1853

    • Mexico sold Southern Arizona and New Mexico to the US for $10 million

  • Abolitionist Movement

    • Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was controversial

      • Set up federal courts to determine statuses of fugitive slaves

      • As long as a slave owner said a slave was their slave; no jury trials by slaves 

        • This meant that free blacks were being re-enslaved even if an owner wasn’t their owner

      • Northerners are required to help capture fugitive slaves and were punished if violated

    • Led to greater support for abolitionist cause

    • Charles Sumner — leading abolitionist in America

    • Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Henry Beecher Stowe (1852)

      • Led to anti slavery petition

      • Showed northerners and the world the horrors of slavery 

    • Roger B. Taney affirmed supremacy of federal courts which held constitutionality of Fugitive Slave Act 

      • Response to northern abolitionists

  • Whig Party’s Demise

    • Democrats strengthened Southern support by affirming slavery

    • Whigs didn’t strengthen Northern support (against slavery)

    • Whigs officially fall in 1854 after the Kansas-Nebraska Act

    • Election of 1852 

      • Franklin Pierce (Democrat) elected

      • Supported slavery in the south

    • Pierce built up commercial empire in the North

    • Pierce strongly supported the South

      • Bought new southern territory (parts of NM & AZ)

      • Ostend Manifesto (1854)

        • Scheme where US pressured Spain to give up Cuba so US can expand slavery for sugar plantation

        • Document exposed → Pierce withdrew it to keep reputation

  • Immigration

    • Peaked in 1840s and 1850s from northern Europe

    • Irish Potato Famine (1845-1852)

      • The Irish primarily grew and ate potatoes

      • In 1845, there was a potato blight that destroyed the crop such that the Irish was taken over by death and famine

      • ⅙ of Irish population emigrated to US

        • Urban areas

        • Chain migration - after settling, arranged for friends and family to migrate as well

    • Irish and Germans boosted American economy

    • Nativism / Xenophobia (hostility towards immigrants)

      • Temperance - opposed to heavy drinking

      • Anti-Catholicism

        • Most immigrants were Catholics

      • Political backlash

        • Irish associated with Democratic Party

        • Germans fled oppressive government systems

          • Socialist ideals → support of abolitionism

  • American / Know-Nothing Party

    • Discouraged immigration → upheld a nativist sentiment

    • Supported anti-slavery movements

  • Kansas-Nebraska Act *** (1854)

    • Leads to the secession crisis

    • Missouri Compromise: no slavery north of 36o30’ line

    • Senator Stephen Douglas proposed:

      • Native Americans Great Plains territory should be divided into 2 parts: Kansas & Nebraska

      • Popular sovereignty for slavery or not

        • Instead of both states joining as free states since they lie above the compromise line

      • Repealed Missouri Compromise

    • Transcontinental Railroad

      • Douglas wants to build a railroad through the northern part of the country, but there’s no incentive for Southerners to vote for the bill

      • Douglas repeals Missouri Compromise as part of the bill

        • Southern “expansion” of slavery

    • Whig party destroyed

    • New Republican Party

      • Disliked slavery

      • Desired society of independent farmers, artisans, and proprietors

      • Emerged to combat the expansion of slavery into Kansas and Nebraska

    • Bleeding Kansas

      • Adoption of popular sovereignty

        • Way more votes than actual population of Kansas

      • People pour into Kansas to try to make Kansas pro or anti slavery, regardless of whether or not they plan to live there

        • Begin fighting with each other

          • Pro-slavery people win, even though more anti-slavery people who actually live in Kansas

      • James Buchanan accepts it as Kansas’s state Lecompton Constitution

        • Stephen Douglas very against it because it’s not true popular sovereignty 

      • Lecompton Constitution → Kansas pro-slavery document

        • Douglas and Buchanan public feud

  • Presidential Election of 1856

    • Over the violence in Kansas

    • Republicans called for prohibition of slavery

    • American Party was split on slavery

    • James Buchanan (Democrat) won

  • Dred Scott Decision (1857)

    • Dred Scott: enslaved African American in free territory (IL + WI)

    • Born as a slave in Virginia → his owner moved west/north

    • Scott said because he lived in free territory, he should be free

    • James Buchanan pressured justices to vote pro-slavery

    • Supreme Court decided that all Negroes were not US citizens

      • Therefore, African Americans cannot sue in federal court

    • Constitution states that Congress can’t deprive citizens of property

      • If enslaved people were property, then they could be taken anywhere

    • All states in the Union are technically slave states

      • Government can’t ban slavery, but also can’t protect slavery

  • People wanted Douglas to transfer to Republican party but people didn’t trust him

    • Lincoln nominated as Republican candidate

  • Abraham Lincoln (Republican)

    • From yeoman farm family

  • Opposed slavery in the territories

  • Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858)

    • Senate position election between Lincoln and Douglas

    • Lincoln:

      • Believed society could not be half-free, half-slave

      • Pushed an aggressive non-slavery standpoint, but careful of being not too abolitionist

    • Douglas:

      • Believed that it was undemocratic to force abolition

      • Framed Lincoln as a radical abolitionist

      • Wishy-washy standpoint

    • Douglas (Democrat) re-elected — Lincoln loses

  • The Election of 1860

    • Democrats split up into North and South

    • Northern Democrats wanted popular sovereignty

    • Southern Democrats wanted slavery protected

    • Stephen Douglas runs for the Democrats

    • Lincoln elected as president for Republican party

      • A Republican president elected without any electoral votes

  • South Carolina secedes from the Union (1860)

    • Felt threatened by Lincoln’s win

  • Deep Southern states one by one secede until all seceded

  • Why?

    • Protect slavery and protect states’ rights

  • Confederate States of America becomes a new nation

    • Jefferson Davis (former Mississippi senator) as president

  • President Buchanan (right before Lincoln comes into office) is timid

    • Claimed government didn’t have a right to reclaim Confederacy

    • Surrendered Fort Sumter

    • Compromise:

      • 1) Protect slavery in states already existing

      • 2) Westward extension of Missouri Line to CA (NOT PASSED)

  • Lincoln’s positions

    • Safeguard slavery in existing places, stop expansion

    • Declared secession of Confederacy was illegal

      • South either returns or goes to war

  • Lincoln tries to reclaim Fort Sumter → Confederacy decides to seize the fort

    • Attack on Fort Sumter = Go to WAR

    • Stephen Douglas agrees with Lincoln that all states must be fully loyal & supportive of the US, regardless of stance on slavery

  • Civil War (1861-1865)

    • South has the advantage all throughout → North’s advantages don’t reflect until the end

    • Seceding states claimed control of property in their states

      • Lincoln supplied Fort Sumter Union troops

      • South Carolina officially declares war on Sumter by firing on Union suppliers

    • South wanted North to recognize the Confederacy as a separate state

    • North wanted South to come back to Union

    • Comparative Strength

      • South: war fought in South; homeland advantage; better military generals

      • North: stronger military capacity (population); strong navy; economic advantage/industrial advantage; well-established central government

    • North began heavily manufacturing

    • South began greater tariffs to raise revenue

    • NYC Draft Riots (1863)

      • $300 to get out of draft responsibility

      • Favored the wealthy as they could afford avoiding the draft

      • Riots/protests in NYC

    • First Battle of the Bull Run

      • Confederate win → “Stonewall” Jackson

    • Lincoln’s Political Problems

      • “Radicals” within the Republican Party

        • Strong abolitionist support → urged Lincoln to move further south

      • Lincoln didn’t want to end the war

      • Also didn’t want to issue Emancipation Proclamation → afraid Southerners would continue fighting

      • Britain and France initially supported confederacy because of cotton exports

      • England maintained neutrality

    • Ulysses S. Grant was the Union General while Robert E. Lee was the Confederate General

    • Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863

      • All slaves in active rebellion areas (Confederate states) are free

      • Changed the scope of the war to a war on slavery

        • Confederacy workers escaped plantations → joined the Union

        • Closed the door for British help toward Confederacy

    • Battle of Gettysburg (turning point)

      • Union win → turned war in favor of the Union

      • Gettysburg Address - Lincoln sought to unify the Union

    • Union (North) wins the war in 1865

  • Lincoln’s Ten Percent plan (lenient)

    • Minimum test of political loyalty for southern states to return to the union

    • Southern states could reestablish their state governments if 10% of electorate pledge loyalty to the union

    • Southern state legislatures had to ratify the 13th amendment abolishing slavery

  • Abe Lincoln assassinated → shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre

  • Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) / Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan

    • Andrew Johnson was a Southern Democrat from Tennessee, taking presidency after Lincoln’s death at the end of the Civil War

      • Support of farmers and laborers → despised the elite and planter aristocracy

      • Plunged the nation into political havoc

      • Johnson was a white supremacist

    • Johnson accepted the fact that slavery was abolished

    • Johnson wants to restore the pre-Civil War era

      • He wanted black subjugation and recognized the inherent injustice in the south

      • Johnson thinks there is a huge gap between slavery and freedom

      • Black Codes: force former slaves back into plantation

        • States adopted black codes under Johnson’s plan

        • E.g. Vagrancy Act

    • Allied himself with ex-Confederate leaders

    • Gave pardons to all leaders who begged their faith to Johnson

    • Pardoned all southerners who took a loyalty oath

      • Southerners now had authority in office and were able to gain high leadership positions

      • Republicans were not happy about this

    • Johnson didn’t do anything to stop white violence against blacks in the south

  • Radical Republicans (RR)

    • Didn’t like Johnson’s plans and passing of Black Codes

    • Wanted reconstruction to be led by Congress

    • Wade-Davis Bill of 1864

      • At least 50% of voters in southern Confederate states had to pledge an oath of allegiance to the Union to be readmitted

  • Freedmen’s Bureau of 1865 (RR)

    • Initially tried to give land to free blacks

    • Aided displaced blacks and war refugees

    • Not effective due to sharecropping

  • Civil Rights Act of 1866 (RR)

    • Gave equal protection to blacks → banned Black Codes

  • 1866 Congressional elections

    • Republicans won huge majorities, despite Johnson’s widespread trial at persuasion

    • Congressional Republicans take the leadership from Johnson

  • Johnson vetoed both the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Act

    • Johnson’s veto didn’t pass with a ⅔ majority → laws passed

  • Reconstruction Act of 1867

    • Passed into law over Johnson’s veto

    • Failure of reconstruction

    • 1) South divided into 5 military districts

      • Each district under command of a US general

      • All laws in South would be enforced

    • 2) Increase requirement for southern states to rejoin Union

      • States had to ratify 14th and 15th amendments

  • Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

    • Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) becomes next president

    • Grant publicly opposed Johnson

  • Republicans in Congress propose bill (14th Amendment) that granted citizenship and equal rights to African American slaves (1868)

    • “All persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens

    • Created a new national citizenship

    • National citizenship trumped state citizenship

  • 15th Amendment

    • All male citizens’ right to vote

  • Women’s Rights Denied

    • Women hoped to get voting rights after passage of 15th amendment

    • American Woman Suffrage Association

      • Loyal to Republican Party

    • National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA - new group)

      • Exclusively focused on women’s rights and suffrage

    • Minor v. Happersett (1875)

      • Supreme Court ruled that suffrage rights were not inherent in citizenship

  • Quest for Land

    • Southerners and Northerners conflict over land and labor

    • Sharecropping

      • Agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a certain "share" of each year's crop

      • Severely restricted the economic mobility of the laborers, leading to conflicts during the Reconstruction era

  • Whigs, some Democrats, and African Americans joined Southern Republican party

  • Union League ensure government upheld justice for freedmen

    • Southerners didn’t support

    • Some political leaders moved south to support/spread Reconstruction

  • Southern Republicans

    • Abolished Black Codes

    • Diversified economy

  • Convict Leasing (flaw of Reconstruction)

    • Private companies could hire prisoners to labor in mines/industries

  • Black Communities

    • Independent churches → schools, social centers, meeting halls

    • Charles Sumner introduced a bill to desegregate society

      • Equal access to schools, churches, transportation…

    • Civil Rights Act of 1875

      • Full and equal access to jury service, transportation, and public accommodations

  • Undoing of Reconstruction (Reconstruction FAILURE)

  • 4 Reasons:

    • 1) Violent Opposition (KKK due to white supremacy)

    • 2) Rutherford B. Hayes 1877 election/compromise

    • 3) Depressed Southern economy / Panic of 1873

    • 4) Northerners gave up → began focusing more on their own issues/economy

  • Republican Party Unravels

    • Opposition in the south of supporters of white supremacy

    • Panic of 1873 → bankruptcy of the Northern Pacific Railroad

    • Republican policies—education, public health, etc. all required money

      • Farmers and industrial workers struggled since there was no money

    • Revolt in Republican Party

      • Increase in spread of ideal of classical Liberalism

        • Free trade, small government, low property taxes, voting rights to educated men

        • Laissez faire economy

        • Idea resonated with Democrats

  • Southern Counterrevolution

    • Ex-Confederates seized power in the South

      • These new leaders terrorized Republicans and called their scheme “Redemption”

    • People didn’t like Southern Reconstruction governments

    • Nathan Bedford Forrest

      • Determined to uphold white supremacy

      • Ex-Confederate Soldier

      • Founder of the KKK

    • Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

      • Believed that the white race was superior to the black race

      • Terror campaign by the ex-confederates

      • Virtually identical to the Democratic Party

      • Passed laws favorable to landowners

      • Terminated Reconstruction programs

    • Enforcement Laws

      • Congress response to KKK

      • Authorized federal prosecutions, military intervention, and suppression of terrorist activity

  • Political Crisis of 1877

    • Presidential election of 1876

      • Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican)

        • Republican party agreed to end Reconstruction

      • Popular vote differed from electoral vote

  • New South 

    • Slogan for the new American south after the Civil War

    • Modernization of society

    • Integrate the south more fully with the US and reject plantation economy

  • Jim Crow Era/Laws




Unit 6:

  • Turner Thesis: Moving along the Western frontier brought stronger American identity

  • The New Union

    • After Civil War, US formed connections with other European countries

    • US asserted power in Latin America/Asia through trade → prosperity

    • Burlingame Treaty - emigration of chinese laborers

  • National Economy

    • Republicans focused on transportation infrastructure

    • US chose private company railroad construction

      • Government provided loans and land grants

  • Railroad companies transformed American capitalism

  • Republican tariffs built other US industries (textile/steel)

    • Democrats thought: tariffs taxed American consumers

    • Republicans thought: tariffs benefited workers

      • Stood alongside abolition of slavery → job opportunities

    • Tariffs generated monopoly power/domination of large private corps

  • Role of Courts

    • Government didn’t have regulatory power over private corporations

    • Munn v. Illinois - Concluded that states could regulate key businesses

    • Congress set up a special court to rule on land claims

  • Silver & Gold

    • Unified currency

    • Gold Standard - currency conversion to gold

  • Homestead Act of 1862

    • Provided 160 acres of federal land to anyone who occupied/improved the property

    • The act distributed millions of acres of western land to individual settlers

    • Passed to help develop the Western frontier and spur economic growth

  • Homesteaders

    • Republicans wanted Great Plains to be taken over by farms since the soil was fertile

      • Wanted to create a profit in farming land

    • However, there were railroads passing by this territory

    • There was an influx of international immigration

    • Exodusters — African Americans with faith in god 

      • They traveled to this new land

    • Western Women

      • Ideology that the success of a farm depends on the women

      • Republicans clashed with Mormons (members of Church of Jesus Christ of LDS)

    • Eventually, farmers began facing environmental challenges

      • There were natural disasters and not enough rainfall

      • 160 acres was too small to be economically profitable for ranches since farming failed

      • Eventually developed strategies for farming

  • First National Park

    • Government feared industrial overdevelopment in the 1860s

    • To preserve sights and nature, they created national parks

      • Yellowstone National Park was the first

  • Western Myths & Realities

    • Post-civil war frontier produced mythic figures

    • Buffalo Bill Cody

      • Bill believed US western frontier was taken over by conquest

    • Frederick Jackson Turner

      • Proclaimed end of the western frontier

  • The Great Plains territory was reserved for the Indians

    • Americans wanted the land for expansion, gold, farming, and cattle, hence they fought for the land

  • Civil War and Indians

    • Dakota Sioux inhabited Minnesota

    • In 1858, the government agreed to reserve land for Indians in exchange for payment

      • The government took advantage of the Indians, unfairly taking more money than they should have

      • This led to mass starvation amongst the Indians

    • In the summer of 1862, Dakota fighters killed immigrants and burned farms throughout Minnesota

    • Response: Congress canceled all treaties with Dakota and expelled them from Minnesota

    • Sand Creek Massacre

      • Cheyenne chief, Black Kettle, consulted with US agents who told him to settle along Sand Creek, CO to avoid being attacked

      • US militia attacked the camp while Cheyenne were away

    • Fetterman Massacre

      • Sioux warriors ambushed US Captain Fetterman

  • Indian Problem: Indians battled and attacked Americans

  • President Ulysses S. Grant introduced a peace policy to face the “Indian Problem”

    • Reformers aimed to destroy Indian heritage/culture

    • Indian Boarding Schools educated the next generation

      • Boys learned farming while girls learned housekeeping

      • In the 1830s, the Indians weren’t a sovereign group anymore

      • Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock

        • Concluded that Congress could make whatever Indian policies it wanted

    • Dawes Severalty Act of 1887

      • The government was no longer negotiating with the tribes

      • Instead, they wanted to erase the tribes such that there stood no tribal lands and force Indians onto individual lands

  • End of Armed Resistance

    • All Indians were sent to reservations

    • Only Lakota Sioux leader, Sitting Bull, refused to leave

    • Lieutenant Colonel Custer led men to attack Sitting Bull’s camp

      • Custer’s Last Stand

    • Battle of the Little Big Horn 

      • Last military victory of Indians against US army

  • Ghost Dance Movement:

    • Ceremony that gathered Indian Americans in a dance that was said to reunite the living with the spirits of the dead and bring the spirits to fight on their behalf

      • They thought this would end American westward expansion and allow for Native American domination

      • Bring back buffalo and peace, prosperity, and unity

    • Lakota did dance wearing special shirts, said to be stronger than bullets

    • Sitting Bull died by accidental Indian police gunshot wound

    • The gunshot was misinterpreted by white military officials in North and South Dakota, leading to arguably the most horrific conflict between the Native American tribes and the US government

    • The Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota:

      • Massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the US Army

  • Resulted in the Indians not being allowed to bury their dead

  • The Gilded Age (1870-1890s)

    • Period of possibility, opportunity, and hope

    • America was an economic/global powerhouse

    • There was a stark wealth disparity

      • Wealth of the richest 1% was equivalent to the other 99%

    • “Gilded” definition: covered thinly with gold paint 

      • The gilded age was fake/corrupt

    • Industrialization and greater commercial agriculture

  • Management Revolution

    • The problem in American industry was that a single person couldn’t supervise everything

    • Shift from owner to manager being the controlling figure

      • Distinguished top executives

      • Departmentalized operations by function

      • Clear lines of communication

    • Taylorism / Scientific Management: Method of industrial management designed to increase efficiency and productivity

  • Northern Securities Company — short-lived American railroad trust formed by robber barons

    • Robber Baron: term to criticize extremely wealthy and powerful businessmen (e.g. Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, etc.)

  • Andrew Carnegie

    • One of the richest men in America

    • Invented the steel industry

    • Mass production and new technology → industrialization & personal wealth

    • Initiated vertical integration

      • Company controlled all aspects of production (raw materials → finished good)

    • Gospel of Wealth

      • Claimed it was the God given duty of the rich to better society with their money, but that this shouldn’t be done through taxes

      • Supported taking away of individuals’ wealth when they die, but not when said individuals were still alive

      • Thought hard work led to success (invested in libraries and schools)

    • Advocate of Social Darwinism

      • Believed that unrestricted competition would eliminate weak businesses

  • John D. Rockefeller:

    • Owner of Standard Oil

    • Initiated horizontal integration

      • Increase prices dramatically, beat competitors, and then merge small companies

    • By 1880s, Standard Oil controlled about 90% of oil industry

    • Supported capitalism

  • Managed a Trust

    • A small group of associates to manage large firms

  • Corporate Workplace (hierarchy)

    • Managers → Key innovators

    • Salesmen

    • Women → Female office workers

      • Low level office jobs

  • Skilled Craft Workers

    • Autonomy in many industries

    • Skilled craft workers would restrict their output such that they would only produce so much to retain their pride and wages

    • Deskilling: Mechanized manufacture / mass production

  • Unskilled Labor & Discrimination

    • Women and children (factory workers)

    • African Americans at the bottom 

  • Urbanization and industrialization

  • From 1865 to 1898, NYC was the greatest concentration of wealth, as well as the greatest concentration of poverty

    • Society thought poverty was a personal problem; you were in poverty because of a character flaw

  • Third Wave of Immigration (1880-1914)

    • In contrast to earlier waves of immigration where immigrants primarily came from Western/Northern Europe, this new wave of immigration brought immigrants from Eastern/Southern Europe

    • Ellis Island

    • Some immigrants brought niche skills

    • Others were looking for low wage, heavy industry jobs

    • Traveling to the US was a risk

  • Asian American Immigrants

    • Harsher treatment than Europeans

    • Rising Asian racism

    • Some Chinese built profitable businesses and farms

    • Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

      • Barred Chinese laborers from entering the US

    • Supreme Court eventually ruled that all people born in the US had citizenship rights

  • Labor Unions:

    • Union of skilled workers which focused on collective bargaining (negotiation between labor and management) to reach written agreements on wages, hours, and working conditions

    • In comparison to other industrialized nations, few American workers joined labor unions

      • Labor unions were seen as un-American, radical, and foreign

      • Workers were also tempered from joining unions because of the idea of social mobility and being able to advance one’s economic status

  • Great Railroad Strike of 1877

    • In Baltimore, Maryland and Ohio

    • Unions and workers were protesting steep wage cuts and the Panic of 1873 → thousands of workers left

    • 50 people dead, $40 million damage

  • National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (1867)

    • Rural protest group

    • Countered rising power of corporations

  • Greenback-Labor Party

    • Group formed by Grangers, labor advocates, and workingmen

    • Protested the collapse of Reconstruction

    • Advocated laws to regulate corporations and reduce working hours

    • Producerism: manual workers are of greater importance than aristocrats

  • The Knights of Labor

    • Founded in 1869 as the grassroots of labor activism

    • This union was open to anyone who wanted to join

    • Knights believed ordinary people needed control over enterprises

    • Sought electoral action

    • Workplace safety laws, prohibition of child labor…

    • Major growth in the 1880s 

    • Haymarket Square Riot (1886)

      • Protested for an 8 hour workday in Chicago

      • Bomb exploded in the middle of the day (anarchist)

      • People began associating the Knights of Labor with violence

      • Participation declined and union fell apart

  • Farmers’ Alliance

    • New rural movement

    • Same ideals as Grangers and Greenbackers

    • Wanted to combat the harsh conditions farmers were facing

    • Interstate Commerce Act

      • Created an Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) that investigated interstate shipping and forced railroads to make rates public

  • American Federation of Labor (AFL)

    • Trade union focusing on skilled craftsmen (mostly white male workers)

    • Believed more in direct negotiation between workers and employers, rather than working for electoral power or legislature

    • AFL excluded women, black Americans, and low-wage workers

    • AFL succeeded largely because they avoided the attacks of large corporations by peacefully negotiating and not threatening the legal status quo of labor

    • AFL offered fast and simple negotiations

  • Industrial cities

    • Before Civil War, cities were for commerce and finance rather than industry

    • Cities became manufacturing sites through industrialization

    • Transit

      • Trolley system by Frank Spague → primary transportation

      • New underground line

      • Railroads

    • Skyscrapers

      • Skyscrapers were profitable from small plots of land

      • Fuller Building

      • Bedrock → strong steel foundation

    • Electric Light

      • Electricity replaced gaslight, giving the city a modern tempo

  • Newcomers / Immigration

    • Explosive population growth

      • Migration from countryside (urbanization)

      • Immigrants from Ireland, Sweden, Germany

        • Ethnic clustering

        • Mutual aid societies: collect dues from members and paid support for death/disability (ethnic groups)

      • Nativists

        • Labor Unions opposed immigrants because they accepted low working wages, undermining their movement

    • African Americans sought urbanization

      • In 1900, 90% of African Americans lived in the south

      • Race riot: white mob attack triggered by rumors of crime

  • Working class residents needed cheap housing

    • Tenements: small apartments housing large number of people

    • Dumbbell Tenement

      • Maximized living space

      • Extremely poor living conditions

  • William M. Tweed (Boss Tweed)

    • Most corrupt politician

    • Tweed was over 6 ft tall and 300+ lbs.

    • Tammany Hall → democratic party political machine (political organization)

      • Dominated NYC politics

      • Provided services to immigrant populations and the poor, not purely out of good will, but for popularity and votes

      • Immigrants seen as a voting block

    • Tweed saw the power of mass politics in the city

    • Kickback - Tweed gets royalties on production

    • Insider knowledge

      • Tweed made big purchases on land and would get them cheap due to insider knowledge/trading, and would resell it for expensive

    • Thomas Nast 

      • Political cartoonist who led to the downfall of Boss Tweed

  • Social Darwinism

    • Evolution = species are not fixed but ever changing

    • Charles Darwin (British naturalist) argued that all creatures struggle to survive

    • Natural selection = species have natural traits that help them survive

    • Social Darwinism = survival of the fittest

    • Eugenics

      • Science of human breeding

      • Mentally deficient people should be prevented from reproducing

      • Mentally unfit were those of lower races

  • Homestead Strike of 1892

    • One of the deadliest labor-management conflicts

    • Strike against Carnegie Steel Company in Pennsylvania 

  • Pullman Strike of 1894

    • 2 interrelated strikes that shaped national labor policy

    • American Railway Union struck against the Pullman factory

      • ARU was one of the largest labor unions founded by Eugene V. Debs

  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

    • Declared that racial segregation laws did not violate the Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal

  • Religion

    • Scientific and cultural realms posed challenging to religious faith

    • Religion was still alive → Protestants

    • Immigrant Faiths

      • Irish Americans practiced Catholicism

      • Orthodox Judaism

    • Protestant Missions peaked in 1915

      • Religious organizations sponsored overseas missions

      • The goal was to convert others through education of the religion

      • American Protective Association (1887)

        • American anti-catholic society founded by Protestants

        • Largest anti-Catholic movement in the latter 19th century

        • Protestants upheld a nativist sentiment because they felt challenged by rising Catholicism

  • Social Gospel (late 19th century): renewing religious faith through dedication to justice and social welfare

    • Belief that Christian principles ought to be applied to oneself and cure the ills of society

    • Protestant preachers sought social justice

    • The Christian duty was to solve urban poverty

  • Realism in the Arts (mid 1800s)

    • Realism contrasted with the previously popular era of romanticism

    • Americans purchased mass amounts of European art and adopted European architecture

    • American literally became Europe

    • Modernism: rejection of traditional artistic taste (20th century)

      • Focused on subconscious and “primitive” mind

      • Overturn convention and tradition

  • Progressivism: overlapping set of movements to combat industrialization

  • Progressive Movement (1897-1920)

    • Progressive Reform

      • Growing power of big businesses

      • Labor conflicts

      • Jim Crow segregation

      • Women’s suffrage

      • Alcohol

    • Society was deteriorating

      • Government intervention was crucial

  • Jacob Riis was a muckraking journalist and social documentary photographer

    • Wrote a book “How the Other Half Lives” (1890) on the poor conditions in NYC

    • Muckrakers: Investigative journalists

      • Shine light on American corruption into the world

      • Upton Sinclair: “The Jungle”

      • Ida Tarbell: exploited John D. Rockefeller’s oil company

  • Edith Wharton: portrayed the morals of the Gilded Age using her upper-class New York aristocracy

  • Author Edward Bellamy

    • Believed the future was going to become a socialist utopia

  •  Author Henry George

    • Those who are wealthy find ways to rig the game to get even more wealth and power

  • Disease in urban environment

    • Late 19th century, European scientists began to understand germs/bacteria

    • High infant mortality rates and tuberculosis

    • Public health movement was one of the era’s most visible reforms

  • Urban Prostitution

    • Large numbers of young white women being kidnapped and forced into prostitution

    • In the long run, prostitution conditions worsened

  • Social Settlements

    • Community welfare centers helped the urban poor

    • Hull House (Jane Addams)

    • Fought for better health precautions, education, schools, rehabilitation strategies, and hospitals

    • Social works was a good opportunity for educated women

  • Cities and National Politics

    • Pure Food and Drug Act and FDA

    • National Consumers’ League (NCL) advocating worker protection laws

    • Women’s Trade Union League: working class women leaders

  •  Triangle Fire of 1911

    • Triangle Shirtwaist Company - produced women’s blouses/shirtwaists

    • Primarily composed of Italian/Jewish immigrant women workers

    • Someone accidentally dropped a match into a heap of clothing/scraps and a fire broke out

    • Employers had locked the doors of the building to keep unions out

    • 146 people dead

  • Response:

    • NY state appointed factory commission that developed a program of labor reform

      • Laws dealing with regulation in factories

      • Went on tour to inspect conditions of factories

    • Tammany Hall politicians fully supported and participated reform

    • People in power were finally listening to reformers

  • Republican Activism

    • Republicans gained control of the government in 1888 with President Benjamin Harrison

    • Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)

      • First federal attempt at limiting trusts → allowed the government to institute laws against trusts in order to dissolve them

      • Regulate interstate corporations

    • President Harrison wanted to protect black voting rights in the South

    • Lodge Bill (1890)

      • Stated that whenever 100 citizens appealed for intervention, the bipartisan federal board could investigate

      • The defeat of the bill was a blow to those seeking to defend African American voting rights (Republicans/Liberals)

      • Marked the downfall of Republican Party

    • Democrats took over the government once again in the election of 1890

  • Populist Party (People’s Party)

    • Democrats faced pressure from rural voters organizing the Farmers’ Alliance

    • Agrarian reformers dissatisfied with economic conditions

    • Kansas Alliance joined with Knights of Labor to create a People’s Party in 1890

    • Gained mass popularity → captured state’s congressional seats

    • James B. Weaver - president of the Populists

    • Populists called for stronger government to protect Americans

    • 1) Monetary Reform: Free silver to increase money supply → relieve debt and economic pressures on farmers

    • 2) Agricultural Issues: Lower railroad freight rates, lower interest rates on loans, and government assistance to help farmers

    • 3) Political Reform: Direct election of Senators to make political system more responsive to the people

    • 4) Government Ownership: Of key industries → railroads

  • Panic of 1893 → Severe US economic depression in 1893

    • Republicans blamed president Grover Cleveland (Democrat)

    • Outside the South

      • Republicans gained control of the White House and Congress

    • In the South:

      • Democrats tried to defeat the Populist Revolt

  • Depression

    • European investors prompted to pull money out of the US

    • In 1894, Jacob Coxey, a businessman, proposed that US government should hire those who were unemployed to fix US railroads

      • Organized jobless men to march for the program

      • Coxey was a dangerous extremist → imprisoned

    • President Grover Cleveland was way out of step with working class demands

    • Depression greatly affected farmers 

      • Faced extreme financial hardship

    • Free silver policy

      • Populist party idea

      • Expand federal money supply by coining silver → inflation → drive down interest rates

        • Expansionary (loose) monetary policy

  • Cleveland opposed this policy → afraid of inflation

  • Democrats had strength in the South

    • Populists were a very farmer-centric party

    • Wanted to help farmers → appealing to poverty stricken people of both races

    • Democrats opposed this

      • Democrats = white man’s party

      • Put down Populist threat through fraud/violence

      • Suppressed political revolt

      • White supremacy

    • Blacks and poor whites couldn’t vote

    • Convict Lease System

      • Blacks received punishment for crimes like “vagrancy” (wandering homeless)

      • Common for southern prisons to rent out convict labor (labor from those imprisoned)

      • Continued slavery in the south

  • The Democratic Party eventually absorbed the Populist Party (took all their ideas)

    • Did so to defy President Cleveland and alienate him from his party

    • Cleveland’s gold standard was unpopular

    • Democrats nominated young Nebraska congressman, free silver advocate, William Jennings Bryan

      • Known for passionate speech from a Populist standpoint

  • Republican Party candidate William McKinley won the 1896 election

    • McKinley was against free silver

    • William McKinley stood for business and industry

  • Republicans dominant from 1896-1932

  • Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)

    • In September 1901, William McKinley was assassinated immediately after winning reelection

    • People feared McKinley’s death because of radical immigrants

    • Vice president Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) became president

      • Was past NY governor

    • Called for vigorous reform

    • He wanted reform whilst also recognizing the importance of large private corporations

      • Better enforcement of Sherman Antitrust Act

      • Wanted to punish those who were really wealthy and abused their power

      • Hepburn Act of 1906: strengthened Interstate Commerce Commission

    • Standard Oil Decision: Supreme Court decided that Rockefeller’s oil monopoly be broken up into several companies

    • Environmental Consideration

      • Roosevelt sought to conserve nature

      • Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902: government sold public lands to raise money for irrigation projects that expanded agriculture

    • Legacy

      • Contradictory presidency

    • Square Deal: Roosevelt’s ideological vision

      • It is the federal government's responsibility to ensure corporations behaved well and treated their workers fairly

      • Federal government is a mediator between labor unions and corporations

    • Roosevelt’s Food and Drug Regulation

      • He read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” which documented the terrible conditions of the meat packing industry

      • Meat Inspection Act of 1906: Called for stricter sanitary requirements in meat packing and a government program to carry out inspections

      • Pure Food and Drug Act

        • In the past, many drugs and medicines contained contaminated substances

        • This act required a food and drugs to be labeled with a list of ingredients

    • Conservation

      • Forest Reserve Act → reserved 150 million acres of land for conservation

  • Taft’s presidency (1909-1913)

    • Roosevelt was critical of Taft

    • Taft initially passed antitrust laws

  • Election of 1912

    • 4 candidates: Taft for Republican, Roosevelt for Progressive, Debs for Socialist, Wilson for Democratic

    • Between Roosevelt and Wilson

    • Roosevelt: federal regulation of corporations, but allow them to exist

      • New Nationalism

    • Wilson: vigorous anti-trust action and depend on the invisible hand of the market

      • New Freedom

    • Wilson elected → passed a massive amount of legislation

      • Wilson’s presidency got closer to Roosevelt’s ideal government action




Unit 7:

  • 20th century US imperialism

  • The US was not a colonial empire → we didn’t need raw materials because we had the west

  • Need for Global Markets

  • Imperialists’ views

    • Imperialism: The expansion of one country’s political, economic, and military influence over another country

    • American Exceptionalism: US has a unique destiny to foster democracy and civilization

    • Used Social Darwinism to back up their Imperialist ideals

  • America purchased Alaska in 1867, and later found out that gold was discovered in Alaska

    • They thought they would be able to find raw materials and wealth in other nations too → new markets

  • Josiah Strong 

    • American Protestant

    • Believed people of white Anglo-Saxon descent were superior

    • White race had to bring the light of Christianity to the darker nations

  • Alfred Thayer Mahan

    • Any country that was strong on the world stage was because they had a large navy

    • We have to secure Pacific and Caribbean territories for global markets for our navy

  • Anti-Imperialists

    • Self-determination

      • Nations shouldn’t be ruled if they want to be self governed

    • Isolationism from foreign affairs

    • George Washington earlier warned against foreign entanglement

    • Anti-imperialists didn’t know what to do when they expanded into a nation with other races → would those people become citizens too? (racist ideology)

  • The War of 1898 / Spanish-American War

    • America wants to acquire Cuba, a Spanish imperial colony

    • 1895: Cuban patriots plan an independence/guerilla war against Spain

      • Spanish crush the war

    • Yellow Journalism

      • Authors published sensational stories exaggerating the atrocities committed by the Spanish against the Cubans

      • Congress called for Cuban independence

    • US establishes naval presence in Cuba

    • USS Maine, American ship, explodes in Havana Harbor killing 200 Americans

      • Yellow journalists claimed the explosion was due to the Spanish because they resented US interference

      • Actually an accidental issue

    • William McKinley offered an ultimatum: back off or we go to war

      • Spain agrees to war

    • Teller Amendment (1898)

      • American treaty that says: we are going to war with Spain to aid Cuba, but we will not annex Cuba

    • Spain declares war on America

    • First, America defeats Spanish in Spanish territory in Philippines

      • US allied with Philippines against Spain

      • Filipinos originally thought that the US was helping the Philippines gain liberation

      • They finally realize US was doing it so they could control the Philippines

      • Issue with the Philippines

        • McKinley wanted to annex the Philippines

          • Sought harbor in the Philippines for trade/naval base

        • Republicans argued that US isn’t allowed to hold territories under the Constitution

        • Concern: it was really far away

          • America needed to find an in between nation — Hawaii

          • America annexed Hawaii

            • Americans move to Hawaii because of plantations

            • Overthrew Queen Liliukalani of Hawaii in 1893

        • Americans believed Philippines were inferior to the US

        • Philippine—American War (1899-1902)

          • Brutal war following the annexation of Philippines

          • Independence war/Guerilla War

          • Taft appointed governor of the Philippines after American victory

    • Splendid little war → 10 weeks

    • Spain surrenders

    • America becomes an imperialist nation → major world power

    • Treaty of Paris (1898)

      • Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, and Hawaii were placed under American control

      • Spain ceded the Philippines to the US for $20 million

      • Democrats spoke out against the treaty → democracy can’t be an empire

    • Insular Cases (1901)

      • Congress decided citizens’ rights in acquired territories

      • Decision: they don’t receive citizenship and these territories are US colonies, not states

    • Platt Amendment (1902)

      • Blocked Cuba from making treaties with other countries except US

      • US has a say in Cuban affairs

  • Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)

    • Thought imperialism went hand and hand with progressivism

    • Stronger government = global economics stability and order

  • The Open Door

    • US was interested in East Asian markets

    • Japanese victory in Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895

      • China divided into spheres of influence under Japan, Russia, Germany, France, and Britain

    • Open Door Policy (1899)

      • Equal trade access for all nations seeking business with China

      • Ordered by John Hay, US Secretary of State

    • Boxers

      • Secret Chinese society

      • Rebelled against foreign occupation in 1900

      • US sent troops to break Boxers siege of European offices in China

    • Second Open Door Policy

      • China should be a “territorial and administrative entity”

      • Americans had equal access to China’s markets

  • Japan was East Asia’s dominant power after they defeated Russia in war

    • Roosevelt aligned US with Japan

    • Root-Takahira Agreement

      • Allowed Japan’s authority over Manchuria when Japan tried to seize it from China

  • William Taft pressed for larger US role in China 

    • Chinese Revolution of 1911 succeeded

    • US/Taft supported China and entered rivalry with Japan


  • US wanted a canal for access to 2 oceans

    • Colombia refused → revolution

    • US ended up recognizing Panama, originally under Columbia, as a new nation and turned it into a canal zone

    • Panama Canal: US gained strong position in western hemisphere

  • Roosevelt Corollary (1905)

    • Declared that the US had the right to regulate all Caribbean affairs

    • Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

      • Monroe Doctrine: Europeans can’t interfere with America (colonize)

  • World War I (1914-1918)

    • Central Powers / Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy)

    • Allies / Triple Entente (Britain, France, and Russia)

    • Start of WWI

      • Austria-Hungary and Russia competed for control in the Balkans

      • Franz Ferdinand, Austro-Hungarian heir to throne, assassinated in 1914

        • Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination

      • Russia has close ties with Serbia → mobilizes troops

      • Germany declares war on Russia and France

      • Germany launches an invasion of Belgium

      • Great Britain declares war on Germany

    • Western front (Europe) & Eastern front (Russia)

    • President Wilson (1913-1921) didn’t want to join the war immediately

      • Wished for the US to be the great mediator/create an international structure (maintain neutrality)

      • Extremely brutal

      • Didn’t want national divides → immigrants already divided

      • Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford opposed joining the war

    • Britain imposes a naval blockade on the Central Powers (1914)

      • France and Britain’s supplies are cut off

      • America’s trade with France and Britain increased dramatically

        • Trading ties and banking ties

      • US no longer maintained neutrality → leaned towards Allies

    • Lusitania (May 1915) — U-boat Attacks

      • German submarine fired a torpedo and sank the Lusitania, a British ship carrying hundreds of Americans

      • Roosevelt encouraged Wilson to go to war

      • Many citizens were still against going to war

    • Germans declare all out submarine warfare (unrestricted)

      • Takes the risk that US will declare war on them → confident that the US had already sided with the Allies

    • Zimmermann Telegram: German powers send note to Mexico and urged Mexico to join the Central Powers (1917)

      • They promised that if US entered the war, Germany would help Mexico regain lost territories to US

      • US intersects the telegram and finds out Germany’s ill intentions

      • Last straw

    • US enters the war on April 1917

      • We enter the war on the side of the Allies

      • Congress instituted military draft → showed government’s power over citizens

      • Sole intention: End the war to provide international order with loss of Central Powers

    • WWI was a Total War

      • America mobilized everything it had to win

      • Wilson established wartime agencies (War Industries Board, Food Administration)

      • Committee on Public Information (CPI)

        • Government propaganda agency

        • Promoted wartime support and nationalism 

    • Espionage Act (1917) / Sedition Act (1918)

      • Made it a crime to say anything against the war

      • Schenck v. US

        • Charles Schenck and peers resisted the draft

        • In this case, Freedom of Speech was considered dangerous and “overruled”

    • November 1917, Eastern Front collapses after Bolshevik Revolution

    • Germany signs an armistice admitting defeat on Nov 11, 1918

  • War’s impact on America

  • Most people supported the war

  • Huge boost for American economy

  • Government expansion and new federal agencies

  • Great Migration

    • WWI created tremendous job opportunities

    • Heavy industry jobs opened to African Americans

      • Immigration quotas led to less low cost workers, so black migrants replaced them

    • Black migration from South to North

    • Escaped from racism and poverty, though they still faced discrimination

      • Tulsa Race Riots/Massacre (1921) → white woman claimed that black shoeshine assaulted her

        • White mob mobilized

        • Black Wall Street

        • Result: mass destruction of black communities

    • Jim Crow laws → propelled segregation in the South

    • Mexicans/Blacks also left farmwork for urban industrial jobs

  • Women’s Suffrage

    • National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) supported the war effort

    • Women were obligated to prove their nationalism to win a ballot

    • Wilson reversed his position (anti-suffrage → pro-suffrage) given women’s patriotism

    • 19th Amendment — women granted the right to vote in 1920 (only white women)

  • Fourteen Points

    • Statements of principles for peace to be used for peace negotiation to end WWI

    • Germany agrees to stop the war if the ending peace treaty is built on the 14 points

    • Wilson convinced the Allies to agree with the new world order → Progressivism

  • Paris Peace Conference (1919)

    • Negotiate the Treaty of Versailles

      • Fourteen points

      • British and France want hard punishments on Germany

      • Split up Germany’s African colonies

      • Germany has to pay $33 billion in reparations

      • Established a British mandate in Palestine

        • Jews moved to Palestine (riots between Jews and Palestinians occurred) 

        • Foreshadowed Israel-Palestine conflict

  •  All Wilson is left with is the League of Nations

    • Wilson unwilling to compromise on this point

  • Wilson also comes down with the Spanish flu during negotiations

  • Armistice signed on November 11th at 11 PM, 1918

  • Other nations see Wilson as a great leader proceeding the Paris Peace Talks

    • Ho Chi Minh, leader of Vietnam, reached out for equality

  • League of Nations

    • International regulatory body

    • Maintain world peace and order

  • Congress and The Treaty of Versailles

    • Republicans hold a majority in the Senate

    • Wilson can’t ratify Treaty of Versailles unless Republicans agree

    • Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

      • Wilson’s political Republican opponent

      • Lodge attacked the League of Nations → League became unpopular in the Senate

    • Wilson decides to take a tour of America to gain public support, pressuring Senate to vote in favor of League

      • Takes a detrimental toll on Wilson’s health

    • US does not ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations

  • Republicans unhappy that they were left out of peace treaty negotiations 

  • They think Wilson was giving up US sovereignty and power to make decisions on foreign policy


  • 1920s were peak of American achievement

  • Highest standard of living and prosperity in history in the world

  • People heavily demanded American goods during WWI

    • Once Europeans became capable of producing their own goods again, America faced a sharp recession

  • American capitalism

  • Warren G. Harding (Republican) won the 1920 presidential election and promised a return to normalcy after WWI—things were not normal

  • Flu epidemic following the war

  • Waves of labor strikes → economy tanked and unemployment increased

  • Anarchists sent bombs through the main on May 1, 1919

  • Bolshevik Revolution

    • World’s first successful anti-capitalist revolution

    • Followed by a series of left-wing uprisings

    • Americans afraid that the there was going to be widespread communism and overthrow of capitalism

  • The First Red Scare (1919)

    • Widespread fear of far left movements and Bolshevism

    • Americans promoted 100% American patriotism  

    • Immigrant and radicals afraid

    • The Red Scare has a lasting impact on American society

    • Seattle strike of 1919

      • 35,000 ship workers left their jobs demanding higher wages and better working conditions

      • 25,000 workers from other unions joined the walk out

  • Organized labor could have a large impact

  • The Palmer Raids

    • Mitchell Palmer tasked official J. Edgar Hoover to gather information on suspected radicals

    • In 1919, there was coordinated bombing attacks on 7 US Eastern cities by communists

      • One of the bombs on Palmer

      • Bomb on Wall Street

    • 11/1919 and 1/1920 → series of raids to capture and arrest suspected socialists (particularly anarchists and communists)

    • Thousands of arrests

  • Republican Power

    • Harding signed legislation to pass high protective tariffs and abolish wartime industries

    • Everyone was so focused on Russian Revolution that labor movements were sidelined

    • Harding’s presidency was the most corrupt

      • Teapot Dome Scandal (1921)

        • Officials conspired to lease government land in Wyoming to oil companies in exchange for cash

        • Example of laissez faire economy

    • Republicans held both parties of Congress

  • President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929 - Republican) takes over once Harding dies of a heart attack

    • Coolidge supported businesses and the wealthy class

    • Did not care for labor reform

    • Women still protested for reform in the 1920s—had more power after being granted the right to vote

    • Prohibition (of alcohol) went into effect in 1920 under the 18th amendment

      • Largely due to women reformers

  • Second Industrial Revolution

    • Driven by the production of consumer goods

    • Everything powered by gasoline and electricity

    • Maintaining consumer demand was the number one priority → cycle of production and consumption

    • Advertising stimulated consumer desire 

    • Popular culture — radio and cinema (new media)

      • Developed a distinct form of American national identity

    • Department stores became popular

    • Automobile industry expanded rapidly

      • Henry Ford’s assembly line brought Model T Ford automobiles to all middle class consumers

        • Transferred each part of car from one worker to another

        • Insatiable demand for automobiles

      • People “wished to escape”

  • US dominated the global film industry

    • Jewish and European immigrants founded Hollywood → film previously seen as a lower class entertainment

    • Americans quickly fell in love with movies

    • D.W. Griffith: American film director pioneering the film industry

    • Radios at home also boomed across the country → first exposure to jazz

  • Miscegenation — interracial couples

    • Rural native born protestants against miscegenation

  • Maturation of professional sports in the 1920s

    • Babe Ruth → emerged after the 1919 World Series Black Sox Scandal

  • Lindbergh’s first solo flight from NY to Paris in 1927

  • The theme of the 1920s was “escape”

    • People were trying to escape from the horrors of WWI

  • Women

    • Flapper: women with bobbed hair, short skirts, makeup, carefree spirit

      • Sexual image

      • Symbol of women’s liberation

    • Greater independence and freedom for women

    • Increased opportunity to work outside the home → primarily low-level jobs

      • Still impacted by race, ethnicity, and class

      • Married women still expected to remain in the domestic sphere

  • Great migration moved Black southerners to the north

  • Harlem Renaissance / The New Negro Movement

    • Harlem: Black district in NYC

    • Revival of the arts and intellectual pursuits of the black population

    • Louis Armstrong and Duke Elington and Ethel Waters

    • The New Negro by Alain Locke in 1925 was an anthology of African American works

    • Culture in art and music, especially jazz

    • Universal Negro Improvement Assiocation (UNIA) — Largest black nationalist movement in the world founded by Marcus Garvey

      • Criticized slow pace of NAACP (another African American movement) and criticized dependence on government

  • Lost Generation

    • Group of writers

    • F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway

    • Pervasive materialism in American culture

  • Radicals / Immigrants

    • Fear of foreign radicals

    • Wave of immigration prior to WWI

      • Nativism was a popular sentiment

      • Americans afraid that they would lose their jobs due to immigrants willing to work for lower wages

      • Emergency Quota Act (1920)/National Origins Act (1924)

        • Set quotas for accepting new immigrants very low (only 3% of current immigrants from each ethnicity in the nation)

  • Fundamentalist Christianity

    • Christian fundamentalists concerned about relaxed sexuality and increase social freedom amidst Catholicism and Judaism

    • The Fundamentals by evangelist A.C. Dixon became the foundational documents for Christian fundamentalism

    • Modernists: embraced the changing culture

    • Fundamentalists: condemned changing morals they saw in the cities

      • Modernism is the enemy

      • Bible is the holy grail

    • Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925

      • John T. Scopes (biology teacher) taught his class evolutionary theory

        • Violated the Butler Act (Tennessee)

      • Butler Act: state law preventing any theory against the Bible being taught 

      • ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) brought the case to the Supreme Court

    • William Jennings Bryan argued that evolutionary theory was morally corrupting

    • Modernism triumphed over Fundamentalism

      • Scopes still found guilty of breaking the law

  • Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan

    • Revived all over the country

    • Racist against Blacks, Jews, and immigrants (all classes)

  • Election of 1928

    • Al Smith (Democratic)

      • He was an immigrant and Catholic

      • Not widely popular among American reformers due to anti-Prohibition policies

    • Herbert Hoover (Republican)

      • Voters tended toward Hoover due to his managerial position in WWI

      • Focused on economic growth and prosperity

    • Hoover won the election massively

  • Great Depression (1929-1939)

    • Longest economic crisis in history

    • Economy crashed in 1929

  • Great Depression reached its lowest point 4 years after 

    • ¼ Americans couldn’t find a job

  • Origins of the Great Depression

    • Thursday, October 24th, 1929, stock market prices suddenly plummeted

    • Black Tuesday (October 29th) — stock market began going down

      • Shares of U.S. Steel dropped from $262 to $22

    • Only 2.5% of Americans had brokerage accounts

    • The stock market crash exposed many factors that led to American economic downfall

    • Huge divide between the wealthy and the poor (per capita income increased → majority was for wealthy citizens)

    • Demand for consumer goods began to decrease in the late 1920s

      • People had already obtained extreme amounts of durable goods

    • Bank Failures

      • Americans borrowed huge amounts of money and defaulted on their loans

      • Wave of bank failures

    • American farmers faced struggle at the beginning of the decade

      • Farmers had been overproducing

      • Combined with high tariffs, farmers went into debt

    • Herbert Hoover’s corrupt presidency

      • Hoover promoted high tariffs during 1928 election to encourage domestic production —— Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 

      • Tariffs rose around the world 

      • International trade halted — fell from $36 billion to $12 billion

      • Hoover spread false optimism, claiming the depression was “over” in 1930

      • Hooverville

        • Shacktowns and homeless encampments during the Great Depression

        • Testified to the housing crisis alongside the unemployment crisis

    • Federal Reserve 

      • Allowed the economy to run too high in the 20s

      • Prices of stocks skyrocketed due to speculation of prices going up even more later

      • Speculative bubble

      • Overreacted to the depression and raised interest rates too quickly → recession

    • Overproduction & underconsumption

    • Entire nation was in panic — contributed to the recession

  • Herbert Hoover / Politics of Depression

    • People blamed the Great Depression on Hoover

    • Hoover responded to the depression with volunteerism—asked leaders to maintain investment and asked charities to help out

    • Hoover established POUR (President’s Organization for Unemployment Relief)

    • Associationalism: assumed Americans could maintain a web of voluntary organizations that provided economic aid and relief

      • Business progressivism

    • Hoover resisted direct action

      • Embraced a conservative ideology

      • Promoted a laissez-faire leaning economy with limited government

    • Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) 

      • Provided emergency loans to banks and other private industries

  • Great Depression Experience

    • Extreme unemployment and declining wages

    • All resources exhausted

    • Women suffered extreme consequences

      • In the 20th century, single women began getting more opportunities for jobs, as did some married women

      • Married women were no longer hired during the depression and single women were laid off

    • Disproportionately affected non-white Americans

  • Migration 

    • Environmental catastrophe during the Great Depression

    • Severe droughts in the midwest — Dust Bowl

      • Due to the lack of rain, soil turned to dust

      • Okies: People traveled west to states like California

    • Migrant Mother, Dorothy Lange:

      • Picture of a mother who migrated to the west

    • Thousands of people who couldn’t find urban jobs moved to rural areas in search of work

    • Officials began limiting migrants → barriers to migration

    • The Grapes of Wrath of 1939 by John Steinbeck book drew attention to hardships that migrants endured

  • Americans were afraid that immigrants would be willing to work for even lower wages

    • Began deporting immigrants

    • Heavily affected Mexican immigrants

    • During the Depression, more people left American than entered 

  • The Bonus Army

    • 15,000+ unemployed veterans and their families converged in DC in 1932

    • There was a bill promising cash bonuses to the veterans of WWI

      • Supposed to be paid in 1945

      • Due to the Depression, veterans demanded their pay immediately

    • The veterans called themselves the Bonus Army and drilled and marched to demand their bonuses

    • Hoover opposed the bill for immediate payment

  • 1932 Presidential Election

    • Republican Herbert Hoover said he wouldn’t destroy the Constitution to help revive the economy

    • Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a New Deal, winning the election

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt

    • FDR was governor of NY in 1928 

      • Established the Temporary Emergency Relief Administrations (TERA)

      • Supplied jobs and aid to ~10% of the of NY state

    • Ran for president as the Democratic nominee

      • Pledged a New Deal

      • Proposed jobs programs, public work projects, higher wages, shorter hours, old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, farm subsidies, banking regulations, and lower tariffs

    • Roosevelt crushed Hoover in the election

  • Roosevelt’s first 100 days / The New Deal

    • Wanted to take as much action as possible

    • Wanted to stabilize the banking system

      • Declared a “national bank holiday”

      • Pushed an Emergency Banking Act

    • Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC): Employed young men on conservation projects

    • Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA): Provided cash to state relief agencies

    • Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA): Hydroelectric dams along Tennessee Valley

    • Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)

      • Created in 1933

      • Raise the price of agricultural products

        • Offered cash incentives to limit production (decrease supply → higher prices)

    • National Recovery Administration (NRA)

      • Stimulate business recovery through fair-practice codes

        • Codes controlled prices, production levels, working hours, etc.

        • Almost like a command economy in which government had oversight

    • GDP increased during the first 100 days but unemployment stayed high

  • The New Deal in the South

    • The South was a region of poverty during the Depression

    • AAA designed to help the southerners, but adversely affected them

    • National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) of 1935 allowed workers to unionize (2nd New Deal)

    • TVA heavily benefited the South 

  • Roosevelt’s New Deal policies were not far reaching enough

    • Careful to work within the bounds of presidential authority

    • Many people criticized FDR for not going far enough

      • Conservatives opposed Roosevelt’s First New Deal

      • Father Coughlin → blamed Depression on international Jewish community 

      • Huey Long → sought to share wealth and put high taxes on millionaires

    • Supreme Court began opposing Roosevelt given previous Republican presidents

    • NRA deemed unconstitutional in 1935

    • AAA fell in 1936

  • The “Second New Deal” (1936)

    • Democrats had the majority in both House and Senate

    • Roosevelt dedicated himself to even more extensive plans

    • 5 billion dollar appropriation

    • Works Progress Administration (WPA) → employed Americans on public works projects

      • Built large amounts of infrastructure

    • Restored a progressive federal income tax

    • Social Security Act (1935)

      • Proposed by Francis Townsend

      • Old-age pensions

      • Unemployment insurance

      • Economic aid

      • Financed from payroll, not federal government

    • Wagner Act (1935)

  • The New Deal Coalition

    • Bloc of white Southerners consistently voting Democratic

      • United a bunch of different groups tied together as Roosevelt’s supporters

    • During the Second New Deal, white Southerners began opposing the New Deal

      • They were afraid that there was too much government control

      • Also afraid that some programs he was passing were inadvertently helping Blacks

      • Unhappy with the Wagner Act → Southern Democrats opposed unionization

  • Black Americans still faced discrimination

    • Suffered especially from Jim Crow laws in the South

    • FDR did little to address black injustice

    • If he were to do something about racial segregation, he would be putting southern Democrats, liberals, laborers, farm workers, and southern whites at risk

      • Essentially putting his entire New Deal at risk

    • Many of FDR’s New Deal policies negatively affected African Americans

    • Removed domestic workers and farm laborers from Social Security

    • New Deal also affected women unfairly

  • End of the New Deal (1937-1939)

    • Roosevelt won the election of 1936 again Alf Landon

    • Conservative barriers limited Roosevelt’s power

    • The Court-packing scheme (1937)

      • Dilute the power of conservative justices

      • Leads to too much power/control

      • This scheme failed and strengthened New Deal opponents

    • Roosevelt cut spending in 1937 → Roosevelt Recession

  • Legacy of the New Deal

    • The New Deal led Americans to see the federal government as an ally for their struggles 

    • Created ideological alignments that are still with us today

    • Created conditions that allowed the Left to be a dominant power

    • Social Safety Net from the government: elderly, disabled, unemployed

    • Legacy shaped American politics

  • 3R’s: Relief, Recovery, and Reform

    • Relief: relief from immediate pain → government dollars to citizens

    • Recovery: any government program designed to solve a problem that is ordinarily solved by the market (solved by supply & demand)

    • Reform: something fundamentally wrong with the American system (social security)


  • Origins of the Pacific War

    • US joined the war in 1941 two years after conflict started in 1939

    • Huge area of war to cover

      • Primarily naval and air war

    • Manchurian / September 18th Incident (1932)

      • Explosion of Japanese owned Railway in Manchuria, China

      • Planned by the Japanese to provide basis for invasion

      • Japanese defeats China and takes control of Manchuria

    • Japanese underwent political tensions at home

      • At the end, committed to aggressive military expansion

      • 3rd largest military in the world

    • US supported China’s intentions

      • Stimson Doctrine of 1932: no state existed as a result of Japanese aggression

      • League of Nations found Japanese guilty of Manchuria incident

      • Japan withdraws from League

    • Japan isolated itself from the rest of the world

    • Japan launches full-scale invasion of China

      • Rape of Nanjing of 1937

      • Nationalist party of China didn’t do enough → taken over by CCP

      • China domestic conflict during Japanese war

    • America didn’t intervene due to causes of WWI (isolationist)

      • Chinese Nationalists looked to America for help → US took no action

  • Origins of the European War

    • Weimar Republic collapsed with economic crisis following WWI

    • Adolf Hitler’s Nazis rose to power in 1933

      • Hitler and Mussolini (fascist Italian leader) toppled Spanish Republican Party during Spanish Civil War (1936)

      • Abraham Lincoln Brigade — group of volunteers from the US who served in the Spanish Civil War fighting for Spanish Republican forces against Fascist forces

    • Hitler worked towards unification and expansion

      • Illustrated in his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf

    • Germany annexed Austria in 1938

    • Annexed Czechoslovakia in 1939

    • Looking to annex Poland → Britain and France were ready for war

    • Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — secret agreement with USSR splitting Poland and promising nonaggression

    • European war began when Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939

      • Germany used tactic called Blitzkrieg —lightning war

    • Germany attacked Western Europe (1939-40)

      • Germany captured and split France in half — Germans occupied the north, puppet government in south

      • Operation Sea Lion → planned German invasion of British isles

        • German Luftwaffe (aircraft)

        • German Blitz → bombing of British cities and civilians

    • Operation Barbarossa → invasion of Soviet Union

      • Broke nonaggression pact of 1939

      • Largest land invasion in history

      • German army stalled by Russian winter

  • Neutrality Acts (1935-1937)

    • Kept the US isolationist policies by keeping the nation out of war

    • Senate’s Nye Committee of 1934 — formed to investigate the role of the arms industry in influencing America’s decision to enter WWI

      • Committee suggested that this industry may have only pushed for the US to enter war due to financial profits

      • Decided the Neutrality Acts

    • Trade embargo on arms in 1935

    • Forbid loans to enemies in 1936

    • Prohibition of transportation of enemies in 1937

    • Trade embargo lifted in 1939

    • Cash and Carry Act (1939) — allowed Britain to purchase US arms as long as they paid cash and carried it on their own ships (loophole for embargo)

      • Maintained US neutrality, but still aided the Allied nations

    • Destroyers for Bases deal (1940): transfer US Navy destroyers to Britain in exchange for land

  • US dissolved trade treaties with Japan in 1939

    • Placed an embargo on oil and other goods in Japan in 1940

    • Japan saw the oil embargo to be a declaration of war

    • Japan launched military invasions across the Pacific

    • Diplomatic relations between the US and Japan collapsed

  • Lend-Lease Act (1941): Allowed US to lend and lease war materials to allied nations 

  • Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941)

    • Japanese surprise attack on American naval base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

    • Crippled American naval powers

    • 2400 Americans killed

    • American isolationism fell

  • US declared war on Axis powers within a week of Pearl Harbor, starting WWII

  • Britain and Americans won the Battle of the Atlantic with their new technologies

    • Advantage to the Allies

  • Allies push Axis forces out of Africa in 1943

  • Americans launched a full-scale bombing attack on Germany, encircling the country

  • Soviets gain victory on the Eastern front at Stalingrad

  • Big Three: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin → scheduled invasion of France at a meeting in Tehran

    • France under Germany’s rule

  • D-Day (1944)

    • Largest amphibious (both land and water) assault in history

    • Invasion of France → liberation of the nation

  • Soviet Union pushed west to invade Germany

    • Soviet troops and American troops meet in Berlin and capture Germany → war is over

  • V-E Day (Victory in Europe)

  • Japanese War

    • America turns full attention to Japan after victory in Europe

    • Philippines falls to Japan after Pearl Harbor

    • America’s tactic of island hopping

      • Attack island after island in the Pacific

    • Massive bombing over Japan in early 1945

    • Manhattan project: US initiative to create an atomic bomb

    • US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan:

      • Hiroshima hit on August 6th, 1945

      • Nagasaki hit on August 9th, 1945

  • Soldiers in WWII

    • 18 million plus soldiers served in WWII

      • 10 million drafted

    • War in the air, marines, navy, army

    • Soldiers trained specialized based on their field

  • Wartime Economy

    • Wartime production pulled America out of the Great Depression and brought economic prosperity

    • Budget deficit soared as government spending massively increased

    • Government entities were mobilized

    • Military production increased while consumer goods production decreased

    • Government raised income taxes and encouraged citizens to buy bonds to earn money

    • Great Migration continued

    • Bracero Program: Mexican nationals working in American agriculture and railroads

      • Established Mexican presence in the southern and western US

  • Women and WWII

    • Encouraged women to help the war effort, either on the home front or on the battlefield

    • Rosie the Riveter (We Can Do It!)

    • Women volunteered in the American Red Cross

    • 350,000+ women served in all-female units of military branches

    • Jim Crow segregation still remained a problem for Black women

    • After the war, women no longer had the same job opportunities

  • Race in WWII

    • Executive Order of 8802 → banned racial and religious discrimination in defense industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to monitor defense industry hiring

    • 1 million+ African Americans fought in the war

    • Double V campaign

      • African Americans fought 2 wars

      • WWII and war against racial inequality in the US

      • NAACP membership dramatically increased

    • Internment

      • Those who were suspected of disloyalty received orders of internment under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798

      • They were sent to government camps 

      • Executive Order 9066: removal of people from “exclusion zones”

      • American policies targeted Japanese populations in which anti-Japanese sentiment was prevalent

      • President Ronald Reagan signed a law in 1988 that apologized for internment

  • Anti-Semitism in the US (Holocaust in America)

    • US turned Jews seeking refuge from the Holocaust away

    • Wagner Rogers bill turned down

      • Bill to allow 20,000 German-Jewish children into the US

    • War Refugees Board (WRB) of 1944

      • Founded by Henry Morgenthau 

      • Saved 200,000+ Jews

  • Post WWII

    • US wanted to create a postworld order that would guarantee global peace and US prosperity

    • After WWII, majority of the population supported America’s membership in League of Nations

    • Atlantic Charter

      • Roosevelt signed with Winston Churchill

      • Became the United Nations in 1945





Unit 8: Redefining Democracy in the Era of Cold War and Liberal Ascendency (1945-1980)

  • Cold War (1947-1989) begins after WWII when US and Soviet Union (2 former allies) emerge as rival superpowers fighting for either democracy or communism

    • Fighting for political alignment in territories won in WWII in Eastern Europe

    • Conflict where neither engages in open warfare

  • US establishes a policy of containment, trying to limit the influence of USSR and Communism

  • Origins of the Cold War

    • Tensions started from 1917 during the Russian Revolution

    • WWII brought them together against the Nazis

    • Soviet Union wanted to expand their control over Europe after WWII

    • USSR left Red Army troops in Eastern Europe and turned the countries into Soviet Communist Satellite States

      • Soviets agreed that they would allow free elections in Poland, but Stalin instead installed a puppet regime

      • US saw this as a violation

    • The Berlin Blockade and the Berlin Airlift (1948)

      • Germany divided into 4 occupation zones (British, French, Soviets, US)

      • Also divided up Berlin, sitting in the Soviet territory of East Germany

      • Soviet Union occupied East Germany and US occupied West Germany

      • Soviets wanted to keep Germany weak to extract reparations, but Western powers wanted to help Germany become strong (key to stable Europe)

        • Iron Curtain

      • Soviet Union decided to block US entry into Western Berlin

        • USSR wanted to overtake western Berlin (all of Berlin)

      • Berlin Airlift: President Truman sent 200,000+ flights to supply western Berlin

      • Western Berlin became a part of West Germany

  • Republicans gain majority in Congress in the election of 1946

  • Truman Doctrine (1947)

    • President Harry S. Truman said the goal of the US was to contain communism

    • “Sources of Soviet Conduct” / “X Article” 

      • George Kennan, US diplomat serving in Moscow

      • Published in Foreign Affairs, and outlined the containment policy

    • Local communist conflicts in Greece and Turkey

    • Truman had to deal with Republicans in Congress as well

      • Sold the idea of freedom to the general public

    • Provided $400 million in military aid to Greece and Turkey 

      • Helped Greek monarchy put down Communist rebel movement

    • Start of the Cold War

    • Truman won reelection

  • The Marshall Plan

    • Secretary of State George Marshall

    • Allocated $13 billion to 17 European nations from 1948-1951

    • Money to help rebuild these countries

    • If nations had a good economy, they would opt for democracy rather than communism

    • Western Europe allied with America

  • National Security Act (1947)

    • Created a new Department of Defense

      • Three branches: Army, Navy, Air Force

    • Creation of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)

      • Spy agency during peacetime

  • Formation of NATO (1949)

    • Mutual defense pact following the crisis over Berlin

    • North Atlantic Treaty Organization between 12 nations

    • Vowed to collectively resist aggression from the Soviet Union

    • First time US joined a peacetime alliance

    • Warsaw Pact: USSR formed an counter-alliance with Communist countries in Eastern Europe in 1955 in response to NATO

  • NSC-68 (1950)

    • National Security Council Paper

    • Asserted that the US had to assume a leadership position among non-Communist nations

    • Argued the US should attempt to “roll back” communism, not just contain it

    • Raised taxes and devoted more funds to military spending

    • Full on mobilization during peacetime

  • Nuclear Proliferation / Arms Race

    • US developed first atomic bomb in 1945

    • Soviets developed atomic bomb in 1949

    • Truman created hydrogen bomb in 1952

    • Soviets developed hydrogen bomb the next year

    • “Mutually Assured Destruction” — if either country went to war, they would both be at loss

  • Cold War in Asia

    • US brought Japan toward democracy

    • US granted independence to the Philippines in 1946

  • Communism in China

    • Civil war in China throughout the 1930s

    • US supported Nationalist Side led by Jiang Jieshi

    • Communist Party led by Mao Zedong gained popularity in China

    • Mao won in 1949 and People’s Republic of China was established

    • Republican accused Truman of “losing” China

  • The Korean War (1950-1953)

    • Proxy war 

    • Korea divided at the 38th parallel after WWII

      • US administered southern half (South Korea)

      • USSR administered northern half (North Korea—communist)

    • In 1950, North Korean/USSR troops activated against South Korea/US

      • Stalin approves of North Korea going to war, but USSR is unwilling to help

    • US gained NATO sponsorship → led by General Douglas MacArthur

      • US pushed USSR troops all the way to China

    • Truman fired MacArthur → thought that US invading China would turn into another disastrous war

    • China sent troops to push back UN forces

    • Armistice in Korea

      • Ended with division at the 38th parallel

      • No results

    • Direct result of Truman’s containment policy

  • President Eisenhower (1953-1961)

    • Election of 1952 — Eisenhower elected (Republican)

    • “New Look” — policy emphasizing development of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to threats from the USSR

      • Realized how difficult it would be to militarize a majority of American citizens

    • “Massive Retaliation” — US maintains a nuclear arsenal capable of retaliating against any enemies

    • MAD — nuclear standoff between the Soviet Union and the US

  • Launching of Sputnik (1957)

    • Space Race began with the launching of the unmanned Soviet satellite Sputnik

    • Alarming to the US because this satellite could also be used to deliver atomic weapons to anywhere on Earth

  • Space Race

    • US created NASA to carry out US space program

    • 1961, JFK missioned to land a man on the moon before the end of the 60s

    • Accomplished in 1969 → US became the first country to complete such a mission

  • President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)

    • “Flexible Response” — Defense strategy to address Kennedy administration’s skepticism of Eisenhower’s New Look and its policy of Massive Retaliation

      • Diplomatic, political, economic, and military strategies (many responses) to deter an enemy attack

      • Encouraged “mutual deterrence”

  • Espionage and U-2 incident

    • US maintained a program of spying on military capabilities of Soviet Union

    • U-2 spy plane shot over Soviet territory

      • No longer a secret → escalated tensions

  • Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

    • U-2 spy plane found that Cuba was preparing bases to install Soviet nuclear missiles

    • JFK demanded that Nikita Khrushchev halt and withdraw missiles

      • Khrushchev refused and demanded for nuclear missiles to be placed

    • JFK placed a naval blockade on Cuba to prevent further shipment of Soviet missiles and send a message to the Soviets that we will invade Cuba

    • Moment:

      • Soviet submarine → America started dropping depth-charges to get the submarine to surface → Soviets almost fire a nuclear missile 

    • World was on the brink of a nuclear war

    • Soviet Union finally said it would abandon Cuban missile program if the US honored sovereignty of Cuba

      • US also secretly agreed to remove missiles from Turkey

  • Eisenhower and Khrushchev Coexistence

    • After death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev takes over as a more moderate leader

    • Eisenhower hopes to warm relations with USSR

    • Sputnik and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) pushed the nations further apart

    • Vice President Richard Nixon took a trip to the Soviet Union in 1959 

      • Kitchen Debate: Nixon and Khrushchev toured American model-home in Moscow and the leaders debated communism v. capitalism

  • US-Soviet Relations under Kennedy

    • JFK attempted to ease tensions between USSR and US

    • Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963) exempted underground nuclear tests

      • Greatly reduced atmospheric testing

  • Détente with China

    • Nixon’s détente policy (ease strained tensions) represented thawing in the Cold War

    • Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) led to arms-control agreements of 1972

    • Nixon visited PRC in 1972 → important step in normalizing relations with China

  • Second Red Scare

    • Anti-Communist movement of the 1950s

    • Strike Wave of 1946

      • Conservative leaders sought to portray union leaders as Communist movement participants

      • 5 million workers walk off their jobs → largely successful strike wave

    • Taft-Hartley Act (1947)

      • Passed in response to labor strikes

      • Made it more difficult for unions to strike

      • Allowed states to pass “right to work” laws, banning union shops (requiring workers to join unions)

    • Federal Employee Loyalty and Security Program (1947)

      • Barred Communists and fascists from serving in federal government

      • Executive Order 9835: Investigations of Federal workers in the government

    • McCarran Internal Security Act (1950)

      • Mandated that Communist groups in the US register with the government

      • Allowed for the arrest of suspected Communist threats during emergencies

    • House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC)

      • Searched for communist influence in every crack of American society (Hollywood)

      • Attack on Hollywood:

        • Investigated film and broadcast 

        • Hollywood Ten (1947) found as communists and blacklisted

    • Senator Joseph Mccarthy

      • Senator who claimed to have a list of 205 communists who were working in the state department

      • Mccarthyism

    • Soviets were hiring American communists for espionage

      • Whittaker Chambers (1948) — a former Communist told HUAC that Alger Hiis passed secrets to the USSR 

    • Rosenberg Case (1949)

      • USSR developed first atomic bomb

      • People claimed they couldn’t have developed it without stealing ideas from the US

      • Julius & Ethel Rosenberg accused of being involved in the espionage

    • J. Edgar Hoover

      • Director of the FBI

      • Responsible of combatting the Red Scare

    • Threat of nuclear war was constantly present

    • The Smith Act

      • Government prosecutors arrested leading members of the Communist party

  • Fall of McCarthyism

    • Mccarthy’s ideals became more and more erratic

    • Useful for getting the Republicans back into presidency

    • McCarthy began accusing members of the military of being Communist → went too far

    • Senate voted to censure McCarthy in 1954 (ended the witch-hunt)

  • Yates v. United States (1957)

    • Supreme Court overturned the convictions of people under the Smith Act


  • Years after 1945 / WWII (1945-1970)

    • Economic Boom (affluence)

      • Wages increase to raise consumer demand

    • Massive productivity

    • Federal government developed Interstate Highway System

    • GI Bill of 1944

      • FDR signed into law

      • WWII veterans given funding to go to college, buy houses, and start businesses

      • Women and African Americans still faced discrimination with the GI bill

    • Baby boom: 50+ million people added to the US population from 1945-1960

      • Reversing a long term decline in the birth rate

      • Natalism: Important for women to have children

    • Employment for women still increased, but it was understood as secondary to having children and getting married

      • Emphasis on family

    • Suburbanization: Increased suburban living with greater population (white middle class)

      • “White flight”

      • Many white people didn’t want to live in the urban neighborhoods that had become racially integrated

    • Levittown

      • William Levitt built masses of nearly identical houses

      • Used techniques of mass production

      • “Little Boxes”

    • Mortgage Revolution (1930s-40s)

      • Increased mortgages, lowered down payment on houses, and lowered interest rates

      • Houses were more affordable

    • Interstate Highway Act (1956): allowed people to travel quickly from suburbs to urban areas

    • “White Flight” & Decline of Older cities

      • White people moving to suburbs took tax revenue away from cities

      • “Redlining” — Property on the perimeter of black neighborhoods is cheaper

      • Federal Housing Administration gave loans to suburban homes and refused mortgages in redlined neighborhoods

    • Urban Renewal

      • Housing Act of 1949 — expansion of federal money and power in urban housing area

    •  Sunbelt: South and Western states

      • People began migrating to the Sunbelt

      • Tax dollars shifted to the Sunbelt

      • Political power shifted from northeast & midwest to south & west

  • Changes in American Culture after 1945

    • Mass Culture: widespread set of ideas to which Americans conformed to

      • Mccarthyism: people wanted to conform so that they wouldn’t be suspected of communism

      • The Lonely Crowd — book that noted that Americans were eager to mold their ideas to societal standards

      • 90% of American households had a television

      • Suburban sitcoms presented ideal American family

    • Advertising

      • People had more disposable income

      • Advertisers appeal to consumers

    • Credit Cards

      • Extreme amounts of production

      • People could buy more than they could afford with credit cards

    • Rock n Roll

      • Extremely popular among young people in the 1950s

      • Developed primarily in Black communities

      • Elvis Presley → white singer

    • Beatniks / Beat Generation

      • Group of poets who rebelled against conformity of the era of the 50s

      • Jack Kerouac → “On the Road” took on free-form style

      • J.D. Salinger → “Catcher in the Rye” targeted conformists

      • Allen Ginsberg → “Howl and Other Poems”

    • Abstract Expressionism

      • Artistic movement in the 50s

      • Elevated the process of painting realistic reproductions of the world

    • Lavender Scare (1950s)

      • Moral panic about homosexual people

      • They were considered to be deviant and communist

  • Foundation/Expansion of the Civil Rights Movement (1945-1960)

    • Challenged the legal basis of the segregation of African Americans and the racism in society

      • Racism justified existence of slavery and Jim Crow segregation

  •  Origins of Civil Rights Movement

    • WWII was transformative for African Americans

    • NAACP’s Double V campaign — victory against fascism abroad and victory against racism at home

  • 1940s/1950s, Civil Rights activists put pressure on the government

    • Truman issued order 9981 in 1948 which banned segregation in US armed forces

    • Didn’t enforce it until the Korean War

    • Feared that he’d lose support of Southern members

    • Committee on Civil Rights

      • Give recommendations on civil rights problems

      • Recommended abolishment of poll taxes and encouragement of federal protection from lynching

    • 24th Amendment: abolished poll tax

    • Supreme Court now was far more liberal 

  • Brown v. The Board of Education (1954)

    • Racial segregation of schools

      • Initiated by the NAACP

    • Oliver Brown’s daughter had to attend a black school far away rather than a nearby white school

    • Case declared that segregated schools violated the 14th amendment (all citizens had equal protection under the law)

    • The Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson → thought that separate schools were unequal

      • Ordered that schools be integrated immediately (all deliberate speed)

      • Southerners found a loophole (“deliberated” about speed) → unhappy

      • Southern Manifesto: Supreme Court engaged in abuse of power

        • Southern states shut schools down 

  • Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955

    • Public transportation segregated in Montgomery Alabama

    • Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white woman

      • Parks was active in the NAACP

    • She was arrested which led to a bus-boycott

    • Ended bus segregation due to wide support

  • Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus prevented black students from entering Little Rock High School

    • “Massive Resistance” — Southern whites engaging in violent backlash against the civil rights movement

    • Little Rock Nine: students that were banished

    • Eisenhower sent troops to protect students

  • Martin Luther King Jr.

    • Peaceful protest

    • Nonviolent civil disobedience → inspired by Gandhi


  • Decolonization after WWII and Nationalism

    • Empires began to crumble

    • New independent nations needed aid → targets of US and USSR during Cold War

    • Guatemala (1954)

      • US led a coup to overthrow the socialist government

      • Guatemala leader nationalized US land used for cultivation

        • Wanted the land for impoverished Guatemalans (offered to buy the land)

  •  CIA installed a military dictatorship in response

  • Cuba

    • Fidel Castro (communist) overthrew the government

    • Communist threat nearby

    • Eisenhower allowed US to train Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro regime

    • Bay of Pigs Invasion → massive failure

      • Tried to oust the Communist regime

      • Led to alienation of US from Cuba and strengthened communism

    • Cuban missile crisis later

  • Dominican Republic

    • LBJ intervened in Dominican Republic’s affairs

    • Juan Bosch, a communist, attempted to ascend to power

  • Military-Industrial Complex

    • Eisenhower warned Americans of growing relationship between military and industry

    • Tempting to start making policy decisions based on material interests of those who produced weaponry

  • Wave of nationalist movements throughout Asia and AFrica

  • Truman and Eisenhower afraid that newly independent countries would end up communist

    • Peace Corps (1961): Kennedy established a program to assist underdeveloped countries

  • Iran (1953)

    • CIA wanted to overthrow democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh

      • Iranian prime minister wanted to nationalize oil industry for stronger control 

    • US and other nations dependent on oil

    • Prior Iranian leader (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi) was friendly to the US

    • Eisenhower authorized the CIA to institute a coup against Mosaddegh 

      • Success, restored Shah’s power

  • The Eisenhower Doctrine (1958)

    • Declared that a Middle Eastern country can ask for American economic assistance or aid from military forces if threatened by armed aggression

    • Eisenhower concerned about Middle East

      • Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser ruled over Egypt in 1954 and supported Soviets

      • Nasser seized control of the Suez Canal

      • France, GB, and Israel invaded Egypt to retake control of the canal → Eisenhower and USSR pressured them to withdraw

    • Rebel movement emerged in Lebanon friendly to Nasser

      • US marines dispatched to support Lebanese president

  • Election of 1960 — JFK elected (Democrat)


  • Vietnam War (1955-1975)

    • American involved from 1964/65 - 1968

    • Vietnam/Indochina

      • Decolonized after fighting French and Japanese

      • Vietnam divided along the 17th parallel 

        • North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh’s communist rule

        • South Vietnam was democratic

      • Eisenhower extended $1 billion to South Vietnam

        • Domino Theory: if one country falls to communism, so would all others

    • JFK agreed with the Domino Theory

      • Sent military advisors to South Vietnam 

  • After JFK’s assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president

  • Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964)

    • North Vietnam fires on US battleship

    • Johnson used this as justification of military involvement

    • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964): gave Johnson a “blank check: to do whatever he wanted in Vietnam without formal declaration of war

    • Marked the beginning of Vietnam War

  • North Vietnam sent 40,000 soldiers to South Vietnam in 1963

    • In 1965, 200,000+ American troops were fighting in Vietnam

    • Vietnamese were adept at fighting

  • People at home opposed the war by 1968

    • Johnson kept pushing for war

    • First televised war

  • Credibility Gap

    • Johnson painted a great picture of war, but in reality, it was much harsher

  • Tet Offensive (1968)

    • Surprise attack on the South Vietnamese and the US

    • US countered by attacking the Vietcong

    • Johnson could no longer escalate the war due to massive destruction and deaths

  • My Lai Massacre (1968)

    • American troops killed inhabitants of My Lai village in Vietnam

    • Led Americans to question the morality of the war in Vietnam

  • Richard Nixon wanted to reduce involvement in Vietnam without looking like US admitted defeat

    • First expanded war into Cambodia and Laos

    • Vietnamization: removal of US from the war; provide financial aid to continue the war without the US (replace US with South Vietnam troops)

  • Paris Peace Accords (1973)

    • Agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam

  • South Vietnam defeated in 1975 → Vietnam becomes a communist nation

  • War Powers Act (1973) — Requires president to report any troop deployments to Congress within 48 hours and gives Congress the ability to withdraw US troops after 60 days

  • Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency (1963-1969)

    • Great Society → correct domestic problems

      • Extension of FDR’s New Deal

      • Continuation of liberalism after JFK

      • His hopes for his Great Society were damaged by the war in Vietnam

      • Liberal Agenda in the 1960s

    • Dramatic rise in the middle class

    • Lyndon Johnson was a Democrat, and there was a Democratic majority

    • Biggest problem was poverty

      • Office of Economic Opportunity: provided self-help programs to impoverished Americans

      • Limited success

      • Not much funding due to Vietnam War

    • Welfare programs

    • Medicare program: provided federal health insurance to those over 65

    • Medicaid program: provided health insurance to those in poverty

    • Abolished immigration quotas: opportunities to immigrants seeking jobs

      • Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 — Allowed immigrants to come to America in larger numbers

    • Liberalism in the 1960s

      • Idea developed by Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”

      • Modern liberalism broke with the past on social progress

      • Government intervention on social problems (higher taxes and more individual rights)

      • Tackle poverty and urban nature

      • Liberalism traced back to the Progressive movement and the New Deal

      • Condemned the anti-Communist “witch-hunt” (hunting for communists), but supported containment

      • Warren Court: many Supreme Court cases supporting liberalism

      • JFK’s policies supported liberalism and idealism

        • “New Frontier” — JFK’s domestic agenda (break from conservatism)

        • Peace Corps (1961): Kennedy established a program to assist underdeveloped countries


  •  Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s

    • Black citizens were responding to violent with nonviolence

      • White northerners saw the bravery of the blacks confronting the racial injustice → it was a stirring image

    • Continuation of the NAACP

      • They handled all the legal cases

  • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

    • Formed in the early 1960s by young Black college students

    • “Freedom Summer”

      • Volunteer campaign attempting to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi

      • By inviting white college students to join them in voting rights legislation, that would help protect the black civil rights activists

    • Played integral roles in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, 1963 March on Washington, and Freedom Summer

  • Lunch Counter Sit-ins (1960)

    • Tennessee and NC students began a campaign of sit-ins at lunch counters to protest segregation

    • Founded by SNCC

  • Freedom Rides (1961)

    • Supreme Court ruled the unconstitutionality of state laws separating races on transportation in 1960

    • States still maintained Jim Crow laws even after the segregation was deemed unconstitutional

    • Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) organized a series of bus rides to challenge the codes

      • African Americans rode with whites

  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC - 1963)

    • Birmingham Campaign (1963)

      • Major campaign in Birmingham, Alabama to protest racial segregation

      • Turning point in the push for federal legislation

    • Bull Connor: ordered city police to disperse crowds with brutal force

    • Children’s Crusade — children’s march

    • King arrested → “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

    • Paved way for the Civil Rights Act

  • March on Washington (1963)

    • 200,000+ people gathered in DC to march

    • Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech

  • March from Selma to Montgomery (1965)

    • Focused on voting rights

    • LBJ spoke in favor of the Selma voting rights campaign

    • MLK led 600 people on a march from Selma Alabama to capital Montgomery → peaceful protest

    • “Bloody Sunday” — county and state police attacked marchers with clubs and tear gas

    • Led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965

  • Black Power Movement

    • Civil Rights Movement ended legal segregation (de jure segregation)

    • Segregation enforced by custom instead (de facto segregation)

    • Racial pride and empowerment

    • We have to meet white power with black power

    • Composed of young advocates

    • Hostility in American south

    • Black Panthers

      • Black nationalist ideology formed by college students

      • Armed with guns

  • Malcolm X

    • Separatism and militarism for freedom

    • Leader of the Nation of Islam

    • Counter white violence with black violence

  • Urban Rioting

    • Many cities experienced rioting between African-Americans and white police forces

    • Harlem, LA, Detroit, Newark riots following the assassination of MLK Jr.

    • National Guard deployed to quell the rebellion

    • “One black, one white—separate and unequal”

  • Assassination of King (1968)

    • His movement accomplished a lot, but couldn’t provide a solution for many of the problems Black Americans faced

  • Democrats were borderline when it came to civil rights for African Americans

  • Civil Rights Act of 1964: Racial discrimination made illegal

  • Voting Rights Act of 1965: Prohibited racial discrimination in voting booth

    • Authorized federal government to oversee voting

    • Outlawed literacy tests and poll taxes — means of preventing Blacks from voting

  • The Warren Court

    • Earl Warren was the chief justice of the Supreme Court (1953-1969)

    • Liberal direction

    • Brown case

    • Mapp v. Ohio (1961)

      • Evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures must be excluded from criminal prosecutions

    • Miranda Rights

      • Right to remain silent and the right to have a lawyer

    • Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

      • Laws forbidding birth-control devices were unconstitutional

    • Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)

      • Students in school have the right to free speech (students wearing black armbands in protest of Vietnam War)

    • NYT v. Sullivan (1964)

      • Freedom of the press

  • Civil right movement sparked a bunch of other movements

  • Loving v. Virginia

    • Struck down laws making interracial marriage illegal

  • Women’s movement

    • Women still belonged in the home in the 1950s

    • The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

      • Explored imprisonment of a housewife → women unable to express opinions and work

    • National Organization for Women (NOW)

      • Advocated for equal opportunity/pay

    • Ms. Magazine by Gloria Steinem

    • Title IX: banned gender discrimination with respect to education and sports

    • Sexual Revolution

      • More tolerant attitudes toward sexual behavior

      • After introduction of the birth control pill, women had more control over reproduction and their sexual lives

    • Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

      • Push to add an amendment to the constitution to prevent discrimination

      • Phyllis Schlafley → led movement called “Stop ERA”

        • Took a conservative standpoint → discrimination was brought on by women themselves (women shouldn’t be in workplaces)

        • Women shouldn’t need men to give rights (ERA) to them 

        • Sees the changes to be getting out of hand

        • Believed women had rights in the status quo (e.g. exemption from military draft)

        • ERA failed

    • Roe v. Wade (1973)

      • Supreme Court declared states couldn’t prohibit women from getting an abortion

    • Quiet Revolution

      • Percentage of women in the workforce grew

      • Women felt less pressure to marry and have children due to liberation

      • Women decided to focus on their careers first during the late 70s

  • Latino Movement

    • Mexican workers came to America in 50s and 60s to work in farms → paid very little

    • United Farm Workers (1962) 

      • Protect migrant farmers

      • Received increased wages

  • American Indian Movement (AIM - 1968)

    • Federal government policy called “termination” — encourage American Indians to assimilate into white culture and then terminate legal recognition of tribes

    • “Declaration of Indian Purpose” — manifesto from 67 tribes

    • Wanted to reclaim their culture taken away by Americans

    • Occupation of Alcatraz Island

      • Home to American federal prison

      • Alcatraz was abandoned in the 1960s 

        • All abandoned lands shall be returned to the Indians

        • Indians claimed Alcatraz

    • Self-Determination Act (1975)

      • American Indians received greater control

    • US v. Wheeler

      • Affirmed the legal status of Indian tribes and banned “termination”

  • Asian-American Civil Rights Movement

    • Wanted reparations for Japanese internment camps

    • “The Emergence of Yellow Power” — Black Power movement was a catalyst for Asian Americans to look at the conditions of their own lives

    • Ronald Reagan apologized for Japanese internment and provided $20,000 in reparations to each internee

  • Gay Liberation Movement

    • Stonewall Inn (1969)

      • A gay bar in NYC resisted a raid by the police and fought back

    • Gay became recognized as a legitimate sexual orientation in the 1970s

  • Youth Culture in the 1960s

    • Youth in the Vietnam War

      • The Draft

        • Selective Service System of 1964 began drafting more young men to serve in the Vietnam War

      • Vietnam War was the first war to occur when most Americans had a TV

      • Most troops in the Vietnam war were working-class and poor

      • Kicked off an antiwar movement

      • Young Americans for Freedom (YAF): supported America in Vietnam to contain communism with a conservative viewpoint

      • Students for a Democratic Society (SDS): Believed in democracy and direct government action (Port Huron Statement)

        • Challenged the fact that we must stop the spread of global communism

      • College students were mad because they would be enlisted in the draft later on

      • Kent State Massacre of 1970

        • Kent State University students protested the Vietnam War

        • National guard sent to keep peace

        • Students threw rocks at the guards

        • One of the guards fired

      • Pentagon Papers

        • Secret study of the Vietnam war written by the Pentagon which was leaked to the press

      • The New Left

        • People criticized the liberal agenda of the 60s for doing too little

        • SDS spread around colleges in America

        • Port Huron Statement: guiding manifesto for the development of the New Left

    • Counterculture Movement

      • Bob Dylan and Folk Revival

        • Music paying homage to the indigenous music of rural America

      • British bands

        • The Beatles and the Rolling Stones transformed American culture in the 60s

        • Rhythm, blues, rock ‘n’ roll

      • Hippie Movement: Overturn societal norms through rebellious clothing and drug use 

        • Rejection of materialistic conformity — DIY approach to life

        • Unrefined music

          • Woodstock Music Festival (1969)

            • Half a million attendees to a giant music festival

        • Haight-Ashbury District

        • Sexual Revolution

      • Ended in the 1970s

  • Environmental issues in 1970s and 80s

    • Oil came from the Middle East

      • Not great relations between American and the Middle East

    • Israel became a nation in 1948

      • Middle Eastern nations opposed Israel while America remained allied with Israel

      • Arab nations formed OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) to control the prices of oil in 1973

        • Cut off oil exports to America and increased the price of oil they did export

    • Camp David Accords (1978)

      • President Jimmy Carter provided peace treaty between Egypt and Israel

    • Energy Crisis

      • Fuel prices rose dramatically in the US after the OPEC oil embargo

      • Limits to amount of fossil fuels available in the world → primarily came from the middle east

    • Iranian Revolution & Iran Hostage Crisis

      • US supported Iranian leader, Shah, was ousted by a revolution led by Muslim religious leader

      • US admitted Shah to the US for medical treatment → Iranian students were mad and took over the US embassy

    • The Carter Doctrine (1980)

      • US would repel any outside forces that attempt to gain control of Persian Gulf region

      • Reflects concerns about protecting US oil interests and keeping the Soviets out of it

    • National Maximum Speed Law of 1974

      • President Nixon proposed to reduce national speed limit on highways

      • Reduced speed limits to 55 miles per hour

      • Truckers’ Rebellion — Truckers were not happy about the policy

    • America considered a shift to nuclear energy

      • Euraneum to make nuclear energy was plentiful and cheap

      • Three Mile Island PA (1979): a nuclear reactor was melted down and radioactive waste was released

      • Americans were concerned about the safety of nuclear energy

    • Environmental Movement

      • Silent Spring by Rachel Carson of 1962 — explained industrial impacts on environment

      • Cuyahoga River of Ohio caught fire in 1969 due to heavy pollution

      • First Earth Day in 1970

      • Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1970 (Environmental Protection Agency) 

        • Managed pollution control

      • Clean Air Act of 1963

        • Control air pollution nationally

    • Love Canal

      • Waterway near Niagara Falls used as a dumpsite for toxic chemicals

      • Superfund Program

        • EPA investigated and cleaned up sites with hazardous substances

  • President Jimmy Carter faced many challenges with foreign policy in the 1970s

  • Conservative Response

    • In the 60s and 70s

      • YAF promoted Barry Goldwater for president in 1964

        • LBJ won election  

      • Sharon Statement (1960) — founding document for the YAF

      • The New Right (70s): Coalition of conservatives

      • John Birch Society: opposed communism and advocated for limited government 

      • William F. Buckley’s National Review 

        • Conservative magazine in the 1950s

      • Religious Right: Conservative Christians who opposed liberalism

        • Legalization of abortion through Roe v. Wade helped unite protestant christians and conservative christians

        • Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority thought the separation of church and state led to moral decay

        • Focus on the Family (Dobson) — focused on Christian rights

  • Stagflation

    • High unemployment and inflation

  • Whip Inflation Now (WIN)

    • President Gerald Ford promoted the WIN campaign which encouraged people to be more disciplined with money

  • Panama Canal (1977)

    • Torrijos-Carter Treaties

      • Jimmy Carter turned the Panama Canal Zone over to Panama, but that the canal remain neutral to shipping of all nations

      • Conservatives were critical of these treaties because they surrendered major power

  • Watergate Scandal (1972)

    • Nixon reelected in 1972

    • Men hired by his reelection party were caught breaking in to the watergate office (Democratic party’s headquarters) attempting to bug phones and steal documents

    • Nixon knew about the scandal and lied about not knowing it

    • First president to resign from office

    • Eroded people’s trust in governing institutions

  • Affirmative Action

    • Arose out of civil rights movement

    • Activists wanted to take affirmative action to make sure racial wrongs were righted

    • Race was a factor in hiring decisions and college decisions

      • Positions set aside for black/minority applicants

    • Bakke v. The University of California (1978)

      • Bakke declined from UC due to spots being reserved for blacks

      • Decided that minority quotas were unconstitutional and violated equal protection clause in 14th amendment

  • Roe v. Wade overturned in 2022

  • Moral Majority — New Right cultural movement

  • Focus on the Family — bridged traditional divide between Catholics and Protestants





Unit 9: Political and Foreign Policy Adjustments in a Globalized World (1980-Present)

  • Resurgence of Conservatism with the election of Reagan

  • Presidential Election of 1964

    • Barry Goldwater’s campaign “The New Right”

    • Roots of a new era of conservatism

  • Jimmy Carter’s Presidency (1977-1981)

    • Jimmy Carter was a democrat and easily overturned

    • Dealt with stagflation

    • Iran Hostage Crisis

    • Energy Crisis due to middle eastern oil exports issue

  • Presidential election of 1980

    • Ronald Reagan, Republican candidate, used to be an actor and came off as very likable to the media

    • Ronald Reagan was the embodiment of Conservatism and the New Right

      • 1) Cold War Conservatism — containment of spread of communism

      • 2) Economically pro-business — wanted to dissipate the laws liberals had put on big businesses to help them flourish

      • 3) Moral and Religious Conservatism — uprisings like the counterculture movement, women’s rights, and gay liberation movements were attacks on conservatives traditional values

    • Reagan won a massive victory in the presidential election over Jimmy Carter

  • Reagan (1981-1989)

    • Fundamental Rejection of the liberalism that dominated the 60s and the 70s

  • Reaganomics

    • Supply-side economics

    • American prosperity can be achieved through tax cuts and decreased federal spending

      • Leads to more investment in the private sector and more jobs

    • Rejection of liberal Keynesian economics that pushed for increased government spending 

    • Economic Recovery Act of 1981

      • Cut income taxes by 25%

    • Reaganomics benefited the wealthy — the idea was that if the wealthy was prosperous, that would trickle down to the lower classes

    • Reagan cut federal spending on welfare programs (e.g. food stamps), but massively increased federal spending on the military

      • Huge increase in deficit spending

      • He still expanded Medicare and Medicaid

    • Deregulation — wanted to lower regulation on big businesses as much as possible

    • Opened federal lands for coal and oil mining

  • Moral Majority

    • Have conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court

    • Scaled back affirmative action and Roe v. Wade

  • End of the Cold War

    • Ronald Reagan worked to end the Cold War era

    • Speeches

      • Gave speeches across the nation and the world, talking about how the Soviet Union was ready to fall

    • Diplomatic Efforts

      • Nixon ushered a period of detente in the 60s where he tried to cool tensions

      • Carter’s presidency refueled tensions

      • Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991)

        • Political leader in the Soviet Union

        • Glasnost — bring more political freedom to Soviets

        • Perestroika — introduced limited free-market practices to Soviets

      • Reagan worked to ease tensions again with Gorbachev

        • Reagan confronted the Soviet Union

        • INF Agreement — get rid of US and Soviet missiles

        • Gorbachev also agreed to remove Soviet troops from Afghanistan

    • Limited Military Intervention

      • Reagan Doctrine (1985) — US will support any regime that was anti communist

      • Nicaragua became communist under a Sandanista coup

        • Reagan issued a US military group called the contras that would try to put down the Sandinistas

        • Contras quickly became hostile of human rights

  •  Iran Contra Affair

    • Iran and Iraq had been at war since the 1980s

    • US previously sold weapons secretly to the Iranian Contras

    • Reagan took those funds to aid the Contras in Nicaragua

      • Illegal — Congress has budgetary authority, NOT the president

  • Built nuclear and conventional weapons

  • Massively increased the military and navy

  • Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars)

    • Build military satellites to shoot down enemy missiles from space

  • US military budget grew immensely

  • Gorbachev decided to reduce communist influence in European and Middle Eastern nations

    • Poland elected a non communist leader

    • All other previously communist countries followed 

  • East Germany tore down the Berlin Wall

  • Soviet Union fell in 1991 → Cold War was over

  • Continued diplomatic efforts

    • US and Russia agreed to the Start 1 Treaty — reduce number of nuclear arms

    • Start II Treaty — US offered funds to Russia after their collapse

  • President George H. W. Bush & the Persian Gulf War

    • Bush’s main accomplishments were in foreign affairs (1989-1993)

    • Berlin Wall came down and Soviet Union collapsed during his presidency

    • Iraq invaded Kuwait → Bush organized troops against invasion

  • NAFTA - North American Free Trade Agreement (1993)

    • Debate in the 90s over free trade and globalization of economy

    • Eliminated all trade barriers and tariffs among the US, Canada, and Mexico

    • Promised global prosperity

  • GATT - General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs

    • International trade agreement encouraging countries to participate in the global economy by reducing barriers to trade

  • The World Trade Organization (WTO) replaces GATT in 1995

  • Clinton embraced global trade through NAFTA, but there rose opposition to globalization

  • “Contract with America” (1994)

    • Bill Clinton (Democrat — 1993-2001) and the opposing Republican Party Congressional majority signed a call to arms for Republicans and a specific blueprint for legislative action

    • Demonstrates the growing conservative movement in the 80s/90s

  • Clinton’s Health Care System

    • Federal health insurance plan would provide subsidized insurance to millions of uncovered Americans → bring down health insurance costs for everyone

  • Social Security Reform

    • Growing percentage of senior citizens due to the Baby Boom after WWII

  • Savings and Loan Crisis

    • S&Ls suffered risky investments and downturn in housing market in the 80s

    • President Bush Sr. signed a bailout bill extending billions of dollars to the industry

  • Somalia

    • Clinton deployed US forces to aid a humanitarian mission in Somalia

  • Clinton put a great deal of effort into Israel and Palestine conflicts

  • Clinton also maintained friendly relations with China

  • Impeachment of President Clinton

    • Turning point in the deterioration of relations between Democrats and Republicans

    • Clinton accused of having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern

      • Clinton denied it, but later forced to admit the affair

      • Impeachable crimes: lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice

  • Election of 2000

    • George W. Bush (Republican) against Al Gore (Democrat)

    • Supreme Court had to decide due to the election being so close

    • George W. Bush won

  • Presidency of George W. Bush

    • New Right achieved a major victory with the election

    • Son of George H. W. Bush (41st president)

    • No Child Left Behind Act (2002): institute reform of public education

      • Mandated that states set learning standards

    • Great Recession (2007-2008)

      • High unemployment, falling wages, and housing crisis

      • Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP - 2008)

        • Strengthen financial sector and restore confidence in securities market

  • Election of Barack Obama (2008)

    • First African American to the presidency

    • Tea Party Movement

      • Opposition movement to Obama’s presidency

      • Framed his presidency as tyrannical/fascist

    • Affordable Care Act

      • Reduced the number of uninsured Americans

  • Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

    • Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is allowed

  • Election/Presidency of Donald Trump (2016)

    • Continued strength of the conservative movement

    • Blunt and aggressive speaking style — “political correctness”

    • Wanted to undo the Affordable Care Act

    • Rolled back many regulations and programs

    • Impeached once because he “abused the powers of the presidency” to benefit his reelection

    • Capitol Attack — effort to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential win

    • Impeached a second time for incitement of insurrection

  • 21st century Technological changes

    • Digital Revolution

      • Introduction of the computer

      • Became much smaller such that Apple and IBM created personal computers that spanned through households

      • Internet developed in the 90s

    • Digital Revolution led to huge increase in speed and productivity → helped the economy

    • Increased productivity didn’t lead to the expected change in the standards of living

      • Steady decrease in manufacturing and steady increase in services

      • Outsource of manufacturing to more productive countries (China)

      • Huge decline in labor unions

        • Reagan broke unions in 1981

      • Increasing wealth gap between the wealthy and the middle class

  • Migration and immigration patterns in the 90s and 00s

    • Sunbelt migration continued in this era

      • Sunbelt states increased conservative politics

      • Republicans increased seats in the House of Representatives

    • Immigrants worked in jobs that Americans didn’t want to do

      • Net positive effect on American economy

    • Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

      • Allowed immigrants to come to America in larger numbers

    • Sharp increase in immigrants → white population declined

  • Challenges in the 21st century

    • 9/11/2001 Terrorist Attacks

      • Al-Qaeda group attack

      • Crashed two commercial airplanes into the twin towers, one into the Pentagon, and another into the countryside

      • War on Terror in Afghanistan

        • War on two fronts — Afghanistan and Iraq

        • Bush demanded that the Afghanistan government hand over Osama bin Laden to America, but the Taliban government refused

        • Bush sent troops into Afghanistan

        • American troops quickly defeated Taliban

        • Osama bin Laden not found and killed until Barack Obama’s presidency

        • Joe Biden withdrew US troops in 2021

  • Iraq War in 2003

    • Related to the War on Terror

    • Saddam Hussein, Iraq leader, suspected to have played a part in 9/11 attacks

      • Hussein suspected to be creating weapons of mass destruction

    • Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom

      • Topple Hussein’s regime and install US democratic regime

    • If you send American troops in, they could build democracy and it would have a ripple effect across Middle Eastern nations

    • America would just be seen as an oppressor in Iraq

  • Response to 9/11

    • Patriot Acts of 2001/3

      • Increased government’s permission to enact surveillance on citizens

      • Necessary for protection of Americans

    • Creation of Department of Homeland Security

  • America’s environmental issues

    • America dependent on fossil fuels

    • Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait of 1990

      • America went to war with Iraq in the 1990s due to dependence on oil

    • Climate Change

      • Greenhouse gas emissions increased temperatures