Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume)

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

CHAPTER 1 New World Encounters, Preconquest–1608 CHAPTER OUTLINE Diverse Cultures: De Vaca’s Journey Through Native America Native Americans Before the Conquest The Environmental Challenge: Food, Climate, and Culture Aztec Dominance Eastern Woodland Cultures Conditions of Conquest Cultural Negotiations Threats to Survival: Columbian Exchange West Africa: Ancient and Complex Societies Europe on the Eve of Conquest Spanish Expansion The Strange Career of Christopher Columbus Spain in the Americas The Conquistadores: Faith and Greed From Plunder to Settlement The French Claim Canada The English Take up the Challenge Birth of English Protestantism Religion, War, and Nationalism Conclusion: Campaign to Sell America

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE “OTHER” It is argued that we make sense of important experiences by constructing stories that give them coherence and meaning. The unexpected meeting of Indians, Europeans, and Africans in the Western Hemisphere after 1492 was interpreted differently by each of the parties involved.

The Europeans explained it as the triumph of Christianity and progress over ignorance and idolatry. But the European interpretation was only one of the ways in which the events of 1492 were understood. Indians and Africans constructed very different stories.

Literary critics have recently turned their attention to the vast literature that accompanied the first contacts between Europeans and Indians in America. Two aspects of the stories told by both sides seem especially interesting. The first is the conscious construction of histories by the Spanish explorers and conquistadores to explain or justify actions that may not have been premeditated. Columbus, for example, was probably not as visionary before 1492 as he later believed himself to be. In the contract he made with Queen Isabella before starting out on his famous voyage, he seems to have expected that he would most likely find, not Asia, but islands like the Canaries and Azores. He may have expected to sail into the Ocean Sea, not across it.

Similarly, the Spanish tale of the conquest of Mexico as a great Christian crusade probably disguises an original intention to establish peaceful trade. Ironically, the conquest narratives may make the Spanish seem more bloodthirsty in intention than they really were.

The second interesting aspect of contact literature is how the Europeans, Indians, and Africans reacted to the “Other.” The concept of the “Other” derives mainly from structuralist theory, which argues that we shape the world through language by use of such polar opposites as “high and low,” “sacred and profane,” “raw and cooked,” “male and female.” One of the most potent of these pairs is “self and other.” It is argued that we construct a sense of self by differentiating ourselves from others, and that we construct a sense of otherness by differentiating others from ourselves. Since we usually impart values to the distinctions we make, the “Other” is never an equal. The “Other” is either vastly superior or grossly inferior, a god or a devil.

Scholars working with such theories have produced interesting analyses of the First Contact period. Tzvetan Todorov, for example, argues that the Spanish victory over the Aztecs was more a triumph of language than of military technology. The Aztecs, in his opinion, used language primarily to communicate with the gods, with the result that their language, and the mental universe formed by language, was highly ritualistic, repetitive, and predictable. Europeans, on the other hand, used language in a more practical way to persuade and manipulate other humans.

In their mental universe, the “Other” was unpredictable but manageable. Upon First Contact, the Aztecs were dumbfounded by an “Other” they found impossible to explain. Montezuma begged the gods to tell him what to do as the Spanish approached, but the gods fell silent. Cortés, however, was able to make false promises, to disguise his intentions, to distort the truth, and even to make seemingly supernatural omens conform to his own intentions. The Spanish defeated the Aztecs because they were more adept at manipulating the signs and symbols that make up a system of communication.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

The subject of the “Other” is especially interesting at a time when the possibility of contact with life beyond our planet is the subject of so much speculation. Students should be encouraged to make comparisons between 1492 and that unknowable time when we first encounter extraterrestrials. Much will depend upon whether we first meet a big-eyed, sad-faced ET or a slimy creature baring a full set of razor-sharp teeth, because we too, like the Europeans, Africans, and Indians of 1492, have already met our “Other.”

RELIVING THE PAST Columbus recorded his first encounter with the Taíno people on the island they called Guanahani when he first made landfall in the Western Hemisphere. This meeting of two worlds and two cultures proceeded rather peacefully but for a strange incident. Columbus took out his sword to show it to one of the natives who apparently thought he was being offered a gift. He took it and cut his hand. What did a Stone Age people think when they first saw the power of metal? And why had Columbus unsheathed his sword? See the translation of The Log of Christopher Columbus by Robert Fuson (Camden, Maine: International Marine Publishing Company, 1987).

The log itself is fascinating, and Fuson fully discusses the controversy over which island in the Bahamas was the one the Indians called Guanahani and Columbus called San Salvador.

One of the most dramatic encounters in American history was the meeting between Hernan Cortés and Montezuma. Both men behaved with solemn courtesy until Cortés attempted to embrace the emperor in the friendly Spanish abrazo. Montezuma’s bodyguards grabbed Cortés by the arm and stopped him, explaining that an embrace would greatly insult the emperor. That small episode epitomizes the difficulties Europeans and Indians had in cross-cultural communication (Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain. New York: Penguin Paperback, 1967).

CHAPTER SUMMARY DIVERSE CULTURES: DE VACA ’S JOURNEY THROUGH NATIVE AMERICA The author views some of the first contacts between Europeans and Native Americans in terms of narratives. Each side brought preconceptions molded by their long histories into their contacts with other peoples, and each side was molded by contact with the other.

The narrative of the voyages of Christopher Columbus, on the other hand, was told in terms of adventure. This one-sided story can be nuanced by considering contacts as creative adaptations to encompass the entire range of experiences on both sides.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

NATIVE AMERICANS BEFORE THE CONQUEST America was first inhabited some twenty thousand years ago when small bands of nomadic Siberian hunters chased large mammals across the land bridge between Asia and America.

During this long migration, the people who became known as the American Indians stopped carrying several diseases, such as smallpox and measles their children thus lost the immunities that would have protected them against such diseases.

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WHAT explains cultural differences among Native American groups before European conquest?

Twenty thousand years ago, Paleo-Indians crossed into North America from Asia. During the migrations, they divided into distinct groups, often speaking different languages. The Agricultural Revolution sparked population growth, allowing some groups, such as the Aztecs, to establish complex societies. The Eastern Woodland Indians, who lived along the Atlantic coast, had just begun to practice agriculture when the Europeans arrived.

The Environmental Challenge: Food, Climate, and Culture: During the thousands of years before the arrival of the Europeans, the continents of North and South America experienced tremendous geologic and climate changes. As the weather warmed, the great mammals died off, and the Indians who hunted them turned increasingly to growing crops, bringing about an Agricultural Revolution. View the Map Pre-Columbian Societies of the Americas on myhistorylab.com Aztec Dominance: In Central America, the Aztecs settled in the fertile valley of Mexico and conquered a large and powerful empire, which they ruled through fear and force.

Eastern Woodland Cultures: Elsewhere, along the Atlantic coast of North America, for example, Native Americans lived in smaller bands and supplemented agriculture with hunting and gathering. In some cases, women owned the farming fields, and men the hunting grounds.

CONDITIONS OF CONQUEST The arrival of Europeans profoundly affected Native Americans, who could be said to have entered a new world.

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HOW did Europeans and Native Americans interact during the period of first contact?

Native Americans initially welcomed the opportunity to trade with the Europeans. The newcomers insisted on “civilizing” the Indians. Neither Christianity nor European-style education held much appeal for Native Americans, and they resisted efforts to transform their cultures. Contagious Old World diseases, such as smallpox, decimated the Indians, leaving them vulnerable to many forms of cultural imperialism. Thomas Hariot, The Algonquian Peoples on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Cultural Negotiations: Native Americans were not passive in their dealings with the Europeans. They eagerly traded for products that made life easier, but they did not accept the notion that Europeans were in any way culturally superior, and most efforts by the Europeans to convert or “civilize” the Indians failed.

Threats to Survival: Columbian Exchange: Wherever Indians and Europeans came into contact, they exchanged ideas, goods, crops, technologies, and so on. Part of this “Columbian Exchange” included the transmission of diseases, like smallpox and measles. As a result, the Indian population declined rapidly. For example, the Arawak population in Santo Domingo fell from almost 4 million before the arrival of Columbus to just 125 in 1570. An entire way of life disappeared. View the Map Native American Population Loss, 1500–1700 on myhistorylab.com WEST AFRICA : ANCIENT AND COMPLEX SOCIETIES Contrary to ill-informed opinion, sub-Saharan West Africa was never an isolated part of the world where only simple societies developed. As elsewhere, West Africa had seen the rise and fall of empires, such as Ghana or Dahomey. West Africa had also been heavily influenced by the coming of Islam. The arrival of Europeans was just the latest of many foreign influences that helped shape African culture. The Portuguese came first, pioneering the sea lanes from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa in the fifteenth century. They found profit in gold and slaves, supplied willingly by native rulers who sold their prisoners of war. The Atlantic slave trade began taking about 1,000 persons each year from Africa, but the volume steadily increased. In the eighteenth century, an estimated five and one-half million were taken away. Altogether, Africa lost almost eleven million of her children to the Atlantic slave trade. Before 1831, more Africans than Europeans came to the Americas.

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WHAT was the character of the West African societies that European traders first encountered?

West Africans had learned of Islam long before European traders arrived looking for slaves. The earliest Europeans encountered powerful local rulers who knew how to profit from commercial exchange. Slaves who had been captured in distant wars were taken to so-called slave factories where they were sold to Europeans and then shipped to the New World. Ghana and Its People in the Eleventh Century on Read the Document myhistorylab.com EUROPE ON THE EVE OF CONQUEST The Vikings discovered America before Columbus, but European colonization of the New World began only after 1492 because only then were the preconditions for successful overseas settlement attained. These conditions were the rise of nation-states and the spread of the new technologies and old knowledge.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

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What factors explain Spain’s central role in New World exploration and colonization?

The unification of Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and the experience of the Reconquista, provided Spain with advantages in its later conquest of the New World. The Spanish Crown supported the explorations of Christopher Columbus, who thought he had discovered a new route to Asia. His voyages gave the Spanish a head start in claiming American lands.

Spanish Expansion: Spain first vied as a world power after unification in the 1400s. The united kingdoms took on new life and prosecuted the Reconquista more fiercely than ever.

Militantly Catholic, the Spanish crown pushed the last Muslim state out in 1492, forcing both Muslims and Jews to flee. The conquistadores took this religious war overseas. The Canary Islands were the first overseas possessions taken by the Spanish.

The Strange Career of Christopher Columbus : Of Genoese origin, Christopher Columbus helped Spain to capture its American lands. Columbus went first to the Portuguese, but they pursued their goal of reaching the East by rounding the southern tip of Africa. He was more successful in petition the Spanish monarchs and was supplied with a fleet to sail to Cathay in August 1492. Miscalculating the distance required to reach Asia, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean. He reached the Bahamas first, convinced that he had reached the East. In spite of three more voyages to the Americas, Columbus died in disgrace, ignorant of the fact that he had found a new continent. Amerigo Vespucci published a fictional account of his travels across the Atlantic and convinced Europeans that new lands had indeed been hit upon. His name was given to the Americas. Watch the Video How Should We Think of Columbus? on myhistorylab.com SPAIN IN THE AMERICAS Immediately after Columbus’s first voyage in 1492, Spain and Portugal quarreled over the hoped-for spoils from what they thought was Asia. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided the new lands along a line running from north to south through the Americas.

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HOW did Spanish conquest of Central and South America transform Native American cultures?

Spanish conquistadores conquered vast territories in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America during the sixteenth century. Catholic missionaries followed the conquistadors to convert the Indians to Christianity. Although the Spanish conquerors cruelly exploited the Indians as laborers, intermarriage between the groups soon led to the creation of a new culture blending Spanish and Indian elements.

The Conquistadores: Faith and Greed: To expand Spain’s territories in the New World, the Crown commissioned independent adventurers (conquistadores) to subdue new lands. For God, glory, and gold they came. Within two decades they decimated the major Caribbean islands, where most of the Indians died from exploitation and disease. The Spaniards then moved onto the mainland and continued the work of conquest. Hernán Cortés went to Mexico in search of 6

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

legendary treasures. He came up against the Aztec emperor, Montezuma. Helped by tributary tribes, firearms and horses, and seen initially as a god, Cortés destroyed the Aztec Empire in 1521. An Early European Image of Native Americans on View the Closer Look myhistorylab.com From Plunder to Settlement: The Spanish crown kept her unruly subjects in America loyal by rewarding the conquistadores with large land grants—encomiendas—that contained entire villages of Indians. In spite of these grants, the Spanish crown tried to keep direct control over their American lands. The Catholic Church also became an integral part of the administrative system, and mitigated some of the damage done by the conquistadores. By 1650, about half a million Spaniards immigrated to the New World. Since most were unmarried males, they married Indian or African women and produced a mixed-blood population. Spain’s empire proved to be a mixed blessing. The great influx of gold and silver made Spain rich and powerful, but set off a massive inflation and the Spanish crown became dependent on bullion imports.

Cruel Conquistadors Torturing Native Americans on View the Image myhistorylab.com THE FRENCH CLAIM CANADA French kings sent several expeditions to America. Jacques Cartier arrived in the Americas in 1534, and explored the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The region was settled by Frenchman Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec in 1608. The French settlers saw cooperation with Native Americans as the best way to succeed. French coureurs de bois traveled deep into Canada searching for furs. This led Jacques Marquette and Sieur de la Salle down the Mississippi, ultimately reaching the Gulf of Mexico. French Catholics had fair success in converting Native Americans. The French empire however, was largely ignored by the French crown. The limited trading was easily controlled in Quebec, hindering economic growth. Jacques Cartier, First Contact with the Indians (1534) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

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WHAT was the character of the French empire in Canada?

The French in Canada focused on building a trading empire rather than on settlement. The coureurs de bois and Catholic missionaries lived among the Indians and learned their languages and customs. French explorers followed the extensive river networks of North America and laid claim to vast stretches of land along the St. Lawrence and Mississippi Rivers.

THE ENGLISH TAKE UP THE CHALLENGE When the Italian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), sailing for the English crossed the Atlantic in 1497, England won a claim to the Americas. However, this claim was not pursued until the late sixteenth century. The English crown, though growing in strength under Henry VII and his successors, was not in a position to undertake overseas ventures. An alliance between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in 1509 made English forays into what was perceived as the Spanish New World difficult.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

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WHY did England not participate in the early competition for New World colonies?

During the early 1500s, religious turmoil occupied the full attention of England’s monarchs. After ascending the throne in 1558, Queen Elizabeth I ended internal religious struggle by establishing an English Church that was Protestant in doctrine but Catholic in ceremony. Under Elizabeth, English nationalism merged with anti-Catholicism in a campaign to challenge Spanish control of the Americas.

Birth of English Protestantism: The Protestant Reformation turned England’s alliance with Spain into enmity. English Protestant zeal, strengthened by growing nationalism, made England a more notable European power. When Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church to achieve a divorce from his wife, anticlerical feelings in England led most of his subjects to countenance the split with Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy made the English monarch head of the church and transformed rich church lands into crown lands. A negative consequence of the break with Rome, on the other hand, was sectarian division, which weakened the crown.

The Catholic Mary became queen in 1553, bringing a tide of anti-Protestant persecutions. The succession of Elizabeth in 1558 brought a moderate course of compromise between Catholic and Protestant observance. Henry VII, Letters of Patent Granted to John Cabot on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Religion, War, and Nationalism: Protestantism and nationalism merged in England. Successful minor skirmishes against the Spanish—basically pirate raids—strengthened a growing patriotism. Annoyed by English ambitions, and the Protestant English queen, Philip II of Spain assembled the Spanish Armada to attack the English. In spite of its size, the Armada was easily overcome by the English fleet in 1588, and England emerged stronger than ever. Just before, in 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh had established the colony of Virginia.

CONCLUSION: CAMPAIGN TO SELL AMERICA Despite Ralegh’s failure, Richard Hakluyt kept English interest in America alive by tirelessly advertising the benefits of colonization. His book The Principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation subtly argued that England needed American colonies. He did not mention, however, that those English people who went to America would encounter other peoples with different dreams about what America should be. John White, Letter to Richard Hakluyt (1590) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

KEY TERMS: 1. Twenty thousand years ago Earth’s climate was considerably colder than it is today. Huge glaciers extended as far south as the present states of Illinois and Ohio and covered broad sections of western Canada. Most of the world’s moisture was transformed into ice, and the oceans dropped hundreds of feet below their current levels. The receding waters created a land bridge connecting Asia and North America, a region now submerged beneath the Bering Sea that has been named Beringia.

2. The Agricultural Revolution helped liberate nomadic groups from the insecurities of hunting and gathering. During this period, Native Americans began to produce ceramics, a 8

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

valuable technology for the storage of grain. The vegetable harvest made possible the establishment of permanent villages, and as the food supply increased, Native American populations expanded, especially around urban centers.

3. The Eastern Woodland Cultures included Indians who lived on the Atlantic coast and supplemented farming with seasonal hunting and gathering. They organized diplomacy, trade, and war around reciprocal relationships that impressed Europeans as being extraordinarily egalitarian, even democratic.

4. Through the ecological transformation known as the Columbian Exchange, European conquerors exposed Native Americans to several new and fatal diseases. Some tribes suffered a 90 to 95 percent population loss within the first century of European contact.

Beneficial effects included the exchange of plants and domestic animals between the two continents.

5. Sixteenth-century Spanish adventurers known as conquistadores, often of noble birth, subdued the Native Americans and created the Spanish empire in the New World. These men were eager for personal glory and material gain, uncompromising in matters of religion, and unswerving in their loyalty to the crown.

6. In 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal divided the entire world along a line located 270 leagues west of the Azores. Any new lands discovered west of the line belonged to Spain. The treaty failed to discourage future English, Dutch, and French adventurers from trying their luck in the New World.

7. The encomienda system rewarded Spanish conquistadores with control over Indian villages.

The people who lived in the settlements (Native Americans) were forced to provide their labor in exchange for legal protection and religious guidance.

8. The figure known as the Virgin of Guadalupe is the result of a creative blending of Indian and European cultures, and it served as a powerful symbol of Mexican nationalism in the wars for independence fought against Spain almost three centuries later.

9. Frenchmen who followed Canada’s rivers to find fresh sources of furs were known as coureurs de bois.

10. With the coming of the Protestant Reformation, the English began to consider their former ally, Spain, to be the greatest threat to English aspirations. England became more and more a Protestant society, and the merger of English Protestantism and English nationalism affected all aspects of public life. The Reformation created a powerful sense of an English identity among all classes of people.

11. The failure of the Spanish Armada’s invasion meant that Spanish hopes for Catholic England were dashed completely.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What was life like for the first humans living in North America and what role did Earth’s climate play in shaping their experiences? Global warming allowed the huntergatherers of Asia to cross into North America. Temperature change put many species at risk, while early humans finished off such animals as camels, mammoths, and horses. Many Native Americans combined agriculture with hunting, produced ceramics, and formed permanent villages.

2. What most impressed Spanish explorers about Aztec culture? Spanish explorers were most impressed with Aztec cities, which housed several hundred thousand people.

3. How was society structured among the Eastern Woodland Indians before the arrival of Europeans? Most of the Algonquian peoples that seventeenth-century English settlers encountered were matrilineal farm bands. The women owned the fields and houses, maintained tribal customs, and had a role in tribal government 4. Why did Europeans insist on trying to “civilize” the Indians? They wanted Native Americans to become more European by adopting their education, customs, and traditions.

Of great importance was converting the Indians to Christianity.

5. What effect did the introduction of Old World diseases such as smallpox have on Native American societies and cultures? It decimated their numbers, especially those closer to the coast and within range of initial contact. As much as 90 to 95 percent of some tribes were wiped out and they found their culture unraveling under the strain.

6. Who were the conquistadores, and what were their motivations in the New World? The conquistadores were men who were eager for personal glory and material wealth. They were rigid in their religious beliefs and loyal to the crown. They were prepared to use fire and sword in any cause authorized by God or king.

7. What did educated Europeans believe about the shape and size of Earth prior to 1492?

Educated Europeans of that time believed Earth was round; the problem lay in distance.

Columbus and his supporters believed Earth’s circumference was only 3,000 nautical miles, but instead it was 10,600 nautical miles—a journey too long for the small ships of Columbus’s fleet.

8. How did Cortés and his small band of Spanish soldiers manage to conquer the Aztec empire? Cortés had a technological superiority, but it was the Aztec belief that the Spaniards were gods that gave him a psychological advantage as well.

9. Describe the character of Spanish-Indian relations following the conquest of Mexico.

Indians were treated as laborers, sometimes slaves, who lived in villages. They provided labor tribute to encomenderos who were usually conquistadores given villages by the crown to keep them tied to the state. Their conditions were deplorable with only priests like Fra Bartolomé de las Casas to speak out on their behalf.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

10. What was the impact of the Protestant Reformation on English politics? Henry VIII and Elizabeth I developed a strong central administration, while at the same time becoming increasingly more Protestant. England was propelled into a central role in European affairs by the merger of English nationalism and Protestantism.

11. How did Protestantism and English national identity become merged under Queen Elizabeth I? As each threat to England was put down, English nationalism grew and established deeper roots. The good Englishmen loved the queen, supported the Church of England, and hated Catholics, especially those from Spain. The Armada and other attempts to curb English expansion only helped the roots of English pride grow deeper.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

CHAPTER 2 England’s New World Experiments, 1607–1732 CHAPTER OUTLINE Profit and Piety: Competing Visions for English Settlement Breaking Away: Decisions to Move to America The Chesapeake: Dreams of Wealth Entrepreneurs in Virginia Threat of Anarchy Tobacco Saves Virginia Time of Reckoning Maryland: A Catholic Refuge A “New” England in America The Puritan Migration to Massachusetts “A City on a Hill” Competing Truths in New England Mobility and Division Diversity in the Middle Colonies Anglo-Dutch Rivalry on the Hudson Confusion in New Jersey Quakers in America Penn’s “Holy Experiment” Planting the Southern Colonies Founding the Carolinas Founding of Georgia Conclusion: Living with Diversity

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

TOWARD DISCUSSION: FOLKWAYS College students are a well-traveled lot and have experienced for themselves some of the regional diversity that still characterizes the United States. When asked to describe such differences, they immediately mention sectional accents. Many students have also noticed regional differences in food, architecture, and what is vaguely referred to as “style.” Considering all the forces working to homogenize American culture, it is amazing that the United States still retains vestiges of cultural diversity that can be traced back to the colonial era.

Early American historians have only recently begun to appreciate the astonishing variety of English cultures in the seventeenth century. England was a small island of little more than four million people in 1600, yet they lived in a series of subcultures that were often incomprehensible to one another. The basic division was between the heavily populated southeast and the still forested northwest, but differences between counties, or even between villages, were enormous.

Only those who grew up in the vicinity, for example, would have understood that someone “stabbed with a Bridgeport dagger” had actually been hanged, the point being that Bridgeport produced excellent rope. Only local residents knew that a “Jack of Dover” was warmed-over food.

Of greater interest are those English cultural traits that crossed the Atlantic. The high-pitched nasal twang of East Anglia migrated to Massachusetts Bay and became the “typical” Yankee New England accent. People in the west of England tended to speak in a soft drawl, drawing out their vowels until “I” sounded like “Ah.” It was possible in seventeenth-century Hampshire County to hear people say, “Ah be poorly,” meaning “I am ill.” That style of speech, it is assumed, laid the foundation for today’s “southern accent.”

Students should be reminded that many of the immigrants called British had little in common with the people called English. Cornish was still a living language and ancient Gaelic ways of life held the allegiance of the people of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Some historians today argue that it was the Celtic immigration that brought into America what is sometimes referred to as “Cracker culture.” If we further consider the large German immigration of the eighteenth century and the even larger influx of Africans, we can easily understand that English culture, varied as it was from the outset, would be transmuted into yet more varied regional subcultures in colonial America.

RELIVING THE PAST John Smith’s whole life was so filled with improbable adventures that some historians have written him off as a hopeless liar. In his Generall Historie of Virginia, printed in 1624, Smith described how he was captured by the Indians and rescued from imminent death by the Indian princess, Pocahontas (Book 3, Chapter II). It would be interesting to compare the story there with two earlier accounts covering the same period. There are striking discrepancies. Philip Barbour has edited The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1986), 3 volumes.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

William Bradford described the departure of the Pilgrims from Holland and the last farewells exchanged between friends and relatives who knew they would never meet again. Bradford’s simple, graceful prose expresses the anguish that must have gripped the millions of Europeans for whom a better life in America was purchased and the heartbreak of those who stayed behind. The best edition of Bradford’s journal is the one edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, Of PIymouth Plantation (New York: Knopf, 1963).

CHAPTER SUMMARY PROFIT AND PIETY: COMPETING VISIONS FOR ENGLISH SETTLEMENT The early English colonies were characterized by diversity of goals and ideals. When the Virginia plantations came into conflict with Native Americans, the governor of Massachusetts failed to help. Thirty-one years later, in 1675, when the New Englanders came under attack, the governor of Virginia saw the attack as a deserved divine punishment and in his turn offered no help.

The author uses the refusal of Massachusetts and Virginia to aid one another during times of crisis to illustrate the remarkable diversity that quickly characterized the different colonies.

Although they were all English, they differed in religious practices, political institutions, and economic development. Differences rooted in conflicts in England were often increased in the colonies.

BREAKING AWAY: DECISIONS TO MOVE TO AMERICA The English came to America for different reasons and with different backgrounds. Some wanted an opportunity to worship God in their own way; others wanted land. Some came in the early part of the century when England was relatively stable; others came at the end of the century after England had experienced a civil war. In America, the colonists had to adjust to different environments. The result was the development of different subcultures: the Chesapeake, New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies.

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WHY did the Chesapeake colonies not prosper during the earliest years of settlement?

In 1607, the Virginia Company established Jamestown as a profit-making venture. Early settlers relied on tobacco as a profitable cash crop. Sir George Calvert founded Maryland in 1634 as a sanctuary for Catholics. Both colonies depended on the labor of indentured servants, predominately single young men. Disease, oppression, and warfare contributed to social instability.

The Chesapeake: Dreams of Wealth: After the disappearance of the Roanoke colony, there was little English interest in the Americas. Those who did advocate settlement viewed the Americas as a source of great natural resources. The English colonized the Chesapeake because they believed they could obtain instant profits. English anti-Spanish feeling also added a motivation, and prosecuting claims in North America would challenge Spanish ambitions.

The Colonies to 1740 on myhistorylab.com View the Map 13

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Entrepreneurs in Virginia: The great expense of colonization was solved in England with the joint-stock companies. These companies allowed pooling of wealth. The London Company, chartered in 1606, settled a colony at Jamestown in 1607 that met immediate disaster. The location in a swamp had been a mistake, but even worse was the failure of the colonists to work together for the common good. Mural of Jamestown Settlement on View the Image myhistorylab.com Threat of Anarchy: Captain John Smith, a tough professional soldier, saved the colonists by imposing order. The London Company helped, too, by reorganizing the government of the colony and by investing more money in the enterprise. A powerful Indian confederation under Powhatan, initially interested in alliance with the English, attacked the Virginia colony in 1622 and 1644. Jamestown was actually abandoned for a few days in 1610 and was saved only by the coincidental arrival of a new shipload of colonists. John Smith, “The Starving Time” on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Tobacco Saves Virginia: Tobacco had been growing as a common weed in the streets of Jamestown before John Rolfe recognized its value. He improved its quality and found a market for it in England. Finally, Virginians had discovered the way to wealth. The London Company, under Sir Edwin Sandys, encouraged large-scale immigration to Virginia by offering headrights, grants of land given to those who paid for the cost of immigration, and by giving the colonists a form of self-government in an elected body called the House of Burgesses. First House of Burgesses Meeting in Jamestown on View the Image myhistorylab.com Time of Reckoning: After 1619, a rush of immigrants arrived in Virginia; few, however, survived for long. Many found that promises made in England, especially indentures were often not honored. It was impossible to establish a normal family life because men outnumbered women by about six to one. The colony, therefore, could not count on a natural increase in its population. Disease and Indian attacks continued to take their toll, especially the sudden outbursts of violence in 1622 that almost wiped out the colony. Virginia remained a place to make a quick fortune and then leave before becoming one of the mortality statistics. The crown made Virginia a royal colony in 1624. The House of Burgesses continued to meet, and was recognized in 1639. Wessell Webling, His Indenture (1622) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Maryland: A Catholic Refuge: The founding of Maryland resulted from the efforts of George Calvert to find a place of refuge for his fellow English Catholics. After his death, his son, Cecilius (Lord Baltimore), received a charter to settle Maryland in 1632. He expected that he would govern the colony along with a few of his wealthy Catholic friends, but he knew that most of the immigrants who would come from England would be Protestant. He therefore issued a law requiring Christians to tolerate one another. Lord Baltimore failed to create the society he wanted. His wealthy friends were unwilling to relocate to America, and the common settlers in Maryland demanded a greater voice in the government. Above all, religious intolerance wrecked Baltimore’s plans. Protestants refused to tolerate Catholics, and the Protestants were strong enough to rise up in arms and seize control of the colony in 1655. Maryland’s early history 14

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

differed from Virginia’s, but aggressive individualism, an absence of public spirit, and an economy based on tobacco characterized both colonies. George Alsop from “A Character of the Province of Maryland” on Read the Document myhistorylab.com A “NEW ” ENGLAND IN AMERICA The legend of the Puritans who came to settle New England is mostly fiction built around a core of solid history. Separatists from Scrooby, England, they were forced abroad by their refusal to attend Anglican services. The Netherlands offered the group a home, but fear of assimilation into Dutch culture drove some of the Scrooby group to sail to America. With limited funds, they negotiated a land patent with the Virginia Company, and found backers. Their ship, the Mayflower, set sail in 1620. Arriving in New England instead of Virginia as planned, with division threatening, 41 of the passengers signed the Mayflower Compact. The new Plymouth settlement was immediately faced with starvation and debt. They were assisted by Squanto and Massasoit, two Native Americans that taught the colonists how to survive in their new surroundings. Mayflower Replica Plymouth, Massachusetts on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

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WHAT role did differences in religion play in the founding of the New England colonies?

Religious persecution drove thousands of Puritans to New England. John Winthrop hoped the settlers would reform English Protestantism and create a “City on a Hill.” The Puritans did not welcome dissent. They exiled Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson to Rhode Island for their religious beliefs. Stable nuclear families and good health helped Puritans to avoid the social turmoil that plagued the Chesapeake colonies.

The Puritan Migration to Massachusetts: The second colony planted in New England was Massachusetts Bay, the home of the Puritans. The Puritans often have been caricatured as neurotics and prudes; in fact, they were men and women committed to changing the major institution of their society. Unlike the Separatists, the Puritans wished to remain within the Church of England, but they wanted the Church to give up all remaining vestiges of her Roman Catholic past. Puritans were also intensely nationalistic and desired a foreign policy that would align England with the Protestant states of Europe. They hoped to accomplish their goals by working within the system, but when King Charles I decided to rule the country without consulting with Parliament, the Puritans despaired. Some of them, led by John Winthrop, decided to establish a better society in America. The Massachusetts Bay Company was formed, and Charles, thinking the company no different from other joint-stock companies, granted it a charter in 1629. Ordinarily, the company should have kept its headquarters in England, where the king could supervise it, but the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Company secretly agreed to bring the charter with them to America. Reasons for the Plantation in New England on Read the Document myhistorylab.com “A City on a Hill”: The Winthrop fleet established settlements around Boston in 1630. The first settlers were joined within a year by two thousand more, and the Bay Colony enjoyed a steady stream of immigration during its first decade: the “Great Migration.” Because the settlers 15

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

usually came as family units, because the area was generally healthy, and because most of the Puritan colonists were willing to sacrifice self-interest for the good of the community, Massachusetts Bay avoided the misery that had characterized colonization in the Chesapeake.

Puritans proved to be pragmatic and inventive in creating social institutions. They had no intention of separating from the Church of England, but immediately dispensed with those features of the Church they found objectionable. The result was Congregationalism, a system that stressed simplicity and in which each congregation was independent. Puritans created a civil government that was neither democratic nor theocratic. A larger proportion of adult males could vote in Massachusetts Bay than in England because the only requirement for voting was a spiritual one. If a man was “born again” he became a “freeman,” or voter, whether he owned property or not. The rulers of the Bay Colony were not democratic in our sense, however; they did not believe that elected officials should concern themselves with the wishes of those who had elected them. On the local level, Puritans created almost completely autonomous towns, and it was on this level that most men participated in public life. Village life was intensely communal even though townships were commercial properties, shares of which could be bought and sold.

John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Competing Truths in New England: In order to protect individual rights and to clarify the responsibilities of citizenship, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay issued the Lawes and Liberties of 1648. This code of law marked the Puritans’ considerable progress in establishing a stable society. In the New World, the Puritans sought freedom of worship, but not for others. Not everyone was happy in Massachusetts Bay. The two most important dissidents were Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Williams, an extreme Separatist, condemned all civil states, even one governed by Puritans. He was expelled and settled in Rhode Island. Anne Hutchinson believed she was directly inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that once a person was “born again” he or she need not obey man-made laws (Antinomianism). Because of her religious ideas and because an assertive woman threatened patriarchal authority, she too was expelled and went to Rhode Island. Colonial Families, Adult and Child Reading on View the Image myhistorylab.com Mobility and Division: Massachusetts Bay spawned four other colonies: New Hampshire, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Of them, New Hampshire remained too small to be significant in the seventeenth century, and New Haven became part of Connecticut. Rhode Island received the Bay Colony’s outcasts (religious dissenters and Quakers for the most part), who continued to make as much trouble in Roger Williams’s colony as they had in John Winthrop’s. Connecticut, a well-populated colony that owed its first settlement to Thomas Hooker, duplicated the institutions and way of life of its mother colony.

DIVERSITY IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES No section of the English empire was more diverse in its history, its ethnic and religious pluralism, or its political institutions than the Middle Colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. These differences emerged from the very different goals that led to their settlement. Father Isaac Jogues’ Description of New York, 1640 on Read the Document myhistorylab.com 16

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

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HOW did ethnic diversity shape the development of the Middle Colonies?

After conquering the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, the English renamed it New York. Despite the conquest, the Dutch remained an influential minority in the colony, and ethnic rivalries shaped the politics of New York for many decades. In 1681, Charles II granted William Penn, a Quaker, a charter for the establishment of Pennsylvania. Penn’s guarantee to respect all Christian settlers’ liberty of conscience drew immigrants from across Northern Europe.

Anglo-Dutch Rivalry on the Hudson: The Dutch settled New York after the voyages of Henry Hudson. The colony became the property of the Dutch West Indies Company, which gave New York little attention and sent incompetent officials. New York was Dutch in little more than ownership. Few immigrants came from Holland, so the Dutch population remained small. Even so, it was polyglot. Finns, Swedes, Germans, and Africans made up sizable minorities in the colony, and these people felt no loyalty to the Dutch West Indies Company. When England sent a fleet to take New York in 1664, the colony fell without a shot being fired. New York became the personal property of James, Duke of York (later King James II). His colony included New Jersey, Delaware, and Maine, as well as various islands. James attempted to rule this vast domain without allowing its inhabitants a political voice beyond the local level. The Dutch retained their language, and their religion, seemingly indifferent to the change of government Confusion in New Jersey: James, the Duke of York, gifted two courtiers who had served his father in the English Civil War land in what is now New Jersey. Two proprietary claims emerged and East and West Jersey governments were formed. The Quakers who ran the West were so quarrelsome William Penn gave up on them. Eventually bankruptcy brought a remerger of the territory, but throughout all the turmoil James II never once showed a concern for New Jersey or her people.

Quakers in America: Pennsylvania, the most important of the Middle Colonies, owed its settlement to the rise of a religious group, the Quakers, or Society of Friends, that was formed

by George Fox in England in the 1650s. The Quakers lived a simple life, which included the principles of equality and pacifism. Their preaching raised antipathy in neighboring states, leading to imprisonment and even martyrdom.

Penn’s “Holy Experiment”: William Penn, the son of an admiral and a wealthy aristocrat, converted to the Society of Friends and became one of their leaders. He used his contacts to obtain a charter for Pennsylvania, which he intended to settle as a “Holy Experiment”, a society run on Quaker principles. In 1682, Penn announced a plan of government for Pennsylvania that contained some traditional features and some advanced features. Nearly all of the political power would be held by men of great wealth, but an elaborate system was designed to protect the rights of those without political or economic power. The scheme, however, proved too complicated to work. Penn successfully recruited immigrants from England, Wales, Ireland, and Germany, and Pennsylvania grew rapidly in population. Many of these immigrants were not Quakers, however, and felt no sense of obligation to make the “Holy Experiment” work. Even the Quakers in Pennsylvania fought among themselves, and the people of Delaware, after Penn bought the colony from the Duke of York, preferred to rule themselves. Diversity typified

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Pennsylvania’s emerging institutions. William Penn, “Model for Government” (1681) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com PLANTING THE SOUTHERN COLONIES The Carolinas differed so much from the Chesapeake Colonies that it would be wrong to speak of the existence of “the South” in the seventeenth century.

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HOW was the founding of the Carolinas different from that of Georgia?

Immigrants from Barbados began settling in the Carolinas in the 1670s. Barbadian immigrants to the Carolinas, many of whom were wealthy planters seeking new lands for plantations, brought slavery with them when they moved. Georgia was founded in 1732 as an alternative to debtors’ prison for impoverished Englishmen and as a military outpost to guard against the Spanish in Florida.

Founding the Carolinas: King Charles II granted Carolina in 1663 to eight friends and political allies who expected to sit back and collect rents as the colony filled up.

Unfortunately for them, nobody went to Carolina. One of the colony’s proprietors, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Earl of Shaftesbury), realized that a more active search for immigrants had to be made. He and John Locke, the famous philosopher, concocted a plan of government that would have given most power to a hereditary elite while at the same time protecting the rights of the small landowners. He also encouraged planters in Barbados, who were being crowded off the island, to take up land in Carolina. Cooper was somewhat successful. A string of settlements grew up around Charleston, but Cooper’s plan of government failed. The Barbadians, who dominated early Carolina, wanted as much selfgovernment as they had enjoyed in Barbados. The Barbadians, in turn, were opposed by French Huguenot settlers, who felt loyal to the proprietors. Carolina became a colony in turmoil. In 1729, the Crown took over Carolina and divided it into two colonies: North and South Carolina.

Founding of Georgia: Arising from antagonism between Britain and Spain, Georgia was founded in 1732 as a buffer to safeguard the Carolinas from Spanish claims. Although conceived

by James Oglethorpe as a refuge for persons imprisoned for debt in England, Georgia attracted few immigrants. Arguing that they could not farm without unfree workers, the settlers won the right to import slaves. By 1751, it had become a small slave colony, much like South Carolina.

CONCLUSION: LIVING WITH DIVERSITY All of the colonies struggled for survival in their first phase, but as they developed, distinct regional differences intensified and persisted throughout the colonial period and even during the struggle for independence. Nevertheless, the colonists eventually developed a distinct identity, a phenomenon that historians have to explain.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

KEY TERMS: 1. The joint-stock company allowed people to invest without fear of bankruptcy. A merchant or landowner could purchase a share of stock at a stated price, and at the end of several years the investor could anticipate recovering the initial amount plus a portion of whatever profits the company made. With many people investing in companies, some projects, such as the launching of a new colony in Virginia, were possible.

2. The House of Burgesses was the first elective representative assembly in colonial Virginia, and its creation was thought to make the colony more attractive to wealthy speculators.

3. A headright, a 50-acre lot for which a low rent was collected, was guaranteed to colonists who paid their own way to the colonies. Powerful Virginians corrupted the system.

Headrights were awarded not to the newly freed servant but to the great planter who had borne the cost of the servant’s transportation to the New World and paid for the food and clothing during the indenture. And even though indentured servants were promised land at the moment of freedom, they were most often cheated.

4. An indentured servant agreed to serve a master for a prescribed period of time in exchange for passage across the Atlantic. Most of these emigrants were single males who came across in their teens or early twenties and were critical to the early colonies’ development.

5. An agreement among the Pilgrims to create a civil government at Plymouth Colony, the Mayflower Compact helped to preserve a struggling community. Because they had arrived in New England and did not have the authority to form a civil government in the region, there was a threat of mutiny.

6. Products of the Protestant Reformation, Puritans accepted a Calvinist notion that an omnipotent God predestined some people to salvation and damned others throughout eternity. They tried to live every day according to Scripture with the hope that they would be among God’s “elect.”

7. A large percentage of those Puritans participating in the “Great Migration” originated in an area northeast of London called East Anglia. London, Kent, and the West Country also contributed to the stream of emigrants. Large numbers came from industrial centers, such as Norwich. By the early 1640s, more than 16,000 men and women had arrived in Massachusetts Bay. 8. Antinomianis m counters everything that the Puritans believed with regard to religion, and the Puritans were not supporters of religious toleration. Antinomianism rejects moral law and affirms that an individual could experience divine revelation and salvation without the assistance of formally trained clergy.

9. Unlike the Puritans, the Quakers rejected formal theology and stressed each person’s “Inner Light,” a spiritual guide to righteousness.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. Why did some people continue to advocate colonies in the New World? They believed that the North American mainland contained resources of incalculable value. It was argued that a resourceful group might reap great profits while providing England with raw materials it would otherwise be forced to purchase from rivals like the Dutch.

2. Why did Jamestown come so close to failing in its early years? The low-lying ground chosen for the site of the colony was actually a disease-ridden death trap. Although it seemed the ideal location to build a fort, it was mosquito infested and the available water was contaminated with salt.

3. Why did the first Virginia settlers not cooperate for the common good? Members of the council in Jamestown debated petty politics. It was not until John Smith instituted tough military discipline without showing special privilege to anyone that things turned around for the colony.

4. In what sense did tobacco save the Chesapeake colonies? John Rolfe’s discovery produced a crop appealing to Europeans in that it was easy to grow and it made money.

Colonists who had once avoided work threw themselves into its cultivation.

5. What explains the extraordinary death rate in early Virginia? The horrendous mismanagement of the colony combined with dangerous conditions contributed to high death rates. Rampant contagious diseases, salt in the water, and massacres such as the Good Friday Powhatan massacre in 1622 all contributed to a sense of impermanence among the surviving colonists.

6. What motives led Lord Baltimore to establish the colony of Maryland? Lord Baltimore wanted to create a sanctuary for England’s persecuted Catholics; he also wanted to make money.

7. Why did the Puritans choose to leave England? The Puritans became convinced that the Church of England and the vices of the rest of the country could no longer be reformed from within. They believed “God will bring some heavy affliction upon this land,” as John Winthrop put it, but God would have somewhere safe set aside for those like Winthrop.

8. What did the founders of Massachusetts mean when they referred to their colony as a “City on a Hill”? The first settlers drew strength from the idea of creating an Old Testament “City on a Hill” that would stand as a beacon of righteousness to the rest of the Christian world. They were expected to live according to Scripture and reform the Church. If they did this, they could expect to live in peace and prosperity.

9. In what ways did Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson pose a threat to the Massachusetts Bay Colony? In both cases Williams and Hutchinson challenged not just the religious authority of leaders but their political authority as well. Williams challenged the validity of the colony’s charter because the land was not purchased from the Indians.

Hutchinson’s heresy went even further, stating that it could not be tested by Scripture. Her accusations coupled with the fact she was a woman made Hutchinson a danger to the very social fabric of the colony.

10. What religious and economic factors led to the settlement of other New England colonies beyond Massachusetts Bay? Rhode Island maintained a strong independent streak, while Connecticut followed a religious path similar to Massachusetts Bay and prospered in the Connecticut valley. New Hampshire remained reliant on trade with the Bay Colony.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

11. Why were the Dutch unable to establish a permanent colony in what became New York? New Netherland lacked individuals capable of leading a colony. The Dutch sent several director-generals to govern, but they invariably lined their pockets and ruled autocratically. One even stumbled into a war that killed great numbers of settlers and Indians.

12. What caused chaos during the settlement of New Jersey? Ownership of the colony was confused from the start. The Duke of York, future James II of England, gave land to Lords Carteret and Berkeley. However, before they had begun to give out land, the governor of the new colony had allowed farmers to move in and charged rents. Some colonists claimed the governor had authorized their assembly, while others claimed Berkeley and Carteret had the authority. Eventually the lands split into East Jersey and West Jersey, but when West Jersey went bankrupt, the king reunited the two sections into the single royal colony of New Jersey.

13. What explains Puritan hostility toward Quakers? Quakers as antinomianists saw no need for a learned ministry. They preached conversion constantly and believed everyone was equal. These views led to their persecution by English and Puritan authorities, which only increased the Quakers’ efforts.

14. How did the Quaker religion influence the development of Pennsylvania? Penn’s Quaker beliefs and need for money led him to establish a colony open to all peoples. Rights to worship, no taxation without representation, and due process of law appealed to many people throughout Europe.

15. How did the Barbadian background of the early settlers shape the economic development of the Carolinas? Before 1680 almost half the men coming into the Carolinas were from the island of Barbados. They moved inland and established plantations like they had in Barbados with slaves and thus established a planter elite class unlike any other English colony. They fought with the proprietors and Huguenot refugees who settled in the area as well. They went through multiple crops and products, like naval stores, before finally settling on rice.

16. Why did Georgia settlers object to the government imposed upon them by James Oglethorpe? Georgia’s early settlers objected to Oglethorpe’s original government because it forbid slavery, rum, and the acquiring of land in excess of 500 acres and allowed for only the eldest son to inherit. If a father died childless, the land reverted to the trustees.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

CHAPTER 3 Putting Down Roots: Opportunity and Oppression in Colonial Society, 1619–1692 CHAPTER OUTLINE Families in an Atlantic Empire Social Stability: New England Colonies of the Seventeenth Century Immigrant Families and New Social Order Puritan Women in New England Establishing a New Social Order The Challenge of the Chesapeake Environment Families at Risk The Structure of Planter Society Race and Freedom in British America Roots of Slavery Constructing African American Identities Blueprint for Empire Response to Economic Competition Regulating Colonial Trade Colonial Political Revolts Civil War in Virginia: Bacon’s Rebellion The Glorious Revolution in the Bay Colony Contagion of Witchcraft Conclusion: Foundations of an Atlantic Empire

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE CALCULUS OF SLAVERY Historians are interested in slavery, students in racism. Historians want to know how and when slavery originated and developed as an institution protected by law; students want to know why whites and blacks, who have so much in common, still seem to identify themselves as if they were different people with different cultures. Slavery is one of the most painful and difficult topics in American history, but you have a chance in this chapter to make the point that institutions usually reflect social demands and that institutions designed to serve one purpose can be adapted to serve altogether different ends. American slavery clearly began as the profitable solution to an economic problem. By the time slavery was destroyed, it had become the unprofitable solution to a social problem.

The question of English racism is being reconsidered by scholars at present, but even if it existed to a significant degree in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it would have worked both for and against the introduction of enslaved Africans into the colonies. If the English hated or feared Africans enough to enslave them, why not keep Africans out of the colonies altogether?

Whatever the truth about English racism, it is clear that economics played the crucial role in the introduction of slavery into British North America.

An English colonist wealthy enough to buy labor had a choice between an English or European indentured servant and an enslaved African. Until around 1700 in British North America, the choice was usually to buy a servant because that purchase made more economic sense. The planter made a series of calculations that you can present to your students in the form of a simple model. The planter weighed four factors: the initial cost of the laborer, the annual cost of maintenance, the annual output per worker and the length of service. If it is explained that servants usually worked for five years, your students will focus on the length of service and give the economic edge to slavery, especially considering that a person enslaved for life could actually bear children, who would be in turn enslaved for life. You should require your students to pay more attention to the initial cost of a laborer. The British North American colonies were always on the fringe of the Atlantic slave trade. About 90 percent of the ten million people taken from Africa were carried to the sugar plantations in Brazil and the West Indies. The British mainland colonies had to pay a premium to divert slave traders from their preferred routes with the result that an African laborer in the colonial period cost four or five times more than an indentured servant, a price so high that only the largest tobacco and rice growers in North America could afford to buy people directly from Africa.

Through most of the colonial period, the up-front cost was the critical factor in determining whether to buy a servant or a slave. There was relatively little difference in the cost of maintenance. Servants did not live luxuriously, nor could slaves be starved. The productivity of slaves and servants depended less on their status than on the quality of the soil they worked and the amount of equipment they used. When all the calculation was done, the planter wound up weighing the initial cost of the laborer against the expected length of service. A servant worked only five years or so, but these were prime working years. A slave and his or her children would work for life, but some planters doubted that a slave too young or too old was worth having.

More importantly, the death rate in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake and in the South 23

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

Carolina rice fields was so high that neither whites nor blacks could expect to live to a ripe old age. A planter who purchased a servant was taking a chance that he or she would survive for five years. A planter who paid much more for a slave was taking an even greater risk. Until about 1700, the prudent choice was to buy a servant.

If the high death rates of the seventeenth century had continued, North America would have largely escaped the curse of slavery, but times changed. After 1700, British merchants dominated the slave trade and opened a direct trade between Africa and the colonies. At the same time, life expectancy in the Chesapeake improved. The combination of these two factors, plus the desire to profit without regard to morality, fastened slavery upon British North America.

What clearly began as an economic institution soon became a racist social arrangement. Even before the American Revolution, there was a common white belief that blacks were inherently inferior and had to be kept in a subordinate position, whether that was slavery or some other status. By the eve of the Civil War, white southerners truly believed that slavery had ceased to be profitable, but slavery had become for them the only possible social system that would allow whites and blacks to live side by side, and they were willing to fight and die for that system.

The history of slavery in America will distress your students, and you should offer them the hope that the more they understand our past, the more powerful they will be to make a better future.

RELIVING THE PAST The most interesting event in the period covered by this chapter was the Salem witchcraft episode. The trial transcripts give us a rare opportunity to learn about seventeenth-century women, who formed the majority of both accused and accusers. One woman, Susannah Martin, struck at the very heart of the prosecution’s case when she demonstrated from the Scriptures that evil spirits could impersonate innocent people. The best source to use is Records of Salem Witchcraft, Copied from the Original Documents (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969 reprint) because it includes the legal papers that preceded each trial. A more available collection of documents is Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, editors, Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1993 edition).

The most dramatic moment in the rebellions of the late seventeenth century came when Nathaniel Bacon marched with an army into Jamestown, Virginia, and confronted Governor William Berkeley. Thomas Mathew, an eyewitness, described in vivid detail Bacon’s gesticulations and Berkeley’s grand gesture when he opened his coat and dared Bacon to shoot him. Mathew’s account, “The Beginning, Progress, and Conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion, 1675–1676,” is in Charles M. Andrews (ed.), Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675–1690 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1915 reprint). This volume is one in a series well worth browsing through: J. Franklin Jameson (ed.), Original Narratives of Early American History.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

CHAPTER SUMMARY FAMILIES IN AN ATLANTIC EMPIRE The author begins with the experience of an ordinary family who immigrated to South Carolina in the eighteenth century to remind us that colonization was the work of families, the basic unit of society. The Witherspoons arrived in South Carolina in the early 1700s and were daunted by the dangers they confronted, and the difficult living conditions. The family was not only a social unit but also the basis of enterprise. Influenced by local conditions, the societies developed by these families varied greatly. In New England, for example, families were stable; in the Chesapeake, they were fragile. After 1660, a trend toward cultural convergence began, primarily because the Crown imposed a set of uniform commercial regulations.

SOCIAL STABILITY: NEW ENGLAND COLONIES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The social system of New England was largely one imported from England. New England Puritans seem to find continuing their familiar way of life easier than did settlers in the Chesapeake colonies.

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WHAT factors explain the remarkable social stability achieved in early New England?

Seventeenth-century New Englanders migrated to America in family groups, ensuring that the ratio of men to women remained roughly even, making it easier for young people to find marriage partners and start families. Stable marriage, together with New England’s healthy climate, led to rapid population growth. While many New Englanders served as servants early in life, most seventeenth-century colonists were eventually able to acquire property.

Immigrant Families and New Social Order: Most New England immigrants arrived as members of a nuclear, “godly” family in which the father exerted strong authority. They therefore found it easier to cope with the wilderness and to preserve English ways. It was even possible to reproduce an English family structure in New England because the sex ratio was about even. Marriage patterns were also substantially similar to those of contemporary England.

New England families differed from the English pattern in only one important aspect: People lived longer in New England. This meant that parents could expect to see their children grow up, marry, and have their own children. Moreover, children frequently grew up knowing their grandparents, increasing the continuity of traditions.

Puritan Women in New England: A gender division of labor prevailed in the colonies. For women, this work concentrated on food production. Women attended churches in great number, generally far outnumbering men. Again continuing English practice, women’s legal rights were limited, and divorce was hard to obtain. Both men and women generally accepted the gendered roles they felt were part of the divine plan. Prenuptial Agreement, (1653) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Establishing a New Social Order: Social distinctions emerged in New England in the 1600s.

Accepting that social hierarchy was the natural order, they nevertheless disagreed about how to 25

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

determine the hierarchy and to maintain it. Most of the colonists were yeoman farmers, proud of their independence. Life-cycle servitude, in which most adolescents spent some time in neighboring households, was the most common pattern. By 1700, the New England Puritans were proud of the society they had created.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE CHESAPEAKE ENVIRONMENT The high death rate suffered in early Virginia, more than any other factor, created a society far different from the one that evolved in New England.

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WHAT factors contributed to political unrest in the Chesapeake region during this period?

Most immigrants to the early Chesapeake colonies were single young men who traveled as indentured servants. Disease killed many of them shortly after arriving. Men outnumbered women, making it difficult for freemen to find marriage partners. Because of the short life expectancy, marriages did not last long. Economic inequality and family instability contributed to political unrest.

Families at Risk: Most of the immigrants settling in Virginia came as young male indentured servants and most died soon after arriving. Normal family life became impossible. Even if a man found a wife, the chances were that one of the partners would die within a decade. Children were frequently orphaned, growing up in a stranger’s home. Women, because they were so scarce, may have been in a good position to bargain in the marriage market, but women who did not have a family to protect them were especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation.

The Structure of Planter Society: In Virginia, wealth meant tobacco, but growing tobacco in large quantities required large amounts of labor. Those who were most prosperous were able to amass a large number of dependent workers who could be pushed as hard as possible. The largest class in the Chesapeake was freemen: those who had come as indentured servants. Below them were those who remained in servitude. By the late seventeenth century, Virginian society became less fluid. The death rate declined and the gentry passed on their wealth to their children.

An indigenous ruling elite emerged, more interested in Virginia than in England, and they gave the colony a greater degree of stability. This creole elite was defined not only by wealth but also by slave ownership. Meantime, freemen increasingly found their opportunities restricted in the Chesapeake. The practice arose of sending boys to be educated in Europe, leaving higher education in the southern colonies behind that of the northern colonies. Tobacco also dictated that Virginians live along the great tidal rivers within easy reach of water-borne commerce. The population therefore dispersed, and Virginia remained a completely rural society, devoid of towns. Tobacco Growing in a Field on View the Image myhistorylab.com

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RACE AND FREEDOM IN BRITISH AMERICA Africans were brought to America against their will in order to fill the places of the Indians who had been decimated and the European indentured servants who did not come in sufficient numbers.

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HOW did African American slaves preserve an independent cultural identity in the New World?

In the Chesapeake, slavery did not become the primary source of labor until the 1680s. As slaves were imported into the colonies at a greater rate, African men and women, torn from their homes, were forced to build a new culture in the New World. Although white colonists, afraid of the growing slave population, passed slave codes restricting the freedom of slaves and black freemen, many slaves still managed to hold onto elements of their African heritage.

Roots of Slavery: The English colonies in America received only a small percentage of the eight to eleven million Africans taken from their native land, because North American colonies could not pay the price for slaves that the West Indies could. Nevertheless, the English colonists took as many slaves as they could acquire. Although slavery had died out in England, economic motivations fueled its continuance in the colonies. Slavery was justified by claims that Africans were being rescued from barbarism and heathenism. The first slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619.

So long as the black population remained small in Virginia, the government did not bother to define their legal position. After 1672, Virginia began to receive a steady supply of slaves from the Royal African Company, and as the number of slaves increased, their legal oppression became more strict. Africans, simply because they were black, were slaves for life, and their status was passed on to their children. White masters could even murder slaves without worrying much about the legal consequences. Diagram of Slave Ship Filled for the Middle Passage on View the Image myhistorylab.com Constructing African American Identities: The slave experience differed from place to place.

Some Africans lived in societies where they never saw a white, while others lived in communities where they were a small and distinct minority. Africans made up a majority of the population of South Carolina and nearly half that of Virginia but were less numerous in New England and the Middle Colonies. There was a tendency for blacks who had successfully coped with white society to look down on recent arrivals from Africa who had not yet learned English.

Northern slaves tended to be more isolated from one another than those farther south and were less able to develop their own culture. However, all Africans participated in the creation of an African American culture, which required an imaginative reshaping of African and European customs. By the early eighteenth century, Africans in America had become numerous enough to begin to reproduce themselves successfully, a fact that ensured their permanence in American life. Blacks resented the debased status forced upon them and occasionally rose up in arms, as in 1739, when blacks killed several whites at Stono, South Carolina. Such rebellions, though crushed, kept whites worried. James Oglethorpe, The Stono Rebellion (1739) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

BLUEPRINT FOR EMPIRE Until the 1660s the English Crown ignored the colonies. During the Restoration of the English monarchy, the king finally realized the profits to be made by regulating colonial trade. This section discusses the mercantile system in general and the Navigation Acts in particular.

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WHY did England discourage free and open trade in colonial America?

During the seventeenth century, Parliament passed a number of mercantilist laws declaring that the raw materials and commerce of their colonies would benefit only the mother country, and not a European rival. Parliament passed a series of seventeenth-century commercial regulations, representing England’s new blueprint for the empire.

Response to Economic Competition: Mercantilism was the dominant economic ideology of the colonial period. Its leading tenet was that one nation’s gain must be another nation’s loss.

Influential interest groups pressured the English government for protection, while the crown was primarily interested in revenue. Taken together, these forces provided a model for the first British Empire.

Regulating Colonial Trade: The Navigation Act of 1660 was the heart of England’s system of regulation. It restricted trade within the empire to English (including American) ships and enumerated certain cargo, such as tobacco, which could not be sold to foreigners until it had first landed at an English port. Another act, the Staple Act of 1663, required that most goods going to America had to come from or through England. The Dutch resented these laws, which spoiled their profitable intermediary position, and Holland fought three wars against England to force their abrogation. The Dutch failed, but New England merchants were more successful in violating the regulations or finding loopholes in them. The English government retaliated by passing even stricter regulations and by sending agents to the colonies to prosecute smugglers.

The most important agent was Edward Randolph, who made himself obnoxious by sending damning reports about New England back to London. England’s imperial officials were hardly competent to regulate colonies so far away. Often one office did something that completely contradicted what another was trying to accomplish. Nevertheless, for every new problem, England passed more laws. The most important colonial agency was the Board of Trade, created in 1696. The Navigation Acts became effective over time, mainly because colonial merchants found it to their benefit to obey them. View the Map Colonial Products on myhistorylab.com COLONIAL POLITICAL REVOLTS The uniform legal system that Britain imposed on the colonies did not erase well-established differences. While in the past historians saw these rebellions as practice for the American Revolution, more recent research has cast them in a different light. Ideology played only a small role, and the rebellions were mainly factional, not between rulers and ruled.

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HOW did colonial revolts affect the political culture of Virginia and New England?

During Bacon’s Rebellion, landless freemen rose up against the governor and demanded Indian lands. Although the rebellion failed, it unified Virginia’s ruling elite. In 1684, James II restructured the Massachusetts Bay government to increase crown authority. New Englanders threw off the Dominion of New England in 1689 and negotiated for government charters that allowed significant local autonomy. Nathaniel Bacon’s Declaration (July 30, 1676) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Civil War in Virginia: Bacon’s Rebellion: In the years after 1660, a long depression hit the Virginia economy. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, an Indian-hating recent immigrant, led a rebellion against the royal governor, William Berkeley. Berkeley had ordered a line of forts to defend the plantations against Indian attacks, but his plans could be construed as protecting his own interests. Bacon’s attack allowed small farmers, blacks and women to join together to demand reforms. The rebellion, however, collapsed after Bacon died. The gentry recovered their positions and in the eighteenth century became a united force in opposition to a series of royal governors. Declaration Against Nathaniel Bacon (1676) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com The Glorious Revolution in the Bay Colony: The Puritan sense of independence was challenged by the Navigation Acts. The Puritans found it hard to adjust to English regulations.

Metacomet—also known as King Philip—joined with the Narragansett Indians in attacks on New England villages. The colony was left in debt and uncertain of its future. In 1684, King James II annulled the charter of Massachusetts Bay and incorporated the colonies stretching from Maine to New Jersey under a single governor, Sir Edmund Andros. In 1689, when news reached America that James II had been overthrown in England, a rebellion broke out in Boston and Andros was deposed. The new monarchs of England, William III and Mary, gave Massachusetts a charter that took the franchise away from “saints” and gave it to those with property.

Contagion of Witchcraft: The crises of the late seventeenth century culminated in the Salem witchcraft panic. Although witches had been arrested and executed before 1691, large numbers were involved in this outbreak of hysteria. After the death of twenty victims, the panic subsided and a shocked community confessed its guilt. Woodcut of Witch Hangings on View the Image myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: FOUNDATIONS OF AN ATLANTIC EMPIRE England’s attitude toward its North American colonies changed in the seventeenth century, and life in the New World changed in consequence. Yet English rule did not erase the deep regional differences that had developed before 1660. No sense of common cause among the colonies had yet emerged.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

KEY TERMS: 1. Participation in village meetings, church-related matters, and militia training were all facets of life for the yeoman (independent) farmer. Possession of land gave agrarian families a sense of independence from external authority.

2. Indentured servants were freemen who signed contracts in which they sold their labor for a set number of years in exchange for passage from Europe. Unlike the gentry, indentured servants were never going to become great planters. Most indentured servants lived on the edge of poverty.

3. The Royal African Company was chartered to meet the colonial planters’ demands for black laborers. In other words, it was formed exclusively for the African slave trade.

Between 1695 and 1709, more than 11,000 Africans were sold in Virginia alone.

4. Mercantilism is an economic policy that centers on the notion that if a nation controls the world’s resources, it will increase its wealth while simultaneously decreasing the wealth of other nations. Therefore, England would not allow its colonies to trade certain desirable resources to other nations.

5. Proponents argued that since trading nations were engaged in a fierce competition for the world’s resources—mostly for raw materials transported from dependent colonies—one nation’s commercial success translated directly into a loss for its rivals. They argued that trade tightly regulated by the central government represented the only way to increase the nation’s wealth at the expense of competitors. As stipulated by an act of Parliament in 1660, certain enumerated goods of great value that were not produced in England—tobacco, sugar, cotton, indigo, etc.—could be transported from the colonies only to an English or other colonial port.

6. The Navigation Acts attempted to eliminate the Dutch as the intermediaries of American commerce. In other words, the acts were designed to regulate colonial commerce in such a way as to favor England’s accumulation of wealth.

7. Governor Berkeley’s reaction in 1676 to Indian raids against outlying plantations sparked a revolt in Virginia. Bacon’s Rebellion could have been avoided, but when Berkeley refused to send troops and revealed plans to build a series of useless forts, Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion. Even the planter elite recognized that Bacon and his soldiers, often poor white servants and black slaves, had legitimate grievances. The revolt was short as Bacon’s followers dispersed shortly after his untimely death due to illness.

8. The Dominion of New England incorporated Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Plymouth, New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire under a single appointed royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros. Andros was tyrannical and immediately alienated everyone in the colonies. He enforced the Navigation Acts with rigor and he brought about commercial depression. He also declared normal town meetings illegal, collected taxes the people never approved, and packed the courts with supporters who detested the local population. For these reasons, the colonists overthrew the Dominion of New England.

9. In 1688 the ruling class of England deposed the Catholic king and placed his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William on the throne. William and Mary accepted a Bill of Rights, stipulating the constitutional rights of all Englishmen. Upon hearing the news of this Glorious Revolution, the Bay colonists overthrew the Andros regime and jailed him immediately.

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10. Because spectral evidence consists of reports of dreams and visions, clergymen considered this sort of testimony accepted by the courts regarding witchcraft to be dubious at best.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. How did families contribute to the social order in seventeenth-century New England? It was believed that God ordained the family for social benefit. Maintenance of the family ensured that men and women would not fall into carnal temptation. The social order would be unsettled because unmarried people had no one to remind them of Scripture.

2. What was life like for women in seventeenth-century New England? Women played subordinate yet prominent roles in the society. They earned the title “deputy husband” during this period, indicating their reliance upon their spouse but also their role in the decisionmaking process. Divorce was nearly impossible to get in pre-revolutionary New England. It was just as unlikely for women to own property. Women occupied a role between rich entrepreneur and slave, usually finding a middle ground in relations with their husband and their perceived role in the society.

3. What counted more in determining social status in early New England—piety or wealth? Both wealth and piety mattered in determining social status in New England. If one had wealth, but did not belong to the Congregational Church one could get nowhere. Yet, there were sumptuary laws to prevent those of lower income from presuming too much in their relations with the community.

4. How did the high mortality rates in the early Chesapeake colonies affect economic and family life? Economically the high mortality rate meant a shortage of labor, causing difficulties in agricultural production. More important were the social ramificatio ns with families in a constant state of flux. Few marriages lasted longer than seven years, as one spouse would usually die after that. Children rarely knew their grandparents and sometimes did not even grow up with someone who was a blood relative.

5. Why did the great planters purchase so many indentured servants during this period?

High mortality rates and the need for cheap labor on plantations led to a high rate of hiring contract labor. Conditions in the Chesapeake colonies were much harsher than in New England. Many workers died during the course of their labors.

6. Why did the slave population in British North America remain relatively small for most of the seventeenth century? Slavers sold their cargo in the Caribbean sugar isles where they could get a higher price than Virginians and other colonists could pay. Plantation owners showed no preference for indentured servants over slaves—it was simply a matter of supply.

7. How did African American slaves preserve cultural practices associated with west African societies? The size and density of the black population determined how successful and extensive black cultural identities were and how well they could be maintained.

8. Why did seventeenth-century English rulers support mercantilism? Supporting mercantilism benefited one country’s interests over another. So it made sense for the British to work against Dutch and French interests, as this would enhance their economic and 31

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

political power at the expense of the other nations. Mercantilism also benefited certain segments of the society, which then supported mercantilist policies even more.

9. How did the Navigation Acts establish the foundation for a commercial empire? The prohibition of Englishmen, including colonists, from trading with other nations strengthened the English merchant trade and brought in additional revenues to the crown. The acts, which forbade trading with any vessel not built in and staffed by a crew at least 75 percent English, hurt outside trade with nations like Holland. The list of enumerated goods included not only staples like rice but also tar, turpentine, indigo, and even molasses.

10. What were the underlying causes of Bacon’s Rebellion? Bacon’s Rebellion was triggered by the failure of the governor to provide protection for colonists whose farms and plantations were being attacked by Indians. The governor insisted, instead, that a series of forts be built to deter Indian attacks and protect the frontier. The colonists saw the forts as useless and just another way for the governor to reward his cronies with the contracts to build the useless forts.

11. Why did colonists overthrow the Dominion of New England in 1689? The Dominion of New England was deposed because of the tyrannical rule of Sir Edmund Andros. He made all assemblies illegal and strictly enforced the Navigation Acts, causing a commercial depression. The courts were packed with his supporters who detested the colonists and he collected taxes the people never agreed to.

12. Why were so many apparently innocent people convicted of witchcraft in Salem in 1691 to 1692? No one is sure why so many trials were held and people killed. The anarchy following the fall of the Andros regime certainly allowed a climate of instability to exist.

Some older, poorer families accused newer, more commercially prosperous families of witchcraft. Discord had existed in the area for some time and the misogynistic nature of New England certainly further fueled the atmosphere.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

CHAPTER 4 Experience of Empire: Eighteenth-Century America, 1680–1763 CHAPTER OUTLINE Constructing an Anglo-American Identity: The Journal of William Byrd Tensions in the Backcountry Scots-Irish Flee English Oppression Germans Search for a Better Life Native Americans Stake Out a Middle Ground Spanish Borderlands of the Eighteenth Century Conquering the Northern Frontier Peoples of the Spanish Borderlands The Impact of European Ideas on American Culture American Enlightenment Benjamin Franklin Economic Transformation Birth of a Consumer Society Religious Revivals in Provincial Societies The Great Awakening Evangelical Religion Clash of Political Cultures Governing the Colonies: The American Experience Colonial Assemblies Century of Imperial War The French Threat King George’s War and Its Aftermath Seven Years’ War Perceptions of War Conclusion: Rule Britannia?

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: PROVINCIALS Modern American students will need help to understand the provincialism of colonial culture.

American culture today, especially American popular culture, the one most familiar to your students, dominates the world. Pearl Jam is played as ardently in Naples as in Seattle. Michael Jordan is as much an icon in Tokyo as in Chicago. Madonna is as adored in Caracas as she is in Tampa. And O.J. Simpson is as notorious in Cairo as he is in Boston. It is true that most popular culture is created in only a few places, like New York and Los Angeles, but one of the characteristics of modern pop culture is that it happens where it is consumed, not where it is produced. Wherever the television set or shopping mall is, there is the vital center of popular culture.

It was altogether different in eighteenth-century America. Nobody would have understood the concept of popular culture and what we call “folk art” was then considered inferior workmanship. In the eighteenth century, culture was “high” culture: art, architecture, literature, opera, or sacred music. The high culture of the American colonies in that era may be defined as provincial, but that word must be carefully defined. In the narrowest definition, a provincial is simply a person who lives in a province, and a province is just a district governed by a geographically remote capital, but the usual connotation of the word provincial is that of a person unaware of living out of the cultural mainstream and therefore ignorantly proud of the second-rate culture of his or her vicinity. In European literature, the provincial is always smug and boorish. The colonial American could not have been provincial in that sense. There was too much moving around and too many people constantly arriving from foreign places. Americans in the eighteenth century did not value multiculturalism, but they had to adjust to reality. Ben Franklin, for example, normally a reasonable and tolerant man, proposed restrictions on German immigration to Pennsylvania because Germans were not “White.” Nevertheless, Franklin learned to speak German.

There is a less familiar connotation of the word provincial, and it is this one that better describes colonial culture. In this sense, provincials are those so in awe of the culture of the capital that they scorn everything local and slavishly buy or copy whatever is produced in the metropolis.

The feeling of being culturally displaced may have existed at all levels of colonial society.

Africans taken by force across the Atlantic dreamed still of the blessed lands in Africa to which they would return in the afterlife. German and Scottish immigrants looked to Heidelberg and Edinburgh for cultural inspiration, not to Boston or Philadelphia. It is, however, among the English-Americans, and especially among the wealthiest, the most prestigious and most articulate, that we can best document the provincialism of colonial America.

Mrs. Jonathan Edwards, for example, glued black silk patches all over her face before going to church to hear her husband describe with vivid relish the terrors of Hell. She wore face patches because fashionable English women in the mid-eighteenth century wore them. George Washington, before he became a rebel, had his clothes made by a tailor in Old Fish Street in London. The clothes did not fit well, Washington admitted, but they were “genteel” because they were made in England. Every American male with a shilling’s worth of prestige in the 34

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

eighteenth century wore a wig only because the better sort of Englishmen wore wigs. Every colonial who could hire an architect had a house built in the Georgian style already becoming outmoded in England. When aspiring Americans sought to improve their writing style, they copied the essays of Addison and Steele. When deep-thinking colonials wished to ponder philosophic questions, they began, and usually ended, with John Locke or George Berkeley.

When less ponderous but equally earnest Americans wanted to examine moral questions in a dramatic setting, they read novels, most notably Pamela by Samuel Richardson.

Provincial Americans combined their love for everything English with an often expressed contempt for their own society. Samuel Johnson, who taught at Yale around 1720, remembered that “the condition of learning in Connecticut (as well as everything else) was very low.”

Cadwallader Colden, a prominent figure in New York City society, lamented that “few men here have any kind of literature.” John Singleton Copley complained that there was not a single painting in Boston “worthy to be called a picture.” William Byrd II, one of the richest, best educated of the Virginian planters, sent his daughter to be educated in England because he feared that her character would be corrupted by the savagery of Virginian society. Thomas Jefferson described the state of music in eighteenth-century America as one of “deplorable barbarism.”

This contempt for American culture resulted in a brain drain from the colonies. Benjamin West, the best painter born in the colonies before the Revolution, is the prime example, but people like Franklin, Washington and Jonathan Edwards tried, at some time in their lives, to move permanently from America to Great Britain.

American provincialism is long gone. Just ask your students if they are impressed by an English university accent. Political independence did not at once result in cultural independence, but new nationhood produced people like Emerson who nudged Americans into trusting their own modes of thought, their own styles of dress, their own accents and their own artifacts. Today, we Americans, heirs to a successful political and cultural revolution, expect others to imitate us.

RELIVING THE PAST One of the most interesting encounters in history occurred when Ben Franklin went to hear George Whitefield preach in November 1739. Here the Enlightenment came face to face with the Awakening, and Reason met Piety. Franklin’s description of Whitefield’s power as a preacher in his Autobiography is amusing, but one must remember that Franklin intended his autobiography to be published. In anonymous newspaper articles, Franklin described Whitefield as a crook who was stealing funds from an orphanage. One should keep this in mind when reading Franklin’s description of Whitefield in the Autobiography. This work is available in many good editions, but the most elaborate is that edited by J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: A Generic Text (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1981).

George Washington made his first appearance on the historical stage in the period covered by this chapter. It is interesting to see him as a young officer describing his defeat by the French at Fort Necessity and telling his brother that there was something “charming” in the sound of bullets whizzing past his head. King George II is supposed to have remarked that Washington could not have heard many bullets. Washington’s account of the battle can be found in the Papers of George Washington edited by W.W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig and others, published 35

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

by the University Press of Virginia. The incident described above is in the Colonial Series, volume.

CHAPTER SUMMARY CONSTRUCTING AN ANGLO-AMERICAN IDENTITY: THE JOURNAL OF WILLIAM BYRD The author uses the journal kept by the wealthy Virginian, William Byrd, during his tour of the “backcountry” to illustrate such key developments discussed in this chapter as the amazing growth in population, the continued diversity of cultures, the tendency toward accepting English norms, and the growing sense of an American identity. Byrd’s account gives an image of the backcountry that is quite different from that implied by period maps. Areas indicated as empty were in fact populated. Moreover, contacts between colonial Americans and England were increasing in this period. This nuances a more simplistic view of Americans growing apart from the mother country.

TENSIONS IN THE BACKCOUNTRY Although population estimates before the first census in 1790 are problematic, between 1700 and 1750, the population of the colonies increased from 250,000 to over two million. Much of it was through natural increase and also through the immigration of non-English Europeans. The population not only grew but also changed, becoming more diverse and dispersed. Many of these new immigrants moved into the “backcountry,” an 800-mile fringe of territory west of the seaboard, populated by Native Americans.

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WHAT difficulties did Native Americans face in maintaining their cultural independence on the frontier?

Britain’s American colonies experienced extraordinary population and economic growth during the eighteenth century. German and Scots-Irish migrants poured into the backcountry, where they clashed with Native Americans. The Indians successfully played off French and British imperial ambitions in the “middle ground” but disease and encroachment by ordinary European settlers undermined the Indians’ ability to resist.

Scots-Irish Flee English Oppression: The Scots, many who had been “planted” by the English in Northern Ireland, concentrated on the Pennsylvania frontier and filled the Shenandoah Valley.

They were initially welcomed as a buffer between older European settlements and Native Americans, but their tendency to take whatever land they wanted and to challenge authority made them troublesome to the Penns.

Germans Search for a Better Life: Many Germans came to North America in search of religious toleration. Among these were the Mennonites. By the mid-1700s, however, Lutheran immigrants were more numerous and more inclined to be looking for more material considerations. German immigrants—called Pennsylvania Dutch—made up of over one-third of the Pennsylvania population by 1766. The Germans and Scots-Irish moved on after 1740 into the Shenandoah Valley. Both groups often moved beyond the range of governments, and religious 36

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

identity came to figure largely in their communities. Peter Kalm, a Swedish Visitor to Philadelphia 1748 on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Native Americans Stake Out a Middle Ground: The immigration of non-English people added to the diversity of American society, but so did Native Americans who had survived conquest and disease. Many Indians moved into the trans-Appalachian region, a “middle ground” where no colonial power was yet established, and where Indians could play Europeans against one another. In this middle ground, remnants of different Indian peoples regrouped and formed new nations that successfully interacted with each other and with Europeans. Their interactions with Europeans varied and evolved. In time, however, the lure of European goods encouraged Indians to deal individually with traders, thus weakening collective resistance to European aggression. The continued existence of the Native Americans in the “middle ground” was subject to changes in relations between France and England and, of course, to white diseases. William Penn Making a Treaty with theIndians 1682 on View the Image myhistorylab.com SPANISH BORDERLANDS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The influence of Spanish colonization was felt far beyond the borders of its empire. Although they maintained the northern border with difficulty, their presence left a lasting effect.

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WHY was the Spanish empire unable to control its northern frontier?

During the late 1600s and early 1700s, the Spanish empire steadily expanded its authority north of Mexico. New Spanish settlements were established in the Southwest and California. Although the Spanish constructed missions and forts, a lack of settlers and troops made it impossible for them to impose effective imperial authority and much of the territory they claimed remained under the control of Indian peoples.

Conquering the Northern Frontier: Lands north of the Rio Grande were claimed for Spain by Juan de Oñate, although the area was temporarily lost for a decade. In the Southeast, French pressure led the Spanish to settle St. Augustine in 1565. Although California was not of great concern to Spanish ambitions, Fra Junípero Serra and Don Gaspar de Portolá established missions and presidios along the coast. Testimony of PedroNaranjo to Spanish Authorities on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Peoples of the Spanish Borderlands: Spanish colonies grew slowly Those Indians who agreed to live under Spanish rule suffered economic discrimination but not racial segregation. Although the northern border was only weakly held, the cultural impact in the southern United States was deep. The Alamo on myhistorylab.com View the Image

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

THE IMPACT OF EUROPEAN IDEAS ON AMERICAN CULTURE The established British colonies changed at almost the same pace as communities in the backcountry, impressing contemporaries with a sense of growing opportunities.

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HOW did European ideas affect eighteenth-century American life?

During the Enlightenment, educated Europeans and American colonists, like Benjamin Franklin, brought scientific reason to the study of religion, nature, and society. By midcentury, economic growth sparked a consumer revolution that introduced colonists to an unprecedented array of imported manufactured items. New ideas and new goods helped integrate the American colonies into mainstream British culture.

American Enlightenment: The 1700s in Europe are called the Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, and produced profound changes in perceptions of the natural world, and man’s place in it. Unlike the European Enlightenment, the colonial American version was less radical.

Science was esteemed, but mainly because of its practical uses, and only if it did not threaten religious ideas.

Benjamin Franklin: Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) epitomized American Enlightenment thinking. Enraptured as a boy by British literature, Franklin became a writer himself, offering practical advice in a witty way. Uninterested in religion, he dedicated himself to reason and science, always with the practical use of scientific theory in mind. Franklin promoted the formation of learned societies, which became important in spreading learning in the colonies.

Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Economic Transformation: America’s prosperity created a rising demand for English and West Indian goods. The colonists paid for their imports by exporting tobacco, wheat, and rice and by purchasing on credit. In addition to the laws described in Chapter 3, England restricted colonial manufacture or trade of timber, sugar, hats, and iron, though the laws were not strictly enforced.

British demands for American goods increased throughout the century. The Connecticut Peddler on Listen to the Audio File myhistorylab.com Birth of a Consume r Society: As England entered the Industrial Revolution and began to massproduce items of everyday use, American industry lagged behind and was even retarded.

American imports of English goods rose, and wealthy Americans began to build up large debts to English merchants. Americans also traded extensively with the West Indies and with each other.

These trades usually earned a surplus and enabled the colonists to pay for English imports.

Intercolonial commerce also gave Americans a chance to learn about one another.

RELIGIOUS REVIVALS IN PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES The Great Awakening, a series of religious revivals, occurred at different places at different times. These revivals, like the one led by Jonathan Edwards at Northampton, Massachusetts, encouraged the “awakened” to question many aspects of their church and their institutions.

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Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

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HOW did the Great Awakening transform the religious culture of colonial America?

The Great Awakening brought a new form of evangelical religion to ordinary colonial Americans. It emphasized personal salvation through a “new birth” and membership in a large community of believers. Itinerant preachers, such as George Whitefield, drew huge crowds throughout the colonies. Other ministers followed Whitefield, inviting ordinary Americans to question traditional religious authorities. Benjamin Franklin on George Whitefield (1771) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com The Great Awakening: It appears that the first part of the 1700s were an optimal time for religious revival. Jonathan Edwards, beginning in Northampton, Massachusetts, initiated the Great Awakening, emphasizing predestination. George Whitefield, an itinerant minister from England, made revivalism a mass movement. Using his abilities as an orator, Whitefie ld preached outdoor sermons to thousands of people in nearly every colony. Whitefield and his many imitators urged congregations to desert unconverted ministers, thereby disrupting established churches. He used the press to spread his message, frequently using newspaper ads.

Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Evangelical Religion: Itinerant preachers were inspired by Whitefield. Their followers were often called “New Lights.” They were seen as a threat to other ministers who doubted their methods as well as their message. The New Lights laid the foundations of Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, and Rutgers. Laypeople, including women and blacks, finally had a chance to shape their own religious institutions. The Awakening thus promoted a democratic, evangelical union of national extent before there was an American political nation. In addition, most of the revivalists had optimistic attitudes toward America’s religious role in world history, thus fostering American patriotism and preparing for the development of a revolutionary mentality. Richard Allen Portrait on View the Image myhistorylab.com CLASH OF POLITICAL CULTURES Politically, tensions grew in the British colonies. Respect for English political institutions led colonists to wish to reproduce them, even as they became aware that they differed significantly from the British The colonials tried to copy British political institutions, but in doing so, discovered how different they were from the English people.

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WHY were the eighteenth century colonial assemblies not fully democratic?

Most eighteenth-century colonial governments contained three parts: a royal governor, an appointed governor’s council, and an elected assembly. Although these representative assemblies did not allow women, blacks, or the poor to vote, they did enfranchise a significant percentage of the white adult male population. Assemblies jealously guarded their privileges and powers, often coming into conflict with royal governors who attempted to expand their own authority.

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Governing the Colonies: The American Experience: Americans liked to think that their colonial governments were replicas of Parliament, but they were not. Royal governors, as a rule, were incompetent political hacks who could not have governed the colonies even if they had taken an interest. They were so bound by instructions from England and had so little patronage with which to buy votes that they were, in effect, given the task of ruling as despots without having the power to force their will on the colonists. The colonial assemblies bore no resemblance to the House of Commons. Most white males could vote in America, so elected officials knew they could not do something too unpopular without suffering at the polls. In spite of being only democratic in a limited sense, the assemblies were always subject to the will of their constituents.

Colonial Assemblies: The protection of colonial liberties ranked high on the agenda of the colonial assemblies. The 1700s were a period of great growth in their power and abilities. The assemblies were not bound to cooperate with royal governors. America’s ties with the mother country became closer in the eighteenth century, especially in the law courts, where English usage became more common. Americans grew increasingly aware that they shared similar political ideas, institutions, and problems with England and with each other.

CENTURY OF IMPERIAL WAR In the eighteenth century the colonies participated in four major imperial wars that pitted England against France. This section shows how the wars led to greater intercolonial association and cooperation.

WHY did colonial Americans support Great Britain’s wars against France?

France and Great Britain waged almost constant war in North America. By 1750, Britain’s American colonists believed that the French in Canada planned to encircle their settlements, cutting them off from the rich lands of the Ohio Valley. The Seven Years’ War (1756– 1763) drove the French from Canada, a stunning victory that generated unprecedented enthusiasm for the British Empire throughout the colonies. View the Map European Claims in America, c. 1750 on myhistorylab.com

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The French Threat: In theory, the British colonies were greatly superior to those of the French in military terms. In practice, however, separate governments in the British colonies weakened made them less easily defended. In the early 1700s, English colonists became convinced that they could not tolerate French ambitions. The French, similarly, thought the British intended to take the entire continent.

King George’s War and Its Aftermath: From 1743 to 1748, the War of the Austrian Succession dragged Americans into conflict. New England troops won an impressive victory when they captured Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, but the fort was returned to France in the peace treaty. In the 1750s both sides realized the strategic importance of the Ohio Valley, which became the cockpit for the next round of skirmishes. The French built a fort at the head of the Ohio River, at present-day Pittsburgh. Virginia considered the area its own and sent its militia under a young officer, George Washington, to expel the French. Washington was defeated, illustrating the need for greater cooperation. Benjamin Franklin reacted by presenting 40

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

his Albany Plan, including a Grand Council headed by a President General. The plan was initially well-received but was not approved of by the assemblies. In 1755, England sent an army under General Edward Braddock to drive the French out of the Ohio Valley. On his march west, Braddock fell into an ambush, and his army was destroyed.

Seven Years’ War: Braddock’s defeat signaled the lowest point in the war for the English. In 1756 England declared war on France and the two nations fought in every corner of the globe.

William Pitt, George II’s most powerful minister, concentrated British efforts on North America and captured Quebec in 1759. The century of struggle for control of the wealth of a continent was now ended. The Peace of Paris of 1763 ended the war, and made the British Empire unrivaled as a world power. The colonists, for their part, saw the victory as a new beginning. The Seven Years’ War on View the Map myhistorylab.com Perceptions of War: The Seven Years’ War was formative for Americans. Cooperation had proved vital, had brought large numbers of young colonial soldiers to other colonies, and had taught a generation of American officers that the British were not invincible. The British later felt that the Americans were never fully appreciative of their close shave with French imperialism, while the Americans felt their contribution had been significant.

CONCLUSION: RULE BRITANNIA ?

In 1763, most colonial Americans believed that they were bound in brotherhood with the English people. British culture, British consumer goods, British evangelists, and British military victories swept all Americans, even the non-English, into what seemed to be a great empire tied together by admiration and affection. The British on the other hand saw the colonists not as brothers but as “not quite English.”

KEY TERMS QUESTIONS: 1. Several different groups of people traveled to the backcountry, a region stretching 800 miles from western Pennsylvania to Georgia, attempting to live together in the same region. Their differences led to a complex, fluid, and often violent society.

2. The “middle ground” helped Native Americans survive in the backcountry because it was an area of land in which neither European nor Native American cultures held a clear upper hand, and both interacted with each other.

3. Enlightenment thinkers replaced the concept of original sin with a much more optimistic view of human nature. A benevolent God, having set the universe in motion, gave human beings the power of reason to enable them to comprehend the orderly workings of his creation. Everything, even human society, operated according to these mechanical rules. The responsibility of men and women, therefore, was to make certain that institutions such as church and state conformed to self-evident natural laws.

4. English exports to the American colonies increased by 360 percent, dramatically picking up the economy and thus creating a consumer revolution.

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5. A new, highly personal appeal to a “new birth” in Christ, the Great Awakening, caused men and women of all backgrounds to rethink basic assumptions about church and state, institutions and society.

6. Ministers were suspicious of itinerant preachers, who traveled from settlement to settlement throughout the colonies spreading their message, because of their somewhat dubious methods. They raised some serious questions regarding itinerant preachers, such as “How could the revivalists be certain God had sparked the Great Awakening?” They also felt that the itinerants relied too much on emotion.

7. Benjamin Franklin proposed the Albany Plan as a blueprint for colonial union and cooperation. The plan failed because it never got the support of the separate colonial assemblies as well as Parliament. The assemblies were jealous of their fiscal authority, and the English thought the scheme undermined the crown’s power over American affairs.

8. Not until William Pitt became effective head of King George II’s ministry did a minister of the king exhibit the energy to break the military stalemate in the Seven Years’ War, which was also known as the French and Indian War in America. Colonial assemblies were extremely resistant to provide money or men and British forces lacked leadership.

9. The treaty signed at the Peace of Paris of 1763 marked the beginning of Great Britain’s expansion of its empire outside of Europe. The British suddenly had control of almost all French territory in North America.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. Why did so many Scots-Irish migrate to America during the eighteenth century? During the seventeenth century, English officials had tried to use Presbyterian Scotts to dominate Catholic Ireland, but they failed. They were persecuted by Anglican officials and laws were passed that hurt Scots-Irish trading with England. They began to migrate to America after several poor harvests in the 1720s, hoping to recreate their fiercely independent culture on the frontier.

2. Why did the new German and Scots-Irish immigrants to America move west after they arrived in the colonies? They pushed west to find new lands and maintain their own unique and independent cultures.

3. How did Native Americans manipulate the “middle ground” to their advantage? As long as the Native Americans had military strength, they were able to demand respect in trade relations occurring in the “middle ground.” They played English against French traders to get the best deals.

4. Why did the Spanish not more aggressively develop California and the Southwest?

Native American hostility and failure to find precious metals tempered Spanish zeal for the Southwest, while California showed only poor Indians along the coast. The difficulty in getting to California caused it to be ignored until the Russians appeared ready to take it over.

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5. How successful were the Spanish in assimilating the Pueblos to impe rial rule? The Pueblos resisted Spanish attempts to convert them to Christianity, often at great personal risk.

It was reported that angry Pueblos at Taos fed Spanish priests corn tortillas seasoned with urine and mouse meat.

6. What were the basic intellectual assumptions of the American Enlightenment? For many Americans the appeal of the Enlightenment was its focus on a search for useful knowledge, ideas, and inventions to improve the quality of human life. What mattered was practical experimentation. Applying reason to solve political and social problems was encouraged.

7. What characteristics did Benjamin Franklin possess that made him an Enlightenment figure? It was Franklin’s sense of reason and science that led Europeans to regard him as a fellow philosophe, a role he cultivated. His curiosity and drive to explore and find useful knowledge made him much like the European philosophes.

8. Why did Americans in the first half of the eighteenth century not complain about the Navigation Acts? The growth of population and expansion of the economy to keep pace kept most white colonists happy. It was, however, a fact that most British officials ignored the new laws and enforcement of the Navigation Acts was lax.

9. How did Americans manage to pay for so many new consumer goods? To assist Americans in purchasing the newly available items from England, the British offered very generous terms of credit. Many colonists forestalled their final payment by paying interest on their debts.

10. What explains the Reverend George Whitefield’s extraordinary popularity among colonial Americans? He was an extraordinarily effective public speaker who, like his friend Franklin, symbolized the cultural forces that were then transforming the Atlantic world.

Whitefield didn’t care what denomination people came from, so his audiences came from all walks of life.

11. What message did evangelical ministers bring to ordinary Americans? Itinerant preachers encouraged a new sense of independent thinking to their “New Light” followers.

They felt they could no longer rely on traditional authority figures or institutions. Combined with the Enlightenment thinkers, they prepared a way for revolutionary thinking in the colonies.

12. What was the structure of royal government in eighteenth-century America? While the colonists argued that their colonial government mirrored government in England, the reality was starkly different. The governors were primarily appointed by the crown and consisted of middling bureaucrats looking to get ahead. They practiced greater power than the king himself, and the councils advising the governors had lost most of their power by the eighteenth century. While many more Americans could vote than Englishmen, their vote tended to count for little.

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13. Why were the plans of royal governors so often defeated by colonial assemblies? These elected members of legislatures viewed themselves as preserving colonial liberties and an attack on them was an attack on the rights of Americans. Many historians have described the political developments in eighteenth-century America as “the rise of the assemblies.” While perhaps a little strong, the climate they developed seemed designed to create hostility with the court-appointed governors.

14. Why during the eighteenth century did Britain’s American colonists come to view the French as a serious threat? It was believed by many that the French were trying to encircle the colonists and confine them to a narrow strip of land along the Atlantic coast. The French establishment of forts and New Orleans did nothing to ease these fears.

15. Why did Benjamin Franklin’s Albany Plan receive so little support? Both the separate colonial assemblies as well as Parliament needed to approve the plan but rejected it. The colonial assemblies jealously guarded their fiscal prerogatives and the British thought Franklin’s scheme undermined the crown’s power over the colonies.

16. How did the Peace of Paris of 1763 transform North American politics? The treaty almost fulfilled Pitt’s dream. With the peace, the French were driven out of North America and 80,000 French-speaking Canadians, mostly Catholic, became subjects of King George III. 17. Why did victory over France not generate greater mutual respect between American colonists and the British? Americans had developed a greater understanding of themselves and learned the British were not invincible. The British charged that the Americans were unappreciative of their efforts and that they had provided troops and funds to fight the French while the Americans had dragged their feet at every turn. Although this claim had merit, the Americans did not want to play the role of junior partner.

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CHAPTER 5 The American Revolution: From Elite Protest to Popular Revolt, 1763– 1783 CHAPTER OUTLINE Moment of Decision: Commitment and Sacrifice Structure of Colonial Society Breakdown of Political Trust No Taxation Without Representation: The American Perspective Justifying Resistance Eroding the Bonds of Empire Paying Off the National Debt The Protest Spreads Fueling the Crisis Surge of Force The Final Provocation: The Boston Tea Party Steps Toward Independence Shots Heard Around the World Beginning “The World Over Again” Fighting for Independence Building a Professional Army “Times That Try Men’s Souls” Victory in a Year of Defeat The French Alliance The Final Campaign The Loyalist Dilemma Conclusion: Preserving Independence

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION In 1764, American colonists complained that the Sugar Act was tyranny because it was taxation without representation. The British heatedly denied the charge and a great debate ensued. The British challenged every point in the American argument and it would be a healthy exercise to require your students to explain what they mean by taxation, representation, and tyranny.

The Americans had a hard time defining taxation. At first they tried to distinguish between internal and external taxes, or between duties intended to raise revenues and duties intended to regulate trade. It took about a decade before they concluded that any act of a government that raised revenue was a tax no matter what form it took. Ask your students if tuition is a tax, or a fine for littering the highway, or an entrance fee to a national park. How long will it take them to reach the same definition as the American revolutionaries?

Representation was an even tougher intellectual nut to crack. The British political tradition separated representation from the right to vote. Very few Englishmen could vote, but all were supposedly represented in Parliament, especially in the House of Commons. The British explained this apparent paradox with a concept called “virtual representation.” It was argued that the interests of the members of Parliament and the nonelectors were so bound together that the men in Parliament could not pass a law that hurt the nonelectors without hurting themselves.

Representation did not mean the right to vote; it meant that those who could vote invariably protected the interests of those who could not vote. The American protest rejected this notion of virtual representation, but not entirely. Americans argued that the interests of Great Britain and the colonies were sufficiently different to make “actual representation” necessary. If Parliament wanted money from Americans, the constitutional way was to request it from the colonial assemblies, because only those assemblies represented the colonists and therefore only the assemblies had the right to tax the colonists. So far, so good, but the colonial assemblies taxed women with property even though women were denied the right to vote. Those Americans who argued that the colonists were not virtually represented in Parliament discovered that women were virtually represented in the colonial assemblies. Women did not have to vote because the men in the assemblies were their husbands, fathers, and sons, who would of course never enact legislation that would hurt women. None of your students will accept that line of argument, but pose the problem of a ten-year-old movie star who earns $5 million a year. She pays taxes on her income, but she cannot vote. It looks like taxation without representation. What would your students do? Would they allow a millionaire to go tax-free? Or would they give the vote to all ten-year-olds? Or will they suddenly find comfort in virtual representation and conclude that the child’s interests are well enough protected by parents, guardians, or agents?

The last term of the equation, tyranny, was the most interesting intellectual problem and the one with the most far-reaching consequences. Tyranny is the denial of a person’s rights by a government, and tyranny therefore has no meaning until individual rights are first defined. On this question, colonial Americans were much divided. Many believed that their rights were defined by the British Constitution. These rights, such as trial by jury, belonged to all subjects of the British Crown, but British rights did not extend to Poles or Germans or Africans, or even fully to English women. For many Americans in the eighteenth century, the British Constitution 46

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was sacred, not just because it protected a large number of personal rights and liberties, but also because it restricted the scope and degree of those rights and liberties. The British Constitution did not assume that freedom was unbounded. In the last resort, however, the American revolutionaries had to reject the British Constitution because it certainly did not include the right of rebellion. The United States was founded on a different theory of rights that had been discussed during the colonial protest. The “natural rights” argument of the Declaration of Independence claims that every human is granted by God a vast number of rights that no government can justly take away. Many Americans were concerned that natural rights were so vague and so unlimited that it would be impossible to erect an orderly society on such a foundation. You can easily demonstrate the difficulty of defining natural rights by taking the example of marriage. Most students will believe that they have a natural right to marry whomever they choose, but every state in the United States defines marriage as a “privilege” that the state may grant or withhold. Students will resent that assertion until you ask if a father has a natural right to marry his daughter, or if a marriage may be arranged between five-year-olds, as happens in some parts of the world. If your students are too easily convinced that marriage is, after all, a privilege that the state may withhold, ask whether Virginia had the legitimate authority to deny marriage between whites and blacks, as it did until 1967. The Supreme Court struck down the Virginia law, but the Court did not rule that marriage was a natural right beyond state regulation.

At present, the abortion issue divides the nation, and probably your students. That too is a debate over rights, a debate that began in 1764 with the slogan, Taxation without representation is tyranny.

RELIVING THE PAST In 1781, an ensign identified only as Smith, leading a small patrol of Continental troops, was informed that a large band of Loyalist cavalry was racing toward him. Smith formed his men and told them that he would kill the first man who tried to run away. When the Loyalists offered Smith a chance to surrender, he replied that he intended to fertilize the spot with Tory blood.

Smith’s men held off two charges before the Loyalists broke off the engagement. In these small actions, Americans won their independence and forged a republican ideal. The incident was recalled by Benjamin Jones, one of Smith’s men, in a marvelous collection of such eyewitness accounts edited by John C. Dann, The Revolution Remembered (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

A more famous battle ended the Revolution at Yorktown, Virginia, a few miles from Jamestown, where the English empire in America began. Dr. James Thacher, a physician with Washington’s army, described the sheer joy of the Americans and the utter agony of the English troops when one of their officers shouted the command “Ground Arms!” Thacher’s account is in Henry Steele Commager and Richard Morris, The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1958).

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CHAPTER SUMMARY MOMENT OF DECISION: COMMITMENT AND SACRIFICE The author begins by describing the price paid for independence by the Patten family. Although it was the gentry and wealthy merchants who began the protest against Great Britain, it was only because so many common folk were willing to sacrifice that the United States became a nation, and these same common folk demanded that their concerns be met. The American Revolution was as much about equality as it was about independence.

STRUCTURE OF COLONIAL SOCIETY In the period following the Seven Years’ War, Americans looked to the future with great optimism. They were a wealthy, growing, strong, young people, as well as being extremely diverse.

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WHY did Americans resist parliamentary taxation?

During the 1760s British rulers claimed that Parliament could make laws for the colonists “in all cases whatsoever.” Americans challenged the concept of “parliamentary sovereignty.” Drawing upon the work of John Locke, the English philosopher, they insisted that God had given them certain natural and inalienable rights. By attempting to tax them without representation, Parliament threatened those basic rights.

Breakdown of Political Trust: There were suspicions on both sides of the Atlantic that the new king, George III, was attempting to enlarge his powers by restricting the liberties of his subjects. Between 1763 and 1770 political instability prevailed in Britain, because of a rapid turnover in chief ministers. The actions and inactions of Parliament and the king served to divide British from American interests. In Britain, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty over the British state was well-established. For most British officials, that meant that colonial governments were firmly under parliamentary control.

No Taxation Without Representation: The American Perspective: The Americans assumed that their own colonial legislatures were in some ways equal to Parliament. The meaning of representation became a key point in the constitutional debate in the assemblies.

The British notion of virtual representation was not accepted in the colonies.

Justifying Resistance: Popular political notions in America were imbued with a moral character that had its roots in the Great Awakening. The colonists had learned by reading John Locke and the Commonwealthmen that civil governments must rule by the consent of the governed or be subject to rebellion. British Commonwealthman ideas, moreover, taught their American readers that power must be balanced by virtue. Virtue, or morality, became an important part of colonial rhetoric, which was used to good effect in pamphlets and newspapers. These media allowed for better communication between the colonies and helped to develop a shared identity. James Otis, An American Colonist Opposes New Taxes on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

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ERODING THE BONDS OF EMPIRE Great Britain was left with a massive debt at the end of the Seven Years’ War. Yet George III decided to maintain a standing army, including some stationed in America. Inspired by the visions of Neolin, the Ottawa leader Pontiac brought together Native Americans in Pontiac’s Rebellion. Colonial defenses were unable to stand against the attacks, but the result for the Native Americans was much worse in the long run. Peaceful relations with the British ceased, and colonists treated all Native Americans as their enemies. Moreover, plans to settle west of the Appalachians continued.

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WHAT events eroded the bonds of empire during the 1760s?

Wars in America cost British taxpayers a lot of money. Parliament concluded that the colonists should help reduce the rising national debt, but when it passed the Stamp Act (1765), Americans protested. Ordinary colonists boycotted British manufactured goods. Taken aback, Parliament repealed the hated statute, while maintaining in the Declaratory Act (1766) its complete legislative authority over the Americans.

Paying Off the National Debt: The British chancellor of the exchequer, George Grenville, was responsible for addressing the problem of debt. In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which was clearly designed to raise revenue and not just regulate trade. Merchants protested, but most Americans ignored it.

The Protest Spreads: The Stamp Act united the gentry and the mass of the population. Patrick Henry was eloquent and influential in speaking and writing against the Stamp Act. His Virginia Resolves, though added to and expurgated, were spread by the press. The more moderate protestors met at a Stamp Act Congress and petitioned the king and Parliament for repeal. The protest moved from the representative houses to the streets, and most of the stamp distributors had resigned by November 1765. The next move to boycott British goods was a very successful innovation, one in which colonial women participated. The House of Commons rescinded the act in 1766, an action that some British claimed would have been carried out without American interference. The legacy of the episode was distrust for British officialdom. Benjamin Franklin, Testimony Against the Stamp Act (1766) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com and Women Signing anAnti-tea Agreement on View the Image myhistorylab.com Fueling the Crisis: In 1767, Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, came up with a new set of taxes on American imports of paper, lead, glass, and tea. Townshend also created the American Board of Customs Commissioners in order to ensure rigorous collection of the duties.

Americans again resisted. The Sons of Liberty organized a boycott of English goods, and the Massachusetts House of Representatives sent a circular letter urging the other colonial assemblies to cooperate in protesting the Townshend Acts. When the English governme nt ordered the Massachusetts assembly to rescind its letter, 92 of the representatives refused, and their defiance inspired Americans everywhere. The Liberty Song on Listen to the Audio File myhistorylab.com Surge of Force: In the midst of the controversy over the Townshend taxes, the English government, in order to save money, closed many of its frontier posts in America and sent troops 49

Instructor’s Manual Peter Porter American Stories. A History of The United States (Combined Volume) Second Edition

to Boston. Their presence heightened tensions. On March 5, 1770, English soldiers in Boston fired on a mob and killed five Americans: the episode was dubbed the Boston Massacre. Just when affairs reached a crisis, the English government changed again. Lord North headed a new ministry and repealed all of the Townshend taxes except for the duty on tea, which North retained to demonstrate Parliament’s supremacy. Lord North’s government did nothing to antagonize the Americans for the next three years, and a semblance of tranquility characterized public affairs. Customs collectors in America, however, contributed to bad feelings by extorting bribes and by enforcing the trade acts to the letter, while radicals such as Samuel Adams still protested that the tax on tea violated American rights. Adams helped organize committees of correspondence that built up a political structure independent of the royally established governments. “Bostonians Paying the Excise Man” on View the Image myhistorylab.com The Final Provocation: The Boston Tea Party: In 1773, Parliament aroused the Americans by passage of the Tea Act. This act, designed to help the East India Company by making it cheaper for them to sell tea in America, was interpreted by Americans as a subtle ploy to get them to consume taxed tea. In Boston, in December 1773, a group of men dumped the tea into the harbor. The English government reacted to the “Boston Tea Party” with outrage and passed the Coercive Acts, which closed the port of Boston and put the entire colony under what amounted to martial law. At the same time, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, establishing an authoritaria n government for Canada. The English considered this act in isolation from American affairs, but the colonists across the continent saw it as final proof that Parliament was plotting to enslave America. They rallied to support the Boston colonists and protest the British blockade. The ultimate crisis had now been reached. If Parliament continued to insist on its supremacy, rebellion was unavoidable. Ben Franklin suggested that Parliament renounce its claim so that the colonies could remain loyal to the king and thus remain within the empire. Parliament rejected this advice. Hewes,“A Retrospect on the Boston Tea Party” on Read the Document myhistorylab.com STEPS TOWARD INDEPENDENCE Americans organized their resistance to England by meeting in a continental congress. This section traces the major events, from the seating of the First Continental Congress in September 1774 to the decision for independence in July 1776.

WHAT events in 1775 and 1776 led to the colonists’ decision to declare independence?

In 1775, following battles at Lexington and Concord, militiamen from throughout New England descended upon Boston, besieging the British troops encamped there. In response, the Continental Congress formed the Continental Army and appointed George Washington commander. In 1776, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense convinced ordinary colonists that a republic was a better form of government than monarchy, and Congress declared independence.

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Shots Heard Around the World: On April 19, 1775, a skirmish broke out between Americans and English troops in Lexington, Massachusetts. The fighting soon spread, and the English were forced to retreat to Boston with heavy losses. Joseph Warren, ‘Account of the Battle of Lexington’ on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

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Beginning “The World Over Again” The Second Continental Congress took charge of the little army that had emerged around Boston by appointing George Washington commander. The English government decided to crush the colonists by blockading their ports and hiring mercenary troops from Germany. Royal governors urged slaves to take up arms against their masters. These actions infuriated the colonists. Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet Common Sense, pushed them closer to independence by urging Americans to cut their ties to England. On July 2, 1776, Congress voted for independence, and on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, a statement of principles that still challenges the people of the world to insist upon their rights as humans. Thomas Paine, A Freelance Writer Urges his Readers to use Common Sense on Read the Document myhistorylab.com FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE In the ensuing war, the English had a better-trained army than did the Americans, but England’s supply line was long, and the English army faced the task not only of occupying terrain but also that of crushing the spirit of a whole people. George III and General Gage were confident of an easy victory. However, distance and the scale of the war ultimately favored the colonists. In addition, the latter were more committed to their cause than Britain appreciated.

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WHY did it take eight years of warfare for the Americans to gain independence?

After a string of American defeats, which exposed weaknesses in military training and recruitment, a victory at Saratoga in 1777 convinced the French to form an alliance with the rebelling colonists. In 1781, supported by French soldiers and warships, Washington forced a British army under General Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown. The shooting war effectively ended following this surrender, and American diplomats negotiated a favorable peace settlement in 1783.

Building a Professional Army: Washington rejected advice that he conduct a guerrilla war of hit-and-run raids against the English because he wanted a “continental” army to foster a feeling of common purpose. For that reason, he never risked the Continental Army in a general engagement where it might be destroyed in a single battle. Washington was less concerned with the state militias, whose value he underestimated. Not only did they fight the British regular army, they served as a kind of internal police force to keep Loyalists from organizing. The large numbers of African American colonists fought too, some for the colonists, some for the British.

Colonel George Washington, 1772 on View the Image myhistorylab.com “Times That Try Men’s Souls”: During July and August 1776, English forces routed the American army on Long Island, captured New York City, and forced Washington to retreat through New Jersey. As Washington’s army fled toward Philadelphia, the English military authorities collected thousands of oaths of allegiance from Americans, many of whom had supported independence. The cause seemed lost, but Washington rekindled the flame of resistance by capturing two English outposts in New Jersey, Trenton and Princeton.

Revolutionary War Scene on View the Image myhistorylab.com

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Victory in a Year of Defeat: In 1777, General John Burgoyne led English forces out of Canada in a drive toward Albany, New York. Americans interrupted Burgoyne’s supply lines and finally forced him to surrender at Saratoga, New York. General William Howe, who was supposed to help Burgoyne, instead decided to capture Philadelphia, which he did easily.

Washington’s discouraged army spent that miserable winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

The French Alliance: France supplied the Americans with arms from the beginning of hostilities. After Saratoga, England feared an open alliance between France and America and proposed peace. Parliament offered to repeal all acts passed since 1763, to respect the right of Americans to tax themselves, and to withdraw all English troops. The Americans, however, preferred full independence and allied themselves with France in 1778.

The Final Campaign: After 1778, the English turned their attention to securing the South. They took Savannah and Charleston, and in August 1780, routed an American army at Camden, South Carolina. Washington sent General Nathanael Greene to the South to command American forces, and Greene’s forces defeated English general Lord Cornwallis in several battles. When Cornwallis took his army to Yorktown, Virginia, for resupply, Washington arranged for the French navy to blockade Chesapeake Bay while the Continental Army marched rapidly to Yorktown, where Cornwallis was trapped. He surrendered his entire army on October 19, 1781.

The English government now realized it could not subdue the Americans and began to negotiate for peace. Surrender at Yorktown on View the Image myhistorylab.com The Loyalist Dilemma: Americans who had remained openly loyal to the king during the Revolution received poor treatment from both sides. The English never fully trusted them, and the patriots took away their property and sometimes imprisoned or executed them. When the war ended, more than one hundred thousand Loyalists left the United States.

CONCLUSION: PRESERVING INDEPENDENCE Many questions confronted Americans after their great victory. Among the greatest challenges was that of building a nation out of the disparate colonies.

KEY TERMS: 1. By no longer allowing the group of aristocrats who called themselves the Whigs to set policy and replacing them with a set of ineffective chief ministers, Britain had no sustainable longrange policy and poor, narrowly based political decisions were made.

2. Members of Parliament wanted no middle ground to exist between the authority of Parliament and the total dependence of the colonies. This authority known as parliamentary sovereignty placed parliamentary decisions over those of the colonial assemblies.

3. Loyalists were Americans who sided with the king and Parliament during the American Revolution. While they would agree with the plea for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they believed that independence would make obtaining these values impossible because it would promote disorder.

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4. The Stamp Act of 1765 placed a tax on newspapers and printed matter produced in the colonies. This act raised a storm of protest and resistance quickly spread throughout the colonies.

5. The delegates to the Stamp Act Congress drafted petitions to the king and Parliament that restated the colonists’ belief “that no taxes should be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.”

6. The mere presence of British troops in Boston infuriated the colonists for several reasons.

First, the troops, in their spare time, competed for jobs. Second, the Americans could find no good reasons for army troops to be stationed in a peaceful city. On March 5, 1770, British soldiers felt threatened and fired shots into a crowd, killing five Americans. When the Boston Massacre occurred, American rage soared because now their feelings of oppression had been solidified.

7. The committees of correspondence allowed the colonies to communicate grievances with each other and provide evidence of British oppression.

8. In response to the Boston Tea Party, when colonists disguised as Indians dumped tea on British ships into Boston Harbor, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts.

9. The Coercive Acts were clearly meant to punish the colonies socially and economically and force them into a state submission.

10. Delegates from the Middle Colonies, during the First Continental Congress, wanted to proceed with caution, but Samuel Adams and other more radical members pushed the moderates toward confrontation with the British.

11. The Second Continental Congress organized the Continental Army and, after commissioning George Washington to lead it, began requisitioning men and supplies for the war effort.

12. The pamphlet Common Sense written by Thomas Paine voiced the colonists’ feelings that they should be independent and free to establish a republican government in America.

13. The French, at Yorktown, provided assistance on land and sea that helped the Americans defeat the British.

14. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 established generous boundaries on the north and south and gave the Americans important fishing rights in the North Atlantic.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. Why were the members of the British government adamant in their defense of parliamentary sovereignty? The British ruling classes insisted that Parliament was the 53

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dominant element within the constitution that protected rights and property from an arbitrary monarch. The crown recognized Parliament’s supreme authority in such matters as taxation after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

2. How did Parliament and the American colonists differ in their ideas about representative government? In American minds, the virtual representation the British claimed existed was not acceptable. The only representatives Americans recognized were those actually chosen by the people whom they represented.

3. How did American colonists justify their resistance to parliamentary sovereignty?

American colonists gravitated toward the ideas of the influential seventeenth-century British philosopher John Locke, which justified their own beliefs that all people possessed natural and inalienable rights. These rights, if taken from them, they could revolt to regain.

4. Why did Parliament think that the colonies should contribute to paying off Britain’s national debt? Parliament believed the colonies needed to generate revenue to help “defray the expenses of defending, protecting and securing” the safety of the colonies. It was time for the colonies to pay their own way. This placed a higher burden on the Navigation Acts.

5. Was the repeal of the Stamp Act a victory for the American cause? British merchants claimed sole responsibility for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and lest the colonists think they had won a major victory, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act the same time it rescinded the Stamp Act. 6. How did Charles Townshend badly misread the American Situation? It was believed by Townshend that if he distributed the tax burden amongst a variety of goods he could gain the revenue Britain needed. It was a brash attempt to free royal governors and other officials from dependence on colonial assemblies. The colonist saw the new duties, especially when combined with the Quartering Act, as more taxation without representation.

7. Why was it a mistake for the British to station regular troops in Boston? The redcoats England sent from Ireland and Nova Scotia were mistreated already and in their spare time they competed with Bostonians for jobs. Jobs in Boston were already scarce and the tension level rose to a point not seen since the Stamp Act riots.

8. Did the Coercive Acts represent an overreaction by Parliament to the Boston Tea Party? Yes, the Coercive Acts were an overreaction to events in Boston. The sweeping denial of constitutional liberties only confirmed the colonists’ worst fears. Even more importantly, the measures were not successful in isolating Boston, as colonists from all over sent livestock, grain, and money to the people of Boston.

9. Why did the British general Thomas Gage underestimate the Americans’ military resolve? Gage based his estimation of American military resolve on what he had heard of or seen during the French and Indian War. But when the British suffered 40 percent casualties at Bunker Hill, Gage realized he had underestimated the fighting ability of the American soldiers.

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10. Why do you think Thomas Paine’s Common Sense became an instant best seller?

Paine’s work was likely so successful because it stripped kingship of historical and theological justification in language the common person could understand. Calling the king a brute would have appealed to many colonists frustrated with their loss of liberties.

11. Why did George Washington insist on organizing a regular field army? Washington insisted that the very existence of a Continental Army sustained American hopes as long as it survived. He saw it as a symbol of the republican cause and avoided general actions with the British that might have seen it destroyed.

12. Why did the first year of war go so badly for the Americans? A new commander, Lord Howe, and a series of victories in which the Americans were overmatched made the first year difficult. Howe’s loyalty policy failed due to the poor treatment his officers and officials gave the Loyalists, but American shortages in supplies and men preparing to depart after short enlistments made for a bleak picture.

13. What role did poor British planning play in the American victory at Saratoga?

Burgoyne’s overburdened column, 30 carts filled with the general’s belongings, 2,000 camp followers, and a German band led to a long train needing protection and supplies. When coupled with Howe’s inexplicable move to Philadelphia, all led to a major victory by the Americans at Saratoga.

14. What role did French support play in the winning of the Revolutionary War? French support altered the strategic planning of the British. Key was the addition of Spain and the threat of its navy and the French navy to concentrate ships in one spot and defeat a British squadron, something they did at Yorktown. The promise to only end the war when American independence was recognized and refusing any Canadian territory also were major factors in American success.

15. Why did the “Southern Campaign” not work out as British strategists had anticipated?

The British strategy ended up turning the southern campaign into a bitter guerilla conflict.

Tory raiders showed little interest in pitched battles preferring to raid at night and kill neighbors they had long-standing grudges with. The colonials waited for their opportunity to raid Cornwallis’s troops and weaken his army, until the bloody battle at Kings Mountain where a force of British regulars and Tory raiders were wiped out.

16. Why did so many Loyalists decide to leave the United States during the Revolution?

Many Loyalists saw the American break with England as turning their backs on order and stability. They believed the Americans wanted “liberty” so as to have the liberty to suppress their own. Over 30,000 farmers relocated to Canada and almost 100,000 Loyalists permanently left America.

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CHAPTER 6 The Republican Experiment, 1783–1788 CHAPTER OUTLINE A New Political Morality Defining Republican Culture Social and Political Reform African Americans in the New Republic The Challenge of Women’s Rights The States: Experiments in Republicanism Stumbling Toward a New National Government Articles of Confederation Western Land: Key to the First Constitution Northwest Ordinance: The Confederation’s Major Achievement “Have We Fought for This?”

The Genius of James Madison Constitutional Reform The Philadelphia Convention Inventing a Federal Republic Compromise Saves the Convention The Last Details We, the People Whose Constitution? Struggle for Ratification Federalists and Antifederalists Adding the Bill of Rights Conclusion: Success Depends on the People

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: “NECESSARY AND PROPER” The men who wrote the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787 created a strong central government, but they did not, or could not, abolish the strong state governments that already existed. As a result, the United States has a federal system of government that many students do not quite understand.

Since every American today is keenly aware of the power of the federal government, it is a good idea to remind students that Congress can pass laws only within the jurisdiction granted to it by Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution. Congress cannot do whatever it wants to do, no matter how praiseworthy its intention. Congress cannot, for example, make racial discrimination a crime in all cases or outlaw fur coats, or ban smoking everywhere or legislate equalized educational funding. The state governments must legislate in most areas of health and safety if there is to be any regulation at all.

Many students have heard of the last section of Article 1, section 8, commonly called the “elastic clause,” which allows Congress to pass whatever laws are “necessary and proper,” but the clause restricts Congress to passing only those laws that are necessary and proper means to achieve the ends listed in Article 1, section 8. One excellent illustration of how the elastic clause should be interpreted comes from the dispute between Hamilton and Jefferson over the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States.

As chartered by Congress, the Bank, a privately owned institution, was allowed to collect federal taxes and hold the money until the government called for it. Jefferson argued that it was unconstitutional to use a private bank as a government collection agency. He did not completely reject the notion that Congress had “implied” powers. He pointed out that since Article 1, section 8 gave Congress power to raise an army, it could be implied that the Constitution gave Congress power to draft people into military service, since a draft was clearly a “necessary and proper” means of raising an army. Jefferson, however, could not see why the Bank was “necessary” to collect taxes. Hamilton, in reply, objected that Jefferson used the word “necessary” in too restrictive a sense. The word did not always mean “indispensable” in common speech; it often meant no more than “useful” as in the statement, “I need to wash my hair tonight.” According to Hamilton, Congress could raise taxes without using the Bank as a collection agency if it chose, but since the Bank was a useful way of collecting taxes, it was one of several legitimate means that Congress could opt to use. Hamilton’s argument has become the accepted way of reading the elastic clause, but it should be emphasized that even Hamilton did not argue that Congress could go beyond the powers listed in Article 1, section 8.

It may astound your students to learn that they live under a federal government of limited powers, but they will be better citizens for the lesson.

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RELIVING THE PAST The men who wrote the Constitution seem to us today almost like demigods, and, in fact, they were quite interesting men. Yet the debates in the Philadelphia Convention show individuals groping for the solution to problems that seemed intractable. On June 1, 1787, for example, the delegates debated whether there should be one chief executive or two. Should he, or they, serve for three years or seven? Now it seems natural to have one person serve for four years, but reading through the debates helps to remind us that while we have the answers, the men in Philadelphia had the questions. The standard source for the Philadelphia Convention is Max Farrand (ed.), The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911).

It should be remembered that each state held a ratifying convention where, again, men were treading on unfamiliar ground. In recent times, historians have become more sympathetic to the fears expressed by the opponents of the Constitution, and it is interesting to hear what revolutionary heroes like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams disliked about the new government.

The standard source is Jonathan Elliot (ed.), The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution . . . (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859). Eliot is being superseded by the monumental Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, begun by Merrill Jensen in 1972 and being carried to completion by John Kaminski and Gaspare Saladino.

CHAPTER SUMMARY A NEW POLITICAL MORALITY The author begins with the debate in Philadelphia in 1786 over a proposal to repeal the ban on stage plays. In Quaker times, the theater was considered sinful. After the Revolution, some wanted to continue the ban on the grounds that plays were frivolous and incompatible with “republican” simplicity. Others argued that the Revolution was all about individual freedom. The theme of this chapter is the conflict about the meaning of the Revolution.

DEFINING REPUBLICAN CULTURE For Americans in the 1700s, republican described a political system based on liberty and equality in which power was closely defined. Following the Revolution, Americans were extremely optimistic about their future. Americans were divided over the relative importance of individual liberty and social order, the right of private property, and the ideal of equality. A series of controversies resulted, shaping the governments created during and after the war for independence.

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WHAT were the limits of equality in the “republican” society of the new United States?

Revolutionary-era Americans proclaimed a “republican” ideology. They believed that government derived its authority from the people, not from kings. They also declared that they had created a new nation committed to civic virtue and social equality. Ordinary people rejected all forms of aristocratic privilege. When women and African Americans claimed the same rights as white men, they met resistance.

Social and Political Reform: Americans were particularly energetic in opposing privilege and any odor of aristocracy. Even the appearance of aristocratic style was objectionable to many. Among the major reforms of American society were changes in the laws of inheritance, more liberal voting qualifications, better representation for frontier settlers, and separation of church and state.

African Americans in the New Republic: During the Revolution, African Americans demanded the natural right to be free. The northern states responded by gradually abolishing slavery. Yet even where slavery was eliminated, blacks were not accorded equality. Abolition also became a subject of serious debate in the South and indeed led to extensive manumission. In the end, however, economic motives overcame republican ideals. Slave Petition to the General Assembly in Connecticut (1779) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com The Challenge of Women’s Rights: Women also demanded the natural right of equality and contributed to the creation of a new society by raising children in households where the republican values of freedom and equality were daily practiced. Women became more assertive in divorcing undesirable mates and in opening their own businesses. Nevertheless, they were still denied their political and legal rights. John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776 on Read the Document myhistorylab.com The States: Experiments in Republicanism: The state constitutions adopted during and just after the Revolution were experiments that provided insights and experience later used when constructing a central government. First, Americans wanted written constitutions that would clearly define the rights of the people and the limits of government power. Second, the drafters believed in natural rights that were beyond the power of the state to control. These constitutions were experiments that provided valuable lessons that were later used in constructing the central government. Of the new state constitutions, eight included declarations of rights.

STUMBLING TOWARD A NEW NATIONAL GOVERNMENT The Second Continental Congress, convening in 1775, undertook a war to defend what was a country in name only.

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WHY did many Americans regard the Articles of Confederation as inadequate?

During the Revolution, Americans showed little interest in establishing a strong national government. Under the Articles of Confederation (1777), an underfunded Congress limped along without direction, while the states competed over western lands. Only after Virginia ceded its claims was Congress able to draft the Northwest Ordinance, which provided an orderly plan for the settlement of the Ohio Valley. The weak Congress was not even able to force the British to live up to their obligations under the Treaty of Paris of 1783.

Articles of Confederation: John Dickinson presented a plan for a strong national government in 1776, but it failed. His proposal to give all the land beyond the Appalachians to Congress angered states like Virginia, and the large states rejected Dickinson’s proposal to continue to give each state equal representation in Congress. After years of debate, the Continental Congress drafted the Articles of Confederation, which gave the central government virtually no power to force the states to do anything. One legislative body, with one representative from each state, held supreme power but had no power to raise revenue. The document was not warmly greeted by the states. John Dickinson, from Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Western Land: Key to the First Constitution: The main delay in ratification of the Articles was the problem regarding ownership of the western lands. Some states such as Maryland had no claim to land beyond their boundaries and argued that the western lands should be given to Congress for the benefit of all Americans. Maryland delayed ratification of the Articles until 1781, when Virginia agreed to renounce claims to the West. Other states followed Virginia’s example, and Congress wound up owning all the land west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Western Land Claims Ceded by the States on View the Map myhistorylab.com Northwest Ordinance: The Confederation’s Major Achievement: The Articles dealt effectively with the western lands, traditionally an area of little law and order. Congress provided local government and the promise of eventual statehood. In order to capitalize quickly on its treasure in land, Congress sold over six million acres to large land companies.

These companies, however, experienced difficulty in attracting immigrants or in controlling the people inhabiting the West. By 1787, Congress realized the need for closer supervision and issued the Northwest Ordinance, providing a new government for the area north of the Ohio River. The Ordinance created a number of territories, each headed by a governor appointed by Congress. As the population of a territory increased, it was to acquire the right to more self-rule and eventual statehood. The Ordinance regulated only those lands north of the Ohio River. Congress took almost no interest in the lands south of the Ohio, resulting in tremendous legal confusion about who owned what. There was even an attempt to establish a new state in the area.

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“HAVE WE FOUGHT FOR THIS?” By 1785, thoughtful Americans feared for the future of the United States and realized that a strong central government had become a necessity. This section describes the political ideology behind the Constitution.

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WHY did Constitutional delegates compromise on representation and slavery?

Dissatisfied with the financial and military weakness of the national government under the Articles of Confederation, twelve states sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. James Madison’s Virginia Plan provided the blueprint for a stronger national government. Delegates compromised on slavery and gave the small states equal representation with large ones in the Senate to prevent the convention from breaking up.

The Genius of James Madison: The difficulties experienced by Americans in the 1780s grew in part from their republican ideals. Because they had believed themselves to be virtuous, they had constructed governments that placed no check on the popular will. But the American people soon realized that they did not always behave as virtuous republicans and that they needed a stronger government. James Madison was especially important in recasting American political ideas away from the dogma that only small republics could be free and democratic. James Madison, Portrait on View the Image myhistorylab.com Constitutional Reform: During a convention held at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786, the nationalists agreed to meet again in Philadelphia in order to scrap the Articles of Confederation and write a new constitution. Before the Philadelphia convention met, a tax protest in Massachusetts turned violent (Shays’s Rebellion). Although the incident was minor, the nationalists feared it was the beginning of America’s slide into anarchy. The crisis atmosphere persuaded many Americans to support a strong central government. Military Reports of Shays’s Rebellion on Read the Document myhistorylab.com The Philadelphia Convention: During the spring of 1787, fifty- five delegates, representing all the states except Rhode Island, opened proceedings. The delegates, including people like Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and Madison, were men of wide and practical experience.

Inventing a Federal Republic: Madison introduced the Virginia Plan, a proposal to create a central government that could veto all acts of the state governments. The central government would have two houses made up of state representatives. The larger the state, the more representatives it would have in these houses. The chief executive would be appointed by Congress. The small states objected to key provisions of the Virginia Plan for fear they would lose their separate identities. They pushed instead for the New Jersey Plan, which would have given Congress greater taxing powers but would have left the Articles of Confederation basically untouched.

Compromise Saves the Convention: The controversy over the two plans ended in compromise.

The House of Representatives would be based on population, a victory for the large states, but each state would have two persons in the Senate, a victory for the small states. Another controversial issue was the continuance of slavery, though the term itself was generally avoided.

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Although the Convention produced a new Constitution, the need to compromise permitted the slave trade to continue for another twenty years. The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 on Read the Document myhistorylab.com The Last Details: In the last weeks of the convention, the delegates hammered out a system of electing the president and translated their various compromises into a written document.

We, the People: Instead of submitting its work to Congress or the state legislatures, the convention gave the power of ratification to special conventions to be elected in each state.

As soon as nine such conventions approved the Constitution, it would go into effect.

WHOSE CONSTITUTION? STRUGGLE FOR RATIFICATION The nationalists who wrote the Constitution now had the problem of having it adopted in the state conventions.

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WHAT issues separated Federalists from Antifederalists during debates over ratification?

During the debates of 1787–1788, Federalists, who favored stronger national government, defended the Constitution against Antifederalists, who opposed centralized authority. By the end of 1791, enough state conventions had endorsed the Constitution for ratification. To appease the Antifederalists, Congress in 1789 added a Bill of Rights to protect the freedoms of citizens against the power of the national government.

Federalists and Antifederalists: Those opposed to the Constitution, unfairly called Antifederalists, came close to defeating it. They distrusted any government removed from direct control of the people and suspected that the new Constitution had been written by the rich and powerful for their own benefit. The Federalists, however, enjoyed the support of most of the news media of the time and were well organized. Starting with Delaware, the ratifying conventions approved the Constitution, and by June 1788, only North Carolina and Rhode Island had not done so. Publius James Madison Federalist Paper Number 10 on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Adding the Bill of Rights: The Antifederalists lost the ratification battle but, because of them, the nationalists had to promise to add a bill of rights to the Constitution. By 1791, the first ten amendments had been added. The Bill of Rights (1789) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: SUCCESS DEPENDS ON THE PEOPLE In the 1780s, the American people met the challenge of self-government. When they discovered that it was dangerous to give themselves too much power, they created governments regulated by a system of checks and balances that protected the people from themselves.

The ratification of the Constitution closed an era of protest, revolution, and political experimentation. The future seemed to belong to the free people of a strong nation.

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KEY TERMS: 1. A way of life, a core ideology, republicanism was an uncompromising commitment to maintain liberty and equality, while guarding against the corrupting influences of power and self-interest.

2. African Americans were denied equal standing with white worshippers and this led to the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1814.

3. The authors of the state constitutions believed men and women possessed certain natural rights over which government could exercise no control. So that future rulers—potential tyrants—would know the exact limits of authority, these fundamental rights were spelled out.

4. The delegates who drafted the framework of the Articles of Confederation shared a general republican conviction that power—especially power so far removed from the people—was inherently dangerous and that the only way to preserve liberty was to place as many constraints as possible on federal authority.

5. The Northwest Ordinance provided a new structure for government of the Northwest Territory by authorizing the creation of from three to five territories, each to be ruled by a governor, a secretary, and three judges appointed by Congress. Once 60,000 persons resided in a territory, they could write a constitution and petition for full statehood.

6. An uprising known as Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts involved several thousand impoverished farmers who complained of high taxes, high interest rates, and, most of all, of a state government insensitive to their problems. These were the same complaints of Americans leading up to the Revolution.

7. The Virginia Plan called for a new government with a strong executive office and two houses of Congress, each with representation proportional to a state’s population. The New Jersey Plan retained the unicameral legislature in which each state possessed one vote and that at the same time gave Congress extensive new powers to tax and regulate trade.

8. Without the three-fifths rule, either the states from the South or the North would have been furious with their representation in the lower house because representation is based on population. If slaves did not count at all toward the population of a state, the South would have lost a major portion of its representation. If slaves counted as full people, the North would have to concede a significant amount of representation to the South, even though slaves were given no rights as people.

9. Federalists supported the constitution and a strong centralized national government capable of fielding a formidable army.

10. Antifederalists were critics of the Constitution who expressed concern that it seemed to possess no specific provision for the protection of natural and civil rights.

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11. The first ten amendments to the Constitution became known as the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights protects the freedoms of assembly, speech, religion, and the press; guarantees speedy trial by an impartial jury; preserves people’s right to bear arms; and prohibits unreasonable searches.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. During the 1780s, why were Americans so sensitive to the dangers of “aristocratic display”? The fact that the distribution of wealth in postwar America was even more uneven than it had been in the mid-eighteenth century made many Americans particularly sensitive to aristocratic display. The title esquire was dropped and judges who wore great flowing wigs to court were chastised.

2. Why did the new republican government not bring liberty and equality to African Americans living in the United States? While many northern states did liberate slaves, that did not guarantee equality. Most African Americans in the North were still denied the basic rights that whites took for granted. Entry into any key job they wanted and the ability to live where they wanted were denied. In the South, after a brief flurry of abolitionist sentiment, economic realities quickly led southern planters to conclude they needed the cheap labor slaves supplied.

3. What evidence argues that this was a period of significant progress for women in the United States? Several factors point toward gains by women in this period, for example, the increase in their ability to obtain divorce in states like Connecticut and Pennsylvania. In 1780 Ester DeBerdt founded an organization of women that raised more than $300,000 for Washington’s army. In 1790, the New Jersey legislature even allowed women who owned property to vote, a right quickly taken back when it was discovered that women voters had decided a close election.

4. Following independence, why did the states insist on drafting written constitutions?

State constitution writers were adamant that all constitutions be written down because Britain’s vaunted unwritten constitution had failed to protect the colonists in their battles to keep their rights as Englishmen. These written documents were to explicitly state what the individual rights of each citizen were.

5. During the Revolution, why did Congress not create a stronger federal government?

Those who drafted the Articles of Confederation shared a common republican fear that power so far removed from the people was dangerous. They believed the only way to protect liberty was to put as many constraints as possible on federal authority. Even the slightest encroachment on state sovereignty irritated republicans who feared centralization would promote corruption.

6. Why did the question of the western lands cause such conflict between the states under the Articles of Confederation? States whose boundaries had been defined by royal charters, 64

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such as New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, were afraid they would be denied the bounty of land sales these western territories might bring.

7. How did the Northwest Ordinance resolve the problem of the western lands? The Northwest Ordinance provided a framework whereby the new territories could become states, yet be governed by congressionally approved judges and governors until they met certain criteria. This bill organized the western lands and brought money to the government.

8. How did James Madison respond to republican fears that a nation as large as the United States could never be successfully governed as a republic? Madison rejected Montesquieu’s argument that a large territory could not be a republic. He pointed out that it was small states like Rhode Island where legislative majorities terrorized propertied minorities. He claimed that a large territory reflects a wider variety of interests, passions, and pursuits that check each other while those who have common issues will have a more difficult time communicating.

9. What role did Shays’s Rebellion play in bringing about constitutional reform? The rebellion seemed to indicate a slipping into lawlessness that many feared. So those in Philadelphia who might have ignored such an indication instead took part in forming the new constitution.

10. Why were the men who drafted the Constitution so concerned with secrecy? They wanted to avoid misinterpretations of issues discussed and avoid the thousands of whispers false or true that might come out of their deliberations until everything was decided.

11. Did the New Jersey Plan represent a significant retreat from the main points of the Virginia Plan? Yes, the New Jersey Plan added only a few powers to Congress, such as taxation and the regulation of trade, while keeping a unicameral legislature. Its supporters claimed that while it was more modest than Madison’s plan it was also more palatable to the American people.

12. Why did the delegates think a compromise on slavery and states’ rights was necessary to achieve the ratification of a new constitution? Both sides recognized these issues as ones that could tear the fabric of the republic. They saw the need for a strong central government as paramount and the falling apart of the union as a fate to be avoided at all costs.

13. How did the delegates ensure that a balanced government remained intact when addressing issues such as elections and presidential powers? The delegates had learned through the various state experiments the importance of having an independent executive.

While awkward in its original structure the electoral college freed the president from being indebted to Congress, with a safeguard that if no clear majority occurred then the election could be decided by the lower house. The Electoral College numbers were based on the total number of representatives and senators a state had, and were to be chosen by local voters.

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14. What was the “ingenious procedure for ratification” adopted by the Constitutional Convention delegates? To avoid the state legislatures, which had a vested interest in the status quo, they created 13 individual constitutional conventions that would review the plan and vote. They also stipulated that only nine states were needed for ratification, thus avoiding the possibility of a small state like Rhode Island blocking ratification.

15. What were the major political issues separating Federalists from Antifederalists? The Antifederalists echoed the criticisms of Montesquieu that the representatives of the people would be too far removed from control of the people and this would breed corruption. The Federalists wisely chose a name that represented a federation of states and recruited the best and brightest in each state to represent their cause. Samuel Chase warned Marylanders that only the gentry and the rich would hold office and farmers and planters would be left out.

16. Why did the men who originally drafted the Constitution not include a Bill of Rights?

As Hamilton said in The Federalist No. 84, the Constitution itself was a Bill of Rights.

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CHAPTER 7 Democracy and Dissent: The Violence of Party Politics, 1788–1800 CHAPTER OUTLINE Force of Public Opinion Principle and Pragmatism: Establishing a New Government Getting Started Conflicting Visions: Jefferson and Hamilton Hamilton’s Plan for Prosperity and Security Debt as a Source of National Strength Interpreting the Constitution: The Bank Controversy Setback for Hamilton Charges of Treason: The Battle over Foreign Affairs The Peril of Neutrality Jay’s Treaty Sparks Domestic Unrest Pushing the Native Americans Aside Popular Political Culture Whiskey Rebellion: Charges of Republican Conspiracy Washington’s Farewell The Adams Presidency: Politics of Mistrust The XYZ Affair and Domestic Politics Crushing Political Dissent Silencing Political Opposition: The Alien and Sedition Acts Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions Adams’s Finest Hour The Peaceful Revolution: The Election of 1800 Conclusion: Danger of Political Extremism

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON Biography is the most popular form of history, and college students love to display their skills at psychoanalysis. They should be encouraged to explain why Hamilton and Jefferson differed so much in terms of character. It might be a good idea, though, to have those interested in the exercise first read James Flexner on Hamilton and Dumas Malone on Jefferson, so that they have some substance to their speculations.

Certain objective facts explain why Hamilton was so much more nationalistic than Jefferson.

Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis and came to the mainland as a sixteen-year-old immigrant in 1773. He resided in New York but formed no deep attachment to that colony and soon left to join the Continental Army, the great school of American nationalism. Like many other officers, Hamilton felt that the war effort was hampered by the narrow, self-interested view that the states took whenever asked to supply the army with money or supplies. Jefferson, on the other hand, was a third-generation Virginian who had spent seven years in the House of Burgesses before the United States came into being. During the war he sat in Congress and served the new nation as an ambassador to France and England, but he also served as governor of his state, and his first and deepest loyalty remained to Virginia.

The differences between Hamilton and Jefferson on issues of public policy are, of course, important, but the differences in the character of the two men are fascinating and students may want to spend some time on that subject.

Hamilton was born out of wedlock, and when he was only ten years old his parents separated, an event the young boy blamed on his mother. Shortly after, Hamilton’s mother died suddenly, perhaps still unforgiven. Was Hamilton’s inability to trust others his continued judgment on a faithless mother? Hamilton grew up in actual poverty, but both of his parents had descended from wealthy families and described to their son their own childhoods, filled with ease and comfort. In his pretensions to gentility and his contempt for poverty, was Hamilton rejecting the childhood he had suffered and living the childhood he should have had by right? Hamilton entered an unloving marriage for money and carried on a sordid affair with a woman who blackmailed him. Is there something telling about the connection between sex and money that marked his life? Hamilton died in a duel that he could have avoided, and in which he made no effort to shoot at his rival, Aaron Burr. Hamilton stood still, waiting to be shot. He once said that he hoped “to make a brilliant exit” from the world. Students may wonder why.

Jefferson had an altogether more pampered childhood. His earliest memory was of being carried on a pillow by one of his parents’ slaves, and he grew up surrounded by people who had to work so that a few, like himself, had the opportunity to develop their minds and spirits. Was Jefferson commenting on himself when he later complained that white southern children were spoiled by slaves? After falling in love a dozen times as a young man, Jefferson married a woman for whom he cared deeply. He and his wife enjoyed a common passion for music and raised a large family.

When his wife died after ten years of marriage, Jefferson was genuinely grief-stricken, but he always found women to comfort him. He may have had an affair with Maria Cosway, a woman he met while he was ambassador to France, and he almost certainly was intimate for years with 67

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Sally Hemings, with whom he probably had several children. Jefferson would not defy social conventions by marrying Hemings or by acknowledging her as his mistress because she was, according to Virginia’s racial laws, a “black” woman despite having had a “white” father.

Nevertheless, according to her own testimony, Jefferson’s relationship with her was based on mutual love. Was it the company of adoring women that made Jefferson so self-assured and generous, so passionate a man of classical tastes? Jefferson became one of the most successful and popular presidents in our history, but he was lucky to have inherited a government that Hamilton had done much to establish. In his last years, Jefferson lived in retirement, reverenced by his country and honored around the world. It seems somehow appropriate that he died quietly in bed, exactly fifty years to the day that Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. He was one of Fortune’s favorites.

RELIVING THE PAST Final passage of Hamilton’s financial program resulted from a political deal in which won approval of the federal government’s assumption of the states’ debts, while Virginia was promised that the capital of the United States would be located on the Potomac River. The deal was worked out at a dinner party hosted by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wrote two accounts of how the dinner came to be held. The second account, written more than thirty years after the event, differs significantly from the earlier account, but is the better known. It may seem improbable that a chance encounter on the streets of New York could lead to a dinner where the future location of the capital of the United States was decided over soup, but politics worked like that then, and probably still does. For Jefferson’s account of the dinner, see The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Julian Boyd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), volume 17, pp. 205–208. The Boyd edition of Jefferson’s works is still the standard, but it is being gradually superseded by a new edition edited by Charles Cullen and others.

Another dinner, less momentous, was described in the journal of William Maclay, a crotchety, pure Republican congressman, ever alert to any hint of creeping monarchism in the new nation.

He wrote a hilarious description of, among other things, a dinner given by George Washington at which Washington told a feeble joke about a New England farmer. Maclay’s Diary, with notes on debates in Congress, has been edited by Kenneth Bowling and Helen Veit (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1988).

CHAPTER SUMMARY FORCE OF PUBLIC OPINION The author starts this chapter with the problem debated in the first Congress about the appropriate way to address Washington when he came to deliver a speech. “The president” seemed demeaning to some congressmen, but “Your Excellency” seemed too regal to others. The debate illustrates the theme of this chapter, the contested meaning of the American Revolution.

The Hamiltonians, or Federalists, stressed the need to create a national economy to preserve the independence of the United States. The Jeffersonians, or Republicans, preferred to keep 68

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government small, local, and responsive. Federalists and Republicans agreed upon the ends but differed about means.

PRINCIPLE AND PRAGMATISM : ESTABLISHING A NEW GOVERNMENT George Washington was unanimously elected president in 1789 and gave the new government all the weight of his great reputation.

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WHY was George Washington unable to overcome division within the new government?

George Washington was the most popular figure in the United States when he became president in 1788. Congress organized the Departments of War, State, and the Treasury.

Washington nominated brilliant figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to serve in his new cabinet. Within months, these two men began fighting over profoundly different visions for the future of the republic. Hamilton imagined an urban commercial nation with a strong central government; Jefferson championed a simple agrarian republic.

Getting Started: Washington had an instinctive grasp of the power of political symbolism and made two grand tours of all the states during his term in office. Executive departments were established, beginning with Departments of War, State and the Treasury in 1789. The bureaucracy was minute by modern standards. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created a court system, with the Supreme Court and district courts. The tariff of 1789 set a tax on imports Washington Taking the Oath of Office on View the Image myhistorylab.com Conflicting Visions: Jefferson and Hamilton: The development of political parties began with the policies endorsed by Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, and opposed by Thomas Jefferson, the secretary of state. Hamilton wanted a strong central government, much like the English. Jefferson believed that a new age of liberty was beginning that would make government less necessary. Hamilton hoped to make the United States a strong commercial and industrial power, while Jefferson hoped the United States would remain a nation of small, independent farmers. Hamilton worried that democracy would lead to anarchy; Jefferson trusted the common people. These differences, clear in retrospect, became obvious to the two men most involved only over time, as events forced the federal government to make important decisions.

Alexander Hamilton, Portrait on View the Image myhistorylab.com HAMILTON’S PLAN FOR PROSPERITY AND SECURITY The greatest problem inherited by the new government was the federal debt. As secretary of the treasury, Hamilton had to make provision for repayment. The central government owed $54 million and the states an additional $25 million. Hamilton put together a financial program that contained two proposals, “funding” and “assumption.” He also asked Congress for a national bank and government aid to manufacturing. This section treats these proposals in detail and explains why they attracted opposition.

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WHY did many Americans oppose Alexander Hamilton’s blueprint for national prosperity?

Hamilton, a first-rate economist, argued that the United States could never become strong and prosperous unless it put its finances in order. In a series of bold reports, he urged Congress to create a new system of public credit, charter a national bank, and stimulate domestic manufacturing. Jefferson and his allies criticized Hamilton’s program on moral and political grounds, charging that it favored the interests of a commercial elite over those of ordinary Americans.

Debt as a Source of National Strength: Hamilton’s Report on the Public Credit (1790) recommended that Congress redeem its debts at face value, even though most of the people holding the certificates of debt had bought them at discount. James Madison broke with Hamilton on this issue. Madison tried unsuccessfully to have Congress pay less to the present holders of the certificates in order to pay something to the individuals who had been forced by poverty to sell the certificates to speculators. Another issue, assumption, referred to federal liability for states’ debts. Some states, such as Virginia, had already paid off their debts and would gain nothing from assumption. Some speculators opposed assumption because they used depreciated state debt certificates for their own profit. Madison organized the anti-Hamilton forces and defeated assumption in the House of Representatives. Hamilton salvaged the program by giving Virginia some money and by agreeing to locate the new U.S. capital on the Potomac River.

Interpreting the Constitution: The Bank Controversy: Hamilton also proposed that Congress charter a national bank. The bank, though privately owned, would work closely with the government. Madison believed that the bank would benefit only the rich. Jefferson did not think that the Constitution gave Congress power to charter a private business. When Congress did charter the bank, Washington asked his cabinet to advise him on the constitutional question. Hamilton’s response was to interpret the Constitution broadly, as giving Congress implied powers. Washington accepted this argument, but public opinion began to turn against Hamilton.

Setback for Hamilton: Hamilton next asked Congress to enact a program favorable to manufacturing, but opposition had now grown organized. Madison raised the prospect of having the central government become more powerful than the individual state governments. Jefferson warned that the rise of cities would destroy agriculture and the civic virtue that farming instilled.

Hamilton’s recommendations were defeated. Alexander Hamilton, Opposing Visions for the New Nation on Read the Document myhistorylab.com CHARGES OF TREASON: THE BATTLE OVER FOREIGN AFFAIRS Foreign affairs engendered a different set of problems during Washington’s second term. The United States had to respond to the wars set off in Europe by the French Revolution, but Hamilton and Jefferson disagreed on the proper course of action. This section describes how foreign affairs divided Americans into two parties: Republicans (Jeffersonians) stood for states’ 70

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rights, strict interpretation of the Constitution and friendship with France; Federalists stood for a strong national government, central economic planning, social order, and friendship with England.

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HOW did foreign affairs affect domestic politics during the 1790s?

The French Revolution split American opinion. Republicans cheered it; Federalists condemned it. When France declared war on Great Britain (1793), Britain began seizing American ships and impressing American sailors into the British navy. Jay’s Treaty (1794) did little to address these insults. During the mid-1790s, America seized additional lands from Indians in the Northwest.

The Peril of Neutrality: Americans wanted to remain neutral when France and England went to war in 1793, but both sides made that difficult. The French sent to America diplomat Edmond Genet, who insulted the Washington administration. The English created more serious problems.

England still occupied American soil in the Northwest and violated maritime rights. Jefferson wanted to punish England by cutting off trade, but Hamilton felt that the United States must appease England because the mother country was so strong. Proclamation of Neutrality on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Jay’s Treaty Sparks Domestic Unrest: England’s provocations called for strong action.

Washington sent John Jay to England to demand removal of the English from American soil, payment for ships illegally seized, better commercial relations, and acceptance of the United States as a neutral nation. Jay, however, had no chance to secure a favorable treaty because Hamilton had secretly informed the English government that the United States would compromise. Jay agreed to a treaty that gave the United States virtually nothing. Washington disliked the proposed treaty but sent it to the Senate where it was ratified by the smallest possible margin. When newspapers learned the contents of the treaty, they viciously attacked it and even criticized Washington. In attacking Washington, the opposition had gone too far. The nation rallied behind its greatest man, and the Federalists used the opportunity to portray the Republicans as traitors. The rift between the parties deepened. Hamilton and Jefferson had retired by the time the treaty became law. The Jay Treaty on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Pushing the Native Americans Aside: Ironically, the unpopular Jay Treaty brought advantages to the United States in the West. English posts in the Northwest Territory had supplied and encouraged Indian raids on American settlements. The U.S. Army failed to defeat the Indians until the battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), which led to the Treaty of Greenville and Indian removal from what is now Ohio. While the Indians were in this desperate condition, the English deserted them and pulled back into Canada. In the Southwest, news of Jay’s Treaty was interpreted by the Spanish as an Anglo-American alliance against Spain. To prevent this, the Spanish suddenly offered to open the Mississippi, to settle the disputed border between Spanish Florida and the United States, and to cease supplying the Indians. These offers resulted in the Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney’s Treaty).

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POPULAR POLITICAL CULTURE This section explains the vehemence of early political conflict, especially when newspapers brought politics into everyday conversation.

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WHY was it hard for Americans to accept political dissent as a part of political activity?

In the 1790s, many Americans equated political dissent with disloyalty. During the Whiskey Rebellion (1794), both Federalists and Republicans feared the other party planned to use violence to crush political opposition. By not announcing his retirement until September 1796, President Washington denied the Republicans time to campaign for the presidency.

Washington’s Farewell Address warned against becoming involved in European politics.

Whiskey Rebellion Tax Protest (1794) on View the Image myhistorylab.com Whiskey Rebellion: Charges of Republican Conspiracy: In 1794, a local tax protest in western Pennsylvania was interpreted by the Federalists as a major insurrection instigated by the Republicans. Jefferson, on the other hand, believed that the crisis had been invented by the Federalists as a pretext to create a strong army to intimidate Republicans. George Washington, Whiskey Rebellion Address to the Congress (1794) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Washington’s Farewell: In 1796, Washington announced his decision to retire from public life, warning Americans in his “Farewell Address” to avoid forging permanent foreign alliances and to avoid forming political parties. But the timing of Washington’s statement was itself a partisan act because it gave the Republicans no time to organize a presidential campaign in 1796.

THE ADAMS PRESIDENCY: POLITICS OF MISTRUST In the election of 1796, the Federalists and Republicans treated each other with suspicion.

Hamilton, hoping to prevent John Adams from being elected, secretly tried to sway voting, but his maneuvers backfired. Adams won the election, and the Federalist Party came away divided.

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WHY were some Federalists willing to sacrifice political freedoms for party advantage?

During the Adams presidency, French privateers waged a Quasi-War against American shipping, and French officials solicited bribes from American diplomats, causing a scandal.

Many Federalists believed that the support of Jeffersonian Republicans for France had compromised American sovereignty. After the Federalist Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) to intimidate the Jeffersonians, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson authored the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions asserting states’ rights. In 1800, Federalist attempts at election rigging failed, handing Jefferson the presidency.

The XYZ Affair and Domestic Politics: Because of Jay’s Treaty, France began to treat the United States as an unfriendly nation. French vessels even fired on American ships in the Atlantic (the Quasi-War). When Adams sent ambassadors to France, the French government 72

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demanded a bribe before negotiations could even begin (the XYZ Affair). Americans were outraged, and Federalists attempted to use anti-French sentiment to crush the Republicans.

Crushing Political Dissent: The extreme Federalists began to build up the army, even though there was no prospect of a French invasion. The Federalists intended to use the army to stifle international opposition. Hamilton took day-to-day command of the army and filled it with officers loyal to him. All Hamilton needed was a declaration of war against France, but Adams refused to ask for one.

Silencing Political Opposition: The Alien and Sedition Acts: Congress could not declare war, but it did pass a series of acts designed to persecute the Republicans. The Alien Enemies Act and the Alien Act gave the president power to expel any foreigner. The Naturalization Act required immigrants to reside in the United States for fourteen years before becoming eligible for citizenship. The last act, the Sedition Act, made it a crime to criticize the government. Federal courts became politicized and often enforced this law in absurd ways. Republicans were convinced that free government was on the brink of extinction. The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions: Jefferson and Madison responded to the Alien and Sedition Acts with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (1798). The Kentucky Resolutions, written by Jefferson and passed by the state of Kentucky, claimed that each state had the power to decide whether acts of Congress were constitutional, and if not, to nullify them. Madison’s Virginia Resolutions urged the states to protect their citizens but did not assert a state’s right to nullify federal law. Jefferson and Madison were less interested at this time in formulating accurate constitutional theory than they were in clarifying the differences between Republicans and Federalists. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798, 1799) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Adams’s Finest Hour: In 1799 Adams openly broke with Hamilton. The president sent another delegation to negotiate with France, and this delegation worked out an amicable settlement. The war hysteria against France vanished, and the American people began to regard Hamilton’s army as a useless expense. In avoiding war with France, Adams saved the nation from the schemes of the High Federalists. In return, they made sure he lost the election of 1800.

The Peaceful Revolution: The Election of 1800: The Federalists lost the election of 1800 because they were internally divided and generally unpopular. The Republicans won easily and the new president, Thomas Jefferson, tried to unite the nation by stressing in his inaugural address the republican values shared by members of each party. Jefferson and Liberty on Listen to the Audio File myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: DANGER OF POLITICAL EXTREMISM The election of 1800 is one of the most important in our history because the transfer of power from Federalists to Republicans was achieved peacefully, but the nation had come dangerously close to suffering the chaos of an ideological civil war.

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KEY TERMS: 1. Hamilton argued that a growing financial community required a central bank to facilitate increasingly complex commercial transactions, and the institution not only would serve as the main depository of the U.S. government but also would issue currency acceptable in payment of federal taxes. Because of that guarantee, the money would maintain its value while in circulation; only a Bank of the United States could provide this.

2. Hamilton believed the Constitution had implied powe rs, which gave the federal government the right to create institutions that were necessary and for the good of the people, such as the Bank of the United States, even if the Constitution didn’t explicitly say it did.

3. America’s political leaders could not ignore the French Revolution because both France and Britain challenged America’s neutral position and were in need of American goods during the war.

4. Jay’s Treaty failed to realize key diplomatic goals, such as the U.S. position on natural rights. The Royal Navy would continue to search American vessels on the high seas for contraband and to impress sailors suspected of being British citizens. There would be no compensation for the ships seized in 1793 until the Americans paid British merchants for debts contracted before the Revolution. And nothing was said about the slaves the British army had carried off at the conclusion of the war.

5. Washington saw the Whiskey Rebellion as an act of civil unrest. He believed that the opposition party had dispatched French agents to western Pennsylvania to undermine the authority of the federal government.

6. Washington, in his Farewell Address, stressed Federalist interests and warned the American people to avoid political factions and foreign entanglements that could sacrifice U.S. security.

7. Although relations between France and the United States had deteriorated, Adams felt that officially declaring war would escalate the conflict more than was necessary. The hostilities came to be known as the Quasi-War. 8. The representatives of the French government did not take the American diplomats seriously.

They felt they could bully the United States, and their demands for bribes before negotiating came to be called the XYZ Affair after the French representatives involved.

9. During the summer of 1798, Congress passed four bills known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The legislation authorized using federal courts and the powers of the presidency to silence the Republicans. These acts were born of fear and vindictiveness to punish the followers of Jefferson.

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10. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions suggested that states should have the right to declare null and void congressional acts they deemed unconstitutional.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What was the structure of the federal government under President Washington? The federal government under Washington was amazingly small by today’s standards. It consisted of three departments: the Departments of State, Treasury, and War. In 1789, Congress passed the Judiciary Act creating the Supreme Court.

2. Why did Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson find it so difficult to cooperate as members of Washington’s cabinet? Jefferson and Hamilton found it so difficult to get along because of their differing philosophical outlooks for the country. Hamilton believed in establishing a system like England’s with a solid and structured financial system heavily reliant upon manufacturing and trade. He also mistrusted the common people, believing that if the wealthy could be convinced their interests were being met they would support a strong central government. Jefferson trusted the common citizen and believed he was the key to the future of the nation. His liberties must be protected from the greed of the wealthy. While he did not want to turn back the clock to an agrarian golden age, Jefferson did believe that farmers made better citizens than factory workers.

3. What did Alexander Hamilton hope his new credit system would accomplish? Hamilton believed his new credit system would reduce the power of the individual states in shaping national economic policy. He saw this as essential to maintaining a strong federal government. The creation of a fully funded national debt would signal to the world that the United States was solvent and, therefore, a good investment; money would stay invested here at home rather than in Europe.

4. How did Hamilton justify the creation of the Bank of the United States? In a masterful essay to the president, Hamilton assured Washington that the powers listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gave Congress the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.” This he claimed was part of the implied powers that the Constitution did not explicitly grant to the federal government but could be interpreted as having been granted.

5. Why did Congress reject Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures? The Report on Manufactures detailed Hamilton’s grand design for the economic future of the United States.

Hamilton’s enemies who had not formed a cohesive party as yet joined together to defeat his program in Congress. Jefferson was afraid of the vice that crowding workers in cities might bring, while Madison argued his plan would consolidate power in the federal government at the expense of the states.

6. Why could America’s political leaders not ignore the French Revolution? When France declared war on England in 1793, America hoped to stay neutral. Both France and England challenged the American policy of “free ships make free goods” and no one was sure if the 75

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United States was bound by the Franco-American treaties of 1778 to provide support to France against England.

7. Why did Jay’s Treaty spark such hostility throughout the nation? Jay’s Treaty was seen as a sellout of national honor. While it maintained the peace, parts of the treaty seemed too high a price to pay, including paying debts to British merchants from before the Revolution with no compensation for goods or sailors taken by the British navy on the high seas.

8. Why did “the opening of the Mississippi” figure so prominently in American politics during the 1790s? The Treaty of San Lorenzo gave the United States such generous terms, such as the opening of the Mississippi to trade, the right to deposit goods in New Orleans without paying duties, and a secure southern boundary line (31st parallel), among others, that Pinckney was seen as a Federalist hero.

9. Why did Washington and his supporters see the Whiskey Rebellion as something more sinister than just an “embarrassing fiasco”? Washington and Hamilton misinterpreted the Republican Pennsylvania governor’s refusal to put down the revolt as a direct political challenge. Both Republicans and Federalists made it worse with Washington accusing Republican political clubs of inciting the farmers and Jefferson saying the whole episode was an attempt by Hamilton to create an army to use to intimidate Republicans.

10. In what ways was Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796 a piece of party propaganda?

The Farewell Address served as propaganda by not being delivered until September, which hurt the Republican efforts to get organized for the election.

11. During the XYZ Affair, why did representatives of the French government treat American diplomats with such disrespect? Talleyrand’s sending of deputies to deal with the American commission and its request of a bribe and forced loan shocked and angered the American commission. Pinckney and Marshall returned to the United States.

12. Why were the High Federalists willing to place party advantage over the welfare of the entire nation? Many of the High Federalists saw the Republicans as the real threat and hoped to use the army to purge the country of them.

13. Why did leaders of the Federalist party not appreciate that the Alien and Sedition Acts undermined the Constitution of the United States? Federalists claimed the Constitution did not condone groundless and malignant lies designed to threaten the safety and existence of the United States. They were determined to shut down the Republican press even if it meant giving the national government dictatorial powers to do it.

14. How did the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions propose to protect American freedoms? Both resolutions defended the right of an individual state to decide on the constitutionality of federal law. While not designed to support southern succession, it was a piece of pure political propaganda. They reminded voters that the Republicans were an option to the Federalists in the coming elections.

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15. Was the Convention of Mortefontaine a victory for American diplomacy? Yes, the convention was a victory for Adams. Even though he did not get compensation for vessels taken during the Quasi-War, he did get the United States out of the treaties of 1778 and establish an environment of mutual trust with France that paved the way for the Louisiana Purchase.

16. What did Jefferson mean when he claimed in his inaugural address that “we are all Republicans; we are all Federalists”? Jefferson meant that even though differing political positions existed, the American people shared a deep commitment to a federal union based on republican ideals set forth during the American Revolution.

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CHAPTER 8 Republican Ascendancy: The Jeffersonian Vision, 1800–1814 CHAPTER OUTLINE Limits of Equality The Republic Expands Westward the Course of Empire Native American Resistance Commercial Life in the Cities Jefferson as President Political Reforms The Louisiana Purchase The Lewis and Clark Expedition Race and Dissent Under Jefferson Attack on the Judges The Slave Trade Embarrassments Overseas Embargo Divides the Nation A New Administration Goes to War Fumbling Toward Conflict The Strange War of 1812 Fighting the British Hartford Convention: The Demise of the Federalists Conclusion: The “Second War of Independence”

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: “YOUNG AMERICA” College students believe that they belong to a distinct generation, different from the generation that produced their parents and teachers. Furthermore, every college student has been told, more than once, that he or she is destined to become a future leader of this nation. In truth, it is difficult to distinguish between generations, but at least once in our history it can be said that political power passed from one generation to another at a discernible point in time. The experience of that new generation should be of interest to college students today.

The generation of Americans from Ben Franklin (born in 1706) to Alexander Hamilton (born in 1757) won a war for independence and established a nation that has endured strong and free for over two centuries. By 1811, these men and women, leaders and average citizens alike, had served their country well and were becoming part of history. Franklin, the first of this generation, died in 1790; George Washington and Patrick Henry in 1799; Samuel Adams in 1803 and Alexander Hamilton, the youngest of this group, was killed in 1804. Of course, some of the revolutionary generation still lived. Thomas Jefferson, sixty-eight years old, continued to give advice on national affairs.

As the text mentions, the Congress that convened in 1811, the Twelfth Congress, was filled with young men serving for the first time. A new generation of Americans had come on the scene, in Congress and in the country, and they were to shape the destiny of the United States for the next forty years. Of this new generation, the ones who would be best remembered by posterity were Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, both born in 1767, and the remarkable trio of John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and Martin Van Buren, all born in 1782.

This new generation experienced the American Revolution in a way their fathers had not. Most knew it only from books or stories told by their elders; even those who had been born before 1776 (like Jackson, who had nearly died in a British prisoner-of-war camp) were only boys when the war ended. For these men, the American Revolution and the adoption of the United States Constitution, its logical conclusion, were great and glorious events. They never understood how difficult it had been to be a “patriot” before 1776, when attachment to the “mother country” ran deep in every American. They never understood how painful the war of independence had been and why it had divided Americans. They never understood that some Americans had preferred the Articles of Confederation to the United States Constitution. It was this new generation that elevated George Washington to a position of demi-divinity and that spoke of the Constitution as if God had given it to Washington on Mount Vernon.

Much of the difficulty between the Twelfth Congress and President Madison, who was sixty years old in 1811, reflected a generation gap. Having lived through the Revolution from beginning to end, the president dreaded another war with England. Even preparations for war raised problems for Madison, who had seen Americans rebel once before against taxes. He doubted that his constituents would ever consent to be heavily taxed by a central government.

Clay and Calhoun, who were members of Congress, simply did not understand Madison’s concern. Certainly, Americans would support the national government, Calhoun replied. It was their government, was it not? And why bother to prepare for a war with England, these young 78

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men asked? We had beaten England before; we could easily do it again. Clay boasted that he could conquer Canada with the Kentucky militia.

It is tempting to apply a bit of psychohistory at this point. Can it be that the young men of 1811, so fervent in their praise of their forefathers, felt inadequate in comparison? Was the War of 1812 a psychological necessity for them? And did they proclaim their victory so loudly because they finally felt relieved that they had proved themselves worthy of their fathers?

RELIVING THE PAST Every American sings the national anthem with some frequency, but the words have become so familiar that most of us no longer hear them. If, however, one knows the context in which Francis Scott Key, on the approach to Baltimore, wrote his poem describing the siege of Fort McHenry, it becomes impossible to hear the anthem again without feeling the words more keenly. Unfortunately, Key left an inadequate account of the siege in a letter he wrote to his mother; however, a lively, accurate account of the episode can be found in Walter Lord’s The Dawn’s Early Light (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972).

“Before the land was ours,” Robert Frost said, “we were the land’s.” Before the Louisiana Purchase was concluded, Lewis and Clark had begun their exploration of the Far West. Through their journal, we begin to understand why the West exerted such a strong pull on the American imagination. Their journey along the great Missouri River was a veritable odyssey, filled with adventure and sights of stampeding bison, unconquered Indians, and monstrous grizzly bears.

The definitive edition of The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition is the one edited by Gary E. Moulton, published by the University of Nebraska Press, but its cost, about $1,000, makes it less available. A cheaper but still excellent alternative is Elliott Coues, History of the Expedition Under the Command of Lewis and Clark (New York: Dover Publications, 1965 reprint).

CHAPTER SUMMARY LIMITS OF EQUALITY The author begins with a story about a maid who refused to think of herself as a servant. In the new America, all people were equal, in principle. The theme of the chapter is the contradiction between the ideal of equality and the reality of a society in which most people were not equal in wealth or rights.

THE REPUBLIC EXPANDS The first decades of the nineteenth century saw the U.S. population grow by almost 2 million.

Regional cultures grew, and the term “southerners” appeared. Disagreement on the issue of slavery was important in forming regional identities, and secession was attempted more than once.

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HOW did the Republic’s growth shape the market economy and relations with Native Americans?

During Jefferson’s administration, a rapidly growing American population flooded into the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. Family farms produced crops for a robust international market.

Cities served as centers, not of industry, but of commerce. When Native America ns such as Tecumseh resisted expansion, the United States government as well as ordinary white settlers pushed them aside.

Westward the Course of Empire: The growth in the West typified the incredible population growth of the whole nation. Areas that had been populated by Indians and fur traders became the states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio. The mix of people in the West led to the creation of a new regional culture of a rootless, optimistic folk. The Western Country, Letters in the Nile’s Weekly Register on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Native American Resistance: The Indians stood in the way of westward movement and suffered the consequences. Defrauded and terrorized, some Indians resisted. Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief, took up the tomahawk but was decisively defeated. So, too, were the Creeks. For Thomas Jefferson, and many others, Indian wars were wars of extermination; there could be no coexistence between whites and Indians. Pennsylvania Gazette Indian Hostilities on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Commercial Life in the Cities: Agriculture and trade, carried on in traditional ways, remained the foundation of the economy. American shipping enjoyed a spurt of prosperity between 1793 and 1805 but suffered when England and France restricted America’s rights as a neutral nation. Cities were closely associated with international trade but still played a marginal role in the life of the rest of the nation. Industrialization and mechanization were just beginning to frighten skilled craftsmen.

JEFFERSON AS PRESIDENT Thomas Jefferson personified the contradictions in Republicanism: He despised ceremonies and formality and dedicated himself to intellectual pursuits; at the same time, he was a politician to the core. He realized that his success as a president depended on close cooperation with Congress. The Pastoral Setting of Washington, D.C. on View the Image myhistorylab.com HOW did practical politics challenge Jefferson’s political principles?

Jefferson brought to the presidency a commitment to a small, less expensive federal government. Once in office, however, he discovered that practical politics demanded compromises with republican principle. He needed a government capable of responding to unexpected challenges and opportunities throughout the world. Although he worried that the Louisiana Purchase (1803) might exceed his authority under the Constitution, Jefferson quickly accepted the French offer, and he sent Lewis and Clark to explore this vast territory.

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Political Reforms: Jefferson gave top priority to cutting the federal debt and federal taxes. He trimmed federal expenses, mainly by slashing military spending. Reduction of the army had the further benefit of removing a threat to republican government. Though badgered by loyal Republicans for political appointments, Jefferson retained only those bureaucrats he thought competent, no matter what their party. His refusal to purge Federalists hastened the demise of the Federalist party. Many of its members retired from public life, and the more ambitious of them, such as John Quincy Adams, became Republicans. A View of the Capitol, 1800 on View the Image myhistorylab.com The Louisiana Purchase: Americans had assumed that they would some day buy or take New Orleans from Spain, which did not have the military strength to resist the United States. In 1801, however, France, which could block America’s westward expansion or close New Orleans, bought Louisiana from Spain. Jefferson sent a mission to France to buy New Orleans. Napoleon, for reasons of his own, offered to sell all of Louisiana, an area larger than the United States at that time, for only $15 million. Lewis and Clark: What Were They Trying to Accomplish? On Watch the Video myhistorylab.com The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Even before purchasing Louisiana, Jefferson sent an exploring party into the area (the Lewis and Clark Expedition). Their report on its economic prospects reaffirmed Jefferson’s desire that it belong to the United States. When he received the French offer, he worried that Congress might not have the constitutional right to make the purchase, but Jefferson urged Congress to complete the deal anyway, fearing that Napoleon might change his mind. He departed even further from Republican principles when he established a government for the new territory. Because most of the inhabitants were French and Spanish, Jefferson did not entrust them with self-rule, and the area was governed from Washington. Nonetheless, the American people thoroughly approved of Jefferson’s actions and reelected him in 1804. Sacagawea Interprets for Lewis and Clark on Read the Document myhistorylab.com RACE AND DISSENT UNDER JEFFERSON The success of Jefferson’s first term disguised growing American problems. The Republican party was deeply divided over Jefferson’s attempts at court reform and over the slave trade.

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HOW did Jeffersonians deal with the difficult problems of party politics and slavery?

To end Federalist control of the judiciary, Jefferson denied commissions to judges appointed at the end of the Adams administration and attempted to remove others from office. The failed, and unconstitutional, impeachment of Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase embarrassed the administration. In 1807, after considerable debate and compromise, Jefferson signed into law a bill outlawing the international slave trade.

Attack on the Judges: Before transferring power to the Republicans in 1801, the Federalists created a number of new circuit courts, filled with loyal Federalists. When Jefferson took office, Congress repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, thus abolishing the new courts. The Federalists complained that this violated the tenure of judges, a right guaranteed by the Constitution. In a related case, Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Supreme Court ruled that the Judiciary Act itself 81

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had been unconstitutional. As Chief Justice John Marshall intended, the Republicans considered the ruling a victory and overlooked the fact that the Court had judged the constitutionality of an act of Congress (judicial review). After their “victory” in the Marbury case, Republicans pressed their attack on the court system. One judge, certifiably insane, was impeached and removed from office. Some Republicans now began to fear a complete destruction of an independent judiciary, an important element in the system of checks and balances. When Jefferson sought impeachment of a judge who, though partisan, had committed no crime, Republican unity disappeared. The trial itself made clear that impeachment could be voted only on narrow political grounds. A Republican Senate refused to convict, and the attack against the judicial system ended. Opinion for the Supreme Court for Marbury v. Madison on Read the Document myhistorylab.com The Slave Trade: Congress prohibited the slave trade after 1808, but northern and southern Republicans disagreed over the issue. Northerners wanted to free any black smuggled into the United States, but southerners succeeded in having a law passed that handed such persons over to state authorities, who could even sell them into slavery. Congress Prohibits Importation of Slaves on Read the Document myhistorylab.com EMBARRASSMENTS OVERSEAS When England and France resumed full-scale hostilities in 1803, American commerce was caught in the middle. The English issued “orders in Council,” and Napoleon issued the Berlin and Milan Decrees, the effects of which were to make American ships subject to seizure.

Jefferson bore these insults because the expense of a war would have wrecked his financial reforms. This section explains the embargo, Jefferson’s alternative to war.

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WHY did the United States find it difficult to avoid military conflict during this period?

During Jefferson’s second term, Great Britain and France waged a world war. Both nations tried to manipulate the United States into taking sides. Recognizing that his country possessed only a weak navy and small army, Jefferson supported the Embargo Act (1807), which closed American ports to all foreign commerce. This angered New Englanders who regarded open trade as the key to their region’s prosperity.

Embargo Divides the Nation: In 1807, Congress prohibited American ships from leaving port. Jefferson reasoned that France and England needed American goods so badly that they would quickly agree to respect American rights. The embargo, however, proved to be unpopular at home. In order to enforce it, the government supervised commerce in minute detail, and when smuggling became commonplace, Jefferson sent in the army. New Englanders especially resented the embargo because it destroyed their economy. Worse, it did not hurt England. In 1809, the embargo was repealed.

A New Administration Goes to War: James Madison was selected as Jefferson’s successor by a caucus of Republican congressmen. He won the election of 1808 easily but was not temperamentally suited to exercise leadership. Under the terms of the Non-Intercourse Act, the United States committed itself to resume trade with England and France if those nations promised to cease their seizure of American vessels. When a minor English official made 82

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such a promise, Madison opened trade with England, but the English government promptly seized those ships Madison had put to sea. Congress replaced the Non-Intercourse Act with another law just as poorly conceived (Macon’s Bill Number Two). This time Napoleon promised to observe American rights, but when Madison opened trade with France, Napoleon broke his word.

Fumbling Toward Conflict: In 1811, the anti-British mood of the country intensified. In the West, the uprising led by Tecumseh was widely believed to have been the work of British agents.

In Congress, a group of fiercely nationalistic representatives, the War Hawks, demanded a war against England to preserve American honor. On June 1, 1812, Madison finally sent Congress a declaration of war. Had there been a telegraph between London and Washington, the war might not have begun because England had just suspended the Orders in Council. This confusing preamble typified the war in general. The vote for war in Congress was close, and nobody seemed to know what the United States intended to gain from victory. British Impressment, 1812 on View the Image myhistorylab.com THE STRANGE WAR OF 1812 Americans expected victory even though they were unprepared for war. To ensure that Republican financial reforms would not be undone, Congress refused to raise taxes. New England, where the Federalist party was still strong, refused to take an active part in the war effort. The United States Army was small, and state militias proved inadequate to fight welltrained veterans. The War of 1812 on View the Map myhistorylab.com WHY is the War of 1812 sometimes thought of as a “second war of independence”?

Prior to the war, Great Britain treated the Unites States as though it were still a colonia l possession and regularly seized sailors serving on American ships. In 1813, American troops destroyed Montreal but failed to conquer Canada. In 1814, British troops burned Washington, D.C., in retaliation. Later that year, General Andrew Jackson won a stunning victory in the Battle of New Orleans. The resolutions of the Hartford Convention, criticizing the war and the Constitution, proved an embarrassment for the Federalists and accelerated their demise as a political party.

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Fighting the British: The American decision to concentrate U.S. efforts on the western forts led initially to British victories. The year 1813 saw defeats on both sides. Although the British managed to burn the U.S. capital in 1814, Baltimore held out against the full force of British naval power. The American triumph in the Battle of New Orleans, though important in regaining control of access to the Mississippi, actually came after peace negotiations had begun. Burning of the White House, 1814 on View the Image myhistorylab.com Hartford Convention: The Demise of the Federalists: The resentment felt by New Englanders over the embargo grew during the Madison administration. When the war seemed to be going badly for the United States, a group of Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1814, to recommend changes in the Constitution that would have lessened the power of the South and the West. Unfortunately for the Federalists, they met on the eve of the victory of New Orleans and the conclusion of peace. After these events, the Convention’s 83

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demands seemed irrelevant as well as disloyal. The Federalist party never recovered from the Hartford Convention.

CONCLUSION: THE “SECOND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE” Negotiations at Ghent began in 1814. British demands were rejected by the Americans. Both sides were exhausted by the war, with almost no change in territory.

KEY TERMS: 1. Shawnee leader Tecumseh wanted to revitalize native cultures, resist contact with whites, resist alcohol, and, most importantly, hold on to Indian land.

2. In April 1803 Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory to the United States for only $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the nation.

3. The Lewis and Clark Expedition commissioned by President Jefferson to explore the Far West not only fulfilled Jefferson’s scientific expectations but also reaffirmed his faith in the future economic prosperity of the United States.

4. The Marbury v. Madison decision (February 1803) asserted the power of judicial review by declaring an act of Congress, the Judiciary Act of 1789, unconstitutional.

5. The Marbury v. Madison decision was the first time the Supreme Court asserted its right, known as judicial review, to judge the constitutionality of congressional acts.

6. The American people did not support the embargo of American commerce that was designed

by President Jefferson to protect American ships from seizure and deprive European powers of needed American goods, such as food. Compliance required a series of enforcement acts that over fourteen months became increasingly harsh. By 1808, Jefferson was involved in the regulation of the smallest details of American economic life. Northerners hated the embargo, and by 1809, the bankruptcy of Jefferson’s foreign policy was obvious. The Embargo Act never seriously damaged the British economy, and it was repealed a few days before James Madison’s inauguration.

7. The War Hawks were aggressive nationalists from the South and West who called for war to defend the national honor and force Britain to respect America’s maritime rights.

8. During the War of 1812, the Americans struggled militarily to force the British out of Canada. The major battles of the war brought few lasting gains to either the British or the Americans.

9. The Battle of New Orleans between British and American forces should never have occurred. The British landed a large force at the exact same time as diplomats in Europe were 84

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preparing the final drafts of a peace treaty. The combatants, of course, knew nothing of the settlement, and so the battle ensued.

10. Madison’s foreign policy in the War of 1812, which had undermined commercial interests in the North, led to the Hartford Convention in 1814 in which New England politicians discussed their dissatisfaction with the relations between their region and the federal government. The convention accelerated the demise of the Federalist party.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What was the appeal of the West for so many Americans after 1790? The almost unlimited geographic mobility when combined with the ambitious and self-confident nature of Americans heading west made it naturally attractive.

2. What would Tecumseh have thought of federal attempts to “civilize” the Indians?

Tecumseh would have rejected the idea and encouraged his followers to resist contact with such groups. Preservation of Indian culture was paramount to him and his brother.

3. What was the character of cities in an expanding Republican economy? American cities had some of the highest population densities ever recorded in this country’s history, for example, 40,000 New Yorkers crammed into 1.5 square miles. Yet cities played only a marginal role in the economy. Urban merchants rarely bought goods for export from a distance of more than 150 miles.

4. Why did Jefferson find it so difficult to reduce the size of the federal government?

Jefferson saw it as shortsighted to fire all the officeholders to satisfy the many members of his party seeking office. First, many had skills that the young republic still needed. Second, Jefferson thought that many of the more moderate Federalists could be won over to the Republican cause. Many like John Quincy Adams were brought over to the Republican side.

5. Did the Louisiana Purchase represent a compromise by Jefferson in his interpretation of the Constitution? Why or why not? Yes, Jefferson pointed out there was no provision in the Constitution for buying large tracts of land, so he proposed an amendment. Few showed the same scruples and because of a shortage of time it was never followed up. Hamilton would have cited the implied powers of Article 1, Section 8. The bill to buy the land from France sailed through Congress.

6. How did the Le wis and Clark Expedition reinforce Jefferson’s faith in the future of the ne w republic? The expedition fulfilled Jefferson’s scientific expectations and reinforced his faith in the future prosperity of the United States.

7. Why did the federal courts become the focus of party controversy under Jefferson? The Federalists had lost the executive branch and had no control over the legislative, but it was the only branch to try and stem the tide of Republicanism. Jefferson rightly saw this and objected to Adams’s “midnight” appointments, especially that of his cousin John Marshall who became chief justice.

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8. Why did the U.S. government not outlaw slavery altogether in 1807? Although Southerners put up a good resistance to Jefferson’s efforts to outlaw the slave trade, it was the fact that Northerners couldn’t figure out what to do with the slaves that slowed the legislation down.

9. Why was Jefferson’s embargo policy such a failure? Americans, especially Northerners, rejected Jefferson’s attempts at “peaceable coercion.” They were willing to take the risk of being seized by British ships to make a profit. Jefferson and Gallatin found themselves attempting to control every aspect of American commerce. Merchants in New York just ignored the law and roughed up customs inspectors who tried to enforce it.

10. Why did the American government find it so hard to avoid entanglements in European affairs? The lack of U.S. military strength allowed the Europeans to do whatever they wished without fear of repercussions. American anti-British sentiment in the West also played a role in pushing the United States toward war.

11. Why were the War Hawks so intent in pushing the new republic into a war with Great Britain? Many of them had been newly elected to Congress and refused to accept national humiliation any longer. They called for action and promised any course that would return respect to the United States and provide protection for her republican institutions.

12. How well did the Americans fare militarily against the British during the War of 1812?

For the most part Americans did poorly. The navy won some skirmishes until the continental war with Napoleon was over. Then the British sent their fleet and bottled up the American navy in its harbors. Commodore Perry gained naval supremacy on Lake Erie but not on Lake Champlain. A small British fleet burned Washington, D.C., but toward the end the fort at Baltimore held out against a heavy bombardment. General Andrew Jackson won a great battle at New Orleans, though the combatants did not know the war was over.

13. What factors led to the calling of the Hartford Convention and the drafting of the Hartford resolutions? New England Federalists and merchants felt the president had ignored their economic needs. When the English occupied Maine towns on the coast and moved into Massachusetts while the president did nothing to drive them out, delegates gathered in Hartford. They never called for succession but did recommend changes to the Constitution.

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CHAPTER 9 Nation Building and Nationalism, 1815–1825 CHAPTER OUTLINE A Revolutionary War Hero Revisits America in 1824 Expansion and Migration Extending the Boundaries Native American Societies Under Pressure Transportation and the Market Economy Roads and Steamboats Emergence of a Market Economy Early Industrialism The Politics of Nation Building After the War of 1812 The Missouri Compromise Postwar Nationalism and the Supreme Court Nationalism in Foreign Policy: The Monroe Doctrine Conclusion: The End of the Era of Good Feeling

TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE BIG APPLE New York City still represents a great challenge to college students. If they can make it there in finance, art, theater, sports, or fashion, they can make it anywhere. Despite the city’s obvious problems, despite the loathing it inspires among so many Americans, New York continues to import bright young people, who give the city so much of its vitality. The predominant position of New York in American life, however, was by no means preordained by geography or history. The city began its rise in the 1820s because of a particular set of circumstances, and there are plenty of signs today that New York’s position is rapidly eroding.

In 1776, it seemed likely that Philadelphia would become the economic, cultural, and political capital of America, and that it would become as central to the life of the new nation as London, Paris, or Vienna were in their respective nations. Philadelphia’s population of 30,000 at the end of the colonial period ranked the city as the third largest in the British Empire. It was America’s greatest seaport and the broad gate of entry for most immigrants. It was, probably, the most refined and cosmopolitan city in the colonies. Philadelphia was home to a college, the American Philosophical Society, the largest community of first-rate doctors in America, an impressive number of scientists and intellectuals, and, not least, Ben Franklin. When the 87

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Continental Congress chose to meet in Philadelphia, the city became the political capital of the colonies.

Philadelphia continued to grow after 1776, but New York grew faster and finally surpassed Philadelphia, becoming America’s largest city by 1820. Philadelphia’s population went above 100,000 in 1820 and stood at 161,000 by 1830. New York, however, grew from 123,000 in 1820 to 202,000 in 1830. By that time it was apparent that New York would become the great metropolis of America.

New York became predominant for several reasons. It possessed a more capacious harbor than Philadelphia, and New York merchants may have been more aggressive. In 1816, England arbitrarily chose to dump her tremendous inventory of unsold goods in New York, a considerable boon to local merchants. Most of all, the Erie Canal made New York City great.

The key to commercial prosperity was the import-export trade with England. In order to dress properly, a respectable woman in the early nineteenth century wore about one hundred yards of material, usually woolen or cotton, nearly all of which came from England through an American seaport. Americans paid for their underskirts with flour sent to England through an American seaport. The Erie Canal gave the lion’s share of this trade to New York City. Merchant houses in New York City received orders from country stores for dry goods, ironware, and a thousand other imports from all along the route of the canal, all along the shores of Lake Erie, and from deep in the Northwest Territory. And with those orders, they sent barrels of flour. In 1820, New York shipped less flour than Baltimore or Philadelphia, but by 1827, New York sent out more flour than both cities combined.

New York’s increasing trade in dry goods and flour created a need not only for dock workers but also for commission merchants, scriveners, auditors, brokers, and bankers. In 1816, Philadelphia had been the financial capital of the United States, but by 1828, the New York Customs House collected enough revenue to pay all the daily expenses of the federal government, and by 1860, New York had more bankers than the rest of the nation. Success, of course, breeds success. The ancillary services that had grown up around the port of New York made the city even more attractive to shippers. New York became the great entrepot of the cotton trade. And just as cargo ships entered America by way of New York, so did immigrants.

By 1830, New York received thirteen immigrants for every one that arrived in Philadelphia.

It is hard to see how Philadelphia, with its air of refinement, could ever have become the capital of a society so inchoate, so pulsing, so vibrant as was early nineteenth-century America. New York was a better symbol of the new nation, but even New York failed to become the Paris of America. New York grew so large, so rich, so sophisticated, and so foreign that the city soon appeared to most Americans, and to most New Yorkers as well, as a world apart.

RELIVING THE PAST Lafayette was only one of the great number of foreign visitors who came to observe and report on America between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Everyone realized that the United 88

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States was in the process of creating a new and different society. Nearly all Americans were optimistic about the results; Europeans, however, varied in their opinions, as indicated by the accounts of Charles Dickens and Frances Trollope.

Dickens, with his ability to draw pictures in prose, gives a poignant description of the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia, a humane attempt to reform criminals by placing them in solitary confinement. Dickens encountered a man who had lived in such confinement, in the same cell, for eleven years. When Dickens spoke to the prisoner, he remained silent, intent upon picking the flesh on his fingers. This can be found in Dickens’s American Notes. The 1968 Peter Smith reprint (Gloucester, Massachusetts) has a good introduction by Christopher Lasch. Barnaby Rudge is also interesting reading, especially those sections that deal with Barnaby’s sojourn in the United States. It is a good example of Dickens’s art in creating fiction out of his personal experiences.

Frances Trollope threw a refreshing dose of cold water on everything American. Her description of a “literary” conversation in Cincinnati with a scholar who was too prudish to mention the title of Pope’s Rape of the Lock, and her description of the House of Representatives, its members wearing hats, spitting, and slouched in their seats, are amusing and insightful. They can be found in Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans. The most recent edition was the 80th published by Penguin Books in 1997.

CHAPTER SUMMARY A REVOLUTIONARY WAR HERO REVISITS AMERICA IN 1824 The author uses Lafayette’s visit to the United States to introduce a description of the great changes that had occurred in the fifty years since the Declaration of Independence. New lands were being opened to settlement, a transportation “revolution” was taking place, and a mood of confidence prevailed.

EXPANSION AND MIGRATION After 1815 the American people shifted their attention from Europe and began to look westward.

They saw a rich, unsettled continent, still held in part by the English, Spanish, and Indians.

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WHAT key forces drove American expansion westward during this period?

Westward expansion was fueled by the ambition to expand American territories and to economically exploit and develop the Far West. The First Seminole War gave Monroe and Adams a chance to push Spain from the Southeast under the Adams-Onís Treaty, while entrepreneurs established a fur trade in the North and an aggressive “removal” policy forced Indian tribes from the South.

Extending the Boundaries: John Quincy Adams, secretary of state from 1816 to 1824, deserves the most credit for expanding the nation’s boundaries during that period. Taking advantage of Spain’s decline, Adams negotiated two treaties: the Adams-Onís Treaty and the Transcontinental Treaty. Under the terms of these treaties, the United States secured all of 89

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Florida and reached as far as the Pacific. In terms of actual settlement, however, the “West” was still east of the Mississippi River.

Native American Societies Under Pressure: Almost 60,000 Indians lived in the Southeast in 1815, most of whom had adopted a “civilized” way of life, including agriculture and slavery.

Nevertheless, the United States government was determined to move them beyond the Mississippi River so that their land could be given to whites. The Indians resisted in different ways. The Cherokees in a sense became more “white.” They wrote a constitution modeled on the United States Constitution and adopted a written language. The Seminoles chose to take up arm and fought a series of “wars” with the United States army. Neither method was successful. The Cherokee Treaty of 1817 on Read the Document myhistorylab.com TRANSPORTATION AND THE MARKET ECONOMY Two important and interrelated developments marked this era: rapid improvement in transportation and the increasing use of money and credit in the economy. In 1812 the new country was still disconnected, and leaders realized a better transportation system was necessary.

Progress of the Century on View the Closer Look myhistorylab.com

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HOW did developments in transportation support the growth of agriculture and manufacturing?

New turnpikes, steamboats, and eventually railroads expanded the access of farmers and small manufacturers to a regional and even national market. Farmers began to produce staple crops to sell rather than subsistence crops for their own families. Textile factories developed to turn southern cotton into clothing. In the North industrialization increased efficiency but required workers to crowd into factories for long hours.

Roads and Steamboats: In an effort to “conquer space,” the national government built the National Road, from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, then in Virginia. In addition, a whole web of turnpikes came into existence, built by private entrepreneurs. Usually, however, the roads did not return a profit, and, though beneficial to the public, they lost their attraction for investors.

Nature blessed the United States with a network of rivers that constituted a natural transportation system that greatly encouraged America’s economic development. Flatboats carried cargo from the upper Mississippi and Ohio Valley to New Orleans and all along the lower stretches of the great river, cotton planters built their wharfs. Flatboats traveled in only one direction, with the flow of the river, but, after 1811, steamboats churned the waters of the West and drove transportation costs down. The steamboat, actually less important than the flatboat, stirred a sense of romance in the American people. Congress even abandoned its usual hands-off policy toward private enterprise to regulate safety standards on the great paddle-wheeler. No river and no road linked East and West before the state of New York, led by Governor De Witt Clinton, built the Erie Canal between Albany and Buffalo. Even before its completion in 1825, the canal was an enormous success. Easterners and westerners paid less for one another’s goods as a result, and New York City grew rapidly as a commercial center. Other states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan also build elaborate canal systems. Listen to the Audio File The Erie Canal on myhistorylab.com 90

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Emergence of a Market Economy: The revolution in transportation had a decisive effect on agriculture. Lower transportation costs meant greater income for the farmer. The sale of a farmer’s produce to distant markets meant participation in a complex system of credit. The greatest profits went to those who switched from mixed farming to a single crop. Agriculture in general became generalized by region. The Ohio Valley became a major wheat-producing area, but the most spectacular success was in the Deep South when it turned to cotton. Several factors were responsible, such as the invention of the cotton gin, increased demand, and the extensive use of slave labor. A Patent Drawing of Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin on View the Image myhistorylab.com Early Industrialis m: Manufacturing increased after the War of 1812, but most manufacturing was still done at home; what changed was the way the process was financed. Merchants owned the raw materials, which they “put out” to farm families. Only in the textile industry did a fully developed factory system emerge. The most spectacular example was the complex operated by the Boston Manufacturing Company at Lowell, Massachusetts. The increasing success of industry in New England prompted businesspeople in that area to shift their investments from shipping to manufacturing, and the politicians there began to pay more attention to ways in which government could aid industry. Even so, America was not yet an industrial nation; it was the growth of a market economy of national scope that was the major economic development of the period. Coming of Age in 1833 (a great period of change/reinvention of the world) on Watch the Video myhistorylab.com THE POLITICS OF NATION BUILDING AFTER THE WAR OF 1812 Conflicts of interest grew as the nation grew. Monroe’s two terms in office were called the “Era of Good Feeling,” though dissension was brewing. An important theme in politics of the period was a growing nationalism.

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WHAT decisions did the federal government face as the country expanded?

The government decided whether new states would allow slavery, how the Supreme Court would function, and how the United States would deal with the European powers. The Missouri Compromise established the 36°30' line dividing slave states from free states, while the Court became the supreme Constitutional interpreter. The Monroe Doctrine held that the United States and Europe should each control their respective hemispheres.

The Missouri Compromise: The Missouri controversy arose when the Missouri territorial assembly applied for statehood in 1817. Missouri would be a slave state, and many northerners already resented what they believed to be the South’s overrepresentation in the House of Representatives. James Tallmadge of New York persuaded the House to reject Missouri’s application unless it abolished slavery. The South considered Missouri’s admission crucial, because at that time there were eleven slave states and eleven free states. The South feared any change in this balance. Congress debated the issue in December 1819 and worked out a compromise. Missouri was allowed to become a slave state, but Maine was also allowed statehood as a free state. More important, Congress banned slavery from any part of the Louisiana Purchase (except for Missouri) above the latitude of 36°30'. Even more important, the 91

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Missouri controversy demonstrated a fundamental rift between North and South. Thomas Jefferson Reacts to the Missouri Compromise on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Postwar Nationalism and the Supreme Court: Between 1801 and 1835, John Marshall served as chief justice of the Supreme Court and used his position to encourage the growth of the nation.

Because he believed that the Constitution existed to protect the industrious, whose exertions to enrich themselves would benefit the entire nation, he sought to protect individual property rights against government interference, especially from the state legislatures. In a series of decisions, Marshall limited the powers of the states, usually by holding them to a strict observance of contracts. Dartmouth College V. Woodward on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Nationalism in Foreign Policy: The Monroe Doctrine: When Spain’s colonies in Latin America rose in rebellion, the United States responded favorably toward the new nations. In Europe, however, the ruling classes feared that rebellion might prove contagious, and France was encouraged to squelch Spain’s rebellious colonies and, perhaps, to keep them for France. Neither Great Britain nor the United States would tolerate French involvement in Latin American affairs, and England asked the United States to cooperate in preventing it. John Quincy Adams persuaded President Monroe that the United States alone should guarantee the independence of Mexico and the states in South and Central America. In 1823, Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine, warning European nations to stay out of the Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine had no real effect when it was first proclaimed but indicated America’s growing selfconfidence. In promising not to interfere in European internal affairs, America detached itself from worldwide struggles against tyranny and betrayed part of its revolutionary heritage. The shift of American focus from Europe to national affairs was one of the important themes of the period following the War of 1812. Americans now looked inward and liked what they saw. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: THE END OF THE “ERA OF GOOD FEELING” In its tremendous expansion, the United States developed a host of contending interests, many of which expected the government to favor them. The “Era of Good Feeling” could not last.

KEY TERMS: 1. Adams informed the Spanish government that further conflict would be avoided only if East Florida was ceded to the United States. Therefore, Spain agreed to the Adams–Onís Treaty.

2. Squatters wanted the right of first purchase at the minimum price of the land that they had already improved; preemption guaranteed this.

3. Following the War of 1812 a myth of national harmony prevailed, culminating in the Era of Good Feeling during James Monroe’s two terms as president.

4. In 1820, the Senate passed the Missouri Compromise, voting to admit Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, therefore eliminating the balance of power 92

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problem that admitting only one state would have caused. The Missouri Compromise also banned slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase above the latitude of 36°30'.

5. Marshall stated in his majority decision in Dartmouth College v. Woodward that the Constitution protected charters given to corporations by states.

6. McCulloch v. Maryland saw Marshall assert the supremacy of federal power over state power.

7. The Court affirmed and expanded the power of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce in Gibbons v. Ogden.

8. It made little impression on the great powers of Europe at the time it was proclaimed, but the Monroe Doctrine signified the rise of a new sense of independence and self-confidence in American attitudes toward the Old World. The United States would now go its own way free of involvement in European conflicts and would energetically protect its own sphere of influence from European interference.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What territories did the United States acquire under Secretary Adams, and how did it obtain them? As a result of Andrew Jackson’s success in the First Seminole War, Adams was able to bully Spain into giving up Florida and moving its Texas boundary north while extending it to the Pacific Ocean. While both Britain and Russia also had claims to the Pacific Northwest, the United States was in a much better position to acquire the Pacific coastline.

2. In what ways did the Cherokee attempt to increase their chances of survival in the face of American settlement, and how did they differ from the Seminoles? The Cherokee were able to create their own language, which led to a cultural revival amongst their tribe. This language enabled them to print primers and newspapers. Their leaders, like John Ross, pointed to acculturation, education, and economic success along American lines. The Seminoles were the smallest of the five tribes and most closely related to Africans. This gave them a different take on American civilization. They even practiced slavery but in a much more benign fashion than did Americans.

3. How did water transportation affect economic development, and how did this influence expansion westward? It reduced the cost of transportation and moved both goods and people faster. The steamboat also allowed a two-way commerce on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The canals built to link the Great Lakes with the Atlantic stimulated the economy for a short time but failed over the long term.

4. What was the main agricultural crop of the South, and what factors made it so successful? Cotton had become the “king” crop by this time in the South. The factors that made the South so successful in the cotton industry included the great demand that had erupted for cotton in England and to a lesser degree in New England. Invented by Eli 93

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Whitney in 1793, the cotton gin was another factor in that it cut the labor costs in removing seeds from short-staple cotton, making it marketable. Both slavery and land played key roles as well, providing labor and new richer soils upon which to grow cotton.

5. What manufacturing sector first fully adopted industrial production, and where was it centered? The shift in textile manufacturing from domestic to factory production was the first move toward industrialization. It centered in the Northeast, particularly around Boston and other Massachusetts towns.

6. What was the Missouri Compromise, and what problems did it resolve? It was a move by the Senate in 1820 to admit Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It resolved the issue of admitting Missouri as a slave state and causing an imbalance between slave and free states. By establishing the 36°30' latitude line as the mark between slave and free, it also solved how future states would decide the issue.

7. What did John Marshall believe the Supreme Court’s role should be, and how did he help to create it? Marshall viewed the role of the Supreme Court to be one of interpreting and enforcing the Constitution in a way that encouraged economic development. He especially thought it important that the Court stop state legislatures’ efforts to interfere with the constitutionally protected rights of individuals or groups of individuals to acquire property through productive activity. Marshall established a pattern through his rulings that showed the dual effect of his decision making. It broadened the power of the federal government at the expense of the states and encouraged the growth of a national market economy.

8. How and why did America’s recognition of the Latin American republics change its relationship with the European powers? U.S. recognition of the Latin American republics put it into conflict with the ideas of the European powers that had banded together after the Napoleonic Wars to curb the liberal independence movements that were springing up following the French Revolution. Russia in particular was strongly against the new Latin American republics and was expanding toward the Oregon Territory, which drove the United States toward cooperation with Great Britain.

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CHAPTER 10 The Triumph of White Men’s Democracy, 1824–1840 CHAPTER OUTLINE Democratic Space: The New Hotels Democracy in Theory and Practice Democratic Culture Democratic Political Institutions Economic Issues Jackson and the Politics of Democracy Jackson Comes to Power Indian Removal The Nullification Crisis The Bank War and the Second-Party System The Bank Veto and the Election of 1832 Killing the Bank The Emergence of the Whigs Heyday of the Second-Party System Conclusion: Tocqueville’s Wisdom

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE SPORT OF POLITICS Students often consider politicians as somehow irrelevant to the political system itself. In fact, of course, those who serve in office shape the system as much as written laws or constitutions do.

Students should know that government in the United States was not always the province of politicians. It was once the avocation of “gentlemen” and became the business of professionals at a certain time only because of particular circumstances.

There were no professional politicians in the 1700s. People like Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and John Adams could be political, but they were not politicians in our sense of the term. They did not derive an appreciable part of their income from public office, nor did they spend much time campaigning for votes. By contrast, the leading public figures of the early nineteenth century, Martin Van Buren, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, were hardly ever out of office and spent most of their time devising ways of advancing themselves politically.

Unlike Jefferson or Washington, who suffered financially from serving in government, successful public officials in the later period tended to leave office richer than when they had entered.

The growing federal and state bureaucracies made it possible for ambitious young men to make politics a career. By the 1830s, the Democrats and Whigs rewarded their workers with civil servant jobs. In return, these bureaucrats “kicked back” a part of their income to the party, which used the funds to finance other campaigns. At the center of each political party, there was a corps of professionals, usually living off the public payroll, whose careers were inextricably tied to the success of the party. As one New York politician confessed, he would vote for a dog if his party nominated it.

Coincident with this development was the disappearance of all real issues from American politics. In the 1790s, politics was intensely ideological, partly because of the influence of the French Revolution and partly because party leaders were intellectuals. The second-party system emerged in a nation where it seemed the white, Protestant, small farmer and his family made up the soul of society and that only their interests should be protected and advanced. There were differences of opinion about how this was to be done, but these were disputes about means rather than ends.

Because politicians must campaign on something that resembles an issue in order to distinguish themselves from their opponents, they created issues. The ideal issue was one that everyone agreed on so that endorsing it would not lose votes. Unfortunately, it was hard to get votes by being for motherhood and apple pie, because any opponent would be just as enthusiastic about them. Nevertheless, then, as now, politicians would suddenly proclaim undying devotion to common verities, which always seemed to be in danger of extinction whenever an election took place. The second best issue was one that was too complicated for the average person to understand. The tariff fitted this qualification. In his autobiography, Van Buren recorded an instance of how artfully he used the complexity of the tariff question to befuddle an audience.

After his speech on the subject, he mingled with the audience and overheard the following conversation: 96

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“Mr. Knower! that was a very able speech!”

“Yes, very able,” was the reply.

“Mr. Knower! on which side of the Tariff question was it?”

Van Buren was infamous for evasion and was accused by his contemporaries of having raised the art of double-talk to a true philosophy, called “noncommitalism,” but even the plain-speaking Andrew Jackson found the tariff an excellent opportunity for his own species of political hedging. Jackson never budged from his support of a “judicious” tariff, nor did he ever explain what that meant.

To say that there were no real political issues does not mean that there were no real issues.

Slavery clearly violated the fundamental ideals on which the nation had been founded, and slavery was an issue that would not go away. Because divisive, controversial issues were avoided at all costs by professional politicians, the second-party system closed the political forum to the question of slavery. Emancipation, when it came, had to come from outside the normal political process.

The second-party system extended the reality of democracy in America. Parties eagerly enlisted young men of talent and financed their political careers, enabling sons of average families to seek high public office. The parties made politics what it remains today, an exciting spectator sport full of sound and fury, even if it often signifies nothing.

RELIVING THE PAST Andrew Jackson dominated the political arena in the 1830s. His forcefulness was illustrated at the annual Jefferson Day dinner on April 15, 1830, in the midst of the nullification controversy.

When the time for giving toasts arrived, Jackson stared at the South Carolinians present and offered, “Our Union, it must be preserved!” John C. Calhoun replied, “The Union, next to our liberty most dear! May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the states and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union!” Contrast the two toasts and you begin to realize that Jackson’s pithiness, in an oratorical age, confirmed his reputation as a man of action. Martin Van Buren reported the above incident in his autobiography, an immensely valuable source that was edited and first published by John C. Fitzpatrick in 1920 and more recently reprinted by the Da Capo Press in 1973.

Van Buren’s great rival in New York and national politics was Thurlow Weed. He too wrote an autobiography, now out of print and not easy to find. It is a good supplement to Van Buren’s because it gives us the Whig version of events. One of the characteristics that made Weed a superb politician was his ability to face reality. When asked by a political ally to agree that the Democrats could never answer Daniel Webster’s attack on Jackson’s veto of the Bank bill, Weed correctly predicted that, “two sentences in the veto message would carry ten electors against the bank for every one that Mr. Webster’s arguments and eloquence secured in

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favor of it.” Weed’s autobiography was edited by his daughter, Harriet Weed, and was published by Houghton Mifflin and Company in 1883.

CHAPTER SUMMARY DEMOCRATIC SPACE: THE NEW HOTELS The author uses the “hotel culture” of the early nineteenth century to exemplify the democratic culture of the new republic. The hotel welcomed all white males who could pay their way in, but excluded the poor, unaccompanied women, and blacks.

DEMOCRACY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE The term democracy was first widely used to describe American institutions in the 1820s and 1830s. Each individual was to be given an equal start in life, but equality of opportunity did not mean equality of result. The American people were happy to accept a society of winners and losers. Although equal opportunity was extolled, economic disparities grew in this period.

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HOW did the relationship between the government and the people change during this time?

The federal government grew more accountable to the people it represented. The rise of “popular sovereignty” meant that men of modest backgrounds could attain new social status, while cultural expression reflected this “decline in deference.” More public officials now had to seek popular election, but public opinion divided over the proper role for government in directing the economy.

Democratic Culture: The democratic ethos also affected the arts in this period. Artists no longer worked for an aristocratic elite, but for a mass audience. Many writers and painters pleased the public by turning out Gothic horror stories, romantic women’s fiction, melodramas, or genre paintings that lovingly depicted the American way of life. More serious artists sought to inspire the masses with neoclassical sculpture or landscapes of untamed nature. Only a few individuals, like Edgar Allan Poe, were truly avant-garde, Romantic artists. Matthew Carey, Rules for Husbands and Wives on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Democratic Political Institutions: Democratic ideals had a real impact on the American political system. Nearly all adult white males gained the right to vote whether or not they had property. Offices that had been appointive, such as judgeships or the electoral college, were made elective. The greatest change took place in the style of politics. Professional politicians emerged, actively seeking votes and acting as servants of the people. Men such as Martin Van Buren in New York extolled the public benefits of a two-party system, and political machines began to develop on the state level. National parties that eventually developed were the Democrats and the Whigs. Although political parties often served special economic interests, it should be remembered that American politics always retained a strong republican ideology and that all parties sought to preserve equality of opportunity. The Whigs and Democrats differed on whether this could be done best with or without active intervention by 98

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the national government, but neither party gave much thought to extending rights to anyone other than adult white males. It was left to other, more radical, parties to argue the cause of African Americans, women, and working people.

Economic Issues: The Panic of 1819 made economic issues a matter of great concern, but there was no consensus on what should be done. Some wanted to retreat to simpler times to avoid the boom and bust associated with a growing market economy, while others wanted the government to subsidize the growth of that sort of economy. These demands for what seemed like favors aroused fears that a “money power” had become a threat to liberty. A growing debate surrounded the function of the federal government in economic matters.

JACKSON AND THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRACY The period from the 1820s to the 1840s is with some justice called “the Age of Jackson.” This section explains why.

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WHAT political conflicts did President Andrew Jackson face and how did he resolve them?Although the Jacksonian movement began with the general’s narrow loss in the 1824 election, he became president in 1828 and subsequently resolved political conflicts with iron-fisted authority. During the Peggy Eaton affair, he sacked his entire cabinet and handled the Indian dilemma by unilaterally evicting Native Americans from their homeland. During the nullification crisis, he threatened states with federal military force.

Jackson Comes to Power: The election of 1824 furthered Jackson’s political career even though he lost the election. The election began as a scramble between five men, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Andrew Jackson. Because no one received a majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives had to decide the election, and its choice came down to Adams or Jackson. When Clay gave his support to Adams, the House elected him president. Adams began his administration under a cloud of suspicion because it was widely believed that he had “bought” the presidency. The Congress elected in 1826 was dominated by those sympathetic with Jackson. Jackson’s supporters, who became the Democratic party, were well organized for the election of 1828. The Democrats appealed to sectional self-interest and pioneered the art of making politics exciting to the average man, but the greatest asset the Democrats had was Jackson himself. Rigid and forceful, Jackson was accepted as a true man of the people, and he defeated Adams easily, especially in the slaveholding states. Jackson’s triumph was a personal one; he stood on no political platform. As president, he democratized the office by firing at will whatever officeholders he did not like, defending the practice by asserting the right of all men to a government post. Andrew Jackson’s Inauguration Lithograph on View the Image myhistorylab.com Indian Removal: Jackson inherited the Indian removal policy from previous administrations but carried it to its harshest conclusion. He agreed with the southern states that the federal government had not pushed the Indians hard enough. He urged Congress to speed up the relocation of the Indians living east of the Mississippi, and when the Cherokees resisted, Jackson sent the army in 1830 to evict them from their homes and herd them over the Mississippi. Some 99

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4,000 Cherokees died along that “Trail of Tears.” Indian Removals on View the Closer Look myhistorylab.com The Nullification Crisis: The South had reason to fear a strong national government that might some day decide to do something about slavery. Led by John C. Calhoun, southern intellectuals began working out a defense of state sovereignty. The first major controversy between federal authority and states’ rights came when South Carolina objected to the high tariff of 1828. The South, however, trusted Jackson to be sympathetic, and South Carolina took no action on the 1828 tariff. By 1832, the Carolinians had come to distrust Jackson, partly as a result of a personal feud between Jackson and Calhoun, but mainly because South Carolina feared a forceful president and Jackson rejected the idea of state sovereignty. When in 1832 a new tariff was passed, South Carolina, still unhappy with the rates, nullified it. Jackson responded by threatening to send the army into South Carolina. Both sides eventually retreated; South Carolina got a lower tariff, but Jackson had demonstrated the will of the federal government to rule the states by force if necessary. South Carolina Refuses the Tariff on Read the Document myhistorylab.com THE BANK WAR AND THE SECOND-PARTY SYSTEM One of the most important actions taken by Jackson was his destruction of the Bank of the United States. The Bank War was a symbolic defense of democratic values and led to two important results: economic disruption and a two-party system.

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WHAT were the arguments for and against the Bank of the United States?

Nicholas Biddle believed that the Bank of the United States was essential to American economic stability. Jackson believed the federal bank to be unconstitutional and a violation of fundamental rights. He saw the bank as a “monster corporation.” Bank proponents believed that Jackson’s Bank War exceeded his constitutional authority, and the Whig Party emerged in opposition to his policies.

The Bank Veto and the Election of 1832: Jackson came into office suspecting the Bank of the United States and made vague threats against it. Biddle overreacted and asked Congress to recharter the Bank in 1832, four years before the old charter was due to expire. Henry Clay took up the Bank’s cause, hoping that congressional approval of the Bank would embarrass Jackson.

When Congress passed the new charter, Jackson vetoed it on the grounds that the Bank was unconstitutional, despite a Supreme Court decision to the contrary. Jackson claimed he vetoed the Bank charter because it violated equality of opportunity and Congress upheld the veto. Clay and Jackson took their argument to the public in the election of 1832, where Jackson’s victory spelled doom for the Bank. Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Bank Bill on Read the Document myhistorylab.com Killing the Bank: Jackson showed his opponents no mercy and proceeded to destroy the Bank by withdrawing the government’s money and depositing it into selected state banks (the “pet banks”). Biddle then used his powers as a central banker to bring on a nationwide recession, which he hoped would be blamed on Jackson. That ploy failed, but Jackson’s destruction of the 100

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Bank cost him support in Congress, especially in the Senate, where fears of a dictatorship began to emerge. Jackson’s Bank Crisis on View the Image myhistorylab.com The Emergence of the Whigs: Opposition to Jackson formed the Whig party. Along the way, the Whigs absorbed the Anti-Masonic party, which had suddenly flourished after 1826 when it attacked the Masons as a secret, privileged elite. The Anti-Masons brought with them to the Whig party a disgust of “loose” living and a willingness to use government powers to enforce “decency.” The Democratic party was also weakened by the defection of working-class spokesmen who criticized Jackson for not destroying all banks. Furthermore, Jackson’s financial policies led to a runaway inflation, followed by an abrupt depression. Jackson chose his friend and advisor, Martin Van Buren, as his successor. The Whigs, still unorganized, presented Van Buren with little opposition in the election of 1836, but Van Buren’s inauguration coincided with the arrival of the depression of 1836, for which the Democrats were blamed. Van Buren felt no responsibility to save individuals and businesses that were going bankrupt, but he did want to save the government funds in the state banks by placing them in “independent subtreasuries.” In the election of 1840 the Whigs were fully organized and had learned the art of successful politicking. They nominated William Henry Harrison, a noncontroversial war hero, and built his image as a common man who had been born in a log cabin. As his running mate, the Whigs picked John Tyler, a former Jacksonian, because he would attract some votes from states’-rights Democrats. Harrison and Tyler beat Van Buren, although the popular vote was close. Van Buren on Listen to the Audio File myhistorylab.com HEYDAY OF THE SECOND-PARTY SYSTEM The election of 1840 signaled the emergence of a permanent two-party system in the United States. For the next decade, Whigs and Democrats evenly divided the electorate. Although there was much overlapping, both parties attracted distinct constituencies and offered voters a clear choice of programs. The Whigs stood for a “positive liberal state,” which meant active government involvement in society. The Democrats stood for a “negative liberal state,” which meant that the government should intervene only to destroy special privileges. Both parties shared a broad democratic ideology, but the Democrats were the party of the individual, while the Whigs were the party of the community.

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WHAT was the two-party system, and how were the parties different?

The “second-party system” was the rivalry between Whigs and Democrats. The Whigs included industrialists, merchants, and farmers who favored stimulus to commerce.

Democrats included smaller farmers, wage workers, and declining gentry—individuals left behind by the new market economy. The division also marked cultural differences in religion, ethnicity, and lifestyle.

CONCLUSION: TOCQUEVILLE’S WISDOM Alexis de Tocqueville, the French visitor who made so many astute observations about life in Jacksonian America, praised most aspects of American democracy but warned of disaster in the future if white males refused to extend the liberties they enjoyed to women, African Americans, and Indians.

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KEY TERMS: 1. The tariff of abominations that had instituted an across-the-board increase in duties was the main issue on Congress’s agenda because pressure for greater protection came not only from manufacturers but also from many farmers, especially wool and hemp growers, who would supply critical votes in the upcoming presidential election.

2. President Jackson’s policy of Indian Removal forced the Cherokee peoples to march to the territory that is now Oklahoma. This trek known as the Trail of Tears was made under such harsh conditions that almost a quarter of the marchers died along the way. The removal of the southeastern Indians exposed the prejudice and greed of Jacksonian democracy.

3. Nullification emerged in the South because that is the region that endured the burden of tariffs. Tariffs increased the prices that southern agriculturists paid for manufactured goods and threatened to undermine their foreign markets by inciting counter protection. Jackson responded by alerting the secretary of war to prepare for possible military action, issued a proclamation denouncing nullification as a treasonous attack on the Union, and asked Congress to vote him the authority to use the army to enforce the tariff. At the same time, he sought to pacify the nullifiers somewhat by recommending a lower tariff.

4. Jackson engaged in a Bank War because he harbored suspicions that branches of the Bank of the United States had illicitly used their influence on behalf of his opponent in the presidential election.

5. Complex changes in the world economy beyond the control of American policymakers caused the Panic of 1837.

6. The second-party system came of age in the election of 1840, after the state of the economy hurt Van Buren and gave the Whigs a chance to offer alternative policies that promised to restore prosperity. The rivalry of Democrats and Whigs made the two-party pattern a normal feature of electoral politics in the United States.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. How did American culture reflect a growing spirit of “popular sovereignty”? A democratic spirit spread through society during the Jackson years. The distinction between what rich and poor wore was leveled. Literacy increased and printing costs decreased, leading to a flood of lurid and sentimental novels, of which some became the first American best sellers. Melodrama became the popular genre in the theater and artists turned to scenes of everyday life as the focus of their work. All these appealed to a more general population and not a specific group.

2. What changed during the 1820s and 1830s in the way politicians were elected to public office? More obstacles to voting were removed, although most men owned property anyway.

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had to go out and campaign; some like Martin Van Buren set up stable statewide political organizations.

3. How did the Jacksonians differ from their opponents in their opinions about the New American Experiment? They saw “the money power” as endangering the survival of republicanism. They also thought the federal government should destroy “special privilege” and “corporate monopoly.”

4. What lessons do his sweeping electoral victory and his handling of the Peggy Eaton affair teach us about Andrew Jackson? What other political developments of the era helped him win election? Jackson was one of the most forceful and domineering presidents.

He could neither forgive nor forget a slight or insult. When his opponents accused his wife of bigamy, Jackson never forgot it and he came to the aid of Peggy Eaton because he felt she was being attacked like his wife had been. The mobilization of the new Democratic party greatly aided Jackson in his presidential bid. While many in this new party had made their feelings clear on the issues of the day, Jackson always left his opinions murky and unclear.

This allowed many people to make assumptions about where he stood and to vote accordingly.

5. What did the Indian Removal policy demonstrate about Jacksonian democracy? It showed two things about Jackson and Jacksonian democracy. Jackson would not protect the Indians from state action, no matter how violent or coercive it appeared. He threw the weight of the federal government behind removal. The prejudiced and greedy side of Jacksonian democracy was revealed in the removal of the southeastern Indians.

6. What was nullification, and why did it emerge in the South? How did Jackson respond to that crisis? Calhoun’s anonymous writing of South Carolina’s nullification affirmation, the belief that a state had the right to set aside a federal law, only added to the Jacksonian drama. Calhoun’s attacks on Peggy Eaton and the revelation that he had recommended Jackson be punished for his 1818 venture against the Seminoles just made it easier for Jackson to vilify him. Jackson saw nullification as a threat to the Union and while he believed in states’ rights, he did not believe a state could challenge the sovereignty of the federal government over the states. He denounced South Carolina and the nullifiers and Congress passed the Force Bill to give him the club he needed to push them back in line.

7. What were Jackson’s reasons for opposing the Bank, and to whom did he turn for support in that effort? Jackson first turned to Congress to curb the power of the Bank, but when that failed he turned to the common people to fight the “monster corporation,” as he called it. His veto message was the first to use more than constitutional arguments against a bill; it also used social and economic issues as well.

8. What did Jackson do to “kill the Bank”? Jackson went through three Treasury secretaries before future Chief Justice Roger Taney stopped depositing money in the Bank of the United States and began to slowly withdraw what funds were there.

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9. Who came together to form the Whig party, and how did they gain power in 1840?

National Republicans associated with Henry Clay and New England ex-Federalists led by Senator Daniel Webster came together. They gained support from Southern Democrats who resented both Jackson’s views on nullification and saw his withdrawal of federal funds from the Bank as an abuse of power. They also added the anti-Masonic party from the Northeast.

After failing in their first attempt at the presidency, they passed over their natural leader Henry Clay for William Henry Harrison, a war hero, and John Tyler a states’ rights Democrat. Using the blueprint Jacksonian Democrats had provided in 1828, they mobilized and soundly defeated Van Buren’s reelection bid.

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CHAPTER 11 Slaves and Masters, 1793–1861 CHAPTER OUTLINE Nat Turner’s Rebellion: A Turning Point in the Slave South The World of Southern Blacks Slaves’ Daily Life and Labor Slave Families, Kinship, and Community Resistance and Rebellion Free Blacks in the Old South White Society in the Antebellum South The Planters’ World Planters, Racism, and Paternalism Small Slaveholders Yeoman Farmers A Closed Mind and a Closed Society Slavery and the Southern Economy The Internal Slave Trade The Rise of the Cotton Kingdom Conclusion: Worlds in Conflict

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE M ASTER CLASS College students should be encouraged to think abstractly about social phenomena without forgetting that institutions depend upon humans for their functioning. Because humans are not always logical, they sometimes service institutions they despise. Slavery is a good case in point.

Slavery may have developed during the colonial period from a series of “unthinking decisions,” but its continued existence into the nineteenth century demanded a force stronger than mere momentum. Considering the active hostility that slaves adopted toward their condition, slavery could not have lasted a week in the United States if it had not been supported by the mass of the white population, even though most whites never owned a slave and considered slavery itself unnatural and un-American.

Laws alone do not enslave people; those laws must be applied, as they were in the South.

Visitors to the region were often fooled into thinking that there was no law and order in the South, but that was the case only among whites. The black portion of the population was always heavily policed. In every locality when the sun went down, armed white men went out on patrol to make sure that the night belonged to the master class. Any African American who ventured from his or her cabin without written permission risked immediate and painful “justice” from the infamous “patrollers.” Even slaves with passes had to worry about being harassed or abused. On those occasions when slaves collected in large numbers and struck for their freedom, the white community mobilized overwhelming counterforce with remarkable rapidity. Nat Turner and his followers, for example, began to kill whites in Southampton County, Virginia, on a Sunday night in August 1831. On Monday afternoon, a young white girl escaped the slaughter and spread the alarm. By Wednesday, Turner’s band, nearly a hundred strong, was defeated in battle by armed whites. Within the next few days, militia companies from three counties plus federal troops with artillery had converged on Southampton County and began a savage manhunt for Turner, during which as many as one hundred African Americans may have been killed. When Turner himself was finally hanged, his corpse was treated with shocking brutality.

Turner’s uprising represented a rare failure of the system of daily repression designed to keep slaves down. It was not so much the gun and the whip that slaves suffered as the routine humiliation meant to establish an impassable gap between them and free people. Whites and blacks in the South very often worked together, drank together, played together, prayed together, and even had sex together, but no matter how friendly or intimate the contact, it was expected that slaves would observe rituals of self-abasement, for example, by using a title of respect when addressing whites, such as Master or Mistress, while being addressed themselves by first name, or as “boy” or “girl.” Whites were expected to resent any show of disrespect and could become murderous in their rage without much fear of legal consequences.

There can be no doubt that it was the willingness of the average white southerner to insist upon the supremacy of his or her “race” that kept slavery alive, but few southern whites approved of the slave system. Indeed, the word “slave” was more often used by northerners; southern whites invariably used the word “servant.” It is not even clear that most white southerners were racists.

They not only lacked any “scientific” belief in the superiority of some genes over others, but also as good Christians they believed that slaves had souls, that all souls were equal and that slaves 105

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would enjoy freedom and happiness in Heaven as much as any master would. Slavery was part of the imperfect, unredeemed world that resulted from sin; it could not exist in the supernatural world. Furthermore, slavery violated the Jeffersonian/Jacksonian political values of most white southerners because slaveholding gave special privileges to a small and shrinking minority of “aristocrats.”

Foreigners traveling in the South often observed the torment suffered by the “consciencehaunted” masters. In one illustrative episode, a northerner in Alabama in 1853 met a local white resident who described how runaway slaves were hunted down and how some of the hunters enjoyed doing so. “Always seemed to me a kind o’ barbarous sport,” the man said. And then, after a pause, “It’s necessary, though.” White southerners lived a paradox. They were a master class yearning to be free.

RELIVING THE PAST Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831 seared the South; it demonstrated like no other slave uprising the depth of black rage. One of the most chilling incidents happened at the very beginning of the revolt. Having slaughtered his master’s family, Turner and his confederates left the house and proceeded some distance before they remembered that they had left an infant alive in a crib.

They went back and finished the massacre. A complete collection of documents relating to the rebellion, including trial transcripts and Turner’s “confessions,” can be found in Henry Irving Tragle, editor, The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1971). Some scholars doubt the authenticity of Turner’s confession, which was taken down by a white physician. William Styron used the confession rather loosely as the basis for his novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967).

Rebellion was the most extreme form of resistance to slavery and involved not only risking one’s own life but the willingness to kill whites whom one knew and perhaps even liked. More frequently, slaves sought freedom through flight, as Frederick Douglass did in 1836. His recollection of the planning and successful execution of his escape from Maryland is dramatic, but especially revealing is his discussion of the force of ignorance, fostered by white planters, that made the prospect of flight so terrifying. Douglass, for example, did not know that the states of New York or Massachusetts existed. Douglass actually published three editions of his autobiography, all of which were reprinted in the Library of America edition in 1994 with notes

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

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CHAPTER SUMMARY NAT TURNER’S REBELLION : A TURNING POINT IN THE SLAVE SOUTH The author begins this chapter with Turner’s uprising to set the theme of a society in conflict with itself. In the aftermath of the rebellion, white southerners became more repressive and more insecure, while black southerners became less open but more resilient in their struggle against slavery.

THE WORLD OF SOUTHERN BLACKS Although slavery was primarily an economic institution that created great wealth, it was also a peculiar social institution. It gave all whites a specious sense of equality despite great disparities in wealth, while it united all blacks, free and enslaved, field hands and house servants, in a common dream of freedom. The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) on Read the Document myhistorylab.com

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WHAT factors made living conditions for southern blacks more or less difficult?

Living conditions were difficult because southern black slaves performed many types of labor. Some worked from sunup to sundown in gangs; others maintained more work control through the “task system”; and urban slaves and free blacks had even more autonomy.

The bonds of family and community helped ease slave life, while some slaves resisted oppression through running away, sabotage, and even occasional armed rebellion.

Slaves’ Daily Life and Labor: The conditions under which enslaved blacks worked varied greatly, but the great majority of them were field workers, organized in gangs, to cultivate cotton. Conditions for those workers were brutal. Slave Quarters, Hermitage Plantation on View the Image myhistorylab.com Slave Families, Kinship, and Community: Slavery made normal family life difficult. Fathers could not always discipline or protect their children, and families could be broken up at any time.

Nonetheless, most slaves grew up in strong, two-parent families. On the plantations, individual blacks were related to all others by ties of kinship, even if sometimes the kinship was fictive. All elderly men were “uncles,” all young women were “sisters.” Slave culture was a family culture, and the family, like religion, saved the individual from having to face alone the horror of slavery.

Slave Dealers on View the Image myhistorylab.com Resistance and Rebellion: The most dramatic displays of a yearning for freedom were the slave rebellions in the antebellum South. Most notable are the ones led by Gabriel Prosser in 1800, Denmark Vesey in 1822, and the greatest of all, Nat Turner in 1831. Most slave resistance, however, was more subtle: they feigned illness, worked inefficiently, destroyed tools, and sometimes poisoned their masters. In their jokes and stories, slaves asserted their everyday victories against overwhelming odds. Underground Railroad on Watch the Video myhistorylab.com

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Free Blacks in the Old South: Free blacks in the South suffered so many legal restrictions that their condition amounted to a sort of semi-slavery. They felt a sense of solidarity with the slaves but were generally unable to help them. Runaway Slave Advertisements on Read the Document myhistorylab.com WHITE SOCIETY IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH Great planters were a small minority but they were the dominant political and economic figures in the South. Plantation on View the Image myhistorylab.com

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WHAT divided and united white southern society?

While great planters, those owning hundreds of slaves, were a tiny minority of the population, they set the tone for white southern society, propagating the ideology of “paternalism” that slaves were children who required a stern but loving parent. Most whites owned few or no slaves, but a political system of “white man’s democracy” and the ideology of white supremacy united them with large slaveholders.

The Planters’ World: The tone and values of the white South were set by the great planters, those who owned more than twenty slaves, even though they comprised less than one percent of the white population. These men, typically self-made, earned a considerable part of their income from commerce, land speculation, and slave trading, as well as cotton planting. They carried into the management of their plantations the same shrewd business mind that had given them their start, but some of them preferred to think of themselves as born aristocrats who disdained money-making.

Planters, Racism, and Paternalism: Southern planters prided themselves on their paternal feelings toward their slaves. These slaves, according to studies, enjoyed a better standard of living than did slaves elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. The relatively decent treatment can to some extent be explained by their increasing economic value after 1808, when planters could no longer count on getting more slaves from Africa. In reality, most large planters had little to do with their slaves. Overseers managed the slaves on a daily basis, and everyone acknowledged that physical force, whipping, and the sale of troublesome slaves were actions necessary to keep the plantation in operation. Nor should it be forgotten that racism was at the core of paternalism.

It was only because they could portray blacks as inferior that slaveholders could see themselves as benevolent Christians. Moonlight and Magnolias: Creating the Old South on Watch the Video myhistorylab.com Small Slaveholders: Slave-owners with fewer than twenty slaves generally provided the worst conditions for African Americans. The slave shared the master’s poverty and was at the complete mercy of the master’s whim.

Yeomen Farmers: Most white southerners did not own slaves. They worked their own farms and differed from the yeomen farmers of the North in only one important aspect: They generally lacked the urban outlets that would have encouraged commercial farming. Although small farmers in the South resented the large planters and often made a point of asserting their equality with them, the average white in the South was not likely to turn against the institution of slavery.

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One could dream of owning slaves someday, but, and this point best explains why the white South defended slavery, the average white feared and hated blacks and saw in slavery a system for keeping blacks “in their place.” So long as all blacks were kept inferior, all whites would be superior. Hinton Helper, A White Southerner Speaks on Read the Document myhistorylab.com A Closed Mind and a Closed Society: The dominant planter class feared not only slave rebellion but also that the white small farmers might join the abolitionist crusade. The planters, therefore, created a mood of impending disaster in order to encourage all southerners to close ranks. After the 1830s, it became dangerous in the South even to speak of slavery as a necessary evil. Slavery could be described only as a positive good. This position was defended on the basis that Africans were inferior in some way, that slavery was sanctioned in the Old and New Testaments, and that slavery provided a kind of humane asylum for African Americans, who would improve as a race because of slavery. In addition, southerners claimed that slavery was superior to the northern wage labor system. Although books criticizing slavery were censored, and people who criticized slavery were beaten and forced to emigrate, and efforts were made to keep slaves illiterate and to keep free blacks under surveillance, southern planters never achieved a sense of security. By the 1850s, they began to believe that their safety could only be guaranteed by secession from the United States. Illustrations for the Antislavery Almanac on View the Image myhistorylab.com SLAVERY AND THE SOUTHERN ECONOMY Before the Civil War, two distinct subdivisions emerged in the South. In the lower South, the cotton kingdom, all economic life revolved around one crop, and blacks constituted nearly half the population. In the upper South, where whites outnumbered blacks three to one, slave labor was less important.

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HOW was slavery related to economic success in the South?

The economy of the South was dominated by slavery: tobacco gave way to the internal slave trade itself as the biggest business in the upper South, while the cotton gin made it possible for large-scale staple agriculture to become a booming economic machine in the Deep South, fueling the growth of a world textile industry and making the planter class very wealthy.

The Internal Slave Trade: Virginia and Maryland, the old centers of tobacco production, had become areas of mixed farming by the 1850s. They needed less labor and more capital, which they acquired by selling slaves to the lower South. As slavery loosened its hold on Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, these states began to take on some of the characteristics of the industrializing North. Whether the loyalty of these states would go to the North or South was increasingly uncertain. Raffling Off a Slave on View the Image myhistorylab.com

The Rise of the Cotton Kingdom: The great boom in cotton cultivation came with the introduction of “short-staple” cotton, which could be grown anywhere south of Virginia and Kentucky. The cotton gin made it easy to extract the seeds, and since it required almost constant, year-round labor, it was ideally suited to slave labor. Cotton growing began in Georgia and South Carolina and spread rapidly westward to Alabama and Mississippi and finally to Arkansas, 109

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Louisiana, and east Texas. Cotton was grown by small farmers, but large planters with their own gins and armies of slaves dominated production, which increased by leaps and bounds. By the 1850s, the South produced 75 percent of the world’s cotton. It was sold to the textile mills in Great Britain in such quantity that cotton’s value as an export exceeded the value of all other American exports combined. There were periods of boom and bust in the cotton industry, but planters made enough in good times to ride out the bad and, from 1849 to 1860, there was a long, sustained period of prosperity. In the 1850s, cotton was the most important business in the United States. View the Image Cotton Gin on a Plantation in Louisiana on myhistorylab.com

CONCLUSION: WORLDS IN CONFLICT Despite a booming economy, the South was a fragile society, divided as it was by color and class, by culture and geography.

KEY TERMS: 1. Denmark Vesey, a free black man in Charleston, South Carolina, had organized to seize armories, arm slaves, and burn the city. It was put to an end quickly. Despite the failure of the Vesey conspiracy, it convinced South Carolinians that they should always be on guard for rebellious slaves.

2. Some slaves were able to escape through the Underground Railroad, an informal network of sympathetic free blacks and a few whites who helped fugitives make their way to freedom in the North.

3. Although yeoman farmers, who owned the land they worked themselves, did not benefit directly from slavery, they tolerated the institution and were fiercely opposed to abolitionism in any form.

4. With the Nat Turner rebellion, the Virginia state legislature in 1831 and 1832 debated a gradual emancipation and deportation plan. However, the proposal was defeated and the argument that slavery was “a positive good” won the day and gradual emancipation disappeared. This hurt the ability of the American Colonization Society to get freedmen to return to Africa.

5. The cotton gin enabled a slave to clean fifty times more cotton by machine than by hand, which reduced production costs and gave new life to slavery in the South.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What were the differences between “gang” and “task” labor? “Gang” labor under the supervision of overseers on large plantations in the Cotton Belt or on sugar plantations in Louisiana left little room for rest. Slaves worked six days a week from sunup to sundown and 110

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even into the evening during the harvest season. Slaves had more control over the pace of labor in the “task system.” This system existed in the rice country of Georgia and South Carolina; an eight-hour day was usually enough for them to complete their labor with less supervision.

2. How did slave communities maintain kinship ties? Where conjugal ties were weak, slaves relied on other associations. Many families were centered on the mother. The slave community tended to absorb orphans quickly. Many children were named after grandparents, while older members of the community were called “uncle” or “aunty.” Slave culture was a family culture, which gave it strength and helped it care for its African American heritage.

3. How successful were the Vesey conspiracy and Nat Turner insurrection? The Vesey conspiracy was caught so early it was quickly crushed, while the Nat Turner insurrection was one of the largest and bloodiest to ever occur before the Civil War. Both represent violent efforts by slaves to gain their freedom, but few slaves were actually involved in violent revolts of this nature.

4. What was life like for freed slaves in the South? Beginning in the 1830s free blacks were forced to register and have a sponsor who would vouch for their conduct. They had to carry papers identifying them at all times and in some states were not allowed to move from county to county without permission. Licensing laws excluded blacks from certain occupations, while vagrancy and apprenticeship laws forced blacks into economic dependency.

5. In what ways did members of the planter society shape themselves as an aristocracy?

Though fewer in numbers, they established the tone for less wealthy planters to follow. These less wealthy planters copied the wealthier group’s dress and customs as much as their wealth would allow. They also held their share of high offices.

6. How did whites see themselves in relation to their slaves? Most of the planters took a benevolent attitude toward their slaves, referring to them as “our people.” According to this paternalistic view, blacks were a race of perpetual children requiring constant care and supervision that only the planters could provide.

7. Why would most slaves prefer plantation life to small farms, given the choice? Slaves preferred the plantation to the small farm because of the sociability, culture, and kinship slave quarters offered, which included better food, clothing, and shelter.

8. What was the yeoman’s attitude toward slavery? Some hoped to own their own slaves, but even those who could not do this saw slavery as providing a guarantee of their own liberty and independence. A part of this stemmed from economics, as they were afraid slaves would take their jobs if freed. However, much of it had to do with racism, which made their opposition to black freedom rigid.

9. What were some of the strategies used by southern whites to fight antislavery efforts?

The “positive good” defense was created as an answer to the abolitionist charge that slavery was an inherently evil institution. It was aimed at the North to counter them, but even more 111

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important was its purpose in relieving the southerners of their own doubts and misgivings, which they had been expressing since 1830. They also tried to point out that the master-slave relationship was more humane than the relationship between factory owner and laborer.

10. In what region did “internal” slave trading become the most profitable industry? Why? Selling slaves became increasingly profitable for those in the upper South who sold their “surplus” slaves to the Deep South. Between 1815 and 1860, 600,000 to 700,000 slaves were “sold downriver” in a southwesterly direction.

11. Why was the cotton gin so useful, and what effect did it have on southern agriculture?

The usefulness of the cotton gin came from its ability to remove seeds from short-staple cotton. This kind of cotton could be grown anywhere south of Virginia and Kentucky. Its seeds were more difficult to extract than other forms so, when combined with the opening of new lands, the cotton gin was a major factor in the development of cotton as “king” in the South. Cotton production rose from 13,000 bales to 461,000 bales by 1840 and the cotton gin had a big hand in making that possible.

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CHAPTER 12 The Pursuit of Perfection, 1800–1861 CHAPTER OUTLINE Redeeming the Middle Class The Rise of Evangelicalism The Second Great Awakening From Revivalism to Reform Domesticity and Changes in the American Family The Cult of Domesticity The Discovery of Childhood The Extension of Education Reform Turns Radical The Rise of Radical Abolitionism Black Abolitionists From Abolitionism to Women’s Rights Conclusion: Counterpoint on Reform

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: PHRENOLOGY History, for many students, is a process of continual enlightenment so that each age is more informed than the one before—our own age, of course, being the most intelligent of all. The progress of human intelligence, unfortunately, is more fitful than many students realize. In the nineteenth century, advanced thinkers accepted science as the measure of truth, but “science” then, as now, could be perverted for the sake of profit and sheer nonsense could become big business. Phrenology is the best case study.

Phrenology was the invention, or “discovery,” of two German scientists, Franz Gall and Johann Spurzheim, both of whom had impeccable academic credentials. They began with the propositions that the brain was the mind, that the brain was divided into a number of organs, that the size of each organ could be estimated by measuring the part of the skull covering it, that each organ had its own function, and that the organs could be improved through exercise.

Phrenology made its way to America slowly, mainly through the efforts of Spurzheim, who lectured in the United States in 1832, and of George Combe, a Scottish philosopher whose book, The Constitution of Man (1828), made a deep impression. Although phrenology attracted intellectuals such as Henry Ward Beecher, Sarah Grimke, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Horace Greeley, and Walt Whitman, it was not until the 1840s that Orson Fowler made it a mass phenomenon and a commercial success.

Fowler was converted to phrenology as a student at Amherst College and, in 1842, became editor of the American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, the house organ of the movement. In 1844, he joined with Samuel Wells to organize the firm of Fowler and Wells, which lasted until 1863 and was undoubtedly the most profitable phrenological shop in America.

To illustrate how phrenology worked, take the example of an organ Fowler and Wells were especially proud of because they had discovered it: Sublimity. This organ, as a trained phrenologist knew, was located “on the side-head, directly above Acquisitiveness . . . and behind Ideality.” It was this organ that allowed a human to perceive the grandeur of nature or of art, such as mountain scenery or “the roar of artillery.” According to Fowler and Wells, one could cultivate Sublimity by looking at mountain scenery or presumably, by getting shelled. Sublimity was an organ that could be exercised as much as possible, but most organs had to be restrained if they grew too large. For example, when overly developed, Secretiveness (located at the inferior edge of the parietal bone “immediately above Destructiveness”) caused the afflicted person to wear tight neckties or high-buttoned dresses. The organ could, however, be reduced by appropriate exercise.

It was best to actually come in person to Fowler and Wells at 27 East 21 Street in New York for a reading, or to go to an accredited graduate of the American Institute of Phrenology, but Fowler and Wells would perform analysis by mail for those who sent two photographs and the appropriate cranial measurements, plus the fee.

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Phrenology was both liberating and dangerous. Because it asserted that the mind could be improved, it helped free many Americans from the still powerful doctrine of Original Sin. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is an example. Convinced during a religious revival that she was a hopeless sinner, she fell into a depression so profound that her family feared for her sanity. She was rescued by reading Combe’s works on phrenology. Phrenology was inherently dangerous, however, because it encouraged the belief that anatomy was destiny. Phrenologists spoke about the ability for improvement of the mind, but they always used African American physiognomy to demonstrate the worst development of the organs, and it turned out that all Jews had the “Commercial Nose.” While most white Americans took this kind of racism in stride, phrenology posed dangers to everyone. Some employers hired, fired, and promoted on the basis of phrenological examinations. There were even proposals, never acted upon, to examine children and to imprison, on the basis of an examination, those who would turn out to be criminals.

RELIVING THE PAST The cult of self-improvement was strongest among the respectable and the cultured. Of the many ideal societies established in the period, Brook Farm was the most famous because it attracted many New England intellectuals. Nathaniel Hawthorne became a member for a short time in 1841. His notebook for the period related that he tossed apples to the farm’s swine and performed other such chores, the kind of work that ennobled the soul. The notebook also demonstrated how incurably artistic Hawthorne was, even when he dug up potatoes. When he finally realized that “a man’s soul may be buried and perish under a dungheap . . . just as well as under a pile of money . . . ,” he left the community. The best edition of Hawthorne’s works is The Centenary Edition published by the Ohio State University Press. The American Notebooks, edited by Claude M. Simpson (1972), is Volume 8 in that edition. Hawthorne later wrote The Blithedale Romance, based on his experiences at Brook Farm.

Most Americans still gave allegiance to traditional, old-fashioned Calvinist Christianity, and it was this force that gave meaning to individual lives and stability to society. On the frontier, innumerable itinerant ministers, especially Baptists and Methodists, spread the Gospel to people who sometimes did not want to hear it. Peter Cartwright, one of the most successful Methodist itinerants, left an account of a trip he once took from St. Louis to Pittsburgh on a steamboat filled with “a mixed multitude; some Deists, some Atheists, some Universalists, a great many profane swearers, drunkards, gamblers, fiddlers, and dancers.” Cartwright persuaded a group of Army officers to leave off playing cards to discuss religion, but when Cartwright insulted the memory of Tom Paine, the great apostle of “natural religion,” the discussion almost became violent. (See The Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, edited by Charles L. Wallis, New York: Abingdon Press, 1956)

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CHAPTER SUMMARY REDEEMING THE MIDDLE CLASS The author uses the revival organized in Rochester, New York, in 1830 as one example of the way the middle class, especially in the urban North, attempted to reform themselves and the society around them.

THE RISE OF EVANGELICALISM The separation of church and state gave all religious denominations equal opportunity to attract members and encouraged all denominations to seek converts actively. Alarmed by what they considered “infidelity,” pious Protestants formed voluntary associations to combat sin.

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HOW did the evangelical revivalism of the early nineteenth century spur reform movements?

Evangelical revivalists preached the perfectibility of individual moral agents, encouraging each person to choose his or her own moral and political destiny. This perfectionism led evangelical Christians to organize voluntary associations and benevolent societies that would teach people moral and social values. The most important of these religiously inspired reform efforts was the temperance movement.

The Second Great Awakening: Camp meetings not only provided emotional religion for the frontier but also one of the few opportunities for social life for rural people whose everyday lives were often tedious and lonely. Camp meeting revivals, however, did not usually lead to organized social reform because the thrust of the religious message was so intensely personal.

There were two branches of evangelical revival in the North. The first started in New England, where theologians such as Timothy Dwight and Lyman Beecher preserved but modified Calvinism by emphasizing the doctrine of “free agency.” The second branch took root in upstate New York, an area of transplanted New Englanders. There the greatest revivalist was Charles G. Finney, who paid no attention to theology and preached an unqualified doctrine of free will.

Finney successfully experimented with revival techniques, such as the “anxious bench,” and his revivals often led to the organization of more churches. View the Image Methodist Camp Meeting, 1819 on myhistorylab.com From Revivalism to Reform: The northern revivals stimulated reform movements by appealing to middle-class citizens who had been socially active before their conversions and who now found a way to preserve traditional values in a rapidly changing world. The various evangelical reform movements, known collectively as “the benevolent empire,” actually did alter American life. The temperance movement, for example, enlisted over a million members, mostly women, who successfully persuaded Americans to cut their consumption of alcohol by more than 50 percent. Read the Document Lyman Beecher, “Six Sermons on Intemperance” (1828) on myhistorylab.com

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DOMESTICITY AND CHANGES IN THE AMERICAN FAMILY Evangelicals and reformers assigned the family, and especially mothers, a crucial role in developing self-disciplined Christian children.

WHAT was the doctrine of “separate spheres,” and how did it change family life?

The doctrine of “separate spheres” glorified women’s role in caring for the home and family, guarding religious and moral values while men went out into the public sphere to earn money and participate in politics. Smaller families and more leisure time for middle-class families also led to more emphasis on children’s development, including new public schools open to all.

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The Cult of Domesticity: The “Cult of True Womanhood” placed women in the home, but the home was glorified as the center of all efforts to civilize and Christianize society. Most women who were married to farmers or laborers still contributed to family income, but more and more middle- and upper-class women could afford to dedicate themselves to the home, making it a sanctuary from the outside world. Many women who found themselves liberated from the drudgery of farm chores used their leisure to improve themselves, to get to know other women, and to lead crusades against vice; above all, however, they attempted to become ideal mothers.

View the Image Woman’s Sphere on myhistorylab.com The Discovery of Childhood: In the nineteenth century, the child was placed at the center of family life. Each child was looked upon as unique and irreplaceable. Ideal parents no longer “broke” a child’s will; they formed his character with affection. Parental discipline was meant to instill guilt rather than fear, so that the child would eventually learn self-discipline.

The Extension of Education: Free public schools appeared in greater numbers from 1820 to 1850, primarily to answer the desire for moral education. Schools were believed capable of taking the place of undesirable or nonexistent home life. Hitherto, schooling had varied from one area to another. The urban workingmen’s movements gave the impetus to public education in the cities of the eastern states. Horace Mann was a leader in the drive to establish public schools in Massachusetts and in turning away from corporal punishment. The schools sought to impose a moral code and moreover a Protestant one. Some were alienated by this approach. Less doctrinaire and open to adults, lyceums and similar institutions could be found in most towns.

Lincoln himself was a product of a debating society. Watch the Video Who was Horace Mann and Why are so many schools Named after him? On myhistorylab.com REFORM TURNS RADICAL Most reformers wanted to improve society, but some of the more radical wanted to destroy society as it existed and create a new, perfect social order.

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WHAT were the major antebellum reform movements?

Religious revivalism inspired movements for temperance, abolition of slavery, and women’s rights. All of these movements grew more radical over time, turning to the political sphere beginning in the 1840s as they lost confidence that society could be transformed only by changing men’s hearts. The abolitionists organized the Liberty party in 1840, and feminists held their first convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.

The Rise of Radical Abolitionism: By the 1830s, radical perfectionists had become impatient with moderate reform and began to form their own societies. The temperance and peace movements split into moderate and radical wings, but the split among the opponents of slavery had more important consequences. Moderate abolitionists hoped for a gradual end to slavery, which they saw as the only realistic possibility, and they even supported removal of blacks from the United States as a concession to white racism. Radical abolitionists, like William Lloyd Garrison, demanded immediate emancipation and formed the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Abolitionists grew from the evangelical tradition and drew strength from it. A good example is Theodore Dwight Weld, an itinerant minister who had been converted by Finney.

When he became an abolitionist, Weld simply adapted his revivalist techniques to a new cause.

Weld was extremely successful in northern Ohio and western New York, where he held mass meetings. The abolitionists appealed mainly to ambitious and hard-working inhabitants of small towns but often encountered opposition from the working class, who disliked blacks and feared their economic and social competition, and from solid citizens, who regarded abolitionists as anarchists. Abolitionists tended to weaken their influence by perpetual in-fighting. Garrison disrupted the movement by associating it with other radical reforms such as pacifism and feminism. White southerners, ironically, helped the abolitionists by trying to suppress the right of petition and by censoring the mails to prevent abolitionist literature from being circulated. These attempts backfired. The abolitionist movement succeeded in making slavery a matter of public concern, despite opposition from without and divisions from within. Read the Document Abolitionist Demands Immediate End on myhistorylab.com Black Abolitionists: African Americans always made up the majority of abolitionists, but black abolitionists had to struggle to achieve leadership positions within abolitionist societies. Some, most notably Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, became nationally known, and in 1830 the Negro Convention gave blacks an independent organization. African Americans also published their own abolitionist newspapers and were the most important figures in running the Underground Railroad. Maria Stewart, “The Miseries We Tasted” on Read the Document myhistorylab.com From Abolitionism to Women’s Rights: The abolitionist movement gave many women an opportunity to engage in a public reform program. In advocating freedom for blacks, women began to realize their own inequality. When they discovered that many male abolitionists refused to accept women as equal partners in protest, women led by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, which was the beginning of the movement for female rights. Watch the Video The Women’s Rights Movement in the Nineteenth Century on myhistorylab.com 118

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CONCLUSION: COUNTERPOINT ON REFORM Perceptive critics, like Nathaniel Hawthorne, regarded the nation’s pursuit of perfection with a skeptical eye, but the reform impulse, no matter how eccentric at times, opened the way to necessary changes in American life.

KEY TERMS: 1. The Second Great Awakening, a wave of religious revivals, swept over the southern frontier because the camp meetings met social as well as religious needs. In the sparsely settled southern backcountry, it was difficult to sustain local churches with regular ministers.

For many people, the only way to get baptized or married or to have a communal religious experience was to attend a camp meeting.

2. Finney’s belief in perfectionism led many evangelicals into moral reform movements.

3. The temperance movement was directed at real social evil. Many Americans viewed drunkenness as a loss of self-control and moral responsibility that spawned crime, vice, and disorder. Therefore, a movement seeking to eradicate these sins attracted many advocates.

4. Cooperating missionary and reform societies—collectively known as the benevolent empire—were a major force in American culture by the early 1830s.

5. The Cult of Domesticity embraced the view that women had a special role to play in the domestic sphere as guardians of virtue and spiritual heads of the home.

6. The abolitionist movement, like the temperance crusade, was a direct outgrowth of the Second Great Awakening. Leading abolitionists had undergone conversion experiences and were already committed to Christian activism before they dedicated themselves to freeing the slaves.

7. It was the first national gathering of feminists. At the Seneca Falls Convention a Declaration of Sentiments was issued demanding that all women be given the right to vote and that married women be freed from unjust laws giving husbands control of their property, persons, and children.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What made revivalism such an effective means to win converts to religion? Young Congregational ministers worked to reshape New England Puritanism to increase its appeal.

People who shared the prevailing optimism about human capabilities responded eagerly to the changes. Upstate New York was especially responsive to new ministries like those begun

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large part due to the rapid economic changes and social dislocations that had occurred in the area.

2. What was the temperance movement, and why did it attract so many followers in this period? Whiskey had become the most popular American beverage since the Revolution. It was cheaper than milk or beer and safer than water. Reformers looked at it as a real social evil, a threat to public morality. Most importantly it threatened the family; it was primarily a male vice. Women picked up on the campaign as a defense of the family. While some workers resisted and founded their own societies that touted hard drinking, it was the Washingtonian Society that spread like wildfire. It contained people who had formerly struggled with drinking themselves. They welcomed men, women, and children while including African Americans as well. The movement made temperance a sign of respectability and hard liquor drinking dropped by 50 percent during the 1830s.

3. What was the doctrine of “separate spheres,” and how did women extend the reach of the domestic sphere to encompass activities of public concern? “Separate spheres” as a doctrine was established by the popular literature at the time. It sentimentalized a woman’s role in keeping a spotless home, nurturing her children, and offering her husband a refuge from the heartless world of commerce and industry. The encouragement by the evangelical movement of the idea of women as keepers of moral virtue helped to fashion a role for women in the public sector. Female reform societies taught women the strict ethical code they taught other family members and took it into the public sphere. This extension was even reflected in crusades to stamp out such masculine vices as intemperance, gambling, and prostitution.

4. How did notions of childhood change during the nineteenth century, and what difference did that make for family life? Child rearing took on a much more familycentered approach. Earlier children were sent off at a young age for schooling or apprenticeship. The child of the wealthy would spend more time with servants or tutors.

Parents and especially mothers, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, began to spend more time with children. Even the custom of naming a child after a sibling who had died in infancy began to decline, as each child came to be seen as a unique, irreplaceable individual.

This resulted in more intimate relations between child and parent. With smaller family sizes this approach cut across class lines and shifted the disciplinary focus from corporal punishment to shaming.

5. How did Horace Mann change ideas about public schooling in America? Mann worked to establish a state board of education and gain tax support for public schools. His belief that teachers and school officials could mold students like clay into perfection did not always sit well with the public. By winning the middle and upper classes to his belief that public education was a means of social discipline he was able to push his viewpoint through despite opposition. Some argued school taxes violated property rights, while others like immigrants and Catholics objected to the evangelical Protestant tone of “moral instruction” in schools.

6. Who were the leading opponents of slavery, and what different approaches did they take to politics as they put forward demands for slavery’s immediate abolition? The 120

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abolitionists who led the movement against slavery all came out of the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening. They had undergone conversions during the 1820s and were already committed to Christian activism before they became involved in the antislavery movement. Weld and Garrison faced threats, while the two Tappan brothers used their wealth despite threats to help the cause. Garrison took extreme approaches that others found divisive, encouraging a nongovernmental approach where people refused to vote or participate. He attacked churches whose clergy failed to come out and take an antislavery stand.

7. What was the Underground Railroad, and who were its main operators? A path for fugitives from slavery was opened by the Underground Railroad. Many of its conductors were leading black abolitionists, ex-slaves themselves like Harriet Tubman and Josiah Henson. They made regular forays into slave states to lead other blacks to freedom. Many free blacks ran the stations along the line, and some in the North even worked to protect fugitives and thwart the slave catchers. At times they used force to prevent fugitives from being returned to slavery.

8. What goals did the Seneca Falls Convention seek to accomplish? These women sought to end the tyranny of men over women throughout the history of mankind. They demanded the right to vote and an end to a husband’s control of his wife’s property, person, and children through unjust laws. The Cult of Domesticity and its doctrine of “separate spheres” were rejected.

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CHAPTER 13 An Age of Expansionism, 1830–1861 CHAPTER OUTLINE The Spirit of Young America Texas, Manifest Destiny, and the Mexican-American War The Texas Revolution The Republic of Texas The Annexation of Texas The Doctrine of Manifest Destiny War with Mexico Settlement of the Mexican-American War Internal Expansionism and the Industrial Revolution The Triumph of the Railroad The Industrial Revolution Takes Off Mass Immigration Begins The New Working Class Conclusion: The Costs of Expansion

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: BOUNDLESS AMERICA Henry Clay once defended the acquisition of Florida by whatever means because “it fills a space in our imagination.” For Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century, there were many such places demanding to be filled. Ask your students to visualize the boundaries of the United States, and the answer is immediate: the Atlantic, the Pacific, Canada, and Mexico. How “natural” and firm, how predestined those boundaries seem today! If we are to understand the almost obsessive desire of earlier Americans to expand their boundaries, we must appreciate how vague and fluid the national borders were before 1850.

In 1783, only the eastern boundary of the United States was fixed. In the North, the frontier with Canada was not yet settled, and neither was the boundary with Spanish Florida in the South. One might think that the Mississippi River formed a definite western boundary, but a glance at the map shows that the Mississippi begins much west of where it ends, and its headwaters are south of the Canadian border. Added to these real difficulties, there was the abysmal state of geographical knowledge. During debates over ratification of the 1783 peace treaty, some congressmen obviously mistook the Missouri River for the Mississippi.

The Louisiana Purchase allowed the United States to take advantage of the disputed border between Louisiana and Spanish West Florida to press Spain until it finally gave up the entire peninsula. The Gulf of Mexico then joined the Atlantic Ocean in defining the coasts of the United States. The Purchase also made the Mississippi totally irrelevant as a western boundary and substituted for it a vague and vast domain that reached as far as imagination allowed. For many Americans and for Napoleon Bonaparte, Louisiana included Texas. Others erroneously believed that Louisiana extended beyond the Rocky Mountains. In the North, the Purchase petered out somewhere on the plains that stretch from the Dakotas into Manitoba.

We know now that the annexation of Texas settled the southern boundary of the United States at the Rio Grande, but we also know how porous a border it is. It is not surprising that in the 1840s many Americans considered the eastern Sierra Madre Mountains a more natural frontier between the United States and Mexico. At the same time that the Rio Grande became the southern boundary, the forty-ninth parallel became the northern border, and, shortly thereafter, the acquisition of California settled the western border. After generations of living within fluid borders, Americans in 1848 could finally define their national boundaries as we do today, the Atlantic, the Pacific, Canada, and Mexico.

These boundaries have endured for so long that they now seem fixed forever. But what would happen if Canada broke up and the people of British Columbia petitioned for annexation? Would the United States pass up a chance to make Alaska contiguous with the lower states? Would the United States someday attempt to round out its queer southwestern border with Mexico and finally acquire the mouth of the Colorado River? Once people realize that boundaries can be altered, it becomes easier for them to think that those boundaries should advance. Nations commonly expand and contract. Mexico once included Guatemala and touched Canada. Perhaps the next turn of fortune will see her collecting tolls on the Great Lakes and dispensing justice in Saskatchewan.

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RELIVING THE PAST As the American people moved west, large numbers of them found themselves living beyond the political boundaries of the United States. These Americans were children of the nation, and their “sufferings,” especially those living in Mexico (now Texas), elicited a tremendous emotional response in the United States. When the Alamo was besieged, its commander, William Travis, issued an appeal for aid to “All Americans in the World. ... ” Travis’s message, which has been called the most heroic ever written by an American, has been reproduced many times. It is most easily available today in Walter Lord’s lively account of the siege of the Alamo, A Time to Stand (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1978 reprint).

Abraham Lincoln made a name for himself on the national political scene during the Mexican War. Unfortunately for him, his stand on the war nearly finished his political career. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln introduced the “spot resolution” in 1847, challenging the president to prove that the war had really been started by a Mexican invasion of American soil. Lincoln’s speech against the war, given in the House of Representatives on January 5, 1848, is a good example of his ability as an orator and his political courage. The best source for this speech, or for anything written by Lincoln, is The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), a work that Basler and others keep up-to-date with supplementary volumes.

CHAPTER SUMMARY THE SPIRIT OF YOUNG AMERICA The author begins with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s celebration of a new generation of Americans, who, he predicted, would lead the nation to greatness. This chapter describes the achievements of this new generation: The West was seized from Mexico, an industrial revolution took off, and the population greatly increased through immigration.

TEXAS, MANIFEST DESTINY, AND THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR Annexation of western lands was an issue forced on politicians by the rush of settlers beyond U.S. borders in the 1830s and 1840s. Settlement of these lands called Manifest Destiny was persuasive but also led to confrontations with Great Britain and Mexico.

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WHY did the U.S. annex Texas and the Southwest?

The expansion of America into Texas and the Southwest had several causes. The early settlers of Texas grew dissatisfied with the Catholic, antislavery Mexican administration.

Many Americans came to believe that it was America’s “Manifest Destiny” to expand across the continent. This ideology was a useful rallying cry for politicians willing to go to war with Mexico to gain new territory.

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The Texas Revolution: Americans, including many slaveholders, immigrated into Texas, owned

by Mexico in the 1820s. These “Anglos” never fully accepted Mexican rule, especially after 1829, when the Mexican government tried to abolish slavery. After a series of incidents, armed rebellion broke out in 1835. View the Map Texas Revolution, 1836 on myhistorylab.com The Republic of Texas: In March 1836, a convention of Texans declared independence. After a short brutal war, Texans forced the defeated Santa Anna to sign a treaty recognizing Texas’ claim to territory all the way to the Rio Grande. Texas was independent, but Mexico refused to recognize the new nation. Texas opened her lands to even more rapid American settlement, and it was the desire of most Texans to join the United States. President Andrew Jackson, however, fearing a war with Mexico and domestic political controversy, delayed annexation. View the Image The Alamo on myhistorylab.com The Annexation of Texas: John Tyler had been placed on the 1840 Whig ticket as vice president in order to get some southern votes; Whig leaders never expected him to become president in 1841. By 1844 Tyler had broken with the Whig party, and his hopes for reelection in 1844 rested almost entirely on finding a new and popular issue. He began pushing for the annexation of Texas, which was a popular issue in the South, but the North was indifferent and perhaps even hostile to the idea of adding a new slave state. When Tyler negotiated a treaty of annexation with Texas, the Senate refused to ratify it. At the Democratic nominating convention in 1844, southern delegates had enough strength to give the nomination to James K. Polk of Tennessee, who was strongly in favor of annexing Texas. In order to win northern support, Polk also promised to extend U.S. jurisdiction over all of Oregon. His victory over Whig candidate Henry Clay was a narrow one, but Polk and the Congress interpreted the results as a mandate for expansion. Congress annexed Texas even before Polk was inaugurated. Watch the Video The Annexation of Texas on myhistorylab.com The Doctrine of Manifest Destiny: The rationale behind American expansion is summed up in the phrase Manifest Destiny, first used in 1845. Expansion was defended on three grounds: first, God wanted the United States, His chosen nation, to become stronger; second, as Americans took over new territories, they made these areas free and democratic; and third, the American population was growing so rapidly that the nation needed more land. The only questions were how far America would expand and whether it would use diplomacy or war to do so. View the Closer Look Emigrants Crossing the Plains on myhistorylab.com War with Mexico: When the United States annexed Texas, it also acquired a boundary dispute with Mexico. When Polk ordered U.S. forces to occupy the disputed area, a skirmish ensued, which the president used to justify a declaration of war on May 13, 1846. Polk saw the war as an opportunity to seize California and New Mexico, those states that Mexico had refused to sell to the United States. In the war, General Zachary Taylor defeated the Mexicans in a series of battles in northern Mexico; New Mexico was taken, and California fell to American forces. The conclusive battles were won by General Winfield Scott, who took Vera Cruz in an amphibious invasion, routed the Mexicans at Cerro Gordo, and occupied Mexico City by September 1847.

View the Image Santa Anna Proclamation on myhistorylab.com

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Settlement of the Mexican-American War: In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican War, the United States gained the Rio Grande as a southern border and enlarged its size by 20 percent with the addition of California and the Southwest. Two powerful forces limited further American expansion: racism and anticolonialism. The American people did not want to take in large numbers of Latin Americans, whom they considered inferior. The annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico had also aroused political contention. Most Whigs opposed the war, and many northerners complained that the nation had been dragged into a war that benefited only the slave-owners in the South. Read the Document Thomas Corwin, “Against the Mexican War” (1847) on myhistorylab.com INTERNAL EXPANSIONISM AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Having pushed to the Pacific, Americans turned inward and developed their vast domain.

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HOW did developments in transportation foster industrialization and encourage immigration?

The birth of rail transportation allowed the swift movement of people and goods, while other advances in technology permitted the new “mass production.” The new industries drew vast numbers of immigrants from Ireland and Germany, who were fleeing famine and persecution. The labor force included more immigrants and thus suffered a decline in working conditions.

The Triumph of the Railroad: By the 1840s and 1850s, the railroad finally began to displace the canal as the cheapest means of hauling freight. Railroad construction stimulated the iron industry, but the most dramatic side effect of the railroad boom was in the area of finance.

Railroads required enormous amounts of capital, which were raised through new techniques such as bonds and preferred stock, and by large government subsidies. Read the Document Senate Report on the Railroads (1852) on myhistorylab.com The Industrial Revolution Takes Off: Mass production and the division of labor transformed traditional crafts and made production more efficient. More and more work was done in a factory system, the essential features of which were the gathering of laborers in one place where they could be supervised, cash wages, and a “continuous process” of manufacturing. Agriculture remained of primary importance in the national economy, but even farming was becoming mechanized. In the North especially, advances in industry, transportation, and agriculture interacted to create a strong economy. View the Image Calico Factory, 1854 on myhistorylab.com Mass Immigration Begins: By the 1840s, American industry was capable of providing hundreds of thousands of jobs, which attracted immigrants. Between 1840 and 1860, over 4 million Europeans, mostly Irish and Germans, came to the United States. Although many came to escape poverty—the Irish especially—most immigrants came for the opportunity to work at higher wages. Ironically, many immigrants stayed in the port cities and gladly took low-paying jobs. Since most immigrants could only afford substandard housing, urban slums spread, inspiring efforts to reduce crime, vice, and dirt, but progress was slow. Read the Document Samuel Morse, Foreign Immigration (1835) on myhistorylab.com 126

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The New Working Class: Traditionally, women and children were factory workers. Men began to enter the factory workforce in significant numbers only in the 1840s. At that time, working conditions had begun to deteriorate. Employers were less personally involved with their laborers, and the depression that followed 1837 induced employers to demand more work for less pay. Workers responded by organizing unions. When immigrants poured into America, they replaced Native Americans in the factories. The budding union movement was badly hurt, but the new working class did not form a docile body of employees. They resented the discipline and continuous nature of factory work and clung to traditional work habits, which to the supervisors appeared as careless work habits.

CONCLUSION: THE COSTS OF EXPANSION The new working class posed a problem for American ideals. It had always been assumed that working for wages was merely the first step toward becoming your own master. Now, it was obvious that a permanent wage-earning class had come into existence. Politicians like Stephen Douglas hoped to create a patriotic consensus based on continued territorial and economic expansion, but expansion actually created conflicts between classes and sections that the politicians could not control.

KEY TERMS: 1. Young America stood for a positive attitude toward the market economy and industrial growth, a more aggressive and belligerent foreign policy, and a celebration of America’s unique strengths and virtues.

2. Some came to believe that it was ordained by God that it was the Manifest Destiny of the United States to possess North America from ocean to ocean, including Canada and Mexico.

3. The folklore of the Alamo is based on fact—only 187 rebels fought off a far larger number of Mexican soldiers for more than a week before eventually capitulating—but it is not true that all rebels, including the folk hero Davy Crockett, fought to the death.

4. The annexation of Texas by the United States, which Mexico still considered its own, caused the Mexican-American War. 5. In the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico relinquished its claims to Texas and ceded an additional 500,000 square miles to the United States for $15 million.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. Why were Austin and the settlers so dissatisfied with Mexican rule over Texas? Austin and the settlers objected to the Mexicans’ insistence that the American settlers become Catholic and emancipate their slaves even though the Mexicans made an exception for the

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Americans, allowing them to make their slaves indentured servants for life. When Santa Ana became dictator and threatened to enforce tariff regulations, the Americans acted.

2. What happened at the Alamo, Goliad, and San Jacinto? A folklore- like account of the Alamo gave the Texans the rallying cry needed in their conflict with Mexico, but only Crockett and seven others had been executed. What followed was a series slaughters between Mexicans and Texans. Another detachment of Texans was captured at Goliad and most of its 350 members executed, while Sam Houston and the Texas army attacked Santa Ana and his troops at San Jacinto. It was the siesta hour, and 630 Mexicans were killed, with Santa Ana himself captured and forced to sign treaties recognizing Texas independence.

3. Why and how did Texas cost Van Buren his party’s nomination? Had the nominating convention been held in 1843 as scheduled, Van Buren would have won. When it was pushed back to 1844, the annexation of Texas had become a main issue and Van Buren was forced to take a stand. He and Clay made a gentlemen’s agreement to not bring up the issue in the campaign. Southern delegates blocked Van Buren’s nomination when they secured a rule requiring a two-thirds vote. After eight ballots Jackson protégé James K. Polk was nominated, a complete dark horse candidate.

4. What was America’s Manifest Destiny, and what were the origins of this concept?

Besides coining the phrase “Manifest Destiny,” John L. O’Sullivan pointed to three main ideas that lay behind it. First, God favored American expansionism. Second, the idea of “free development” implied that the spread of American rule meant extending the area of freedom.

Finally, his third premise was that an expanding population required territorial acquisitions.

5. How did the United States obtain New Mexico and California? Steven Kearney captured Santa Fe with an expedition and announced the annexation of New Mexico. When his forces arrived in California, he discovered a group of settlers had already declared independence with assistance from a small exploring expedition led by John C Frémont. The Bear Flag Republic had benefited from the U.S. Navy’s capture of Monterey as well.

6. Why, given the expansionist spirit, did the United States not annex Mexico in its entirety? A peculiar combination of racism and anticolonialism dominated American opinion, according to the historian Frederick Merk. It was one thing to take sparsely populated territory in the West and Southwest and another to take territory that would incorporate millions of mixed Spanish and Indian people. These “mongrels” could never be fit citizens of a self-governing republic, claimed the racist opponents of the “all Mexico” movement. Norman Graebner, another historian, claims all that was really desired were the great California ports of San Diego and San Francisco. These ports enabled the United States to dominate the Pacific trade with Asia.

7. What new political and financial arrangements emerged to encourage the growth of the railroads? With the great demand for cash required by railroad expansion new financial methods like selling stock to the public and new types of securities, such as preferred stock, were developed. Long-term bonds at set rates and government land grants all added to the railroads’ success. State and local governments became convinced that the railroad was their 128

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ticket to economic success and bought in as well buying stock and guaranteeing railroad bonds.

8. What technological developments contributed to the new “mass production”? Power looms and spinning machinery had first made the textile mills possible. New advances like Elias Howe’s sewing machine, in 1846, contributed both to shoemaking and the ready-towear clothing industry. The British practice of using coal instead of charcoal produced a more industrial-ready metal, while Charles Goodyear discovered how to vulcanize rubber in 1839, which made new manufactured items, like the overshoe, available to the American consumer. The development of the world’s most reliable and sophisticated machine tools may have been the greatest triumph of the mid-nineteenth century. These tools were signs of American aptitude for precision tool making vital for efficient industrialization.

9. What were the new immigrants’ reasons for migrating, and what conditions did they face on arrival? There were many different causes to the mass immigration from Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. The Irish came to escape the potato blight that was causing famine. Low fares on shipping from England enabled the Irish to make the journey. They were looked down on by native-born Americans. Their devotion to Catholicism aroused Protestant anger and suspicion; some even accused them of not being “white” like other northern Europeans. The Germans fared better, as they were artisans seeking to ply their trade in a major city like New York or Chicago. They formed communities and even the Catholics among them escaped the scorn heaped on the Irish. Most immigrants were more interested in making a decent living than voting or participating in democratic government.

Their vast numbers made the problems in many cities worse, as slums popped up and living conditions deteriorated.

10. How did the constitution and behavior of the working class change in this period? As the labor force shifted from artisans in the 1830s to factory workers in the 1840s and later, conditions in the factory deteriorated. Relations between worker and owner got more remote, and workers became more militant in protesting their conditions and wages. The girls of the Lowell mills formed a union, but it was difficult to organize many of the immigrants as they were usually willing to work for cheaper wages. Many rural workers making the transition to factory work struggled and their protests were more silent with the emergence of absenteeism, loafing, drinking, and other slowdown methods.

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CHAPTER 14 The Sectional Crisis, 1846–1861 CHAPTER OUTLINE Brooks Assaults Sumner in Congress The Compromise of 1850 The Problem of Slavery in the Mexican Cession The Wilmot Proviso Launches the Free-Soil Movement Forging a Compromise Political Upheaval, 1852–1856 The Party System in Crisis The Kansas-Nebraska Act Raises a Storm Kansas and the Rise of the Republicans Sectional Division in the Election of 1856 The House Divided, 1857–1860 Cultural Sectionalism The Dred Scott Case Debating the Morality of Slavery The Election of 1860 Conclusion: Explaining the Crisis

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY American politicians are at their most creative when faced with a controversy they want to evade. It is then that they spin webs of mystification, using the threads of high-sounding rhetoric.

In the 1850s, politicians meant to befuddle voters by concocting “popular sovereignty.” The expression fooled some of the people some of the time and will probably confuse your students today.

You will have to explain that most of the fifty states began life as territories, owned and governed by Congress. Since nobody wanted territories to remain territories forever, Congress worked out an intelligent method for bringing territories into statehood. In the first stage, Congress appointed a governor and opened a land office. The first people who moved in had access to good land, but they gave up, temporarily, the right to vote. There was no selfgovernment at all during the first phase of a territory. As the population grew, the people acquired more self-government and eventually were allowed by Congress to write a constitution.

If Congress approved the constitution, the territory became a state. Congress, in short, was involved in every stage of a territory’s evolution but especially so during the first stage, when only the appointed governor yielded political authority.

Congress gave its governors detailed instructions when they were appointed and in the territories of the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan), Congress told the governors to prohibit slavery. All of those territories became free states. While the Northwest territories were moving toward nonslave statehood, slaveholding southerners insisted that the Southwest territories (Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi) be opened to them.

Congress did not have the stomach to write instructions giving explicit approval to slavery, so it simply omitted any mention of the subject from the governors’ instructions, knowing that the governors would welcome slaveholders, who were rich and powerful men.

Every territory in which Congress allowed slaveholders to settle became a slave state, a result that should have surprised no one. Nevertheless, most northerners were shocked in 1817 when the Missouri Territory applied for statehood with a constitution that incorporated slavery. When Missouri had been first organized as a territory, Congress, as usual, had given the governor no instructions about slavery, and the governor, as usual, allowed slaveholders in. As usual, again, the slave owners soon dominated the territory economically, socially, and politically. When they wrote a constitution and sent it to Congress, they expected the usual rubber-stamp approval.

Instead, northern members of the House of Representatives rebelled against a policy that would give all the territories to the southern slave masters. The House voted to delay statehood for Missouri until she changed her constitution to abolish slavery. The resulting controversy was settled by the famous Missouri “Compromise.” Congress promised that it would prohibit slavery from any territory carved out of the Louisiana Purchase above the line 32°30'.

The territorial issue seemed solved, but as the nation expanded, the issue kept cropping up, and each time it did, it aroused more bitter passions in the North and South, making it ever more difficult to compromise. By 1850, when Congress had to decide what to do with the New 131

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Mexico and Utah territories, recently taken from Mexico, the controversy was so severe that the nation was on the brink of civil war. It was then that the politicians came up with “popular sovereignty.” Congress suddenly discovered that it was undemocratic for Congress to tell the people of a territory thousands of miles away how they should run their lives. Let the people decide!

In fact, the “people” in the first stage of a territory had no right whatsoever to govern themselves, and had absolutely no mechanism for keeping slave-owners out, unless they resorted to terrorism. No territorial governor would keep out slavery unless he was specifically ordered by Congress to do so, and once slave owners entered a territory, that territory was doomed to become a slave state. It cannot be emphasized enough that “popular sovereignty” was a fraud meant to deceive northerners. In the Utah Territory, for example, the governor was instructed to stamp out polygamy, and when the Mormons there refused to obey the law, Congress sent in the United States Army. So much for allowing the people of the territory to run their own lives!

Popular sovereignty gave the Utah and New Mexico territories to the slaveholders, but the North might have shrugged off the loss because it would take ages for those territories to become states. Congress, however, made a colossal error in 1854 by applying popular sovereignty to territories that would be ready for statehood very quickly. The Kansas-Nebraska Act organized those territories by repealing the Missouri Compromise, which would have required Congress to instruct the governors to ban slavery. Congress would give no instructions to the governors and would let the people decide their own future, but most northerners now understood that unless Congress banned slavery in the first stage of a territory’s existence, that territory would become a slave state. Outraged by yet another giveaway to the South, northerners rose up in fury against the established political parties and cried out for new men and a new party to stop the expansion of slavery into the territories. Abe Lincoln and the Republican party stepped forth to fill that role.

RELIVING THE PAST By the 1850s, North and South had become so antagonistic that one section’s hero almost automatically became the other’s villain. John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry scared the South; his execution sickened the North. Brown went to his death with grim determination, convinced as he wrote in his last note that “the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. .. ” Richard A. Warch and Jonathan F. Fanton have edited the volume on John Brown in the Great Lives Observed Series (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), which includes Brown’s last letters and statements, trial transcripts, and samples of northern and southern opinions on the raid.

The sectional controversy was most apparent in Congress, where it was becoming increasingly difficult to compromise. A good instance of the deteriorating conditions was the remarkable difficulty in electing a Speaker of the House in the first session of the Thirty-Fifth Congress, which opened on December 3, 1849, and which would have to settle the status of the Mexican cession. Howell Cobb of Georgia and Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts battled through sixty-two ballots without either man achieving a majority of the House. Cobb finally won when the rules were changed to allow for a plurality. The ballots, with occasional 132

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shouts from the floor, are recorded in Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, sixteen volumes edited by Thomas Hart Benton, a noted politician of the era (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1861). The Abridgment also is an excellent source for the give and take of political discourse during the entire period it covers.

CHAPTER SUMMARY BROOKS ASSAULTS SUMNER IN CONGRESS The author uses the assault by a southern senator on a northern senator to illustrate the depth of bitter feelings between North and South. It was only through astute political maneuvering that a civil war was postponed for another decade.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 In the 1840s, the North and South differed violently over whether slavery should be allowed to extend into the territories. Professional politicians, however, successfully mediated the conflict.

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HOW did territorial expansion intensify the conflict over slave ownership?

Manifest Destiny raised questions about states’ rights. The Constitution did not permit the federal government to override state slavery laws, but the Wilmot Proviso attempted and failed to ban slavery prospectively in the Mexican cession. Despite that defeat, California was admitted as a free state under the Compromise of 1850 while the Fugitive Slave Law appeased the South.

The Problem of Slavery in the Mexican Cession: Traditionally, slavery had been kept out of American politics, with the result that no practical program could be devised for its elimination in the southern states. Congress, however, had the power to set the conditions under which territories became states and to forbid slavery in new states. In the 1840s, as the result of expansion, Congress faced the problem of determining the status of slavery in the territories taken from Mexico.

The Wilmot Proviso Launches the Free-Soil Movement: As soon as the United States declared war against Mexico, antislavery groups wanted to make sure that slavery would not expand because of American victory. David Wilmot introduced a bill in Congress that would have banned all African Americans, slave or free, from whatever land the United States took from Mexico, thus preserving the area for white small farmers. This blend of racism and antislavery won great support in the North, and in a clearly sectional division, the House of Representatives passed the Proviso, while the Senate defeated it. The battle over the Proviso foreshadowed an even more urgent controversy once the peace treaty with Mexico was signed.

Read the Documen John C. Calhoun’s Proposal to Preserve the Union on myhistorylab.com Forging a Compromise: The issue of slavery in the Mexican cession became an issue in the 1848 election. Democratic presidential candidate Lewis Cass offered a clever solution that would allow the settlers in the territories to decide the issue (“squatter” or popular sovereignty). The 133

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proposal found support among antislavery forces, who assumed that the territorial settlers would have a chance to prohibit slavery before it could get established. Popular sovereignty, however, was unacceptable to those who wanted a definite limit placed on the expansion of slavery. The Free-Soil party was formed, and it ran Martin Van Buren for president. The Whigs nominated war hero Zachary Taylor, who took no stand on the territorial question and who won with less than half the popular vote. The Whig leader, Henry Clay, put together a compromise package.

The North would get California as a free state and a prohibition on the slave trade in the District of Columbia; the South got a strong fugitive slave law and a chance to settle the New Mexico territory, which was also enlarged. The Fugitive Slave Law turned out to be the most troublesome part of the compromise. Abolitionists, especially black abolitionists, became very active in helping slaves to escape from the South to refuge in Canada, and some slaveholders pushed their power to recapture slaves in the most provocative manner. One even insisted on deporting a slave from Boston even though the United States army had to be called on to subdue the crowd of rescuers. When Taylor, who opposed the compromise, died in August 1850, the Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, adopted each of Clay’s proposals as a separate measure and changed them slightly. The Democrats, for example, extended popular sovereignty to the Utah Territory. No single bill was backed by a majority of both northern and southern congressmen, but a combination of northern Democrats and southern Whigs passed each separate measure. The South accepted the Compromise of 1850 as conclusive and backed away from threats of secession. In the North, the Democratic party gained popularity by taking credit for the compromise, and the Whigs found it necessary to cease their criticism of it. Read the Document The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) on myhistorylab.com POLITICAL UPHEAVAL, 1852–1856 The sectional disputes aroused by the controversy over slavery in the new territories had been successfully handled by the Whigs and Democrats. In the 1850s, these parties collapsed as the sectional struggle raged without restraint.

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HOW did the two-party system change during this period?

The Whig candidate lost for supporting the antislavery cause, while the Kansas-Nebraska Act sought to repeal the Missouri compromise—a move considered by most northerners and some southerners as abominable. This gave rise to Republicanism, which adhered to native Protestant values while supporting development in the West and opposing slavery. The 1856 election was largely a choice for two presidents, one northern and one southern.

The Party System in Crisis: Once the Compromise of 1850 seemed to have settled the territorial controversy, Whigs and Democrats looked for new issues. The Democrats claimed credit for the nation’s prosperity and promised to defend the compromise. Whigs, however, could find no popular issue and began to fight among themselves. Their candidate in 1852, Winfield Scott, lost in a landslide to Democrat Franklin Pierce, a colorless nonentity.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act Raises a Storm: In 1854, Stephen Douglas introduced a bill to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territories. These areas were north of the Missouri Compromise line and had been off limits to slavery since 1820, but Douglas proposed to apply popular sovereignty to them in an effort to get southern votes and avoid another controversy over 134

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territories. Douglas expected to revive the spirit of Manifest Destiny for the benefit of the Democratic party and for his own benefit, when he ran for president in 1860. The South insisted, and Douglas agreed to add an explicit repeal of the Missouri Compromise to the KansasNebraska Act, thus provoking a storm of protest in the North, where it was felt that the South had broken a long-established agreement. The Whig party, unable to decide what position to take on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, disintegrated. The Democratic party suffered mass defections in the North. In the congressional elections of 1854, coalitions of “anti-Nebraska” candidates swept the North, and the Democrats became virtually the only political party in the South. In the midst of this uproar, President Pierce made an effort to buy, or seize, Cuba from Spain, but northern anger at any further extension of slavery forced the president to drop the idea. View the Image Stephen Douglas on myhistorylab.com Kansas and the Rise of the Republicans: The Republican party emerged as a coalition of former Whigs, Know-Nothings, Free-Soilers, and Democrats by emphasizing the sectional struggle and by appealing strictly to northern voters. Republicans promised to save the West as a preserve for white, small farmers. Events in Kansas helped the Republicans. Abolitionists and proslavery forces raced into the territory to gain control of the territorial legislature. Proslavery forces won and passed laws that made it illegal even to criticize the institution of slavery. Very soon, however, those who favored free soil became the majority and set up a rival government.

President Pierce recognized the proslavery legislature, while the Republicans attacked it as the tyrannical instrument of a minority. In Kansas, fighting broke out, and the Republicans used “Bleeding Kansas” to win more northern voters. View the Closer Look The Compromise of 1850 on myhistorylab.com Sectional Division in the Election of 1856: The Republicans, who sought votes only in the free states, nominated John C. Frémont for president. The Know-Nothings ran ex-President Millard Fillmore as a champion of sectional compromise. The Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, defended the Compromise of 1850 and carried the election, despite clear gains for the Republicans.

THE HOUSE DIVIDED, 1857–1860 The long sectional quarrel convinced North and South that they were so different in culture that they could no longer coexist in the same nation.

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HOW did the institution of slavery go beyond political and economic debates?

Slavery divided American society culturally, legally, and morally. Religious congregations became the site for discord, while literature expressed increasingly the sentiments surrounding slaveholding. The Dred Scott decision stripped American blacks—free and slave alike—of most legal rights. Finally, Lincoln chose to oppose slavery on moral grounds making freedom a human (and not simply legal) right.

Cultural Sectionalism: Cultural and intellectual cleavages surfaced in the 1840s. Even religion divided North and South. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians split into northern and southern denominations because of their attitudes toward slaveholding. Southern literature romanticized life on the plantation, and the South attempted to become intellectually and economically 135

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independent in preparation for nationhood. At the same time, northern intellectuals condemned slavery in prose and poem. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, was an immense success in the North. Watch the Video Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Making Of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on myhistorylab.com The Dred Scott Case: The Supreme Court had a chance to decide the issue of slavery in the territories when it agreed to consider the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857. Instead of limiting itself to a narrow determination of the case, the Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional because Congress could not restrict the right of a slaveowner to take his slaves into a territory. The ruling outraged the North and strengthened the Republicans. Watch the Video Dred Scott and the Crises that Led to the Civil War on myhistorylab.com Debating the Morality of Slavery: In 1858, Republican Abraham Lincoln faced Democrat Stephen Douglas in the Illinois Senate race. In debates, Lincoln claimed that there was a southern plot to extend slavery throughout the nation. He promised to take measures that would ensure the eventual extinction of the institution. Above all, Lincoln made the point that he considered slavery a moral problem, while Douglas did not. Douglas answered by accusing Lincoln of favoring racial equality, a potent charge that forced Lincoln to defend white supremacy. Lincoln lost the election but gained a national reputation. A series of events in 1859 and 1860 convinced southerners that Republicans intended to foment rebellion among African Americans and white small farmers. John Brown tried to capture an arsenal at Harpers Ferry in order to arm slaves. When Brown was executed for treason, the North mourned him as a martyr.

The white South was disgusted and became convinced that the Republican party would use armed force to abolish slavery. The only solution, it seemed, was to secede if the next president was a Republican. Read the Document Abraham Lincoln, Charleston Debate, 1858 on myhistorylab.com The Election of 1860: Republicans nominated Lincoln in 1860 because he was from Illinois and because he was not as controversial as other Republican leaders. In order to widen the party’s appeal, the Republicans promised high tariffs for industry, free homesteads for small farmers, and government aid for internal improvements. Democrats could not agree on a candidate. The northern wing nominated Stephen Douglas; the southern Democrats nominated John Breckinridge. The Constitutional Union party ran John Bell, who promised to compromise the differences between North and South. Lincoln received less than 40 percent of the popular vote but won virtually every northern electoral vote, giving him the victory.

CONCLUSION: EXPLAINING THE CRISIS The breakup of the Union would not have happened without slavery or the rise of a strictly sectional party like the Republicans. But the conflict arose from a fundamental difference between two different ideals of society. The South saw itself as paternalistic, generous, and prosperous, and defended slavery on the grounds of race. The North, inspired by evangelical

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Protestantism, believed that each person should be responsible for himself and free to make his own way in the world. To the North, slavery was tyrannical and immoral.

KEY TERMS: 1. Party lines crumbled and were replaced by a sharp sectional cleavage. Every northern congressman with the exception of two Democrats voted for the Wilmot Proviso amendment, which proposed banning slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico, and every southerner except two Whigs went on record against it.

2. Popular sovereignty was the concept that the settlers of a newly organized territory had the right to decide, through voting, whether or not to accept slavery. This would allow the people to have the final say on the slavery question.

3. Among other things, the Compromise of 1850 made California a free state, ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law. 4. For those living in the South, the Fugitive Slave Law was extremely helpful because it made it easier for slave owners to recapture slaves; it also made it easier for kidnappers to take free blacks. In the North, the law became the object of hatred precisely because it strengthened the institution of slavery.

5. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repudiated a compromise that many in the North regarded as a binding sectional compact. The already weakened and tottering Whig party totally disintegrated when its congressional representation split cleanly along sectional lines on the Kansas-Nebraska issue. The Democratic party survived, but its ability to act as a unifying national force was seriously impaired. Northern desertions and southern gains combined to destroy the sectional balance within the party, placing it under firm southern control.

6. This secret memo—later dubbed a “manifesto”—urged the acquisition of Cuba by any means necessary. When the Ostend Manifesto became public, northerners claimed it was a plot to extend slavery and the manifesto was disavowed.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What role did the Constitution play in the debates over slavery in existing states as well as in newly acquired territories? In existing states, the Constitution gave the federal government no power to regulate or destroy the trade where it existed under state law. The Constitution had not predetermined the status of slavery in future states. However, since Congress could admit states under whatever restrictions it wanted, it could require the abolition of slavery as the price.

2. What was the Wilmot Proviso, and what effect did it have on existing party lines? An amendment to the military appropriations bill, proposed by David Wilmot a Pennsylvania Democrat, which would have banned slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. Its 137

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debate brought about a sectional cleavage that replaced party lines. In the North every congressman but two Democrats voted for the bill, while in the South every one but two Whigs voted against it.

3. What were the key provisions of the Compromise of 1850? Henry Clay, seeking to be the pacificator he had been with the Missouri Compromise, isolated sectional issues and tried to strike a middle ground with concessions coming from both sides. He proposed admitting California as a free state but leaving the rest of the New Mexico territory uncommitted. He pointed out that in addition to its arid climate, which did not support cotton or its slave culture, Mexico had freed the slaves already. He sought to settle a boundary dispute between New Mexico and Texas, by giving New Mexico the territory in question but having the federal government pay Texas’s debt. Finally, as another concession to the North he recommended ending slave auctions in the District of Columbia but strengthening the Fugitive Slave Law to suit the South.

4. Why did the Democrats win the election of 1852, and why were they uneasy despite this victory? Democrats won the election of 1852 because the Whigs had declined to the point that they had no program that set them clearly apart from the Democrats. People just trusted the Democrats to stick to the Compromise of 1850. This made the Democrats uneasy because of the realization that people had not voted for them out of any sense of party loyalty.

5. Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act divide the Democratic party along sectional lines and lead to the demise of the Whig party? Many saw it as a betrayal of a sacred pledge, while others saw it as a craven and sinful surrender to slave power. Douglas had grossly underestimated its effects, as it split the Democratic party and brought an end to what was left of the second-party system.

6. What positions did the new Republican party take regarding immigration, western expansion, and slavery? Republicans argued that slavery was a greater threat than any popish plot. Nativist Republicans, however, found themselves very comfortable with a party that championed Protestant values. At the local level causes like banning the sale of alcohol, honoring the Sabbath, the reading of the Bible in schools, and opposition to state aid for parochial schools endeared the party to the former Know-Nothings. Republicans used racial themes especially in their support of antislavery laws, saying it was a way of keeping African Americans out of the territories.

7. How was the election of 1860 really two separate races? The presidential race of 1860 provided a northern battle between Buchanan and Frémont, while in the South Fillmore squared off against Buchanan. Buchanan obtained enough votes to win, but Frémont’s showing in the North led to secessionist talk from the South, a portent of things to come.

8. What aspects of American culture became sectionalized in the 1850s? Both literature and religion showed cultural divisiveness. Churches like the Methodists and Baptists split into northern and southern wings. While the Presbyterians and Episcopalians stayed one church, they drifted in different directions. Prominent authors split between North and South. Writers 138

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like Edgar Allen Poe wrote pro-slavery pieces, while others like Melville and Thoreau wrote antislavery pieces. The culmination of absolutist literature emerged with Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

9. What did Chief Justice Taney argue in his opinion, and what impact did this have on American sectionalism? Taney argued that no African American, free or slave, was a citizen of the United States. Furthermore, Dred Scott’s residence in Wisconsin had not established any rights of freedom as Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery there. Therefore, the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. The North saw this as “a wicked and false judgment”—the greatest crime, some argued, in the annals of the Republic.

In the end the Court’s decision actually helped the Republicans build support because it lent credence to their claim that slave power was beginning to dominate all branches of the federal government.

10. What was the basis of Lincoln’s opposition to slavery? Lincoln viewed slavery as human bondage and was morally opposed to it. He was willing to let it exist in the South only because the Constitution had not outlawed it. Lincoln argued that the founders had restricted slavery and, therefore, it should not expand to new territories.

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CHAPTER 15 Secession and the Civil War, 1860–1865 CHAPTER OUTLINE The Emergence of Lincoln The Storm Gathers The Deep South Secedes The Failure of Compromise And the War Came Adjusting to Total War Mobilizing the Home Fronts Political Leadership: Northern Success and Southern Failure Early Campaigns and Battles Fight to the Finish The Coming of Emancipation African Americans and the War The Tide Turns Last Stages of the Conflict Effects of the War Conclusion: An Organizational Revolution

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: SHERMAN’S M ARCH TO THE SEA Students are generally bored with military history if it is presented as a series of battles won and lost until one side wins more or less by attrition. Military history becomes more significant if students realize that war has a psychological dimension and that civilian morale is as important as the production of artillery shells. As the text points out, the Civil War was a total war and the Union generals understood that they could not win by gaining strategic objectives or by occupying enemy territory. It was necessary to destroy the southern whites’ will to resist and to convince them that they had no choice but to repudiate secession. In the work of demoralizing the white South, no campaign was more successful than Sherman’s march from Atlanta to Savannah.

Sherman invaded Georgia with a host of nearly one hundred thousand men in May 1864 and fought his way into Atlanta four months later. The fall of Atlanta stunned the South. But Confederate leaders believed they now had a chance to destroy Sherman’s force by attacking his supply line, which ran along various railroads for more than four hundred fifty miles back to Nashville. To solve his logistical problem, Sherman detached part of his armies to keep the Confederates out of Tennessee and, with the other half, decided to break away from his overextended supply line to strike for the ocean. There the Union navy could easily reinforce him. His target was Savannah, three hundred miles away, and his troops would feed themselves off the land as they marched.

To keep Atlanta out of enemy hands once he left, Sherman determined to complete the destruction of the city. When the mayor protested, Sherman replied that, “war is cruelty, and you cannot refine it, and those who brought war into our Country deserve all the Curses and Maledictions a people can pour out.” On September 1, Sherman’s forces torched Atlanta.

The march itself never encountered much resistance. Altogether, Sherman lost about eight hundred men, compared to the thirty thousand he lost when taking Atlanta. Fanning out over an area as much as thirty miles wide, Sherman’s “bummers” destroyed shops, factories, rail lines, and anything of value to the southern war effort. They foraged and destroyed the crops so crucial to the South’s food supply and sometimes plundered the civilians in their way. The infantry corps started with 3,476 cattle, captured 13,294 en route, and entered Savannah with 6,861.

The march went so well that the North began to joke about it. Lincoln told an audience that everyone knew where Sherman had gone into the South, but nobody knew where he would come out. When Union troops occupied Milledgeville, they broke into the capitol and held a mock session of the legislature that repealed the secession ordinance. Sherman caught the mood and presented the city of Savannah to Lincoln as a Christmas present on December 22.

For the South, however, the march was grim news. Sherman had intended to bring the war home to those who caused it, and he succeeded. A sense of utter helplessness descended over Georgia.

A resident of Augusta, wondering why that city had not yet fallen to Sherman, finally concluded that “they have only to come and take it when they are ready.” But even more devastating, as far as the white South was concerned, was the phenomenon of thousands and thousands of their slaves fleeing to the safety of Sherman’s army. The march eventually resembled a comet, with a small head of soldiers with a great tail of runaway slaves. Blacks had begun to vote with their 141

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feet as soon as the Union army entered the Confederacy, but never in such numbers as they did now. Sherman considered them a nuisance and a supply problem, but the blacks themselves knew that they were free, that they had freed themselves, and that no force on earth was going to reenslave them. Sherman fought no major battles during his march to the sea and destroyed no southern armies, but he succeeded better than he intended in rending the fabric of southern society.

RELIVING THE PAST History rarely records who fired the first shot in any war, but the Civil War was different. We know precisely when and who fired the first shot. After Lincoln informed the governor of South Carolina that Fort Sumter would be resupplied, South Carolina made the fateful decision to take the fort before the convoy could arrive. At 4:30 a.m., on April 12, 1861, Edmund Ruffin fired a sixty-four-pound Columbiad and watched its shell explode on the northeastern parapet of Fort Sumter. Ruffin, a noted soil chemist, was given the “honor” of opening hostilities because he had been dedicated for so long to the cause of southern independence. His diary, edited by William Kauffman Scarborough and published by the Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, 1972), records the incident and gives a fascinating picture of southern life before and during the war. When Ruffin realized that the Confederacy was doomed, he killed himself.

What began at Sumter ended at Appomattox. One of the great tableaux of American history is the meeting of Grant and Lee in the McLean House. Lee was dressed in his best uniform; Grant wore a rumpled private’s uniform. After the brief exchange of notes that ended a long war, Lee walked into the front yard, faced his defeated army, and clapped his hands three times. There are numerous accounts of the surrender. Grant described the scene in his memoirs, one of the most interesting memoirs written by an American general. It was most recently reprinted by the Library of America in 1990.

CHAPTER SUMMARY THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN The author begins with a short biography of Lincoln, whose election precipitated the Civil War but whose leadership preserved the Union.

THE STORM GATHERS Secession did not necessarily mean war. There was one last attempt to reconcile North and South, and there was much doubt about how firmly the federal government should respond to secession. Watch the Video What caused the Civil War? on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT developments and events drew the Union toward Civil War? The election of Lincoln prompted the secession of seven states. In South Carolina, “cooperationism” was defeated, sparking other states to follow. Republicans rejected compromise on the question of slavery in new states, and Lincoln resolved to use military force should the South strike first. At Fort Sumter in 1861 it finally did.

The Deep South Secedes: South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, and by February 1861, six more states, all in the Deep South, had joined South Carolina in forming the Confederate States of America. Significantly, the new Confederate government was headed by men who were moderates and who had not led the secession movement. Significant, too, is the fact that the Confederate constitution resembled the U.S. Constitution. The South did not secede in order to create a slaveholders’ utopia; the South dreamed of restoring the Union as it had been before the rise of the Republican party, and even though the Confederate constitution protected slavery, it was hoped that some or all of the northern states would join the Confederacy. Read the Document South Carolina Declaration of the Causes of Secession on myhistorylab.com The Failure of Compromise: There was a last-minute effort to save the Union. In Congress, support grew for a plan put forward by Senator John Crittenden, the essence of which was to settle the problem of slavery in the territories by extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific. Lincoln rejected this plan because he did not think it would end secession and because he viewed it as a repudiation of the principles on which he had been elected.

And the War Came: President Buchanan had made no attempt to coerce the South back into the Union, and many northerners wanted to let the South “go in peace.” Most northerners, however, wanted forceful action to preserve the Union. When Lincoln took office, he discovered that he must either quickly resupply the federal garrison in Fort Sumter, South Carolina, or surrender it.

He opted for resupply and informed the governor of South Carolina of that decision. Before the supplies could arrive, South Carolina forces opened fire on Fort Sumter on April 12 and captured it. Lincoln called out the northern state militias to suppress the insurrection in the South.

Lincoln’s actions united the South. Virginia now seceded, followed by the rest of the upper South. Only four slave states remained in the Union: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. In the North, the general public responded eagerly to what they expected would be a short war. Although it had been the issue of slavery that led to secession, people at the time defined the war in terms of whether or not the Union was indissoluble. View the Image Fort Sumter on myhistorylab.com ADJUSTING TO TOTAL WAR Because the North could restore the Union only by destroying the southern will to resist, the Civil War became a “total war.”

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WHAT challenges did “total war” bring for each side?

Total war meant no ceasefire until the southern separatists were defeated. The North, with its large population, heavy industry, and agriculture, was better suited for the long conflict.

The South struggled to supply foodstuffs and lacked wealth yet put up a strong fight. Meanwhile, Lincoln tightened his grip on the federal government, maintaining northern unity.

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Mobilizing the Home Fronts: Both North and South put volunteers into the field in the first year of the war, but both sides finally had to resort to conscription in the summer of 1862. The North had an easier time financing the war through taxes, bonds, and paper money, and private industry kept the Union armies generally well supplied. The Confederate government, lacking an industrial base, succeeded in setting up government arsenals that kept the Confederate armies supplied, but the Confederacy found it difficult to finance the war effort, and the South suffered runaway inflation. A more serious problem was that the Confederacy could not create an adequate transportation system to carry food to its cities and armies. Read the Document Diary Of Joseph Addison Waddell on myhistorylab.com Political Leadership: Northern Success and Southern Failure: Lincoln was a far more effective chief executive than Jefferson Davis. Lincoln greatly expanded his wartime powers by declaring martial law and rounding up about ten thousand “subversives,” who were imprisoned without trial. At the same time, northern newspapers and politicians were free to attack Lincoln, which ensured that the Republican party rallied around him. Jefferson Davis, on the other hand, concerned himself mainly with his military duties and showed little interest in civilian morale and economic problems. Because there was no political organization loyal to him, Davis had little influence with state governments, which sometimes impeded the war effort. View the Map The Civil War Part I: 1861–1862 on myhistorylab.com Early Campaigns and Battles: In the first year of the war, the North achieved total naval supremacy and cleared Confederate troops from West Virginia, Kentucky, and much of Tennessee. New Orleans was taken, but the drive to take control of the Mississippi stalled at the Battle of Shiloh. In the East, the Union tried several times to take Richmond, but all efforts failed. When Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland, he was defeated at Antietam.

FIGHT TO THE FINISH After 1863, the war went steadily against the South, but southern resistance continued, and the North had to adopt more radical measures in order to win, including emancipation of the slaves.

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HOW did the Union finally attain victory, and what role did emancipation play in it?

Lincoln was skeptical of the possibility for emancipation although he favored it morally.

Later he saw the strategic benefit of opposing slavery, so he declared the freedom of slaves in unoccupied areas in the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Many African Americans escaped slavery and joined the Union Army, helping to turn the tide of the war. Generals Grant and Sherman fought hard, and the mounting Union victories helped win electoral support for Lincoln in the 1864 election.

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The Coming of Emancipation: In the first year of the war, the North fought to save the Union and opposed making the struggle one for the freedom of blacks. But as the dream of quick victory faded, pressure built to do something to hurt the South. When the Union army prevailed at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (September 22, 1862), giving the South one hundred days to surrender if it wished to preserve slavery. On January 1, 1863, the proclamation went into effect in those areas still in rebellion. The proclamation encouraged African Americans to flee in even larger numbers to the Union lines, thereby robbing thousands of laborers from the Confederate war effort. Read the Document The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) on myhistorylab.com African Americans and the War: Almost two hundred thousand African Americans served in the Union army, and many others were used as laborers in the northern war effort. Their contribution encouraged Lincoln to push further for their rights. He organized governments in conquered southern states that abolished slavery and persuaded Maryland and Missouri to do likewise. Finally, Lincoln and the Republicans passed the Thirteenth Amendment through Congress on January 31, 1865. Read the Document H. Ford Douglas to Frederick Douglass’s Monthly (1863) on myhistorylab.com The Tide Turns: By 1863, both sides were war-weary. The southern economy was in a shambles, and desertions had become a major problem. In the North, the Democrats increasingly attacked Lincoln’s handling of the war and his emancipation of the slaves. When the federal government had to resort to outright conscription, riots broke out. In New York City, it was necessary to use army troops to restore order. On the battlefield, the Union advance had stopped.

Ulysses Grant seemed bogged down before Vicksburg, and another advance on Richmond ended with complete defeat at Chancellorsville. During the summer, the tide of battle turned. Lee invaded the North and lost the crucial Battle of Gettysburg. At exactly the same time, the Union army took Vicksburg and, with it, control of the Mississippi. View the Image Confederate Captives Gettysburg, Matthew Brady on myhistorylab.com Last Stages of the Conflict: Following his victory at Vicksburg, Grant became general-in-chief of the Union army and invaded the South on all fronts. While William Sherman led the western armies through Georgia, Grant forced Lee slowly back toward Richmond. Unable to defeat or outmaneuver Lee, Grant settled into a long siege at Richmond and Petersburg. For a while Lincoln feared that the apparent stalemate before Richmond would result in his defeat in the election of 1864, but Sherman’s capture of Atlanta revived northern morale, and Lincoln beat Democratic candidate General George McClellan by an overwhelming majority. In the winter of 1864 and the early spring of 1865, Union forces were victorious everywhere. Lee surrendered his army on April 9. Five days later, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, but the Union had been saved. View the Map The Civil War Part II: 1863–1865 on myhistorylab.com

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EFFECTS OF THE WAR The war profoundly changed the United States. The death of 618,000 men left many women bereft of husbands and either encouraged or forced them to seek roles other than those of wife and mother. Four million African Americans were free but not yet equal. Industrial workers suffered from wartime inflation but hoped that the Republican Party would take up their cause.

The war gave the federal government predominance over the states, even though the states continued to have primary responsibility for most functions of government. In the realm of economic policy, the Republican Party had enacted measures to encourage business, and the federal government would continue to play an activist role in the economy. Watch the Video The Lives Of Southern Women on myhistorylab.com

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HOW did the outcome of the war affect America socially and politically?

The Civil War changed the status of many social groups, including women, who took on new social roles after the death of male family members, and blacks, who were adjusting to free status in a white society. New national institutions, including benevolent organizations as well as banks, contributed to an “organizational revolution.” The federal government grew stronger than ever with restored dominion over the South.

CONCLUSION: AN ORGANIZATIONAL REVOLUTION The war organized the American people. An individualistic society of small producers had begun the transformation toward a modern, bureaucratic state, a development celebrated by intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had once espoused the autonomy of the individual.

KEY TERMS: 1. Cooperationists believed the slave states should act as a unit and opposed those who advocated immediate secession by each state individually.

2. President Lincoln was adamantly opposed to the Crittenden compromise, which proposed an extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific to protect slavery in the southwestern territories.

3. The Union needed to issue Treasury notes, called greenbacks because of their color, in order to finance the enormous cost of the war.

4. The Lincoln administration realized that issuing the Emancipation Proclamation would win sympathy for the Union cause in England and France and thus might counter the growing threat that these nations would come to the aid of the Confederacy.

5. To fight dissension and “disloyalty” by groups like the Copperheads that advocated peace at any price, the government used its martial law authority to arrest a few alleged ringleaders.

However, the only effective way to overcome the disillusionment that fed the peace movement was to start winning battles and thus convince the northern public that victory was assured.

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6. The Sanitary Commission was chartered to promote health in the northern army’s camps through attention to cleanliness, nutrition, and medical care.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. How did secessionists conceive of the U.S. Constitution, and how did their new constitution differ? Secessionists believed the U.S. Constitution had only been a “compact” among sovereign states. Any individual state could leave the Union by holding a convention, similar to the one that met to ratify the Constitution, and vote to withdraw from the Union.

The Confederate constitution was similar to that of the United States with traditional southern exceptions. No protective tariffs could be imposed by the federal government; it also could not subsidize internal improvements or interfere with slavery.

2. What was the Crittenden compromise, and why was it rejected? Lincoln’s rejection of the plan to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, thus protecting slavery in the territories, doomed the plan because it stiffened the resolve of the Republican congressmen.

Lincoln and the Free-Soilers believed the only way to reunite the house divided and end slavery was to make sure that slaveholders could never enlarge their domain.

3. What was Lincoln’s attitude toward the use of force, and why did he want the South to initiate any hostilities that might occur? Lincoln, in his inaugural address, outlined a cautious use of force. He would not attempt to recapture forts the South had taken, but he would defend forts still in federal hands. His insistence on the South striking first was to shift the blame toward the Confederacy.

4. Which side was better suited economically for “total war,” and why? By 1863, the North’s strong economy was producing more than it needed to fight the war while the South struggled for basic necessities. The economy of the North was based on factory and farms, which were strong producers.

5. In what ways did Lincoln assume stronger executive powers than a peacetime president, and was he justified for doing so? Once the fighting began, Lincoln took steps beyond normal presidential powers. He expanded the army and advanced public money to private individuals, normally requiring congressional consent. His calling of martial law and suspension of habeas corpus between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., strengthened the military’s ability to arrest confederate sympathizers and spies. He eventually extended his authority to include all parts of the country where “disloyal” elements” were still active.

Lincoln’s argument that these powers were necessary for his prosecution of the war seemed reasonable. Most of those arrested during the course of the war were not individuals expressing their dissent; they were deserters, draft dodgers, smugglers, and even people found in places they were not supposed to be.

6. What strategic choices did Union generals make in the early fighting that led to severe losses and heavy casualties? Winfield Scott’s decision to push McDowell with his raw troops into attacking Jackson at Manassas Junction in Virginia was the first of several 147

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disasters for the Union. A slow- moving Union army was almost wiped out at the Battle of Shiloh and McClellan was chased up and down the peninsula by Lee. The bloodiest single day of combat occurred at the Battle of Antietam during this period as well.

7. Why was Lincoln skeptical of immediate emancipation, and what changed his mind?

Lincoln’s own beliefs stemmed toward gradual, compensated emancipation. When coupled with his fear of alienating Unionists in the border slave states, a clearer understanding of his caution becomes apparent. His change of heart was due primarily to political pressure. The Republicans in Congress, known as Radicals, were ready to repudiate his administration if he did not act.

8. What effect did African American troops have on the war in battle and on the home front? Without the service of black troops it is very doubtful the Union could have won.

Over 200,000 African Americans served in the war. Those who didn’t serve in the military worked at heavy labor jobs, including on plantations run or rented by loyal planters in the Deep South. Their brave efforts in the battles of the last two years of the war and the easing of northern fears of being swamped by black immigrants allowed for a permanent and comprehensive emancipation program to develop.

9. How did the tide turn against the Confederate army in the middle of 1863? Grant’s brilliant maneuvers and capture of Vicksburg gave the Union control of the Mississippi River. Union forces in the East finally achieved a major victory at Gettysburg, even though allowing Lee to slip back into Virginia; these two major events turned the tide of the war.

10. How did Generals Grant and Sherman affect the election of 1864? Grant’s bloody campaigns around Richmond inflicted losses the Confederates could ill afford. It was Sherman’s victory at Atlanta and sacking of Georgia that gave Lincoln’s campaign the momentum it needed to defeat General McClellan who was running for the Democrats and keep the Radicals in line.

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CHAPTER 16 The Agony of Reconstruction, 1863–1877 CHAPTER OUTLINE Robert Smalls and Black Politicians during Reconstruction The President versus Congress Wartime Reconstruction Andrew Johnson at the Helm Congress Takes the Initiative Congressional Reconstruction Plan Enacted The Impeachment Crisis Reconstructing Southern Society Reorganizing Land and Labor Black Codes: A New Name for Slavery?

Republican Rule in the South Claiming Public and Private Rights Retreat from Reconstruction Final Efforts of Reconstruction A Reign of Terror Against Blacks Reunion and the New South The Compromise of 1877 “Redeeming” a New South The Rise of Jim Crow Conclusion: Henry McNeal Turner and the “Unfinished Revolution”

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: IMPEACHMENT Students generally believe that the president is a far more powerful political force than the Congress. There has even been talk of an “imperial presidency” developing in the United States.

Students should therefore be reminded that in any serious confrontation between Congress and the chief executive, Congress will win, as Richard Nixon can testify. The man who most bitterly learned that the Constitution gives Congress ultimate authority in our system of government was Andrew Johnson, the first president to have been impeached by the House of Representatives.

Johnson was not a weak president. He vigorously exercised the ample powers given the president by the Constitution. Johnson, like Lincoln, used the power to pardon in order to reconstruct the South. This power, granted to the president in Article II, section 2 of the Constitution, is virtually unlimited. Johnson required southerners to sign statements admitting their guilt in rebelling against the United States and requesting forgiveness. Johnson then granted their requests. Having been pardoned, the former rebels were legally innocent and should have been able to participate in all civic affairs, such as holding public office. There was a kind of ironic common sense in Johnson’s position. Because secession was an illegal act, no southern state had ever left the Union; the southern states, therefore, did not have to be reconstructed. In other words, there had never been a secession; there had been a rebellion, an act by individuals.

Congress did not believe that the problem of southern reconstruction could be accomplished by having Confederate leaders admit or pretend to admit that they had committed a crime. Unless the social and political system of the South was fundamentally altered, Congress believed, the old planter elite would again come to power, and all the sacrifice of the Union army would have been in vain. Congress, therefore, refused to seat men elected to the House and Senate from states that Johnson considered to be reconstructed. Congress defended this exclusion on two interrelated grounds. First, Article I, section 5 of the Constitution gives Congress the right to determine the legitimacy of the election of its members. Congress ruled that all congressional elections in the South were invalid because, among other things, so many adult males (African Americans) had been unable to vote. Second, Article IV, section 4 gives the federal government the responsibility of ensuring that each state has a “republican” form of government. When the Constitution was written, the word “republican” clearly meant a government in which there was neither king nor hereditary aristocracy. By the early nineteenth century, the fear that any state might cease to be “republican” had disappeared, and Article IV, section 4 seemed like a dead letter, but in the sectional crisis of the 1850s, the Republican party began to argue that the southern states were not really republican because slavery gave all power to a small minority.

“The people” had no political voice. In order to reconstruct the South so that it would be truly “republican,” Congress determined that totally new conditions would have to be created. This in turn meant not only the abolition of slavery but also the right of African Americans to vote.

Congress had the upper hand in its struggle with Johnson. He could pardon individuals, but no southerner would sit in Congress until Reconstruction was done the way Congress wanted. The president tried to use his powers as chief executive to sabotage Radical Reconstruction, by vetoing bills and by firing federal officials who did their jobs too well, but Congress proved 150

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again that it had superior powers. The Republicans, after 1867, had sufficient strength in Congress to override the president’s vetoes, and Congress rattled its ultimate weapon when it impeached Johnson. Altogether, Congress got its own way during Reconstruction.

If fears linger that an “imperial” presidency is growing, it is well to be reminded that as long as Americans allow the Constitution to determine the ground rules of political life most power lies in the legislative branch of government, the one closest to the people.

RELIVING THE PAST Reconstruction was lived most intensely by southern whites and blacks. African Americans learned of their freedom in many different ways. One African American woman remembered encountering Union troops when she was a little girl and being told, “Nigger! You is as free as us.” Another remembered that the plantation mistress assembled all the slaves before the great house, where she informed them that they were free, and then ordered them off her property.

After emancipation, African Americans struggled through the Reconstruction period, not without some victories. One former slave, Henry Banner of Little Rock, Arkansas, summed it up this way: “In slavery I owns nothing and never owns nothing. In freedom I’s own my home and raise the family. All that cause me worriment, and in slavery I has no worriment, but I takes the freedom.” The best single collection of former slave narratives is that edited by George P. Rawick, The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1972), 19 volumes. A good sample of the narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s is B. A. Botkin, editor, Lay My Burden Down (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945).

It should be remembered that Reconstruction failed to break the spirit of white southerners, who began to shape a society much like the one that existed before the war. There is an excellent collection of letters sent to one another by members of a large and well-off Georgian family in The Children of Pride, edited by Robert Manson Myers (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972). Among the more notable examples of the South’s defiant, “unreconstructed” attitude are the letters sent by Caroline Jones to her mother, thanking God for the assassination of Lincoln, and the letter dated December 9, 1865, from Mary Jones to her daughter, telling her about the troubles she was having with the Freedmen’s Bureau.

CHAPTER SUMMARY ROBERT SMALLS AND BLACK POLITICIANS DURING RECONSTRUCTION The author demonstrates the frustrating failure of Reconstruction through the biography of Robert Smalls, who escaped slavery in South Carolina, joined the Union military effort, and enjoyed a successful career in business and politics after the war, until the return of white supremacy.

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THE PRESIDENT VERSUS CONGRESS The North split on the question of reconstructing the South. Some northerners, led by the White House, wanted speedy Reconstruction with a minimum of changes in the South. Other northerners, led by Congress, wanted a slower Reconstruction and demanded that the freed African Americans be protected.

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WHAT conflicts arose among Lincoln, Johnson, and Congress during Reconstruction?

Both Lincoln and Johnson had their own notions of how Reconstruction should be governed. Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan was especially challenged by the Radical Republicans who sought more protection for black rights. Later, when Johnson hesitated to renew the Freedmen’s Bureau and fight the Black Codes, Congress swiftly passed the Fourteenth Amendment hoping to ensure equal rights to all Americans.

Wartime Reconstruction: Even Lincoln clashed with Congress over Reconstruction.

Lincoln hoped to win southerners from the Confederate cause by announcing a lenient policy in 1863. Congress, however, resented Lincoln’s assumption that he alone could determine policy, and some congressmen wanted to make black suffrage a precondition for taking the South back into the Union. Most of all, Congress did not trust white southerners. Lincoln and Congress could not agree on the issue and it was left to Lincoln’s successor to work out a Reconstruction policy.

Andrew Johnson at the Helm: Johnson, a southern Democrat, had remained loyal to the Union and was rewarded with the vice presidency in 1864. At first, Radical Republicans felt enthusiastic about Johnson, because he had a long record of hostility toward the great planter class. Gradually, however, Johnson split with the Republican party. Johnson began the process of Reconstruction by instructing the southern states to hold conventions that would declare secession illegal, repudiate the Confederate debt, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. The conventions did as ordered, but did so reluctantly, and none of them gave African Americans the right to vote. In fact, the southern states passed “Black Codes” that put African Americans into a kind of semislavery. Johnson approved of the actions of these conventions; Congress did not.

Read the Document The Mississippi Black Code (1865) on myhistorylab.com Congress Takes the Initiative: Congress insisted that African Americans be given the vote. In part, this insistence reflected political partisanship, since the Republican party expected to get the black vote. For the most part, however, the desire to give the franchise to African Americans grew from an ideological commitment to equal rights and a fear that without black suffrage the South would again fall under the control of the great planters. In 1866, when Johnson vetoed two bills designed to help the freedmen, Republicans felt betrayed. In order to protect the rights of African Americans from a president they no longer trusted, the Republicans pushed the Fourteenth Amendment through Congress. In the elections of 1866, Johnson organized the National Union party, which ran against Republican congressmen. The results of the election, however, strengthened the Radical Republicans in Congress. Read the Document Thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments on myhistorylab.com 152

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Congressional Reconstruction Plan Enacted: Congress began enacting measures that are collectively called “Radical Reconstruction.” The South was placed under military rule until black suffrage was fully secured. The more radical Republicans realized that the African Americans needed a long period of federal protection, but the Republican party in general felt uneasy about the military occupation and wanted it to be short. View the Image Reconstruction on myhistorylab.com The Impeachment Crisis: When Johnson sabotaged Radical Reconstruction in the way he administered it, Congress moved to remove him from office. The House impeached him in February 1868, but the Senate refused to convict. Popular opinion had begun to turn against the Radical Republicans, who seemed willing to subvert the Constitution to accomplish what they wanted. View the Image Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson on myhistorylab.com RECONSTRUCTING SOUTHERN SOCIETY The South was an arena with three contending parties: southern whites who wanted to keep the newly freed blacks in an inferior position, northern whites who moved to the South to make money (“carpetbaggers”) or to “civilize” the region, and blacks who wanted equality. Eventually, the forces of reaction and racism won because the federal government did not sustain its interest in Reconstruction. Read the Document Carl Schurz, Report on the Condition of the South (1865) on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT problems did southern society face during Reconstruction?

The immediate problems facing the South were economic and physical devastation and the mass of freed slaves to be provided for. While former slaveholders hoped to reduce exslaves to conditions not unlike slavery, northern Republicans wanted to reorganize southern land and labor on a northern free-labor model. Freedmen’s Bureau agents emphasized that ex-slaves had to sign contracts and work for wages. The freed slaves hoped instead to own land.

Sharecropping was a compromise.

Reorganizing Land and Labor: Faced with a massive need to rebuild, the South had to find a new labor system. The ex-slaves preferred to work their own land and were sometimes given land by the federal government. Under Johnson, most of this land reverted to white ownership.

The former slave-owners tried to impose a contract labor system resembling slavery, but blacks insisted instead on sharecropping, which seemed like a first step toward economic independence.

Sharecropping soon proved to be a form of peonage. Watch the Video The Schools the Civil War and Reconstruction Created on myhistorylab.com Black Codes: A New Name for Slavery? The South became an increasingly segregated society after the Civil War. As whites returned to political power, they enacted “Black Codes,” harsh laws that reduced blacks to a condition little short of slavery. The federal government often intervened to annul the Black Codes, but a reign of terror and unpunished physical violence robbed blacks of the gains they had achieved in the years just after the war.

Republican Rule in the South: The Republican party was not organized in the South until 1867, and it never acquired much strength. At first it attracted three groups, all with different aims: 153

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businesspeople, who wanted government aid: small white farmers, who wanted protection from creditors and blacks, who formed the majority of the party and who wanted social and political equality. The Republican coalition was inherently unstable and broke up when the whites left it.

View the Image Robert Smalls on myhistorylab.com Claiming Public and Private Rights: The Republican party in the South improved conditions in areas such as public education, welfare, and transportation, but because too many Republican state legislatures were corrupt, although no worse than those in the North, the entire Reconstruction effort was tarnished. Ironically, white southerners mainly blamed African Americans for crooked, inefficient government, even though blacks never controlled most southern legislatures during Reconstruction. Read the Document Slave Narrative, “The Story of Mattie J. Jackson” on myhistorylab.com RETREAT FROM RECONSTRUCTION Grant faced problems that might have defeated a better president, but he contributed to his own failure. He was not a man with strong principles.

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WHY did Reconstruction end?

Although intended to further protect civil rights, the Fifteenth Amendment allowed states to limit local suffrage through difficult voting prerequisites. Further, the Ku Klux Klan campaigned through increasingly illegal means to intimidate black voters and representation. By 1876, these tactics led to the defeat of the Republicans in most southern states and Reconstruction was nearly dead.

Final Efforts of Reconstruction: In 1869, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to give equal rights to vote to black males. The exclusion of women in the amendment created a split in the feminist movement but seemed to assure Republican political ascendency in the South for decades to come. Read the Document The State of the South (1872) on myhistorylab.com A Reign of Terror Against Blacks: Various loosely organized vigilante groups in the South, most notably the Ku Klux Klan, unleashed a reign of terror against blacks and whites who joined the Republican party. At first, Grant and the northern Republicans took a hard line against the Klan, but when the Democratic party began to make political gains by criticizing the continued repression of southern whites, the Republican party became less inclined to support blacks if it meant losing white votes. Without the federal government to protect them, blacks were systematically excluded from political life, and by 1876 Republicans controlled only South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. Forceful measures would have quashed terrorism in the South eventually, but the northern public grew tired of the effort. Read the Document Hannah Irwin Describes Ku Klux Klan Ride on myhistorylab.com REUNION AND THE NEW SOUTH North and South reconciled after 1877, but only when it was agreed to strip African Americans of their political gains and to favor the interests of big business over those of the small farmer.

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WHO benefited and who suffered from the reconciliation of the North and South?

Reunion came at the expense of African Americans. In the Compromise of 1877, a secret deal struck between Republicans and Democrats restored autonomous government in the South to resolve the 1876 election. The North would no longer enforce unpopular civil rights, allowing the Redeemers to bring back laissez-faire economics and restore white supremacy through the Jim Crow laws.

The Compromise of 1877: Nobody knew who won the election of 1876. Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden got most of the popular votes, but the dispute about the electoral vote was so great that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes had a chance. Congress appointed a special commission to determine who should get the disputed electoral votes. When it became clear that the commission would give the votes to Hayes, the southern Democrats in Congress promised not to cause trouble if the Republicans would guarantee federal aid to the South as well as removal of all remaining federal troops. When Hayes agreed, Reconstruction came to an end.

“Redeeming” a New South: The men who replaced the Republicans in running the South, the “Redeemers,” were more interested in commerce or manufacturing than in agriculture. They used the doctrine of white supremacy to gain and hold power, but their chief interest was in making the South a modern, industrial society. The Redeemer regimes, often corrupt, welcomed northern investment and northern control of the southern economy. These governments neglected the problems of small farmers, black or white, who suffered from debts they could not repay.

Eventually, the small farmer organized his own political party in the 1890s. View the Map The Rise of Tenancy in the South, 1880 on myhistorylab.com The Rise of Jim Crow: The Redeemers also began the process of legal segregation and invented ways of denying blacks the right to vote. Blacks trying to vote Republican were whipped or even lynched, but even blacks who wanted to vote for Democrats were turned away by cynical rules enacted for the sole purpose of keeping elections wholly white. Politically powerless, blacks were subjected to degrading segregation laws whenever they used public facilities. Watch the Video The Promise and Failure of Reconstruction on myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: HENRY MCNEAL TURNER AND THE “UNFINISHED REVOLUTION” The author ends the chapter with a capsule biography of a free black who, like Robert Smalls, enjoyed a distinguished political career after the war but who was eventually forced out of government by the return of white supremacy. At one time convinced that blacks and whites would live together in equality, Henry Turner, a Methodist bishop, ended by preaching that the only hope for American blacks was to emigrate to Africa.

KEY TERMS: 1. Congress was unhappy with the Ten Percent Plan because it favored protection for black rights, especially black male suffrage, as a precondition for the readmission of southern states. Also, a larger group of Congressional moderates opposed Lincoln’s plan because they 155

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did not trust the repentant Confederates who would play a major role in the new governments.

2. The Radical Republicans insisted on black suffrage and federal protection of civil rights of African Americans.

3. The Wade-Davis Bill required that a majority of a former Confederate state’s white male population take a loyalty oath and guarantee equality for African Americans.

4. Johnson believed that the fact that the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery was both enough of a punishment for the South and enough of a gain for the North and African Americans. He didn’t believe that provisions for African American rights had to be clearly articulated.

5. Because states that had regained their full rights under the Constitution were headed by exConfederate leaders, they proceeded to pass Black Codes restricting the freedom of former slaves in an attempt to preserve the prewar social order.

6. It did provide temporary relief, education, legal help, and assistance in obtaining land or employment. However, the Freedmen’s Bureau was not far reaching enough and never redistributed land to ex-slaves. It dissolved by 1865.

7. Giving the federal government responsibility for guaranteeing equal rights under the law to all Americans, Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment defined national citizenship for the first time as extending to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”

8. Radical Reconstruction divided the South into five military districts. Its measures required states to guarantee black male suffrage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of readmission to the Union.

9. An alternative capital–labor relationship known as sharecropping eventually replaced the contract system. First in small groups and later as individual families, black sharecroppers worked a piece of land for a fixed share of the crop, usually one-half. Credit-starved landlords liked this arrangement because it did not require much expense before harvest, and the tenant shared the risks of crop failure. Most sharecroppers were left with no net profit at the end of the year and, more often than not, with a debt that had to be worked off in subsequent years.

10. The Republican effort to make equal rights for blacks the law of the land resulted in passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1869; however, it failed to extend the vote to women as well as freedmen.

11. Between 1868 and 1872, the Ku Klux Klan and other secret societies were bent on restoring white supremacy by intimidating blacks who tried to exercise their political rights. The hoods and robes Klansmen wore conveyed a clear sense of intimidation. Some victims were only threatened; others were whipped or murdered.

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12. The Force Acts were designed to protect black voters in the South by placing state elections under federal jurisdiction and imposing fines and imprisonment on those guilty of interfering with any citizen exercising his right to vote.

13. Federal troop withdrawal from the South marked the most significant aspect of the Compromise of 1877. As a result, Reconstruction gave way to “Redemption” and the rise of Jim Crow.

14. Laissez-faire and white supremacy united all Redeemers. However, they had differing backgrounds and previous loyalties. Some were members of the Old South’s ruling planter class who had warmly supported secession. Others were of the middle class and favored commercial and industrial interests over agrarian groups and called for a New South committed to diversified economic development. A third group consisted of professional politicians bending with the changes of the time.

15. The systematic segregation of whites from blacks occurred as a result of the passage of Jim Crow laws in the South.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. On what matters did Lincoln and Congress disagree? Congress’s main objections were to Lincoln’s Reconstruction plans. Members of Congress, and especially the Radicals, viewed them as too lenient. Governments in Arkansas and Louisiana were based on Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan, which required 10 percent or more of the electorate of a state to take a loyalty oath, but Congress refused to seat the Unionists elected by those states late in the war.

Lincoln exercised a pocket veto on the Wade-Davis Bill that required 50 percent of the electorate to take an oath.

2. Why did Northerners and Republicans grow uneasy and disillusioned with Johnson’s approach to Reconstruction? Johnson’s approach to Reconstruction sought to punish the planters but to readmit southern states fairly quickly. His lack of support for African American suffrage irritated Congress, but when the new state governments began to pass Black Codes with vagrancy and other restrictive laws, Congress became angry. When prominent Confederates were elected and showed up in Congress, Congress refused to allow them to take their seats.

3. What events caused Congress to take the initiative in passing the Fourteenth Amendment? Fear that Johnson would not enforce the civil rights legislation Congress had passed and that the courts might declare such laws unconstitutional prompted Congress to pass the Fourteenth Amendment. Johnson had helped form the National Union movement to support his Reconstruction plan and was working to get Republicans who supported him as well as Democrats elected to Congress, which helped to motivate Congress even further.

4. What was Radical Reconstruction, and how did it differ from previous plans? Radical Reconstruction was actually a compromise between more radical Republicans and 157

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mainstream Republicans. The first act, passed over Johnson’s veto in March 1867, reorganized the South into five military districts. It was meant for a short period of military rule before loyal governments formed with black suffrage as a major component. They believed that once blacks had the vote they could defend themselves against white supremacists’ efforts to deny them their civil rights.

5. What prompted Congress to initiate impeachment against Johnson, and what was the outcome of that action? Johnson’s effort to dismiss Secretary of War Stanton, the only Radical left on his cabinet, violated the Tenure of Office Act and Congress moved to impeach him. He was impeached by the House and his trial moved to the Senate. Seven Republicans broke with the party leadership and Johnson avoided impeachment by one vote.

6. What were the conflicting visions of the planters, the Freedmen’s Bureau agents, and the freed slaves with regard to what a new labor system should look like? Blacks wanted to determine their own economic system; many wanted to maintain the family-based communal work methods they had used during slavery. Many also wanted to stay on lands their families had occupied for generations rather than go work new lands as individual farmers. Many Southerners believed blacks would only work under compulsion. The Freedmen’s Bureau enforced the contracts signed for the contract labor system planters established. Some Freedmen’s Bureau agents supported the ex-slaves, while others were allies of the planters. While some freedmen had gotten land early on, the federal government pulled back support for many initiatives and most blacks ended up with no money and no land and became contract laborers or sharecroppers.

7. What were the Black Codes, and how did they compare to the conditions of slavery? In addition to separating the races in public, the Black Codes pushed African Americans back closer to slavery. They had onerous provisions like making unemployment a crime for blacks. Other codes made it difficult for African Americans to own property or hold any other occupation beside servant or laborer. Many of the codes put blacks just a grade above their condition while in slavery.

8. What were the three social groups that made up the southern Republican party? The three groups that made up the southern Republican party varied in strength per geographic location. Businessmen who wanted government aid for private enterprise, a group that also existed in the North, made up one segment. Many from this group were recent arrivals from the North, called carpetbaggers, while others were southern Whigs who had returned to take advantage of the situation, called scalawags. Poor white farmers made up the second group, many had Unionist sentiments during the war. The newly enfranchised blacks made up the third group. They were the rank-and-file Republicans in the South and were most concerned with education, civil rights, and land ownership.

9. What new rights and institutions did free blacks create and use following emancipation? Institutions formerly denied to slaves were utilized by many ex-slaves. The courts were used to assert citizen rights, marriages were formalized, and custody battles fought to regain or retain children taken under the apprenticeship programs of the Black 158

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Codes. Blacks joined black denomination churches like the American Methodist Episcopal church and focused on education by creating their own institutions.

10. What did the Fifteenth Amendment stipulate, and whom did it benefit? All states were prohibited from denying male citizens the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It did not include women, and it benefited Republicans the most that were relying on the black vote, especially in the South.

11. How important was the Ku Klux Klan in influencing elections and policies in the South? The Klan was most effective in state elections and in affecting policies at the state level. It did manage to cost Grant Louisiana and Georgia during the election of 1868, but thereafter it was directed at Republican state governments. Republican governors did call out the state militia to fight Klan violence, but only in Arkansas were they successful. Louisiana saw 1,000 lives claimed by political violence. When Grant finally stopped sending troops to aid the Republican governors in 1875, one county in Mississippi saw only seven Republican votes where there had been a black majority of 2,000.

12. Who agreed upon the Compromise of 1877, and why? Republican leaders struck an informal bargain with conservative southern Democrats in what has been dubbed the Compromise of 1877 to get Hayes elected. Who agreed to what is unknown, but President Hayes ordered the army to allow democratic takeovers of state governments in South Carolina and Louisiana. Southern blacks were left to their own fate.

13. Which principles divided and which united the new “Redeemer” governments? Three types of groups emerged as providing Redeemers for the new southern governments that replaced Republican governments in the South. There were members of the old planter aristocracy trying to reestablish white supremacy from the antebellum period. Another group came from a more middle-class origin or outlook; they focused on commercial and industrial interests. A final group was made up of politicians who bent in the political winds to stay in power. No matter which group they came from, the Redeemers agreed on two basic principles. First was laissez-faire, which united planters and capitalist promoters. Second, white supremacy was a principal most in the South could rally around. It was a rallying cry for the Redeemers and helped cover up economic grievances of groups with no political clout.

14. What aspects of southern society did the Jim Crow laws regulate? Jim Crow customs started out as regulations separating blacks from whites on railroad cars, for example. It was in the political arena where blacks lost the most to Jim Crow. Following the Compromise of 1877, blacks faced intimidation and bulldozing when they attempted to vote.

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CHAPTER 17 The West: Exploiting an Empire, 1849–1902 CHAPTER OUTLINE Lean Bear’s Changing West Beyond the Frontier Crushing the Native Americans Life of the Plains Indians Searching for an Indian Policy Final Battles on the Plains The End of Tribal Life Settlement of the West Men and Women on the Overland Trail Land for the Taking The Spanish-Speaking Southwest The Bonanza West The Mining Bonanza The Cattle Bonanza The Farming Bonanza Discontent on the Farm The Final Fling Conclusion: The Meaning of the West

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE FRONTIER THESIS All college students, it seems, have heard of the “frontier thesis,” but few of them realize how severely challenged that interpretation of the American experience has been. It is an appropriate time, while covering this chapter, to include discussion of the topic.

Historians did not notice the frontier until after its disappearance. In 1890, the Census Bureau announced that the nation was so settled that “there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.” This announcement caught the attention of a young historian named Frederick Jackson Turner. Three years later, he delivered the address “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” to the World’s Congress of Historians, meeting in Chicago.

Turner defined the frontier as the empty land on the margin of a settled area having a population of two or more persons per square mile. According to Turner, life on the frontier evoked certain character traits, coarseness and strength, acuteness and inquisitiveness, a practical turn of mind, a grasp of material things, a restless energy, and, above all, an exuberant, dominant individualism.

The person who entered the forest was a European; the person who emerged was an American.

For the nation as a whole, this process was repeated for nearly three hundred years, with important results. The frontier made the United States a more self-sufficient nation and raised the major political questions of the first half of the nineteenth century. Most of all, the frontier gave Americans their sense of nationalism.

Turner’s 1893 address is the classic statement of the frontier thesis, but Turner eventually published thirteen separate pieces in which he elaborated, modified, and even contradicted his most famous paper. As his critics, especially George Pierson, have pointed out, Turner never consistently defined the term “frontier” and often confused it with physical mobility, a phenomenon not necessarily related to the frontier. One of the most discussed aspects of the Turner thesis, the “safety-valve” theory, which claims that economic hardship in the East drove people to the West, was not even hinted at in the 1893 address. Turner made this assertion in a later article, written for a general audience. Because the safety-valve theory could be tested empirically, historians have subjected it to intensive examination and have shown that Turner was totally wrong.

Even restricting discussion to the 1893 statement, one encounters problems with the Turner thesis. For one thing, Turner made too large a claim for the frontier. He stated, “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.” This key assertion is too broad to be accurate or useful. For another thing, Turner was like most other late-nineteenth-century historians in adopting an evolutionary scheme of social organization, with “savage” society at one extreme and “industrial” society at the other. The evolutionary aspect of the theory now seems jejune, and it has been pointed out that if the frontier had an inherent ability to create character, nations with large frontiers, like Brazil or Russia, would have evolved into societies similar to that of the United States.

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Nevertheless, the frontier thesis continues to make sense. If it is conceded that Americans differ in important respects from Europeans, despite a common Christian religion, a common history of Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, a common science, similar forms of government and law, and interrelated economies, how is that difference to be explained? The most persuasive answer so far has been Turner’s. Surely, a society must be profoundly affected when its citizens, year after year, leave established communities and begin anew in a strange environment; when its worst-paid workers can dream of escape to the West, even if they never go; when the casual slaughter of Indians becomes the stuff of folklore; when expanding settlements demand the most extensive transportation network in the world and when the task of internal development turns the nation’s attention away from the outside world. Americans have felt the impact of the frontier, even if their historians have not been able to weigh it.

RELIVING THE PAST It will be some time before the history of the West becomes as interesting as its legends. Cowboy life, for example, was characterized by long, dull hours, punctuated by frenzied activity, but the myth of the cowboy as gunman persists. Relatively little violence occurred along the cattle trails, but the great shoot-outs have captured our imagination. The most famous of these duels occurred in Tombstone, in the Arizona Territory, on October 26, 1881, at the O.K. Corral. Arising from a complex series of incidents that pitted the Earps against the Clantons, the shoot-out resembled nothing out of High Noon. Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp, accompanied by “Doc” Holliday, an alcoholic, wife-beating dentist, armed with revolvers and a shotgun, cornered Ike and Billy Clanton with their allies, Tom and Frank McLowery. The Earps fired at point-blank range and killed all of their enemies, except for Ike Clanton, who ran away. The Earps were arrested, but a grand jury failed to indict them. The incident is well narrated by Frank Waters, The Earp Brothers of Tombstone (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960). Waters includes long excerpts from eyewitness accounts.

When the full history of the West is written it will be different, but no less interesting. One great step forward has been taken by Lillian Schlissel, who has excerpted diaries of women pioneers in Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey (New York: Shocken Books, 1982). Schlissel’s analysis of the diaries makes several interesting points, such as the general reluctance of women to make the journey in the first place. The volume also contains remarkable photographs and the diaries themselves capture the hardship and terror of the westward trek. Consider the poignancy of a small entry recorded on Sunday, July 20, 1862, by Jane Gould Tortillott: “The men had a ball-play towards night. Seemed to enjoy themselves very much, it seemed like old times.”

CHAPTER SUMMARY LEAN BEAR’S CHANGING WEST The author uses the visit of a Cheyenne chief, Lean Bear, to New York and Washington in 1863 to illustrate the lawless and brutal way the West was settled. Lincoln assured Lean Bear that the government wanted a peaceful and orderly migration into the West but warned that many of the pioneers could not be restrained. A year later, U.S. soldiers killed Lean Bear in cold blood.

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BEYOND THE FRONTIER Beyond the Mississippi lay, according to contemporary maps, “The Great American Desert,” long thought to be uninhabitable by anyone but aborigines. By 1840 white settlement had paused at the edge of timber country in Missouri. Beyond lay the forbidding sea of grass that was the Great Plains. The eastern Prairie Plains had rich soil and good rainfall, but the rough High Plains were semiarid. The formidable Rockies and other mountain ranges held back rainfall, which rarely reached fifteen inches a year. The lack of water and timber and the ineffectiveness of traditional farming tools and methods led most early settlers to head directly for the more temperate Pacific Coast.

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WHAT were the particular challenges of settling the country west of the Mississippi?

As people began moving west of the Mississippi River, they encountered new conditions, including vast treeless plains and towering mountain ranges. Above all, they left behind the water and timber on which they had depended in the East, forcing them to devise ways to deal with the different challenges.

CRUSHING THE NATIVE AMERICANS By 1867 nearly a quarter of a million Indians inhabited the western half of the United States.

Some tribes were originally from the East, displaced by relentless waves of settlers. Others were native to the region, with cultures suited to their environments. By the 1880s, confrontations with still more white settlers had driven the Indians onto increasingly small reservations, and diseases introduced by whites had decimated the California Indians. By the 1890s the Indian cultures had crumbled. View the Map Native Americans, 1850–1896 on myhistorylab.com

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HOW did white Americans crush the culture of the Native Americans as they moved west?

Through the centuries before Europeans and others arrived, Native Americans had developed a complex culture suited to the various environments in which they lived. The United States government and white settlers employed a variety of methods—political, military, legal, and cultural—to oust the Indians from their lands, “civilize” them, and contain and control them.

Life of the Plains Indians: By the 1700s the availability of the horse had led the Plains Indians to abandon farming almost completely for a nomadic lifestyle, following and living off the vast herds of buffalo. The Plains Indians became skilled horse people, and tribes developed a warrior class, although their wars were usually limited to brief skirmishes and “counting coups,” touching the enemy’s body with the hand or a special stick. Tribes were divided into smaller, independent bands governed by a chief and council of elders. This loose organization within tribes confounded federal attempts to deal with the Indians. Tasks were divided between the sexes, but among tribes like the Sioux there was little difference in status between men and women. Listen to the Audio File Rituals of the Maize on myhistorylab.com

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Searching for an Indian Policy: Until the 1850s the lands west of the Mississippi were of no interest to whites. The United States government, therefore, regarded the trans-Mississippi West as one great Indian reservation and as a final destination for the eastern Indians. When gold was discovered in California, however, the Great Plains became a thoroughfare to the Pacific, and the federal government began to attempt to confine the Indian tribes within specific areas. This attempt led to wars and massacres. As a result of the Sioux War of 1865-1867, Congress adopted a “small reservation” approach, designed to keep the Indians out of the path of white migration westward. Read the Document Congressional Report on the Sand Creek Massacre (1867) on myhistorylab.com Final Battles on the Plains The small reservation policy proved unsuccessful. Young warriors refused to be restrained, and white settlers encroached on Indian lands. The final series of wars featured a notable Sioux victory at Little Bighorn in 1876, but for the most part the Indians were defeated and often massacred. Such a massacre occurred at Wounded Knee in 1890, when the army became determined to stop the “Ghost Dances.” Watch the Video Sioux ghost Dance on myhistorylab.com The End of Tribal Life The final step in the Indian policy was the assimilationists’ plan to use education, land policy, and federal law to eradicate tribal authority and culture. In 1887 Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, which destroyed communal ownership of land and gave small farms to each head of a family. Those Indians who left the tribe became United States citizens. A final, devastating blow to tribal life came when the buffalo, the very basis of the Plains Indians’ way of life, were exterminated by professional and amateur white hunters. Only about 250,000 Indians still inhabited the United States in 1900, and most lived in poverty. Read the Document Autobiographical Narrative of Zitakala School in Indiana on myhistorylab.com SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST Americans settled more land between 1870 and 1900 than at any other time in their history.

Contrary to the safety-valve theory, most people moved west during periods of prosperity. Their timing was right, for as the nation’s population grew, so did the demand for the livestock, agricultural, mineral, and lumber products of the expanding West.

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WHY DID AMERICANS AND OTHERS TO MOVE TO THE WEST? There were many reasons Americans moved west, including a desire to get rich, to seek religious freedom, and to improve health, among other things. The federal government helped out with generous land laws and with laws favoring irrigation in the arid West. In the Southwest a proud culture took shape around Spanish laws and customs, involving water, the rights of women, and the sale, ownership, and use of land.

Men and Women on the Overland Trail: The great migration over the Plains began with the 1849 California Gold Rush. Large groups of settlers, including many families, usually started out from the area of St. Louis, Missouri, in April so that they could get through the Rocky Mountains before snow closed the passes. The trek to the Pacific Coast took at least six months and left in 164

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its wake epic stories of heroism and trails of garbage. View the Image Great Western Migration on myhistorylab.com Land for the Taking: Between 1860 and 1900, the federal government distributed one-half billion acres of western land. Much was sold to states, private corporations, and individuals.

About 128 million acres were granted to railroad companies, and 48 million acres were given away through the Homestead Act of 1862. Although the act set off a mass migration of landhungry Europeans and Americans, the size of the tracts granted was not suited to Plains conditions. The Timber Culture Act of 1873, which granted larger tracts to settlers who agreed to plant trees, was a success, but the Desert Land Act of 1877, which granted still larger tracts to settlers installing irrigation systems, invited fraud. Ultimately, most of the land in the West wound up in the hands of speculators, large ranchers, timber companies, and railroads. To boost their freight and passenger business, the railroads actively recruited immigrants and helped them buy, settle, and farm railroad property. The most important limit on population growth in the West was the scarcity of water. In 1902, in the Newlands Act, Congress set aside federal money for irrigation projects, transforming the arid West into a “hydraulic” society. View the Image American Progress on myhistorylab.com The Spanish-Speaking Southwest: The settlements of Spanish-speaking people concentrated in the Southwest and California made many cultural and institutional contributions, including irrigation, stock management, cloth weaving, and a set of laws for managing limited natural resources. Although the Californians began to lose their vast landholdings after the 1860s, the Spanish-Mexican heritage shaped politics, language, society, and law.

THE BONANZA WEST The quest for mining, cattle, and land bonanzas led to uneven growth, boom-and-bust economic cycles, wasted resources, and “instant cities” like San Francisco. People came to get rich quickly and adopted institutions based on that mentality.

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WHY was the West a bonanza of dreams and get-rich-quick schemes?

The West attracted hundreds of thousands of people seeking a better economic life. Many failed, of course, but many also succeeded, finding their own particular bonanzas in mining, cattle ranching, and farming. In many of these areas, western development paralleled trends in the rest of the nation: larger and larger businesses, new uses for technology, and the employment of outside capital.

The Mining Bonanza: Mining first attracted settlers to the West, many to mine and as many to provide services to the miners. The mining frontier moved from West to East in a pattern first established by the California Gold Rush of 1849. First individual prospectors used simple placer mining to remove the surface gold. Then eastern-and European-financed corporations moved in with the heavy, expensive mining equipment needed to remove metal from the deep lodes. The final fling came in the Black Hills rush of 1874–1876, in which miners overran the Sioux hunting grounds. Mining camps and germinal cities sprouted with each first strike, and 165

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urbanization quickly followed. The camps were governed by simple democracy and, when that failed, by vigilantes. Men outnumbered women two-to-one, and “respectable” women were a rarity. Some women worked claims but most earned wages as cooks, housekeepers, and seamstresses. Between one-quarter and one-half of camp citizens were foreign-born, and hostility was often directed against the French, Latin Americans, and Chinese. California’s 1850 Foreign Miner’s Tax drove foreigners out, and the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years. The great mining boom ended in the 1890s. The western mines contributed millions to the economy, helped finance the Civil War and industrialization, and, through the new influx of silver, changed the relative value of silver and gold, the basis of American currency. Mining populated portions of the West and led to early statehood for Nevada, Idaho, and Montana. In its wake, however, it left invaded Indian reservations, pitted hills, and ghost towns. Read the Document John Lester, “Hydraulic Mining” on myhistorylab.com The Cattle Bonanza: The Far West offered an ideal region for cattle grazing. The buffalo grass of the Plains fattened the longhorn steers that provided meat for the cities of the East. Large herds grazed on the open range, then were driven to railheads, Abilene, or Dodge City, Kansas, most likely, where they then were taken by train to Chicago. The profits were enormous for the large ranchers, but cowboys, many of whom were African American or Mexican, worked long, hard hours for little pay. The cowboys, like the miners, governed themselves, and there was, contrary to popular legends, remarkably little violence among them. By 1880, the day of the cowboy was ending. Wheat farmers were beginning to fence off the open range, and mechanical improvements modernized the industry. As improved breeds proved profitable, more and more large ranches controlled by absentee owners opened on the northern ranges of the High Plains.

Following the devastating winter of 1886 when thousands of cattle died, ranchers reduced the size of their herds or switched to raising sheep. Watch the Video Cowboys and Cattle on myhistorylab.com The Farming Bonanza: In the decades after 1870, millions of farmers moved west to seek crop bonanzas and a new way of life. By 1900, the Far West was a settled area and held 30 percent of the nation’s population. The farming frontier moved westward slowly, but steadily, and the population of the Plains tripled between 1870 and 1890. Of special interest was the migration of African Americans from the South, seeking to live free of discrimination and terror. All farmers on the Plains battled a harsh environment. Surface water was scarce, and digging deep wells and building windmills were both expensive operations. Lumber for fences and houses was scarce and expensive to import. Many started frontier life in dreary sod houses and endured extremes of heat and cold, an endless, enervating wind, and hordes of omnivorous grasshoppers. Several important innovations allowed Americans to farm the Plains, such as barbed wire, which allowed fencing without wood. View the Image Exodusters on myhistorylab.com Discontent on the Farm: Discouraged by droughts, some settlers abandoned their farms, and the ones who remained were restless and angry. They complained about declining crop prices, rising rail rates, and heavy mortgages. The Grange, originally founded to provide social, cultural, and educational opportunities for southern farmers, grew and often acted as a political lobby. Farmers beyond the Mississippi also became more commercial, scientific, and productive. By 1890, they were exporting large amounts of wheat and other crops.

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The Final Fling: Oklahoma, the last large area reserved for the Indians, was opened for white settlement in 1889. At noon on April 22, thousands of people rushed in to grab whatever they could, the epitome of western history.

CONCLUSION: THE MEANING OF THE WEST Historians have long interpreted the history of the Far West through the concept of the famous “frontier thesis.” More recently, however, the West is seen as a place where different ethnic and economic interests came into sharp conflict, and where rapid population growth eroded the environment, themes that continue to describe the West. Read the Document Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” on myhistorylab.com

KEY TERMS: 1. Ghost Dances, rites that grew from the vision of a Paiute messiah named Wovoka, were supposed to bring back Native American lands and cause the whites to disappear.

2. Troops of the Seventh Cavalry, under orders to stop the Ghost Dance religion among the Sioux, took Chief Big Foot and his followers to a camp in South Dakota. The fight that ensued is known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.

3. The Dawes Severalty Act broke up traditional Indian life by promoting individual land ownership.

4. The Gold Rush of 1849 touched off a mining boom that helped shape the development of the West and set the pattern for subsequent strikes in other regions.

5. The Ove rland Trail was an extremely difficult journey, often taking six months or more to complete. The weather was either extremely hot or extremely cold, and travelers were often exhausted and hungry.

6. The Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres of land to anyone who paid a $10 fee and pledged to live on and cultivate the land for five years. The act encouraged a large migration to the West, and between 1862 and 1900, nearly 600,000 families claimed homesteads under its provisions.

7. The National Reclamation Act set aside the majority of the proceeds from the sale of public land in sixteen western states to fund irrigation projects in arid states so that there would be a water supply.

8. Using a shovel and a washing pan to separate gold from the ore in streams and riverbeds was known as placer mining.

9. The Comstock Lode was the richest ore deposit discovery in the history of mining, producing silver and gold worth more than $306 million between 1859 and 1879. Because 167

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the money went to financiers and corporations, it greatly aided the development of the economy in the West.

10. To reduce the amount of Chinese laborers who could compete with whites in the mining industry, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

11. The Exodusters were African Americans who left Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in 1879 to seek freer lives in Kansas, where they worked as farmers or laborers.

12. The National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry provided social, educational, and cultural outlets for its members. Known as the Grange, it also set up grain elevators, cooperative stores, warehouses, insurance companies, and farm machinery factories.

13. According to Turner’s thesis, the existence of a frontier and its settlement shaped American character, giving rise to individualism, independence, and self-confidence and fostering the American spirit of invention and adaptation.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What characterized the life of the Plains Indians? A nomadic life of hunting buffalo on horseback, they had given up farming with the introduction of the modern horse. They formed tribes of several thousand but lived in bands of 300 to 500 people. Every part of the buffalo was used by the Indians and they divided tasks by gender.

2. How did American policy toward the Indians evolve in these years? At first the lands west of the Mississippi were considered Indian lands. As settlers began to move west, great preserves were set aside for each tribe with firm guarantees. Many Indians did not want to be tied to these vast preserves and clashes continued with whites, especially as gold was discovered. The Chivington and Fetterman massacres led to another change, whereby Indians were given small parcels of land and attempts were made to civilize them and teach them to farm.

3. What were the final battles on the Plains? “Custer’s Last Stand” really marked the beginning of the end for the Plains Indians. The slaughter of Custer’s 265 men led to outcries for revenge and, by October 1876, 3,000 Sioux had surrendered. The last battles were massacres that resulted after the army intervened to stop the Indians’ Ghost Dances.

4. What events and measures ended tribal life? The Dawes Severalty Act and the attempt to make Indians private landowners shrunk Indian landholdings from 138 million acres to 48 million acres by 1934. Schools like the Carlisle School attempted to assimilate young Indian men into white society. It was, however, the extermination of the buffalo that was the final blow to Indian tribal life.

5. What was life like on the Overland Trail? Life on the trail was arduous. Under the best conditions the trip took six months, 16 hours a day of grueling labor. Men got up before dawn and hitched the team to the wagons. Following breakfast they headed out, stopping at 168

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lunch to let the animals graze, and then continuing on again until nightfall. Women would make dinner and the next day’s lunch, while children gathered firewood and started fires. The men hunted, while the women cooked and cleaned. Trash was everywhere from wagon trains that had gone before.

6. By what measures did the government distribute land in the West? Land laws helped the U.S. government distribute land. If a person paid $10 and pledged to live on the land and cultivate it for five years, the Homestead Act of 1862 would provide 160 acres of land.

Speculators made great use of land laws, because in many cases small farmers could not afford the land and the cost to cultivate it. Only 600,000 homestead patents were issued by the government, while half a billion acres of western lands went to speculators and corporations.

7. In what ways did the Spanish-Mexican heritage of the Southwest shape its development? The Spanish established political and economic practices that permeated the Southwest. Spanish was the language most often spoken throughout the area. Spanish land grants went to large landowners at first and also to communities for grazing and Indians.

Even though men dominated family and economic life, women had a great deal of economic rights as well. They kept rights to lands owned before marriage. A modified economic caste system existed. The Roman Catholic Church also had a strong influence in the Southwest.

8. What were the characteristics of the mining industry? Mining was the first important industry to attract people to the West. After the placer mines gave out, large corporations moved in to dig the deep shafts and finance the heavy equipment. Eastern and European financiers followed to take control; laborers unionized and mining towns began to take on the characteristics of industrial centers. Soon after a mining camp was established, a kind of simple democracy took hold with miners organizing a “district” and adopting rules governing people’s behavior within the camp.

9. What characterized the growth of the cattle business in these years? Open range in the early years after 1865 allowed the cattle business to flourish. When railheads were introduced to ship the cattle north, the business really took off. Slowly as innovations such as barbed wire and homesteaders with wheat crept in, the cattle business slowed and many even switched to sheep. The cowboys themselves were made of a diverse lot, with as many as half the hands being black and/or Mexican. Like the mining camps, the cattle drives were beyond the reach of much of the law, and drivers and cowboys were forced to make their own laws.

10. What was farming like on the Plains? Farming on the Plains had unique difficulties. Very little surface water existed and many wells had to be 50 to 500 feet deep. Farmers like cowboys were a mixed lot. Many blacks who were fed up with the mistreatment and denial of civil rights brought on by the Black Codes fled west. The farmers faced weather extremes and could not afford much wood, so they built their houses out of sod. Grasshoppers caused more problems, but farmers developed new techniques and methods to improve their yields, surviving beyond what many expected.

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11. Why were so many farmers unhappy in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and what did they try to do about it? The Grange was established to provide social and cultural outlets for farmers. They were not supposed to get involved with politics, but many ignored the prohibition. Farmers developed better commercial and scientific methods. American agriculture during this period transformed the country, even though many farmers were unhappy.

12. Who were the “Boomers,” and who were the “Sooners”? The “Boomers” were those who waited for the signal to race into Oklahoma for open land. The “Sooners” didn’t wait for the signal but jumped the gun. Both groups demonstrated the speed with which settlement occurred in the West.

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CHAPTER 18 The Industrial Society, 1850–1901 CHAPTER OUTLINE A Machine Culture Industrial Development An Empire on Rails Advantages of the Railroad Building the Empire Linking the Nation via Trunk Lines Rails Across the Continent Problems of Growth An Industrial Empire Carnegie and Steel Rockefeller and Oil The Business of Invention The Sellers The Wage Earners Working Men, Working Women, Working Children Culture of Work Labor Unions Labor Unrest Conclusion: Industrialization’s Benefits and Costs

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE HOUSE OF M ORGAN The “robber barons,” like any other rich scoundrels, perpetually interest students and the general public, and their careers offer a good opportunity to discuss business ethics. Nearly always, even the most criminal of the robber barons contributed to the prosperity of the nation, but did the end justify the means? Most businessmen, of course, were perfectly honest, but even some of the most respected had done things that should not be admired. A good case to discuss is the career of J.P. Morgan.

J. Pierpont Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1837, the son of a wealthy international banker. He received an excellent education in the United States and abroad, including two years at the University of Gottingen in West Germany. When the Civil War broke out, Morgan hired a substitute and went into the business of buying condemned carbines from the War Department at $3.50 each and selling them to one of the Union armies for $22 each.

After the war, he helped found the firm of Drexel, Morgan and Co., which came to dominate American banking for the rest of the nineteenth century.

Morgan’s importance rested on his access to foreign credit. Like his father, Morgan was always active in selling corporate and government securities to European and English customers. Like all bankers, Morgan worried about the economic viability of his creditors and demanded a voice in their business operations. But Morgan had another great source of influence. His foreign clients signed over their proxies to Morgan, thus giving him actual voting rights in corporate decisions.

Morgan began to exert power over industry in 1885 when the New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad engaged in competition likely to ruin both. Morgan had already helped float a sale of New York Central stock and had a vested interest in its survival. He successfully mediated the conflict and later aided in the reorganization of the Reading, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and other railroads. His influence spread to other areas, including the telephone industry, the merchant marine, electricity, and the steel industry.

His greatest feat of consolidation was the creation of the United States Steel Company in 1901.

“I like a little competition,” he once remarked, “but I like combination better.” Morgan, responding to his foreign clients’ demand for stability and honesty, attempted to bring order and planning to American industry. On March 27, 1886, for example, the Commercial and Financial Chronicle reported that “Representatives of the various coal companies met at the house of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan this week, and informally decided to limit coal production and maintain prices.” In fact, it was agreed that coal production would go up from 31.6 million tons to 33.5 million and that the price would be allowed to go up by twenty-five cents.

Morgan’s ability to control prices outraged the average citizen, and in 1912 a congressional committee investigated his financial activities. The provision in the Clayton Anti-Trust Act outlawing interlocking directorates was aimed at what was thought to be the source of his power.

But Morgan certainly contributed to the general well-being of the American people. Aside from eliminating wasteful competition and some of the outright fraud that characterized American 172

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business in the nineteenth century, Morgan encouraged American industry to reinvest its revenues. The remarkable fact about the period between 1865 and 1900, a time of general prosperity, is that business profits as a percentage of national income actually declined. In other words, American industry added to its productive base rather than increase dividends. This remarkable restraint was imposed by people like Morgan who saw themselves as managers of investment portfolios, content with modest, long-range profits. In a sense, bankers rescued industry from people like Cornelius Vanderbilt who behaved as if the businesses they created belonged to them.

When Morgan died in 1913, he had already left his soul to “my Savior, in full confidence that having redeemed it and washed it in His most precious Blood, He will present it faultless before my Heavenly Father .... ” Morgan’s life had not been faultless, but he had rendered considerable service to the American economy.

RELIVING THE PAST In the late nineteenth century, successful businesspeople invariably wrote autobiographies, usually to show how they had raised themselves from humble beginnings. John D. Rockefeller, for example, described how he got his first bank loan for $2,000 from Truman Handy, president of the Commercial Branch Bank of Cleveland. Rockefeller does not mention the close ties he shared with Handy through the Presbyterian Church, but the episode as related does convey the sense of respectability and excitement of a young man getting his start in business. One can read about this in Rockefeller’s Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1933).

The best autobiography by a businessman of this era is unquestionably that of Andrew Carnegie.

Carnegie was filled with opinions, which he expressed at the drop of a hat, and he includes verbatim accounts of conversations with the various famous people he met and with his workers.

One episode demonstrates how personal business still was. Around 1867, Carnegie and George Pullman were competing to supply sleeping cars to the Union Pacific Railroad. Carnegie contrived to meet Pullman on the staircase of the St. Nicholas Hotel in New York. “Goodevening, Mr. Pullman!” Carnegie said. “Here we are together, and are we not making a nice couple of fools of ourselves?” Pullman agreed, and the deal that led to formation of the Pullman Palace Car Company was set in motion. Carnegie’s autobiography was published in 1920 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

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CHAPTER SUMMARY A MACHINE CULTURE The author uses the Grand Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 to make the point that while the American people could look back on a century of national history of which they were proud, they were more interested in looking toward a future in which the country would be a powerful industrial giant.

INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT The United States offered ideal conditions for rapid industrial growth at the end of the nineteenth century. There was an abundance of cheap natural resources, large pools of labor, the largest domestic market in the world, and capital and government support without government regulation. Industrial development was not always smooth and the North and East tended to reap most of the rewards, but between 1865 and 1914 the rate of growth continued to be very rapid.

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WHAT enabled the United States to build an industrial economy?

The United States had somewhat unique advantages in developing its industries, including an abundance of natural resources, a plentiful supply of labor from Europe and American farms, numerous inventions, a national market, plentiful capital, favorable government policies, and a number of entrepreneurs who saw the possibilities in developing a national economy.

AN EMPIRE ON RAILS The industrial economy of nineteenth-century America was based on the expansion of the railroads, which consumed great quantities of raw materials, employed thousands of people, and necessitated new forms of business organization.

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HOW and why did the railroad system grow?

Through the infusion of foreign and domestic capital and the help of local, state, and federal government, a railroad system grew that dwarfed systems in other countries. It changed the economic, political, and social landscape, creating a nation very different from the country that had existed before.

Advantages of the Railroad: Rail added greater speed and safety than other forms of land travel. Unlike European railroads linking towns, American networks often brought urban life to outlying areas. Railway companies operated on an unprecedented scale, acting as both huge consumers and employers. View the Image Modern Colossus of (Rail) Roads, 1879 on myhistorylab.com Building the Empire: Between 1865 and 1916, the United States laid down over two hundred thousand miles of track at a cost in the billions of dollars. A great deal of the expense was met by local and state governments and, especially in the West, by the federal

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government. Even with all the fraud and waste connected with government grants, the railroads saved the federal government about one billion dollars between 1850 and 1945.

Linking the Nation via Trunk Lines: At first, railroads were built by and for local interests. At the time of the Civil War, the nation did not have an integrated rail system. During and after the war, construction and consolidation of trunk lines proceeded rapidly under the direction of men such as Cornelius Vanderbilt. The eastern seaboard was directly linked with the Great Lakes and the West. The southern railroad system grew at an exceptional rate in the 1880s and was integrated into the national network. At the same time, rail transportation was becoming safer, speedier, and more reliable. View the Image Pullman Car Works on myhistorylab.com Rails Across the Continent: Congress voted to build a transcontinental railroad in 1862 and allowed two companies to compete in its construction. The Union Pacific worked westward from Nebraska, using Irish laborers. The Central Pacific worked eastward, using Chinese immigrants. It became a race, each company vying for land, loans, and potential markets. On May 10, 1869, in Utah, the tracks met. By 1900, four more lines reached the Pacific.

Problems of Growth: If anything, too much track was put down in the United States.

Competition between railroads became intense, and all efforts by railroad men to share freight in an orderly way failed. After the Panic of 1893, bankers like J. P. Morgan gained control of the railroad corporations. Opposing “wasteful” competition while favoring efficiency and combination, the bankers imp View the Image J. P. Morgan on myhistorylab.com AN INDUSTRIAL EMPIRE The Bessemer process of refining steel made mass production possible and the use of steel caused great changes in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and architecture.

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WHAT were the main characteristics of the new steel and oil industries?

In the late nineteenth century, an industrial empire took shape, centered around steel and oil, leading to the importance of the automobile in the new twentieth century. The result was large and more complex business organizations, greater concentrations of wealth and capital, and greater concentration of control by a relatively few individuals and companies.

Carnegie and Steel: Large-scale steel production required access to iron ore deposits in Minnesota and extensive transportation networks. Because of the massive amounts of capital required to enter steel production, there were never very many major steel companies.

Nevertheless, competition was keen for some time and led to vertical integration of the industry.

In 1872, Andrew Carnegie entered the steel business and became its master. His company produced the steel for the Brooklyn Bridge and the Washington Monument and for the growing cities. By 1901, Carnegie employed more than twenty thousand people and produced more steel than Great Britain. In that year he sold out to J. P. Morgan, who headed a group that incorporated the United States Steel Company, the nation’s first billion-dollar corporation. Read the Document Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth” (1889) on myhistorylab.com

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Rockefeller and Oil: Long before Americans drove cars, oil became a big business; the most profitable use of petroleum was in the form of kerosene for lighting. The first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, and its success led to intense competition. In 1863, John D. Rockefeller began to consolidate the oil business when he organized the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. By meticulous attention to the smallest detail, Rockefeller lowered costs and improved quality.

Standard Oil was also remarkably successful in establishing an efficient marketing operation. As his business spread beyond Ohio, Rockefeller maintained centralized control by creating a holding company, called the Standard Oil Trust, that owned and managed member companies.

This managerial innovation was copied by other large companies, and the word “trust” became synonymous with “monopoly.” View the Image John D. Rockefeller Cartoon” Parallel to Paragraph Below on myhistorylab.com The Business of Invention: American technology is the child of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Gifted individuals such as Thomas Edison, for example, and teams working in research laboratories turned out a succession of inventions, the telegraph, the camera, processed foods, the telephone, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp, that made life easier. Electricity lit homes and factories and powered urban transportation systems. View the Image Model of Bell’s Telephone on myhistorylab.com THE SELLERS Marketing became a science in the late nineteenth century. Advertising became common, and new ways of selling products, such as the department store, chain store, brand names, and mailorder catalogs, became popular. Americans became a community of consumers, a community that to some degree overcame ethnic and economic differences. Read the Document The Department Store: Another View on myhistorylab.com

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WHY were the new methods of advertising so important?

Advertising, a relatively new industry, helped to sell the goods of the new industrial economy. Americans learned to buy goods they did not even know they wanted. When bored or troubled, they went to the store—the current mall—to shop.

THE WAGE EARNERS The American labor force, in general, benefited from a rise in real wages in the last quarter of the century.

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WHO were the wage earners in the new economy?

By dint of hard work, millions of men and women built the new factory society. Their work was grueling and often dangerous. Men, women, and children did the labor, often for low wages in unsafe conditions.

Working Men, Working Women, Working Children: The labor force was composed of many different people: skilled and unskilled, men and women, adults and children, native-born and immigrants, Protestants and Catholics, whites and blacks. Nearly always it was the skilled, white males who received a greater share of America’s increasing prosperity. Still, for all workers, the 176

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workweek was a long one. Read the Document John Spargo, “The Bitter Cries of the Children” on myhistorylab.com CULTURE OF WORK Industrialization disrupted old patterns of work. Working primarily indoors, and by a clock, represented a dramatic shift for most. Moreover, the workforce was mobile, with little stability of employment. At the same time, great social mobility was possible. The hope of upward mobility drove workers to accept the system.

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HOW did wage earners organize in this period, and what demands did they make?

Laborers faced many challenges in the new economy, including work that followed the clock, the increasing size of the industry they worked for, machines, and wages. Various unions formed, including the American Federation of Labor, which still survives today. Labor unrest not only took peaceful forms of looking for better wages and safer working conditions but also resulted from time to time in violence that disturbed other Americans.

Labor Unions: Early labor unions, such as the Knights of Labor, were more like fraternal orders than unions as we know them. The Knights, for example, opposed strikes and refused to accept the fact that many workers would never become their own bosses. The first modern union was founded in 1881 by Samuel Gompers. The American Federation of Labor recognized that the industrial system was permanent and concentrated on practical steps to improve wages and working conditions. The American Federation of Labor, however, organized only skilled workers while ignoring women and African Americans. View the Image American Federation of Labor on myhistorylab.com Labor Unrest: Employers and employees responded to different imperatives and often came into violent conflict. Employees tried to humanize the factory by working according to habitual, natural rhythms, while employers tried to apply the strict laws of the market. The result was an era of strikes. In 1877 the rail system was practically shut down, and from 1880 to 1900 there were 23,000 strikes. Many of them turned violent. The worst incident took place in Chicago in 1886. In this Haymarket “incident” some policemen were killed, and fears of an anarchist uprising spread. View the Image Handbill Haymarket Square Bombing on myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: INDUSTRIALIZATION’S BENEFITS AND COSTS Despite the unquestionable benefits of rapid industrialization, in terms of national power and wealth and even in terms of an improving standard of living, many Americans questioned whether these benefits were worth the exploitation, the social unrest, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and the increasing power of the giant corporations.

KEY TERMS:

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1. Trunk lines reflected a growing integration of transportation via railroad across the country.

They connected the eastern seaports to the Great Lakes and western rivers and included the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O), the Erie, the New York Central, and the Pennsylvania railroads.

2. A new form of business organization called the trust developed in the early 1880s. It allowed stockholders to exchange their stock certificates for trust certificates on which dividends were paid. Competition almost disappeared and profits soared. Trusts became synonymous with monopoly.

3. As the national economy emerged, so did national labor unions. In 1885, the Knights of Labor won a victory against Jay Gould’s Missouri Pacific Railroad. However, in 1886, Gould struck back, crushing the Knights on the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The defeat punctured the union’s growth and revealed the ineffectiveness of its national leaders. A few years after 1890, the union was essentially defunct.

4. Founded in 1886, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a loose alliance of national craft unions. It organized only skilled workers along craft lines, avoided politics, and worked for specific practical objectives.

5. In 1892 the Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers, an AFL affiliate, struck at the Homestead steel plant after wages were cut nearly 20 percent. Violence ensued and the state militia had to intervene in the Homestead Strike to restore order.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What advantages did the railroad have over earlier forms of transportation? Some of the advantages the railroad had over earlier forms of transportation included more direct routes, greater speed, and safety. It had more dependable schedules, a larger volume of traffic, and year-round service. Other land routes didn’t offer these benefits. The railroads went where canals and rivers could not, directly to the loading docks of industry and across the arid lands of the West.

2. How did the railroad empire grow? Capital was the key. Federal land grants helped build 18,738 miles of track but that was only 8 percent of the system. Congress loaned nearly $65 million to a half dozen western railroads, while donating millions of acres of the public domain. The land was usually remote and hard to build on, so the railroads used it as security for bonds and loans. The whole system bred waste and corruption, and the companies built fast eager to collect government subsidies for each mile of track they laid.

3. How did the railroad tie the nation together? Two major developments helped the railroads link the country together after the Civil War. Trunk lines came to link the East with the Great Lakes region; four primary ones emerged, including Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central Railroad. The railroad companies also got together and created four distinct time zones to help scheduling problems, although Congress didn’t jump on board until 1918, 35 years later.

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4. What characterized the building and completion of the transcontinental railroads?

While Congress commissioned the building of a transcontinental line in 1862 and 1864, it did not really get going until after the war. General Dodge hired Civil War veterans and Irishmen to build the Union Pacific line west from Nebraska. While they were attacked by Indians, they did have the advantage of building over flat prairie. Charles Crocker hired Chinese laborers, mostly brought straight from China, to build the Central Pacific line westward.

They had to blast their way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but the two lines were connected on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah. A photograph was taken of the workers, but it left the Chinese laborers out.

5. What problems did railroads face as they grew? Because the railroads overbuilt in the 1870s and 1880s, competition was severe. Railroad managers used a variety of measures to desperately secure traffic, such as special rates, favors, rebates, and secret discounts for highvolume shippers. Eventually managers reached the conclusion that ruthless competition helped no one.

6. What were the main characteristics of the growth of the steel industry? Early Bessemer plants required high capital; they needed research departments and large amounts of resources to run. The three areas where the steel industry grew in Alabama, Ohio, and Pennsylvania all had large coal deposits. Eventually Pittsburgh became the center of the steel industry; like the railroads, steel companies grew larger and larger. As the operations expanded, managers needed more complex skills. Consumer preferences along with marketing and product development were keys to success.

7. How did John D. Rockefeller transform the oil industry? Like Morgan, Rockefeller considered competition wasteful and small-scale enterprise inefficient. Consolidation was critical to success and he set out to do just that. He marketed high-quality products at the lowest unit cost possible. His methods followed ever meaner paths as he threatened competitors and bribed politicians. One of his favorite methods was to extort railroad rebates that lowered his transportation costs. The formation of the trust cinched industrial control for Rockefeller and the oil business became a model other companies studied and used to control their own industries.

8. What were the most important inventions of the years between 1870 and 1900?

Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone and Thomas Edison’s harnessing of electricity to create the light bulb were the two most important inventions of the age. The telephone was first installed in the White House in 1878. Edison tried 1,600 different materials before settling on the proper filament for his light bulb and in September 1882, as J. P. Morgan and others looked on, Edison lighted the New York Stock Exchange, Morgan’s house, as well as other buildings.

9. What were conditions like for working men, women, and children? Wages were low.

Before 1900 most wage earners worked at least 10 hours a day at 20 cents an hour if they were skilled. The unskilled were lucky to make half that. A decent living required $600 a week, but most workers were pulling in $400 to $500 a week. Certain workers like machinists, construction workers, and printers made more than the average. Garment 179

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workers, eastern coal miners, and agricultural workers all made less. So many children worked that the term child labor usually was interpreted as those under age 14. Women workers were usually single and young, with many starting around the age of 16 or 17 and quitting after a dozen years or so after getting married. Only 5 percent of white married women worked, but 25 percent of African American women were forced to work due to family circumstances. Men usually made more than women, and women usually made more than children. Black workers were always on the fringe, in many cases only getting menial jobs.

10. What was the history of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor during the late nineteenth century? Uriah S. Stevens and the Philadelphia garment workers founded the Knights of Labor in 1869. Under the eloquent and idealistic Terrence Powderly, elected as new Grand Master Workman in 1879, the organization’s secrecy was ended and aggressive recruiting began. Any worker could join regardless of race, creed, or gender. At its height 100,000 black workers were members. Even employers could join, but nonworkers like bankers, liquor salesmen, and gamblers could not. Powderly was against strikes, but in 1885 Knights in St. Louis, Kansas City, and other cities were able to gain a victory against Jay Gould’s Missouri Pacific Railroad. He got even the next year when he crushed them with the Texas and Pacific Railroad. Eventually the Haymarket riot turned America against unions and the Knights slowly faded away. A more enduring organization emerged as the Knights began to fade; the American Federation of Labor was founded in 1886. Its membership was more exclusive; only skilled workers along with craftsmen could join. They stayed away from politics and focused on specific issues. The AFL’s goal was to improve workers’ lives in practical ways. Higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions were the focus and employers were promised the strike and boycott would only be used for limited gains. A stable workforce would be the result and all would benefit. They became a powerful force in the 1890s, ignoring women workers for the most part, but allowing blacks.

Local chapters used skill examinations and high entrance fees to keep the blacks out.

11. What major strikes occurred between the 1870s and 1890s? In 1877, the great railroad strike paralyzed railroads from Chicago to California. The United States saw more than 23,000 strikes involving 6.6 million workers between 1880 and 1900. Police shot and killed two workers in Chicago in May 1886, which led to the Haymarket Square riot. A dull event with more than 3,000 workers became violent when a bomb was thrown killing one policeman and wounding six others. Police fired into the crowd and killed four protestors.

Carnegie and Frick caused an explosion of violence when they cut their workers’ pay by 20 percent in 1892. An AFL affiliate struck at their Homestead plant in Pennsylvania. When they hired Pinkertons to break the strike, they ended up getting pinned down by workers and the governor had to send in troops to break the strike.

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CHAPTER 19 Toward an Urban Society, 1877–1900 CHAPTER OUTLINE The Overcrowded City The Lure of the City Skyscrapers and Suburbs Tenements and the Problems of Overcrowding Strangers in a New Land Immigrants and the City Urban Political Machines Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900 Manners and Mores Leisure and Entertainment Changes in Family Life Changing Views: A Growing Assertiveness Among Women Educating the Masses Higher Education The Spread of Jim Crow The Stirrings of Reform Progress and Poverty New Currents in Social Thought The Settlement Houses A Crisis in Social Welfare Conclusion: The Pluralistic Society

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE M ODERN CITY As the United States moves deeper into a “posturban” society, we can see that the urban experience in America was an historical phenomenon that lasted a discernible period of time. It can be argued that Americans never developed an urban culture and have never felt comfortable with their cities. William Jennings Bryan, in his famous Cross of Gold speech, made the remarkable claim that all the nation’s cities could burn down without fundamentally hurting American society. Bryan spoke in 1898, when the modern city was just evolving in the United States, but students today may look at cities as the fossils of a dead past.

Cities did not grow at an even rate, nor did their growth keep pace with the population increase in the nation as a whole. The Census Bureau in earlier days defined as “urban” any incorporated area with a population of more than twenty-five hundred. It is not a definition that most of us today would accept, but even so, the urban population actually decreased as a percentage of total population after 1890. In that year, 56.7 percent of the nation lived in urban areas; in 1910 only 39.3 percent did so. It is further worth noting that city dwellers did not reproduce themselves.

Their birthrate was below zero population growth. Without immigrants from Europe and from rural America, the cities would have shrunk in actual numbers, but the immigrants did come, and they came in hordes.

As immigrants poured into the cities, city populations increased and population densities became massive. The seven largest cities in America around the turn of the century (with their approximate populations in the year 1900 in parentheses) were New York (nearly 5 million), Chicago (1.7 million), Philadelphia (1.3 million), St. Louis (600,000), Boston (560,000), and Cleveland and Baltimore (about a quarter of a million each). By 1910, fifty cities in the United States had more than one hundred thousand persons. Everyone was astounded at the crowding that city people endured. The tenth ward on New York’s Lower East Side, with a population density of 747 persons per acre, was probably the most crowded spot in the world in 1900. Some of its blocks housed nearly three thousand persons. Traffic jams were common, and civic leaders appealed to the populace to behave more politely on the subways.

Although New York consolidated its position as America’s first city, it was Chicago that captured the nation’s imagination at the beginning of the twentieth century. Starting as a small trading post and having a mere 350 persons as late as 1833, Chicago lifted itself above the plains to become America’s eighth largest city by 1860. Then, in 1871 the city burned to the ground and had to begin anew. The effort called forth the creative enterprise of architects and engineers.

Louis Sullivan, the most noted architect of the “Chicago School,” greeted the opportunity to devise an architecture that owed nothing to the past. He well expressed the city’s spirit in urging that a building “must be tall, every inch of it tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it.”

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition and demonstrated in the “Great White City” what an ideal urban environment would be. Chicago, however, never did become a quiet place of classical temples; its citizens took pride instead in the city’s sweat-soaked image as “Hog Butcher” and “Freight Handler” of the world.

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To house its teeming masses, the city grew vertically as well as horizontally; the skyscraper became the symbol of the new city. Once architects realized that they could use an internal skeleton of steel and iron beams instead of masonry walls to support upper floors, there was no limit to how high a building could go. If we accept the Guaranty (now the Prudential) Building in Buffalo (completed in 1895) as the first skyscraper, the pace of progress seems astonishing. That building was only thirteen stories high. In 1913 the Woolworth Building in New York was completed; it was fifty-eight stories high. People, however, did not live in skyscrapers. It is in the rise of drab five-story tenements and barbell apartment buildings that the history of urban housing is written. These prosaic buildings, which seemed to become slums the moment they were inhabited, quartered the armies of people needed to work the commercial and industrial wheels that kept the cities moving.

Urban slums became notorious in the late nineteenth century, and anyone who could escape did so. Even when the only convenient form of transportation was a pair of shoes, there had been a flight of the wealthier to the outskirts of urban settlement. That process was speeded somewhat by the horse-car, but it accelerated rapidly when the electric trolley came into use. In 1850 the suburbs of Boston lay only three miles from city hall. In 1900 streetcars pushed the suburban radius to ten miles, bringing more than thirty cities and towns within Boston’s sphere.

Americans reacted to their cities so strongly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because they were something new to the American experience. Their power and their attraction could not be denied. What would ever pull a young man or woman back to the farm once he or she had seen St. Louis? There was danger and there was sin, but there was life and excitement. Already in the late nineteenth century, people were speaking of the cities as America’s new frontier. They still are.

RELIVING THE PAST Urban life and work in a factory or office made it difficult for increasing numbers of Americans to enjoy nature and outdoor exercise. Organized sports became an important way of overcoming the baleful effects of a sedentary way of life. In 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented basketball, an ideal urban game in that it did not require a large field. Naismith deliberately set out to invent a game in which there would be no physical contact. As he conceived it, there would be no dribbling, no dunking, no goaltending, and apparently, no rebounding.

Nevertheless, because the game became popular among girls, it was attacked for its speed.

Lucille Eaton Hill of the Boston Physical Education Society called for its abolition because “such excitement upon the emotional and nervous feminine nature” had a tendency to “unsex the player. .. ” For Naismith’s account of how he came to invent the game, see Frank G. Menke, editor, The Encyclopedia of Sports (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1975).

Despite efforts to get urban Americans to participate in sports, most of them preferred to be spectators. Games of all sorts became organized and professional. By 1900 baseball had emerged as the national pastime, at least for males. Attendance for both leagues reached three and a half 183

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million in 1900, and almost six million by 1905. What is now recognized as the first World Series was played in 1903 between Boston in the American League and Pittsburgh in the National League. Fans could open to the sports page of the New York Times for October 14, 1903, and read about Bill Dinnen’s shutout of Pittsburgh in the concluding eighth game and his strikeout of Honus Wagner in the ninth inning, “to the almost frenzied delight of 7000 enthusiasts.”

CHAPTER SUMMARY THE OVERCROWDED CITY The author begins this chapter with an account of the tragic death of a young woman in an awful slum as a prelude to his description of the overcrowding and horrible conditions that characterized America’s largest cities around 1900. Reformers felt almost hopeless in face of such monstrous problems.

THE LURE OF THE CITY Cities grew dramatically in both number and population, with half of all Americans living in cities and three cities of more than a million inhabitants by 1920.

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WHY did cities in the United States grow between 1880 and 1900?

American cities grew by leaps and bounds in the two decades after 1880. Among the reasons for the growth were the needs of an industrializing society; technological change in the form of electricity, elevators, steel beams, and other advances; and the arrival of millions of immigrants. Politically, city bosses responded to the needs of immigrants and other urban voters, keeping themselves in power.

Skyscrapers and Suburbs: The use of steel beams allowed architects to raise buildings to previously impossible heights and the streetcar allowed those with sufficient wealth to move from the crowded city centers. Skyscrapers and suburbs became the defining characteristics of the American city.

Tenements and the Problems of Overcrowding: To house the enormous numbers of people crowding into the central cities, a new form of structure, the tenement, was created. Inadequate sanitation, air and water pollution, and the stench of factories and human wastes made the cities dangerously unhealthy. In addition, cities suffered high rates of juvenile crime, suicides and alcoholism. View the Image Slum Children on myhistorylab.com Strangers in a New Land: The cities were populated by the millions of immigrants who came to the United States in the late nineteenth century. By 1900 the vast majority of people who lived in New York, Boston, or Chicago were foreign-born or were the children of immigrants.

Nativism again became a strong force, especially in the 1880s, when a new immigration from southern and eastern Europe brought millions of Italians, Slavs, Greeks, and Jews into the

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country. Organizations such as the American Protective Association tried to limit immigration but without success. Watch the Video Ellis Island Immigrants on myhistorylab.com Immigrants and the City: European peasants faced the difficult task of becoming American factory workers, but while doing so, they retained much of their traditional way of life and shaped the city as much as the city shaped them. Immigrants tended to marry within their own ethnic group, to marry at earlier ages, and to have more children than did native-born Americans.

Immigrant associations helped preserve the language and customs of the old country, while aiding the process of adjustment to a new country. All immigrant groups started their own newspapers, their own churches or synagogues, and their own schools, all of which institutions helped preserve traditions. Read the Document Letter to the Jewish Daily Forward on myhistorylab.com Urban Political Machines: Political power in the cities was shared by various institutions, including party machines headed by “bosses.” Some of these men, like William Tweed of New York City, were notoriously corrupt, but most merely traded services for votes and improved conditions in their cities.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE, 1877–1900 American life seemed much the same in 1877 as it had been a century earlier. Most Americans were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who owned their own homes and led quiet, generally healthy lives. But urbanization and industrialization were changing all aspects of American life.

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HOW did the growth of American cities affect social, cultural, and political life?

The rapid growth of cities spawned important changes in the way Americans thought and acted. Cities opened up large new areas of entertainment, employment, and behavior. They reshaped the family, brought women more and more into the workforce, and led to a greater emphasis on education.

Manners and Mores: The late nineteenth century was Victorian in its morals. Middle-class men and women dressed and behaved “properly.” Religious values were still strong and underlay many of the reform movements aimed against alcohol, pornography, and political corruption.

Leisure and Entertainment: In general, Americans spent their free time at home playing cards or other parlor games. The general taste in music favored sentimental ballads, but ragtime was becoming popular. Outside the home, the circus was immensely popular, and organized baseball, football, and basketball began to attract fans. Street lights and streetcars changed Americans’ leisure habits. Evenings became time for entertainment and pleasure. Watch the Video College Football,1903 on myhistorylab.com Changes in Family Life: Family relationships changed dramatically under the impact of urbanization and industrialization. Among the poorly paid segments of society, where everyone had to work, family life virtually disappeared. In middle-class families, the move to 185

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suburbia meant that the father commuted to work in the morning and was gone all day. Many middle-class women, who no longer earned an income, concentrated upon making their homes a domestic refuge from the outside world, but domesticity was never fully honored and it became almost shameful to be “just a housewife.”

Changing Views: A Growing Assertiveness Among Women: “New women,” those who established themselves in successful careers and who could support themselves, increasingly demanded the elimination of laws that discriminated against them and spoke openly about topics, such as menstruation, that had long been considered forbidden subjects. View the Image Medical College for Women on myhistorylab.com Educating the Masses: Even though the states required young people to attend school, few students reached the sixth grade. Until reformers like John Dewey became accepted, most teaching was unimaginative and routine, and students were not usually encouraged to be active in the classroom. The educational problems of the South were compounded by segregation and rural poverty. In 1896 the Supreme Court allowed “separate but equal” school systems, thus approving racial discrimination. Read the Document Opinion of the Supreme Court for Plessy v.

Ferguson (1896) on myhistorylab.com Higher Education: Colleges and universities flourished, thanks to aid from private sources and the federal government. There was greater emphasis on practical subjects such as medicine and nursing, and great research institutes such as Johns Hopkins were opened. Women found it easier to get a college education, but African Americans and other racial minorities were usually confined to institutions like Tuskegee, only for blacks. African- American leaders debated the future of higher education in a segregated society. Booker T. Washington argued that African Americans had to accommodate to racism and concentrate on practical, vocational education.

W.E.B. Du Bois insisted that African Americans receive quality, integrated education. His approach was more aggressive than that of Washington and advocated immediate change.

Attendance at colleges and universities grew rapidly as professional training in law and medicine became required. Higher education institutes were sources of new ideas that helped to transform American culture. Watch the Video Conflict between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois on myhistorylab.com THE SPREAD OF JIM CROW A legal regime of separation and exclusion took firm hold in the 1890s. While differing widely on their views, both Washington and Du Bois fought these growing restrictions that came to be know as Jim Crow laws.

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WHY did Jim Crow laws spread across the South after the end of Reconstruction?

After Reconstruction ended in 1877, northern weariness with Civil War issues, a series of Supreme Court decisions, and growing racism led the federal government to stop trying to uphold civil rights legislation in the South. This enabled southern states and cities to pass and enforce Jim Crow laws that mandated rigid separation between blacks and whites.

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THE STIRRINGS OF REFORM The dominant idea among many intellectuals in the period was social Darwinism, which held that attempts at reform in society were useless and harmful. Nevertheless, some thoughtful people began to argue that conditions in the United States had to be changed.

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HOW did life in the growing cities lead to ideas of reform?

Urban life, which forced many people into closer contact, made visible the problems of life to a degree people had rarely experienced. The city could not hide the contrasts between rich and poor, the dirtiness and dangers of factory life, and the woeful lot of millions of immigrants. Reformers emerged to argue for change. Some of them, like Jane Addams, opened settlement houses in the heart of the city, where they lived among the poor.

Progress and Poverty: One of the most influential books of the era was Henry George’s Progress and Poverty. George convinced many Americans that the rich were getting richer and the poor, poorer. His solution was to tax land, which he believed was the source of all wealth.

New Currents in Social Thought: George was not the only reformer. The “Social Gospel,” preached by liberal Protestant ministers, was an attempt to reform industrial society by introducing Christian standards into the economic sphere. Read the Document Edward Bellamy, from Looking Backward on myhistorylab.com The Settlement Houses: Stanton Coit introduced London’s settlement-house idea to New York in 1886. The idea caught on and settlement houses, mostly staffed by women, spread around the nation. The best known, Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago, offered classical and practical education to those who lived in the slums. The settlement- house movement inspired further reform and was influential in having a law passed in Illinois, in 1893, which limited the number of hours that could be worked by children under the age of fourteen.

A Crisis in Social Welfare: The depression of 1893 taught reformers that private charity was not enough. A new professionalism came into social work; attempts were made to study the conditions that created poverty, and reformers increasingly called for government intervention.

CONCLUSION: THE PLURALISTIC SOCIETY The United States was a society in crisis between 1870 and 1900. Great disparities in wealth were developing, racial tension and labor unrest reached frightening dimensio ns, and an economic depression raised doubts about the continued existence of the nation.

KEY TERMS: 1. Employment and the hope for a better standard of living attracted new immigrants to America. They tended to be Catholics and Jews rather than Protestants.

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2. Reformers known as the Mugwumps wanted lower tariffs, limited federal government, and civil service reform to end political corruption.

3. In 1874 women who advocated total abstinence from alcoholic beverages formed the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

4. In 1890 Susan B. Anthony helped form the National American Woman Suffrage Association to work for the enfranchisement of women.

5. In 1883 the Supreme Court ruled in the Civil Rights Cases that the Fourteenth Amendment barred state governments from discriminating on the basis of race but did not prevent private individuals or organizations from doing so.

6. In 1896 the Supreme Court established the doctrine of “separate but equal” in Plessy v.

Ferguson and upheld a Louisiana law requiring different seating in railroad cards for whites and blacks.

7. Because social Darwinis m argued that change or reform would take centuries because human beings are evolutionary creatures, it became extremely important to have strong reform movements in America.

8. Those who believed in the religious philosophy known as the Social Gospel wanted to improve the conditions of life on earth as well as save souls for the hereafter.

9. Most settlement houses were located in poor districts of major cities and were run by young, educated women who provided social services and a political voice for their neighborhoods.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. How did cities change between the 1870s and 1900? Skyscrapers and streetcars allowed the middle class to move out to the suburbs and immigrants to move in to the cities.

Elevators allowed people to get more easily up and down inside the buildings, while architects made them safer and changed the view of the urban skyline forever.

2. What were the main challenges of life in the overcrowded city? A foul “stink” permeated most major cities in America. The smell came from human waste, horse manure, and factories. Families were crammed into “dumbbell” tenements. Sanitation was inadequate, which meant most people drank polluted water. Drinking was a major problem, with one report indicating there were as many saloons as meat markets, dry goods stores, and grocery stores combined in Chicago alone. Suicide rates tripled in the 1880s. Many urban youths joined gangs who engaged in criminal behavior, and crime was rampant.

3. What drew the river of immigrants to the United States? Immigrants coming to the United States were drawn by the hope of employment and driven out of Europe by poverty, lack of work, and political turmoil. They came first to the Northeast but slowly shifted to other areas as the nationalities changed and the Northeast became crowded.

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4. In what specific ways did immigrants respond to the American city? Most immigrants shaped their cities as much as the cities shaped them. For example, they set up benevolent societies and built their own churches and schools to teach their children their native culture.

Some groups excluded women, while others were exclusively for women. Many cities had foreign language newspapers: The first Lithuanian newspaper was produced not in Lithuania but in the United States.

5. What role did politicians play in American cities? Politicians filled a void in city governments by taking care of the immigrant poor. Their role in city and state politics can be overplayed, but their significance is notable. When new immigrants arrived looking for work, politicians like those of Tammany Hall in New York or “Blind Boss” Buckley in San Francisco would find them work. If times got hard, the political machines would see them through and the poor were the most grateful voters around.

6. What was the nature of Victorian morality? Victorian morality was both strict and confining to the women of the age. It established a severe code of moral behavior and dress that women followed and disobeyed, reflecting women’s struggle to move forward in new ways during the era. These morals affected all of society; children were watched constantly.

Patriotic and religious values occupied a central role in society. New issues became the focus for new groups. For example, the Mugwumps focused on reforming politics, while other groups focused on sobriety.

7. In a period of increasing leisure, what did people do in their free time? As free time became more available, Americans took on many new activities. They continued to play games and cards in their “second parlors” at home. However, activities outside the home became more prevalent as well. This is the era when sports first emerged with baseball taking center stage and Rutgers and Princeton playing their first football games. Cities showed their pride with new institutions like New York’s Metropolitan Opera, while both Boston and New York provided full symphony orchestras. Gas and electric lights brightened the nights and families could travel further as well.

8. How did the process of urbanization affect the family? Farm families continued to work together, but industrial families did not. They did, however, have far greater extended families and for reasons of culture and survival kept strong family ties. The middle-class family became more self-contained and isolated from the work environment. As fathers moved their families out to the suburbs and the role of the family in many ways changed, it became a mechanism for social control. One of the most significant trends highlighted by this change was the lowering of the birthrate. As contraceptives were still not widely used, this was a move of abstinence and family planning. While immigrants and blacks had more children than whites, their birthrates declined as well.

9. In what ways did women respond to life in the urban-industrial society? As women became more independent and a more important part of the workforce, society’s views began to change. Laws began to change to allow women to retain their property and children during a divorce. Women became more involved in causes like getting the right to vote and they 189

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lobbied for equal pay. These changes took time, but society slowly began to change. New books even challenged the idea that sex was bad and meant only for procreation.

10. In what ways did ideas about education change during these years? More and more states made education compulsory. Schools came to be viewed by educators as the primary way to prepare people for life and work in an industrialized society. These new schools not only focused on the basics like math and reading but also on managing the clock. Their conditions were so poor that many children went to work in factories rather than deal with the harsh structure and poor conditions of the early classroom. In the South the Plessy v.

Ferguson decision allowed “separate but equal” schools for blacks that lagged behind schools for whites. After the 1870s schools began to change and a new focus emerged on elementary education like kindergarten, while older students learned practical applications like manual training and homemaking.

11. What were the trends in higher education between the 1870s and 1900? As 150 new colleges opened between 1880 and 1900, many new trends began to develop. The Morrill Land Grant Act fostered the creation of 69 new universities, including the great state universities of Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, and Illinois. Many of the industrial philanthropists contributed to the creation of new universities like Leland Stanford who endowed Stanford University on his ranch in California. Higher education moved away from the classical curriculum to begin to teach modern topics like science and engineering at places like MIT. Women formed study clubs throughout the country, studying history and architecture as well as women’s rights. Only three schools had allowed women to study before the Civil War; afterward women’s colleges opened including Vassar and Bryn Mawr.

The new land grant schools took women from the start and began a nationwide trend toward coeducation. Blacks had limited opportunities. When W. E. B. Du Bois attended Harvard, he found the social life was closed to him and he treated his fellow classmates with disdain.

Most blacks turned to all-black schools like Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. It started small but eventually grew to over 46 buildings teaching 30 trades to 1,400 students. Many whites who supported manual training for blacks gave to schools like Tuskegee. While only 5 percent of the population went to these new schools, the new ideas they encountered profoundly affected them, changing their views not just about themselves but about society as well.

12. What was George’s solution to economic inequality in the late nineteenth century?

Henry George recognized that the wealthy class was becoming wealthier and the gap between rich and poor was growing wider, making social contrasts sharper between the groups. Land was the source of wealth, since a rise in land prices did not result from any effort on the part of the owner; it represented an “unearned increment” and a “single tax” on that increment should be assessed. This would help equalize wealth and raise revenues for the poor. This simplistic approach appealed to some, but it was his analysis about the source of the problem and the questions he raised that pushed many to seek solutions long after he was gone.

13. What new ideas did Henry George and others offer, and what effect did those ideas have? Many new thinkers were excited by the ideas George offered, including Clarence 190

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Darrow. He was convinced that criminals were made, not formed. For 40 years he worked to convince people that poverty was at the core of crime. Another lawyer who agreed and wanted to eradicate greed, poverty, and crime was Edward Bellamy. His novel Looking Backward spurred the growth of Nationalist Clubs that sought to accomplish his objectives.

They worked for the nationalization of public utilities and a wider distribution of wealth.

Some Protestant sects still championed individual salvation and a better life in the next world. They saw slums and poverty as much a part of God’s plan as wealth and suburbs.

Other churches countered those ideas by forming new urban missions and living among the poor, working to help them improve their lives. The Social Gospel emerged as a doctrine focusing as much on society and improving it as on saving individual souls.

14. What were the causes and characteristics of the numerous settlement houses formed in these years? Most of these new reformers were young idealists from the middle class. They took as their model Toynbee Hall, which had been founded in London in 1884. In 1886, the first American house opened on New York’s Lower East Side, the Neighborhood Guild.

Others soon followed with Jane Addams’s Hull House in Chicago being the most famous.

The reformers lived in the inner city, experiencing the problems of those they sought to help.

They wanted to create in the heart of the city the values and sense of community that smalltown America provided. Jane Addams like many of the settlement workers found society had no use for her talents; many but not all of the reformers were college educated. Her intentions to share the lives of the poor came with the view that the overpowering poverty of the overcrowded city forced American ideals to crumble. Like the many other settlement houses and their workers, Addams identified the poor who lived in her area. She not only taught them English and history, but she also encouraged them to retain their own culture. Addams was the exception in that she offered programs to blacks as well as immigrants; most settlement houses worked only to help immigrants and excluded blacks.

15. What effect did the panic and depression of the 1890s have on social thought?

Traditional methods of helping the poor were hit hard by the economic crisis of the 1893 depression. Settlement houses and community chests did what they could, but their resources were limited. A new group of professional social workers emerged who wanted to not only feed the poor but also study their conditions and work to provide solutions. William Stead visited the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and stayed to wander the city. He talked to Jane Addams and eventually wrote a book that generated a response that helped to spawn the National Civic Federation in 1900.

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CHAPTER 20 Political Realignments, 1876–1901 CHAPTER OUTLINE Hardship and Heartache Politics of Stalemate The Party Deadlock Reestablishing Presidential Power Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress Tariffs, Trusts, and Silver The 1890 Elections The Rise of the Populist Movement The Farm Problem The Fast-Growing Farmers’ Alliance The People’s Party The Crisis of the Depression The Panic of 1893 The Pullman Strike A Beleaguered President Breaking the Party Deadlock Changing Attitudes Women and Children in the Labor Force Changing Themes in Literature The Presidential Election of 1896 The Mystique of Silver The Republicans and Gold The Democrats and Silver Campaign and Election The McKinley Administration Conclusion: A Decade’s Dramatic Changes

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: FREE SILVER AT 16 TO 1 Most of your students will understand the major political controversies in American history, from Federalists versus Antifederalists, to Clinton versus Gingrich, but none will understand the central issue of the 1896 election, free silver at 16 to 1, nor will they easily believe that Americans were once deeply divided between “silverites” and “goldbugs.” You will have to explain the mysteries of a bimetallic money standard.

In 1789, when Congress first received the authority to make money by minting coins or printing paper, the United States adopted a bimetallic system. That is, the Treasury would buy gold or silver from private persons and mint the metal into coins or would back up whatever paper notes it issued with gold and silver. The problem with a bimetallic system is to establish an exchange rate between gold and silver that matches the world market price of those commodities. The United States never managed to do so. From 1789 to 1834, the Treasury gave 15 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold while the world market gave 15.5 ounces. Anyone with silver sold it to the Treasury for gold, sold the gold on the world market for silver, sold the silver to the Treasury for gold, in an endless cycle, making a safe profit on each transaction. Before long, of course, the Treasury was emptied of gold and could mint only silver coins. The United States in effect was on a silver standard.

In 1834, Congress reversed the situation by overvaluing gold. Congress now gave 16 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold. Those with gold sold it to the Treasury for silver, sold the silver on the world market for gold, sold the gold to the Treasury for silver, and so on. In a short time, all the silver in the Treasury was gone and the United States was in effect on a gold standard.

Nearly fifty years later, in 1873, Congress recognized reality by dropping the silver dollar from the list of coins the Treasury was obliged to mint. The Treasury therefore stopped purchasing silver since it had no use for it. Silver mine operators and currency speculators were unhappy and put pressure on Congress to make the Treasury buy unlimited amounts of silver, a demand they christened “free silver,” at a price higher than the world market, or 16 to 1. The slogan, “free silver at 16 to 1," therefore meant that the Treasury should be obliged by law to purchase unlimited amounts of silver at a rate of 16 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold. Congress bowed somewhat to the pressure and ordered the Treasury to purchase limited amounts of silver but would not accept the demand for “free” or unlimited purchases of silver.

It is easy to see why silver mine owners wanted “free silver,” but why did a large number of Americans take up the cause? Generally speaking, after the great inflation of the Civil War period, Congress began to squeeze the money supply at a time of rapid expansion in the economy. The result was periodic “panics” followed by serious depressions in which farmers could not sell their crops, businessmen closed their stores, and laborers lost their jobs. Many government officials and economists attributed these downturns to a “natural” business cycle and argued that the only remedy was time and patience. Any attempt by the government to restore prosperity would only make things worse. Many others, however, disagreed. They believed that a sudden infusion of money into the economy would stimulate recovery. The quickest way to increase the money supply was to resume the coinage of silver, especially if silver was overvalued. The immediate effect of cheap money would be to raise prices, thereby encouraging 193

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businessmen to increase production by hiring back their workers. Silver seemed a quick cure for economic misery, and the demand for free silver increased after each panic.

In 1893, during yet another depression, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, made matters worse by pushing through Congress an act to stop the purchase of silver altogether. His action touched off a great national debate between “silverites” and “goldbugs,” and, by 1896, the major political parties had to take a stand on the issue. The Republicans waffled by nominating William McKinley on a platform that tried to appeal to both sides, but the Democrats staked all on a single roll of the dice by dumping Cleveland and nominating William Jennings Bryan on a free silver platform. Bryan then received the support of a rapidly growing third party, the Populists, and seemed likely to win the election. The Republicans had no choice but to defend the gold standard and to condemn silver as snake oil, and they did that intelligently and effectively. The Democrats and Populists presented just as intelligent a defense of government-regulated inflation of the money supply as a temporary remedy for hard times. In the end, the voters chose “sound money” over silver. McKinley was elected president and the Republicans won both houses of Congress. The Democrats, portrayed as the party of crazy economic ideas, went into a long decline. In 1900, Congress adopted the gold standard, and the great issue of free silver and a bimetallic standard faded to the point that it is today incomprehensible without the help of a college professor.

RELIVING THE PAST The last decade of the nineteenth century was filled with protests. A number of magazines were published during that decade, and they usually can be obtained in today’s college library. They are an excellent source to browse through, because the cartoons, the special features, and even the advertisements give one a feel for the times. The May 17, 1894, issue of the Independent carries an account by A. Cleveland Hall of his travels with Coxey’s Army, which is one of the most famous protests of the 1890s. Jacob Coxey was part businessman, part showman, and part nut. He led a march on Washington to demand government jobs to repair the nation’s roads.

Starting from Massillon, Ohio, on Easter Sunday, 1894, Coxey arrived in Washington on May Day, as planned. Among the participants of the march were Coxey’s son, Legal Tender Coxey, and a man of many aliases, usually known as The Great Unknown. One of the banners carried in the march proclaimed “Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men, But Death to Interest on Bonds.”

Populism was a more serious and more sustained protest. On the surface, it was a farmers’ movement, but it offered hope for a better life and a more just society to all those who felt aggrieved. Blacks joined in large numbers and so did women, who held prominent positions within the People’s party. The most famous female Populist was Mary Elizabeth Lease of Kansas, and her most famous speech was one in which she told farmers to raise less corn and more hell. Whether she actually uttered such a line is doubtful, but it has become enshrined in American history. There is a good article about Lease by Annie L. Diggs called “The Women in the Alliance Movement” in The Arena, XXXII (July 1892), 161–179.

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CHAPTER SUMMARY HARDSHIP AND HEARTACHE The author begins with a pathetic letter from a starving woman in Kansas in order to sharpen our understanding of the Panic of 1893 and the four-year depression that followed it. One of the results of that painful period was a realignment of American politics.

POLITICS OF STALEMATE Political life was still restricted to white males, who seemed to enjoy it enormously and who turned out at the polls in great numbers. Women won the vote in four states, but the Supreme Court upheld the states’ right to decide the issue. In many areas, poll taxes kept blacks from voting, as did literacy tests and “grandfather clauses.” Read the Document National Suffrage Association Mother’s Day Letter on myhistorylab.com

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WHY was there a stalemate between Republicans and Democrats that lasted until the mid-1890s?

For more than two decades after the end of Reconstruction, American politics remained the politics of stalemate, in which the Democrats and Republicans fought tenaciously for votes and focused on a handful of “doubtful” states. In general, Democrats dominated the South, and Republicans controlled crucial sections of the North. Presidents in the period worked successfully to reestablish the authority of their office.

The Party Deadlock: The Democratic party revived quickly after the Civil War and divided the electorate almost evenly with the Republicans. Usually, neither party controlled both Congress and the White House. The government in Washington became less important, while local and state governments became more important. View the Map Woman Suffrage Before the Nineteenth Century on myhistorylab.com Reestablishing Presidential Power: The office of the president reached its lowest point under Andrew Johnson, but the presidents who followed him in office reasserted the powers of the executive branch. Hayes ended military Reconstruction; Garfield, in the short time before his assassination, began to assert his leadership of the party; Chester Arthur pushed for a strong navy and for civil service reform; Grover Cleveland used the veto to return the federal government to the Democratic principle of laissez-faire. In the election of 1888, Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the presidency to Benjamin Harrison, who won the Electoral College. View the Image Keep the Ball Rolling, 1888 on myhistorylab.com REPUBLICANS IN POWER: THE BILLION-DOLLAR CONGRESS The election of 1888 gave the Republicans control of the White House and Capitol Hill and enabled them to enact their party’s program.

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HOW did the Republican party’s vision shape the “Billion-Dollar Congress”?

Victorious in 1888, in control of both the presidency and Congress, Republicans set out to enact their policies. They succeeded to a remarkable degree, only to discover that voters were not yet ready for their form of activism. The congressional elections of 1890, one of the most important midterm elections in American history, restored the Democrats to power.

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Tariffs, Trusts, and Silver: The Republicans, traditionally a high-tariff party, passed the McKinley Tariff Act in 1890, raising duties to their highest point up to that time. As the party of the Union and the Union army, the Republicans granted pensions to veterans or their survivors. By 1893, nearly one million pensions had been granted. The Republicans also passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. The act attempted to regulate big business without hurting it. In order to head off demands for the free coinage of silver, which would have led to inflation, the Republicans passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1890. The federal government bought a certain amount of silver each month and issued paper money backed by the silver or by gold if the holder preferred.

The 1890 Elections: On the state level, the Republicans also asserted strong government policies, such as Sunday closing laws, prohibition, and the mandatory use of English in public schools. Although the Republicans were remarkably successful in enacting their programs into law, various blocs of voters were so alienated that the party suffered massive losses in the congressional elections of 1890.

THE RISE OF THE POPULIST MOVEMENT Even before the elections of 1890 made the Populists prominent, this new party (the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union) had been attracting unhappy farmers of the South and West.

WHAT factors led to the formation and growth of the Farmers’ Alliance and People’s party?

On the farms in the late 1880s and early 1890s, a remarkable movement took shape, as farmers in the South and West joined the Farmers’ Alliance and later the People’s party. The People’s party sought various reforms but failed, as voters turned to the Democrats in the crucial presidential election of 1892.

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The Farm Problem: In the last half of the nineteenth century, a worldwide agricultural economy emerged, but since there were great fluctuations in supply and demand, American farmers enjoyed prosperity one year and suffered depression the next. In general, farmers complained about lower prices for their crops, rising railroad rates, and onerous mortgages.

In reality, farmers’ purchasing power generally increased, railroad rates declined, and mortgages allowed farmers to mechanize and thus improve their incomes. The economic conditions of farmers varied from region to region and from individual to individual, but there was a general feeling of depression among farmers, who resented the snobbery of city folk and who saw their children leave the farm for life in the metropolis.

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The Fast-Growing Farmers’ Alliance: The National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union succeeded the Grange and various other farmers’ associations. It began as the Southern Alliance in 1875, headed by Charles Macune, and spread rapidly. After 1889 it absorbed the Northwestern Alliance. In the South, the Alliance had great success in capturing the local Democratic parties, but in the North and West, the Alliance ran its own candidates successfully. At a meeting in Ocala, Florida, in 1890, the Alliance announced its “Ocala Demands,” which called for a system of government warehouses that would enable farmers to store their harvests while awaiting higher prices. The Alliance also demanded the free coinage of silver, low tariffs, a federal income tax, direct election of senators, and the regulation of railroads. Read the Document Proceedings of Grange Session (1879) on myhistorylab.com The People’s Party: The Southern Alliance gave up on the Democrats and agreed to the formation of the Populist party. In the South, the Populists recruited African Americans and gave them influential positions. In the election of 1892, Populist nominee James Weaver drew over one million votes, although he failed to attract voters in the urban areas, the South, and even the Midwest. The Alliance itself began to lose members.

THE CRISIS OF THE DEPRESSION The Democrats swept the elections of 1890 and 1892 and controlled both the White House and Congress when the Panic of 1893, a result of overexpansion and excessive borrowing in the previous two decades, devastated the nation.

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WHAT were the main political and labor effects of the panic and depression of the 1890s?

The panic and depression of the 1890s, one of the worst depressions in American history, led to changes in politics and labor. Affecting rich and poor alike, the depression encouraged many people to rethink their views on the causes of poverty and unemployment. It discredited President Grover Cleveland and his wing of the Democratic party and crushed the Democrats in the crucial midterm elections of 1894, giving the Republican party a long-term lease on power.

The Panic of 1893: In February 1893, the failure of a major railroad company set off a panic on the New York Stock Exchange. As investors sold stock to purchase gold, the United States Treasury was depleted of its reserves, and fears of government bankruptcy further shook confidence in the economy. In May 1893, the market hit a record low, and a wave of business failures put two million people out of work. Conditions worsened in 1894, when drought destroyed the corn crop.

The Pullman Strike: The depression heightened tensions between capital and labor, as exemplified in the Pullman strike. The American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, protested wage cuts and layoffs by closing down railroads in the West. President Cleveland used federal troops to bring the strike to a violent end in 1894. The strike set the course of the labor movement for years to come. Read the Document Jacob Coxey on myhistorylab.com A Beleaguered President: President Cleveland believed that the Sherman Silver Purchase Act had created the depression by causing gold to flow out of the public treasury. In a bitter fight that 197

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divided his own party, Cleveland managed to get the act repealed in 1893, but neither the depression nor the drain on the treasury ceased. In fact, Cleveland made silver a political issue.

Cleveland and his party also failed to lower tariff rates as they had promised. View the Image Grover Cleveland on myhistorylab.com Breaking the Party Deadlock: Cleveland’s failure to end the depression reduced the Democratic party to a sectional southern organization. In the rest of the nation, the Republicans became the overwhelming majority, and they swept the 1894 congressional elections. The party deadlock that had existed since the 1870s was broken, and the American people endorsed the Republican doctrine of government.

CHANGING ATTITUDES The depression of 1893 involved so many millions in suffering that it became impossible to consider unemployment as the result of a purely personal failure. Americans now accepted the need for government intervention to help the poor and jobless.

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WHAT changes in outlook did the panic and depression of the 1890s bring about?

The sheer human tragedy of the depression led people to reconsider the roles of the government, the economy, and society. They had once thought that people lost their jobs because of their own failings; now they knew that vast and harmful economic forces were at fault. People joined organizations like women’s clubs, church groups, and farm societies to discuss cures for the situation. More and more people called for reform; more and more looked to the government for help. Women and children worked in increasing numbers. Reflecting the depression’s human tragedy, realism and naturalism played a larger role in American literature.

Women and Children in the Labor Force: The depression accelerated the movement of women and children into the workforce. Because they were paid less, they replaced adult males.

Even after the depression, many employers preferred to retain women and children rather than rehire adult males. Read the Document Everybody Works but Father on myhistorylab.com Changing Themes in Literature: The depression encouraged an already growing trend toward “realism” in American literature. The greatest example is in the work of Mark Twain, whose characters speak as people actually did. The depression gave added purpose to the realist school, and writers like William Dean Howells and Stephen Crane portrayed the grim life of the poor, while Frank Norris attacked the power of big business. Theodore Dreiser, the foremost naturalist writer, presented human beings as being helpless in the face of vast social and economic forces.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1896 The presidential election continued the realignment begun in the congressional elections of 1894.

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WHY was the presidential election of 1896 so important?

The presidential election of 1896 was one of the most important elections in our history. It brought to a head the fight between supporters of silver or gold, established the 198

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Republicans as the nation’s majority party, and shaped the nation’s politics until 1932, when another depression brought a very different Democratic party back into power.

The Mystique of Silver: Many Americans, especially in the South and West, believed that the free coinage of silver, by boosting the money supply, would end the depression. Beyond that reasoning, silver was a symbol of America and of the common people.

The Republicans and Gold: The Republicans nominated William McKinley, a senator from Ohio, in 1896 and adopted a platform promising to go back to the gold standard, which would bring prosperity.

The Democrats and Silver: The Democrats split over the silver issue, but the majority of the delegates at the national convention favored free silver and nominated William Jennings Bryan, who electrified the audience with his “Cross of Gold” speech. Read the Document William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold” Speech (1896) on myhistorylab.com Campaign and Election: The Populist party also endorsed Bryan, who actively campaigned for president. Bryan offered a return to an older, rural, religious America. McKinley defended the advancing urban, industrial society. The election was a clear victory for McKinley and an utter rout of the Populist party, which vanished after 1896.

THE MCKINLEY ADMINISTRATION McKinley had the good fortune to take office as the depression gave way to prosperity, and the association of the Republican party with progress and good times made it dominant for the next three decades.

McKinley had Congress pass the Dingley Tariff, which raised rates to record-high levels, but even Republicans began to wonder if their traditional high-tariff stance was still desirable. In 1900, Congress put the United States on the gold standard, thus ending the silver agitation.

McKinley ran on this record against Bryan in 1900, and again beat him by an even greater landslide. A few months later, McKinley was killed by an assassin, and Theodore Roosevelt became president.

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WHAT did McKinley accomplish that placed the results of the 1896 election on a solid basis?

The McKinley administration (1897–1901) profited from economic recovery from the depression of the 1890s. It also had the advantage of its own achievements, which included enactment of the gold standard, passage of a new tariff, and the war with Spain. The Republicans faced another challenge: how to regulate big business instead of simply promoting it.

CONCLUSION: A DECADE’S DRAMATIC CHANGES The 1890s saw significant political and social changes: The presidency gained more power, the Republicans became the majority party, the U.S. acquired colonies, and an economic depression 199

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ruined countless lives but opened the way for reform. The 1890s were the first decade of the twentieth century.

KEY TERMS: 1. The Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act represented a compromise between groups favoring the coinage of silver and those opposed to it by calling for the partial coinage of silver.

2. In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act to reform civil service. The act created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to administer competitive examinations and appoint officeholders on the basis of merit. For the long term, it laid the basis for the expansion of the civil service.

3. For the first time in the history of the United States, the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act attempted to deal legislatively with the problem of trusts, industrial growth, and the increasing size of business. The act shaped all later antitrust policy.

4. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was a compromise that helped to resolve the controversy over silver coinage. Opponents of silver were pleased that the act did not include free coinage. Silverites, however, were happy that the monthly purchases would buy up most of the country’s silver production.

5. The National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union promised unified action to solve agricultural problems and fought for reforms that would improve the farmers’ lot, including measures to overcome low crop prices, burdensome mortgages, and high railroad rates.

6. In 1890 the National Farmers’ Alliance adopted the Ocala Demands to push for the creation of a “sub-treasury system” that would allow farmers to store their crops in government warehouses until they could get the best prices. They also urged the free coinage of silver, an end to protective tariffs and national banks, a federal income tax, and the direct election of senators by voters instead if state legislatures.

7. Northern Alliance leaders formed the new People’s (Populist) party to promote reform.

Southern Alliance leaders eventually joined, convinced that Democrats exploited Alliance popularity but failed to adopt its reforms. In the election of 1892, many voters tended to align with Democrats rather than the Populists. Although the Populists did run candidates in the next three presidential elections, they had reached their peak in 1892.

8. The great Pullman strike—one of the largest strikes in U.S. history—began in May 1894 when the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company struck to protest wage cuts, high rents for company housing, and layoffs.

9. In March 1900 Congress passed the Gold Standard Act, which declared gold the nation’s standard of currency, meaning that all currency in circulation had to be redeemable in gold.

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ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What were the characteristics of politics in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s? The Civil War generation still dominated the politics of the 1870s and 1880s. Five of the six presidents elected between 1865 and 1900 had served in the Civil War. There were very few independents and people clung to party loyalties. The Democrats bounced back well from the Civil War and were much less of a regional party. Democrats worked to keep government small and local, while Republicans looked to government to pursue programs that improved society as a whole and increased wealth. Elections were very close and a group of six states known as the “doubtful” states swung elections one way or the other. These “doubtful” states included New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Ohio, with most presidential candidates from 1868 to 1912 coming from these states. They received more attention and money than others in an effort to curry their support. In 1876 and 1888, the losing candidate actually had more popular votes than the winner and only twice did one party control both the Congress and the presidency once by each party.

2. How did each of the presidents from Rutherford B. Hayes to Benjamin Harrison work to regain the powers of his office, diminished during the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson? Presidential power had been weakened greatly by the impeachment of Johnson and the scandals of the Grant administration. Starting with Hayes, presidents worked to regain that power and prestige for their office. Civil service reform was a key aspect of Hayes’s program and he appointed reformers as high-ranking officials. Garfield had planned to unite the Republicans and work toward asserting American interests in Latin America. His administration had been swamped by office seekers, prompting him to question why anyone would want the job as president. He was shot in the back while boarding a train for vacation by a disgruntled office seeker and Chester Arthur succeeded him after his death. Arthur was a better president than most expected and, working with Congress, he got the Pendleton Act passed. In large part a reaction to the Garfield assassination, the act laid the way for expansion of the civil service by creating a bipartisan commission to oversee the administration of civil service exams. Grover Cleveland became the first Democratic president since 1861 and committed his party to curtailing government and lowering the tariff.

3. What were the three most important measures of the “Billion-Dollar Congress”? A first step in raising revenues for government was accomplished by the McKinley Tariff Act, which raised duties by 4 percent. It helped to fund the Dependent Pensions Act, which provided pensions for Union army veterans, their wives, and their children. The two biggest moves by Congress were the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. The antitrust act was the first attempt by the federal government to deal with the problem of trusts and industrial growth. It laid the foundation for all future antitrust policy. It was not until 1900 that judicial interpretations swung in favor of the act and it gained new power.

President Harrison and other Republicans pushed for a compromise over the debate between a gold currency, favored by the Northeast, and a silver currency, favored by the South and West. The Treasury was directed by the act to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver a month and issue legal tender in the form of Treasury notes to pay for it.

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4. Why were the 1890 elections among the most important midterm elections in American history? Republicans were soundly thrashed in the midterm elections of 1890. The electorate disagreed with Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed who stated America was a “billiondollar country” in response to attacks on the “Billion-Dollar Congress” for all its spending.

Nebraska elected its first Democratic governor and Iowa went Democratic as well despite the claim that “Iowa would go Democratic when Hell went Methodist.”

5. What was the situation of farmers between 1870 and 1900? Farmers had been thrown into a new international market they neither controlled nor understood by the new means of transportation and communication that had developed. They complained bitterly about lower prices and high mortgages with some justification. Profits were low in agriculture, but farmers’ purchasing power actually increased over these years. Farmers also complained, not entirely with justification, that railroad rates were excessive, as railroad rates had actually declined during this period. Short-term farm mortgages were common because many farmers used them to expand their business and buy new equipment.

6. What brought farmers to join the Farmers’ Alliance? Two movements emerged, one in the South and one on the Plains. The southern movement tended to be more secretive, racially motivated, and worked with Democrats to accomplish its political goals. The Alliance in the West started with more social and economic programs but quickly moved into politics. Unlike the Southern Alliance, it created its own Peoples party and saw some success in the elections of 1890. Female leadership was strong on the Plains and the party worked to accomplish goals for its members.

7. What happened to the People’s party? In 1880, southern Democrats used intimidation, fraud, and manipulation to keep Populist candidate James B. Weaver from winning southern states. The Populists did see inroads in the election of governors and congressmen. In 1892, when many voters switched parties, they chose to realign with Democrats. City dwellers and factory workers found little interesting with the Populist platform. As membership in the Farmers’ Alliance declined, so did the power of the Populists.

8. What were the effects of the panic and depression after 1893? News of the failure of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad collapse led frightened people to sell stocks and other assets to buy gold. The Treasury’s reserve fell to below $100 million for the first time since 1870. The stock market broke and leading railroads went bankrupt. In 1894 the GNP dropped again and one out of every five workers was out of work. A heat wave struck the farm belt west of the Mississippi, bringing drought along with it. People became restless and angry as things got worse.

9. What were the three most important causes of the Pullman strike? The workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company struck to protest wage cuts, layoffs, and high rents for company housing in May 1894.

10. How did President Grover Cleveland respond to the difficult events of the 1890s?

Cleveland was convinced the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 had caused the depression of 1893. He believed that all he had to do was get it repealed and the economy 202

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would recover. He may have been right in the long run, but in the short term it did not help because deflation occurred when inflation was probably needed. Companies continued to close and the market remained listless. His actions strengthened the Silver Democrats and the Republicans while costing the conservative Democrats who had dominated the party since the 1860s.

11. What was the outcome and significance of the midterm elections of 1894? The midterm elections of 1894 saw the Democrats crushed. It was the greatest national defeat up to that time with 113 seats lost in the House and not a single Democrat elected in 24 states. The party was virtually destroyed in the battleground of the Midwest. This broke the party deadlock that had existed since the 1870s and allowed the Republicans to take the country toward doctrines of activism and national authority, which revealed a willingness of Americans to use government power to regulate the economy and safeguard individual welfare. This in turn laid the groundwork for the reforms of the Progressive Era and the New Deal.

12. In what ways did the depression of the 1890s affect women and children? The depression accelerated the trend of women and children entering the workforce. As men struggled to get work, more women and children entered the workforce. Even as the depression ended, businessmen had come to realize that female work was cheaper. Middle-class women became concerned for the safety of children and loss of family values. They stepped up their activism and formed new groups that eventually led to the increase in compulsory education for children and the founding of thousands of local Parent–Teacher Associations.

13. What were some of the major changes in literature during these years? Literature rejected the romanticism of the Civil War and post–Civil War era. Naturalism and realism became the call to action. Authors specialized in regional tales, emphasizing “true” relationships between people. America’s foremost realist author was Mark Twain, who drew on his experiences on the Mississippi to produce stories like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He relied on local dialect and common speech instead of literary language. Naturalist authors like Stephen Crane showed the violence of war in The Red Badge of Courage, while others like Jack London described the power of nature over civilized society in The Sea Wolf and The Call of the Wild.

14. Why did so many people believe in silver? People’s desire for a quick solution to the economic crisis fueled their readiness to accept the virtues of silver. They saw free coinage as a deliverance from ties to other world economies and a way to increase access to money for every man. Many compared their passions to religious fervor. By 1896 silver was a symbol that had moral and patriotic dimensions. It became one of the largest social movements in American history, although brief, as it succumbed quickly to the return of prosperity and electoral defeat.

15. How did McKinley gain the presidential nomination? McKinley’s calm, able and affable demeanor projected well with voters, while his campaign manager Marcus Hanna built a powerful national organization. He had McKinley cast as “the advance agent of prosperity,” 203

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an attractive image during a time of depression. His backing of the gold standard gained overwhelming support from a majority of Republicans.

16. What won William Jennings Bryan the Democratic nomination in 1896? Young and handsome with a resounding voice that could reach every corner of an auditorium, Bryan gripped the Democratic convention of 1896 with his “Cross of Gold” speech. He claimed silver was representative of the laborer and the cause of freedom for humanity. When he uttered his lines that mankind would not be crucified on a cross of gold, he had the delegates in a furor and he was nominated.

17. What were the most important results of the 1896 election? Bryan’s efforts to get support changed electioneering. Abandoned by the eastern Democratic press, he went directly to the people traveling more than 18,000 miles. The election turnout was the highest in years and McKinley’s victory with 50 percent of the vote to Bryant’s 46 percent broke the backs of the Populists. Many aspects of their platform were later adopted under different leadership.

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CHAPTER 21 Toward Empire, 1865–1902 CHAPTER OUTLINE Roosevelt and the Rough Riders America Looks Outward Catching the Spirit of Empire Reasons for Expansion Foreign Policy Approaches, 1867–1900 The Lure of Hawaii The New Navy War with Spain A War for Principle The Spanish-American War African American Soldiers in the War The Course of the War Acquisition of Empire The Treaty of Paris Debate Guerrilla Warfare in the Philippines The Open Door Conclusion: Outcome of the War with Spain

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: IMPERIAL AMERICA Most college students today favor a “little America.” They detest colonization. This attitude would be strengthened if they knew more about the methods of “pacification” employed by the United States when it first acquired an overseas empire, but American imperialism is not a simple matter to discuss. For one thing, some of those colonized by the United States have made it clear that they do not want to become independent.

The sudden acquisition of an overseas empire astonished Americans at the time and has been a matter of considerable curiosity to historians ever since. Some historians describe the event as “the great aberration,” because imperialism violated the ideals that Americans had come to hold sacred as a result of their own struggle for independence. Americans around 1900 found in their conquest of the West a more recent and more relevant history with which to guide them in their imperial adventure. The lessons they drew from that history proved extremely useful in the task of subduing those of their new subjects who resisted American rule but gave the wrong answers to the problem of governing those who did not resist.

“Pacification” was of major concern in the Philippines. When President McKinley decided to take the Philippines, American forces occupied only the capital, Manila, but in the rest of the archipelago, which consists of more than seven thousand islands stretching over one thousand miles from north to south, the only effective government was that of Emilio Aguinaldo.

Aguinaldo wanted independence and expected the Americans to withdraw their troops. Instead, American troops moved out of Manila and attacked Aguinaldo’s forces. The resulting war, or “insurrection” as it was officially termed in the United States, resembled the kind of warfare that Americans learned in their conquest of the West. Indeed, many of the officers and men who fought in the Philippines had seen combat on the Plains.

Indian warfare had been genocidal, and so was war in the Philippines. In the campaign to suppress the guerrillas in Samar, Brigadier General Jacob Smith issued an order, which he later confirmed, that all males above the age of ten were to be killed. In another instance, approximately thirteen hundred Filipino prisoners were methodically executed over a period of weeks. William Howard Taft, the top civilian authority in the islands, testifying before a congressional committee, admitted that he would not defend what the American army was doing in the Philippines if the victims were whites.

There was one crucial difference between the Philippines and the Plains. The United States always intended to settle the West with white, small farmers who would eventually form states.

Americans knew what was happening to the Indians and even protested the more outrageous slaughters, such as the one at Wounded Knee, but the extermination of the Indians seemed to most Americans the regrettable but unavoidable price of progress. The Red Man would die so that the Union would grow.

The situation in the Philippines was different. Nobody expected large numbers of Americans to move there, nor was it popular to think of the Philippines as becoming a state someday. What, then, justified the massacre of hundreds of thousands of persons whom America was supposed 205

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to be protecting? The United States could not hold the area as a “colony,” a word with such negative connotations that it was never officially used to describe any American dependency.

Public opinion forced the government to clarify its ultimate aim in the Philippines, and the only politically popular position was to announce that the United States would grant independence to the Philippines. Business interests and the military opposed that policy, and the politicians appeased all sides by promising independence in a future that receded year after year. Every president from McKinley to Franklin Roosevelt promised the Philippines independence, but it took until 1946 before the United States finally kept the promise.

The Philippines resisted American rule, but other areas did not, and the United States had to work out a new sort of relationship to them. Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Midway, and the Virgin Islands all accepted government by the United States, but Congress was reluctant to treat them as territories that would eventually become states. Congress therefore invented a new status, somewhere between colony and territory. All land under the jurisdiction of the United States was either a state or a territory, but territories could be incorporated or unincorporated. An incorporated territory, such as Alaska, was exactly like the Arizona or Kansas territories before statehood. All provisions of the Constitution applied, and the territory was destined to become a state. In unincorporated territories, such as Puerto Rico, certain “fundamental” aspects of the Constitution applied, but other “formal” aspects did not. What was fundamental and what was formal had to be decided in particular cases, but among the merely formal rights that residents of unincorporated territories did not enjoy, unless Congress specifically granted them, were the right to bear arms and the right to be indicted by a grand jury.

In distinguishing between types of territories, Congress attempted to go beyond the American experience, but the attempt has been unsuccessful. Unincorporated territories had a way of becoming incorporated territories, which puts them on the way to statehood. Congress has attempted to invent another category, the commonwealth, to do away with the problem, but the commonwealth status probably works only because the American people remain ignorant about the extent of their holdings around the world. All students know that Puerto Rico is a commonwealth, and most know that Puerto Rico is destined for statehood in the near future. But how many know that Congress in 1976 made the northern Marianas a commonwealth, thereby extending United States citizenship to any person born on the island of Guguan?

RELIVING THE PAST The most famous episode of the Spanish-American War was Teddy Roosevelt’s racing around the battlefield at San Juan Hill, watching men get shot to the right and left, waving his hat and, on horseback, leading his men up Kettle Hill. Roosevelt was an excellent writer, and he described his adventures in “The Rough Riders,” which can be most easily found today in The Collected Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), volume 13.

The way in which the United States acquired the Philippines is rather curious. According to President McKinley, he did not want the islands, and he prayed night after night for guidance.

“And one night late it came to me this way,” he told a group of Methodists. “I don’t know how it was, but it came ....” The next day, McKinley called in the War Department’s cartographer and 206

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told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States. McKinley’s account first appeared in The Christian Advocate, January 22, 1903, and is reprinted in full in Charles S. Olcott, William McKinley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916), II, 109–111.

CHAPTER SUMMARY ROOSEVELT AND THE ROUGH RIDERS The author begins with the band of volunteers raised by Teddy Roosevelt for service in the war with Spain because they typified the kind of American who won an empire and held it by force.

They were tough, undisciplined, courageous, racist, and above all, eager to assert themselves upon the world stage.

AMERICA LOOKS OUTWARD America had always expanded, but expansion during the 1890s had several novel aspects. The United States now took strategically placed islands that were never intended to become more than colonies. Watch the Video Roosevelt’s Rough Riders on myhistorylab.com

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WHY did Americans to look outward in the last half of the nineteenth century?

In the late nineteenth century, Americans increasingly looked overseas, influenced in part by the example of other nations and confidence in what their country could offer other peoples, including Christianity, commerce, and American values. Policymakers were sure that the nation needed a navy, colonial outposts, foreign markets, and a new foreign policy.

Catching the Spirit of Empire: For generations, Americans had looked inward, but by the 1870s, there was a stirring of interest in areas beyond the boundaries of the United States.

Reasons for Expansion: As the frontier receded, some Americans felt it would be necessary to expand abroad, especially in order to gain markets in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The popularity of evolutionary ideas also encouraged expansion, because these ideas taught Americans to view native people elsewhere as children in need of guidance. The missionary spirit was also still strong, as illustrated by the popularity of Josiah Strong’s book, Our Country (1885). Read the Document Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life” (1900) on myhistorylab.com Foreign Policy Approaches: 1867–1900: After the Civil War, the United States pursued an expansionist foreign policy. Under the leadership of various secretaries of state such as William Seward and James Blaine, the United States acquired Alaska and the Midway Islands and made unsuccessful attempts to gain Hawaii and Santo Domingo. American foreign policy was especially successful at eroding European influence in Latin America.

The United States intervened on the side of Venezuela against Great Britain in a debt dispute and diverted Latin American trade from Europe through a series of reciprocity treaties.

The Lure of Hawaii: Hawaii was a natural way-station between the United States and Asia and therefore attracted American attention. A large colony of Americans was already in Hawaii 207

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when, in 1875, the United States bound the islands more closely by granting Hawaiian sugar free entry into the United States. This arrangement ended, however, with the McKinley Tariff of 1890. Hawaii suffered an economic slump, and its queen, Liliuokalani, proclaimed measures to lessen the influence of the Americans in Hawaii. American settlers pulled off a coup and asked for annexation to the United States. In Congress, anticolonial sentiment was strong enough to block annexation until 1898, when Hawaii was made an American possession in the midst of the excitement over the Spanish-American War. View the Image Queen Liliuokalani on myhistorylab.com The New Navy: The United States had to rebuild its navy from scratch in the 1880s. Alfred Mahan, in a series of influential books, argued that industrialism produced vast surpluses of agricultural and manufactured goods, for which markets must be found. Markets involved distant ports requiring a large merchant marine and a strong navy. He warned that America was in competition with strong European states. Benjamin Tracy, who became secretary of the navy in 1889, supervised a program of naval construction that began to give the United States an offensive capability at sea. Read the Document Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power on myhistorylab.com WAR WITH SPAIN The easy victory over Spain in 1898 reaffirmed American belief in the special destiny of their nation, but the results of the war, colonies and imperial responsibilities, disturbed many citizens.

View the Map Activities of the United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1930s on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT were the causes and results of the war with Spain?

In 1898 the United States fought a war with Spain, which resulted in a quick victory and enormous changes for American society, including a larger military, an increased role for the federal government in American life, the acquisition of colonies, and increased power for the office of the presidency.

A War for Principle: In February 1895, another in a recurring series of rebellions broke out in Cuba. As Spanish tactics to suppress the rebellion became more brutal, American public opinion, stimulated by the “yellow press,” increasingly favored Cuban independence. President McKinley, while sympathetic to the insurgents, hoped to keep the United States out of a war with Spain. The Spanish government made some concessions to McKinley but resisted movement toward Cuban independence. The crisis intensified in February 1898, when the Maine blew up in Havana harbor. The explosion was most likely an accident, but most Americans blamed the Spanish. To pressure Spain and to prepare for war, McKinley asked for and received a $50 million military appropriation. Spain, however, remained steadfastly opposed to Cuban independence, so Congress took it upon itself to declare Cuba free in April 1898. Congress promised at the same time not to annex Cuba (the “Teller Amendment”). On April 25, when diplomatic channels had obviously failed, the United States declared war. Watch the Video Burial of the Maine Victims on myhistorylab.com

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The Spanish-American War: The war was won rapidly. Americans responded enthusiastically to the call to arms, but the small regular army was ill-prepared for rapid mobilization. Most soldiers fought in National Guard units, which often retained the flavor of the small-town communities from which they were raised. Supplies proved to be a problem, as did tropical diseases, which took out many soldiers. Read the Document Spanish-American War on myhistorylab.com African American Soldiers in the War: African Americans served both in the regular army and as volunteers. Most of these troops came from the West and were shocked to discover the segregation that was common in the South. Their presence in the camps and staging areas in the South led to a number of incidents in which the black troops refused to accept the separation.

During the fighting itself, segregation was often abandoned by necessity, and many African Americans distinguished themselves. View the Image African American Troops in SpanishAmerican War on myhistorylab.com The Course of the War: The war lasted only ten weeks. Almost as soon as it was declared, Commodore George Dewey crushed the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay. The United States suddenly realized that the Philippines were now open for occupation and hurriedly sent an expeditionary force. In June 1898, the United States invaded Cuba and, after tough fighting, laid siege to Santiago. After a Spanish attempt to escape by sea was defeated, the Spanish forces surrendered.

American troops also occupied Puerto Rico. View the Map The Spanish-American War on myhistorylab.com ACQUISITION OF EMPIRE The war ended formally in December 1898 when representatives of the United States and Spain met at Paris to negotiate a peace treaty. The United States insisted on independence for Cuba but was determined to take Puerto Rico and Guam for itself. The great problem was the Philippine Islands, where an independence movement had already begun. After much soul-searching, President McKinley decided the United States should take the Philippines. View the Map American Empire, 1900 on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT were the various viewpoints about the acquisition of empire after the war with Spain?

In the peace treaty ending the war with Spain, the United States acquired a new empire, including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. For the first time, the United States owned territories overseas, upon which it did not intend to grant statehood. That fact, together with historical, racial, and other arguments, caused an angry discussion between those in favor and those opposing the new colonies. Adding to the debate was the outbreak of warfare between American troops and Filipino insurgents in the Philippines.

The Treaty of Paris Debate: The annexation of the Philippines aroused a storm of protest by labor unions, which feared a flood of cheap labor, by racists, who objected to the inclusion of people of color into the county, and by many others, who did not want the United States to become a colonial power. Read the Document Civilization Begins at Home, 1898 on myhistorylab.com 209

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Guerrilla Warfare in the Philippines: Occupation of the Philippines involved the United States in a three-year struggle against insurgents, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, who wanted independence.

The guerrilla war eased when, in 1901, the United States replaced military rule with a civil administration. Local self-government was allowed, and the United States established a schedule for full independence, which finally came to the Philippines on July 4, 1946. View the Image U.S. Soldiers in the Philippines, 1899 on myhistorylab.com The Open Door: In March 1900, the United States announced that the “Open Door” policy would regulate relations with China. This meant that no European nation should carve out a sphere of influence in China and exclude others from trading in the area. Once again, the United States had meddled in the affairs of a foreign nation without considering the consequences.

CONCLUSION: OUTCOME OF THE WAR WITH SPAIN The Spanish-American War had various results: It paved the road to the White House for Teddy Roosevelt, it reunited North and South to the detriment of American blacks, and it confirmed the Republicans as the majority party. It also made it necessary to station American soldiers outside the country.

KEY TERMS: 1. In the years following the Civil War, Americans had plenty to focus on at home: Reconstruction, the movement westward, and making a living. Americans, therefore, had little interest in events taking place abroad and preferred following a policy of isolationism that fostered a desire to avoid foreign entanglements.

2. In the 1870s and after, a growing sense of internationalism stemmed from telegraphs, telephones, and undersea cables that kept people better informed about political and economic developments in distant lands. Also, the end of the frontier, interest in foreign markets, and intellectual currents made Americans more interested in imperialism, which meant imposing control over other peoples through annexation, military conquest, or economic domination.

3. Yellow journalis m, sensationalist reporting by a few New York City newspapers eager to increase sales, helped turn U.S. public opinion against Spain’s actions in Cuba.

4. In the 1898 Teller Amendment the United States pledged that it did not intend to annex Cuba and that it would recognize Cuban independence from Spain after the SpanishAmerican War. 5. Spain recognized Cuba’s independence and assumed the Cuban debt. Also as part of the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States.

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6. Members of the Anti-Imperialist League opposed the acquisition of overseas colonies by the United States, believing it would subvert American ideals and institutions.

7. During the Philippine-Ame rican War, 4,300 American lives and untold thousands of Filipino lives were lost. The fighting was brutal and there were terrible atrocities on both sides.

8. Nations possessing a sphere of influence, according to the Open Door policy, would respect the rights and privileges of other nations in that sphere; the Chinese government would continue to collect tariff duties in all spheres; and nations would not discriminate against other nations in levying port dues and railroad rates within their respective spheres of influence.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. Why did Americans for a long time resist involvement in events abroad? Americans had resisted becoming involved with external events throughout most of the country’s history.

After the Civil War, they were more concerned with Reconstruction, westward expansion, and simply making a living. Throughout the nineteenth century Americans had enjoyed free security because of the British desire to keep other European powers from meddling in Latin American affairs and because of the separation provided by two oceans.

2. What were some of the factors that led Americans in the late nineteenth century to become more willing to get involved in events abroad? In 1890, the census report that announced the ending of the frontier sparked fears of diminishing opportunities at home.

When factories and farms produced more than the domestic market at home could handle, people began to look outward. In 1898, America exported more than it imported and started a trend that would last until the 1960s. America also got caught up to a degree in the worldwide scramble for empire.

3. What were the main characteristics of American foreign policy between 1867 and 1900?

Different areas of the world dictated the American approach to foreign policy. In Europe America strove to stay out of diplomatic entanglements while also promoting trade. North and South America saw the United States base its policy on the Monroe Doctrine, a recurring dream of annexing Canada or Mexico, a hope for trade, and a determination to stick together in Pan-American unity against the Old World. In the Pacific the United States coveted Hawaii and other islands along the sea-lanes to China.

4. For what three reasons were the Hawaiian Islands important to American policymakers? Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands stood out as one of the best harbors in the Pacific and naval strategists had eyed it for yeas. It made a perfect way station for Pacific commercial traffic and its sugar was an extremely valuable commodity in the American market.

5. What led the United States to build a new steel navy? A combination of factors led to America’s creation of a steel navy. Once a great fleet during the Civil War, the American 211

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navy had rotted away and many officers left. The new officers of the 1880s began to push for new ships. They argued that America was falling behind the major powers and was at risk of losing its strategic and economic interests in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The first effort was for 30 fast ships; they ended up with four first-class battleships, moving from the twelfth-strongest navy to seventh strongest by the end of Benjamin Tracy’s tenure as secretary of the navy.

6. What were the three main causes of the war with Spain in 1898? One of the first causes of the war was McKinley’s objection to Spain’s inhumane prosecution of the war with the Cuban insurgents. The explosion aboard the USS Maine, likely caused by poor ventilation but blamed on the Spanish, was yet another factor pushing the United States toward war with Spain. Ultimately the Spanish refusal to allow McKinley to mediate and deal humanely with the Cubans pushed the two sides toward war. The anti-Spanish hysteria whipped up by the yellow journalists played a role in bringing about a pro-war environment, but the other factors were more germane to the causes of the war.

7. What was the nature of this “splendid little war,” as McKinley’s secretary of state described it? A ten-week war, the Spanish-American War had relatively few casualties but exposed the flaws in the U.S. army. Only 28,000 men were in the army at the outset; millions volunteered and the army had to shuttle them into National Guard units from their hometown and then into the army. Problems of supply and disease revealed themselves quickly. Half a unit might get sick upon arrival in Cuba or the Philippines. National Guard equipment was outdated, as they still fired the Civil War Springfield rifle. Its cartridge gave a puff of black smoke upon firing, identifying troop location. Hometowns identified with their hometown units.

8. What role did African American troops play in the Spanish-American War? After resisting and even fighting segregation and discrimination in the United States, even on the troop carriers taking them to battle, African Americans played a major role in the war.

Spaniards came to fear the “smoked Yankees” and blacks took command as white officers died. They probably saved Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. Blacks won five Congressional Medals of Honor during the Spanish-American War. 9. What were the main events of the war itself? Commodore Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet surprised everyone, including the army. They rushed an expeditionary force to the Philippines to take the Spanish surrender on August 13, 1898. On May 28, Admiral William Sampson was able to bottle up the Spanish fleet in the harbor at Santiago de Cuba.

The Marine landing at the great harbor of Guantanamo Bay enabled troops and supplies to roll onto the island. Without a doubt, though, the most remembered action of the war was the charge of the Rough Riders, led by future President Theodore Roosevelt, up San Juan Hill.

10. What were the main arguments on each side in the debate over the treaty that ended the war? Most of the arguments concerning the Treaty of Paris were against the treaty.

Those for it claimed it was good for trade and important to America strategically. Many prominent Americans such as Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and Samuel Gompers were against its passage. Some argued it was contrary to American ideas and traditions of liberty 212

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and freedom. Booker T. Washington pointed out we had enough problems concerning blacks and Indians yet to be solved. Gompers and others railed against mongrel workers and mixing the blood of “Asiatics” in with Americans. When word arrived that American soldiers and Filipino insurgents had clashed, pressure on the Senate led to the treaty’s passage by two votes.

11. What were the causes and consequences of the Philippine-American War? McKinley and others concluded that the Filipinos were not ready for independence. Feeling betrayed after helping the Americans defeat the Spanish, Aguinaldo declared independence and war broke out between the two sides. While the war with Spain had lasted three months, the war in the Philippines would last more than three years, costing the lives of 4,300 Americans and thousands of Filipinos. Both sides committed atrocities, with the United States burning an entire village after a patrol was attacked. Aguinaldo was finally captured through trickery, but the United States would not grant Philippine independence until 1946.

12. What was the Open Door policy toward China? Three agreements were part of the policy: (1) nations possessing a sphere of influence would respect the rights and privileges of other nations in that sphere; (2) the Chinese government would continue to collect tariff duties in all spheres; and (3) nations would not discriminate against other nations in levying port dues and railroad rates within their sphere.

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CHAPTER 22 The Progressive Era, 1895–1917 CHAPTER OUTLINE Muckrakers Call for Reform The Changing Face of Industrialism The Innovative Model T The Burgeoning Trusts Managing the Machines Society’s Masses Better Times on the Farm Women and Children at Work The Niagara Movement and the NAACP Immigrants in the Labor Force Conflict in the Workplace Organizing Labor A New Urban Culture Production and Consumption Living and Dying in an Urban Nation Popular Pastimes Experimentation in the Arts Conclusion: A Ferment of Discovery and Reform

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: M UCKRAKING One of the lost souls who made his appearance in the classic Pilgrim’s Progress was a man so concerned with digging in the muck of his fields that he did not notice a crown offered him from Heaven. Teddy Roosevelt used the image to attack those who seemed obsessed with exposing corruption in American life. The popularity of television programs that do the same thing today indicates that the American public, including students, still have a healthy appetite for muckraking. They may be interested in learning about the origins of that practice, and they should be asked why a culture so geared to boosterism is also eager to bare its sins to public view.

Muckraking benefited from a new phenomenon in American literature. There was a “magazine revolution” in the late nineteenth century. Instead of depending on individual subscribers to cover costs of production, which meant an expensive journal and a small, intellectual audience, magazines began to be financed through advertising, which aimed at a mass audience. Samuel McClure, publisher of the leading muckraking journal, realized that he could almost give away his magazine and still make a profit just from the advertising. In 1893 he began publication of McClure’s Magazine at fifteen cents a copy, touching off an immediate price war. Muckraking, therefore, appeared just when magazines started to enter the average home, and almost everything about the new medium excited readers, including the advertisements. That may sound hard to believe, but in the early days of television, people used to enjoy watching the test patterns. Part of the popularity of muckraking, then, may be explained by the accident of fortunate timing.

Muckraking gained public approval also because it continued the tradition of self-education that had been so strong in nineteenth-century America. Today, muckraking articles no longer seem like popular literature, as they did when they first appeared, because we no longer tolerate the didactic tone that was popular with Americans at that time. Writers like Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, or Ray Stannard Baker conceded nothing to the reader’s impatience or taste for the sensational. An article like “Pittsburgh: A City Ashamed” ran as long as 8,600 words and guided its audience through the labyrinth of municipal government, with neither sex nor violence to relieve the narrative.

Muckraking also endorsed traditional American values and ideas such as original sin and the virtuous yeoman. The articles were not, of course, explicitly theological, but their message was an old one. After relating case after case of individual bribery, perjury, and theft, the muckrakers invariably raised the question of who was really guilty, and always answered that the reader was.

Americans were collectively guilty because they did not demand honest government. There was no excuse for apathy, no justification for cynicism. Reading a muckraking article was like listening to a sermon, except that the sinner was threatened with municipal corruption rather than Hell.

Finally, the muckrakers appealed to the traditional, yeoman values still strong in America.

Although the muckrakers claimed that corruption was ubiquitous, they generally exposed urban graft. The cities, of course, had always been suspect from a virtuous point of view, but the 214

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muckrakers maintained that something new had been added to intensify the problem of the cities.

Business had grown dominant and supported crooked government. The muckrakers argued that the commercial spirit itself inculcated traits that were dangerous. “The commercial spirit,” Steffens declared, “is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle.”

The muckraking era usually described by historians was relatively short, lasting perhaps for only the first quarter of the twentieth century, but muckraking has always been and will always be a popular activity.

RELIVING THE PAST Philosophers often use parables or problems to illustrate abstract points. William James, whose theory of pragmatism had a great influence in the early part of the twentieth century, used the problem of a man trying to catch sight of a squirrel clinging to the trunk of a tree. The man moves around the tree, but the squirrel moves just as rapidly, so that the trunk of the tree is always between the man and the squirrel. The question is, does the man go around the squirrel or not? The man certainly goes around the tree, but does he go around the squirrel? For the solution, see his lecture, “What Pragmatism Means,” first delivered in Boston in 1906 and now available in the definitive, critical edition, William James, Pragmatism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975).

Among those who tried to apply pragmatism was John Dewey, whose fame now seems to be restricted to his work as an educational reformer. His book, School and Society, first published in 1899, was the credo of progressive education. In it he relates one episode that tells much about traditional education and why Dewey felt it had to be reformed. While shopping for school desks, Dewey looked at model after model without finding what he wanted. Finally the salesman said, “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at which the children may work; these are all for listening.” See Jo Ann Boydston, editor, John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899–1924 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976).

CHAPTER SUMMARY MUCKRAKERS CALL FOR REFORM The author begins by describing how magazines, with their insatiable appetite for sensational material, gave rise, almost accidentally, to the muckraking movement in the early twentieth century. It was a time of general prosperity, but also a time when Americans devoured articles exposing their own corruption. Read the Document Upton Sinclair from the Jungle on myhistorylab.com

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THE CHANGING FACE OF INDUSTRIALISM As industry grew larger, it provided more goods at lower prices. Despite a residue of social problems left by the old century, the new century began on a note of optimism.

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HOW did industrialis m change after 1900?

As prosperity returned after the late 1890s, the American industrial system underwent important changes. Mass production, spurred by the spread of the moving assembly line, turned out more and more products for American and foreign consumers. New management methods arose to organize workers on the factory floor. Jobs became both routine and at the same time more dangerous. Trusts grew.

The Innovative Model T: Henry Ford began mass-producing autos, thereby transforming the industry. He made a small profit on each unit, but sold cars in such numbers that his gross profits were enormous. He introduced the Model T, his greatest success, in 1908, at a time when the federal government began to subsidize highways.

The Burgeoning Trusts: The trend toward bigness in industry accelerated after 1900 in such fields as oil, rubber and railroads. Bankers, J.P. Morgan especially, provided integrated control through interlocking directorates. The trusts were never very popular and were denounced as threats to equal opportunity, but some defended them on the grounds that they led to greater efficiency.

Managing the Machines: In the larger industries, managers became more interested in the manufacturing process than the welfare or morale of the workers. Efficiency became the ultimate goal; Frederick Taylor was its philosopher and the assembly line its symbol. Workers benefited by better paychecks, but mass production increased the danger and tedium of long workdays.

The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire demonstrated the increased risks of factory work.

Watch the Video Punching the Clock on myhistorylab.com SOCIETY’S MASSES In order to increase production, employment had to expand rapidly. As a result, women, immigrants, blacks, and Mexican Americans entered the labor force in large numbers. Though they did more of the work, they enjoyed a smaller share of the rewards. Such inequities led to vocal protest by workers, aided by those who sympathized.

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HOW did mass production affect women, children, immigrants, and African Americans?

While life improved for many people in the post-1900 industrial society, many others faced challenges: women and children in the workforce, and laborers in their efforts to organize.

Between 1901 and 1920, some 14.8 million immigrants, an extraordinary number, entered the country and began the difficult process of adjusting to life in their new home. All of these people faced difficult challenges due to low wages, dangerous working conditions, and the steady demands of the factory system.

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Better Times on the Farm: Farmers generally prospered in the period. Eastern farmers gained greater access to international markets and western farmers benefited from vast irrigation projects. The increasing prosperity, however, was unequally shared. Tenant farmers, many of them African Americans, still endured poverty and ill health. Watch the Video Rural Free Delivery Mail on myhistorylab.com Women and Children at Work: Women continued to enter the workforce in increasing numbers despite complaints that they should stay at home. Women formed their own unions and lobbied for their own interests and those of the children who held jobs. In 1921, Congress finally passed laws protecting the health of pregnant workers and their infants. Watch the Video Women in the Workplace, 1904 on myhistorylab.com The Niagara Movement and the NAACP: Most African Americans lived in rural areas of the South at the turn of the century. Their working conditions were miserable, and many contracted away their freedom. Blacks generally earned less than whites in the same jobs, and their education levels dropped or stagnated. Led by W.E.B. Du Bois, a meeting of African American leaders took place at Niagara Falls in 1905. The Niagara Movement called for nothing less than complete equality and focused on education. Race riots took place in 1906 and 1908, in which whites violently invaded black neighborhoods. Infuriated, black and white reformers founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The organization quickly grew, its voice being The Crisis. Along with the National Urban League, the NAACP became a powerful force. Their successes, however, were small compared to continuing racism.

Read the Document The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles on myhistorylab.com Immigrants in the Labor Force: The flow of immigrants peaked between 1901 and 1920. A new group of temporary immigrants—dubbed birds of passage—came from Eastern Europe and Italy. Programs to “Americanize” the newcomers regardless of origin were attempted. Such organizations as the Women’s Trade Union League claimed these programs were really intended to support management and counseled workers to ignore them. After 1910, immigration from Mexico increased significantly, mostly drawn from the poorer classes. Huge numbers of immigrants altered the Southwest. Immigration from China was low in the early decades of the century and was typified by older, predominantly male immigrants. Chinese coming to Angel Island, California, were subjected to long examinations. Japanese immigration was high, mostly concentrated in California. Racism aimed at all newcomers increased, as was antagonism against Catholics and Jews. Congress passed an act stopping Chinese immigration in 1902, and in 1917 passed a law aimed at reducing immigration from southern and eastern Europe. View the Image Chinese Americans in California on myhistorylab.com CONFLICT IN THE WORKPLACE New factory systems increased production and led to industrial actions. As production was slowed by strikes, union membership grew. Both a desire to improve working conditions and fear of violent action led to labor reform Read the Document Samuel Gompers, The American Labor Movement (1914) on myhistorylab.com

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WHY were there so many strikes in this period?

Low wages, sped-up assembly lines, and dangerous conditions in the workplace brought about numerous attempts to organize workers for their own defense. The Women’s Trade Union League had many successes. The International Workers of the World, a radical union, wanted to place workers in control. In the end, Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor won the allegiance of the greatest number of workers.

Organizing Labor: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was accepted by management. Women were discouraged from joining the AFL, and the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) was formed in 1903. Although the WTUL remained small, it was influential, and supported many effective strikes. The action in 1910 against a large clothing manufacturer led to collective bargaining that set a long-standing precedent. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was inclusive and aimed to represent unskilled workers, through revolution if necessary. The IWW supported successful strikes. Although it failed to bring about something like the Russian Revolution, it was effective in representing new immigrants and migrant laborers. To avoid problems, many employers began to improve working conditions. Henry Ford, for example, doubled wages and reduced the workday, thereby increasing production and ending union activity in his plants. View the Image The IWW Is Coming on myhistorylab.com A NEW URBAN CULTURE Mass production meant mass consumption and a more abundant life for most Americans. For the first time in their history, ordinary people had free time on their hands and used it to enjoy themselves. Spectator sports, especially baseball, became immensely popular, as did movies, phonograph records, and light reading.

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WHAT happened to art and culture in these years so filled with change?

In the dozen years after 1900, American culture changed in important ways. Cities grew on a major scale, taking on their modern form. Suburbs flourished. Sports became increasingly popular, reflecting people’s increased leisure time. Experimentation occurred in literature, poetry, painting, and the arts.

Production and Consumption: Between 1900 and 1920, American manufacturers, especially in textiles, became more efficient about creating a demand for their products through advertising and more efficient about supplying the demand they created by mass production. The American people enjoyed a flood of goods that raised their standard of living dramatically. At the same time, wealth was being increasingly concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.

Living and Dying in an Urban Nation: By 1920, less than one-third of the American people still lived in rural areas. Cities were growing at a colossal rate and began to take on modern form. They were still dangerous, unhealthy places to live, but they were beginning to be improved. Los Angeles, for example, adopted zoning regulations to separate industrial, commercial, and residential areas.

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Popular Pastimes: Americans flocked to baseball and football games, movies and concerts, and made heroes of athletes and bandleaders like John Philip Sousa. Ragtime and the fox-trot caught on, the blues and jazz became the music of all Americans, and vaudeville reached its peak.

Science fiction novels, such as the Tom Swift series, familiarized Americans with spaceships and ray-guns. Watch the Video Luna Park at Coney Island on myhistorylab.com Experimentation in the Arts: Serious artists began to change old art forms. Isadora Duncan experimented with new forms of dance while writers like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound introduced new forms of poetry. In painting, the Ashcan School and post-impressionism challenged older ideas of what art was.

CONCLUSION: A FERMENT OF DISCOVERY AND REFORM The Progressive Era did not eradicate racism and labor conflict, but there were solid social and economic gains; there was a sense of excitement that social experiments could work.

KEY TERMS: 1. Readers were enthralled with the investigative journalism of the muckrakers, writers who made a practice of exposing the corruption of public and prominent figures, and the social and political problems they exposed.

2. Progressivism sought to remedy the effects of industrialization and urbanization, social disorder, political corruption, and many other issues.

3. Led by W. E .B. Du Bois in 1905, a group of African American leaders met on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, as no hotel on the American side would take them. Rejecting Booker T. Washington’s gradualist approach, their Niagara Movement pledged action on equal access to voting, economic opportunity, integration, and equality before the law.

4. Within five years of its creation in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had 50 branches and more than 6,000 members. With the National Urban League, they pressured employers, labor unions, and the government on behalf of African Americans. Despite some small gains, African Americans continued to experience disfranchisement, poor employment opportunities, and segregation.

5. Temporary migrant workers who returned home every slack season were referred to as birds of passage. Many Italian men chose this route, and thousands were trapped in the United States with the outbreak of World War I. 6. The work of the Women’s Trade Union League was to organize women into trade unions.

It also lobbied for laws to safeguard female workers and backed several successful strikes, especially in the garment industry.

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7. The International Workers of the World (IWW) was another union that worked to unite the American working class into one union to promote labor’s interests. It worked also to organize unskilled and foreign-born laborers, advocated social revolution, and led several major strikes.

8. The realist painters of New York City’s Greenwich Village, known to their critics as the Ashcan School, took the slums and streets of the nation’s cities and the lives of ordinary urban dwellers as their subjects. They not only often celebrated life in the city but also advocated political and social reform.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. How did Henry Ford revolutionize the automobile industry? Ford learned that a smaller unit profit on a large number of sales yielded tremendous revenues. He copied the techniques of meatpackers who moved carcasses on overhead trolleys by doing the same with automobile assembly. His Highland Park, Michigan, plant had moving assembly lines installed in 1913 and dramatically reduced time and costs. On a single day in 1925, a new car every 10 seconds was produced and 9,109 Model Ts rolled off the assembly line, setting a production record.

2. What factors led to the rapid growth of trusts? As capital and organization became more important in the later nineteenth century trusts gained momentum. Financiers like J. P. Morgan replaced the industrial capitalists of an earlier era and companies began to swallow smaller companies. Oligopoly resulted in which a small number of large, powerful companies controlled a commodity or service.

3. What methods emerged to help manage the workers and machinery on the factory floor? While foremen still managed workers, the rules began to come from a central office with a trained professional manager supervising production flow. New procedures like systematic record keeping, cost accounting, and inventory and production controls became widespread. Scientific labor management took hold, with ideas like those of Frederick Winslow Taylor moving to the forefront. As machines got faster and monotony grew, workers came into greater danger in the workplace.

4. Why did conditions on the farm improve after 1900? The introduction of rural free delivery and parcel post opened a whole new world for farmers. Farmers were exposed to urban thinking, national advertising, and political events. Better roads, mail-order catalogs, and other innovations brought farmers closer to the rest of society.

5. In what conditions did women and children work in the early twentieth century? More than one-fifth of all adult women worked in 1900, most of whom held service jobs. Men had slowly squeezed women out of the medical profession so that by the 1920s only 5 percent of medical school graduates were women, down from the 25 percent who had graduated in the 1890s. More women than men graduated from high school, but they were forced into pursuing further education in the “new business schools” where they learned stenography and other clerical skills. Nearly 20 percent of the children between ages 5 and 15 held full-time or 220

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almost full-time jobs. The Women’s Trade Union League lobbied the Bureau of Labor to investigate the conditions under which children and women worked; it took four years and the study produced 19 volumes of data. In 1911, the Children’s Bureau was created as part of the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

6. What were the main causes for the formation of the Niagara Movement and the NAACP in the early twentieth century? The fact that in 1900 many African Americans were still living in a state of peonage with Jim Crow laws keeping segregation lines hardened angered black leaders. Literacy among blacks dropped from 45 percent in 1900 to 30 percent in 1910 with only 8,000 black youths attending high schools in the entire Southeast. Du Bois inspired the Niagara Movement to work for equal rights and a focus on education among African American youths. The race riots in Georgia in 1906 and Springfield, Illinois (Lincoln’s hometown), in 1908 angered both black and white reformers. They called for a conference that organized the NAACP, which in conjunction with the National Urban League pressured employers, labor unions, and the government to do more for African Americans.

7. In what ways did immigrants adjust or not adjust to their new society? Immigrants from new countries struggled against nativist whites and many older immigrant groups. Many were Catholic and Jewish, which brought natural resentment from a predominantly Protestant population. Some brought their families with them and stayed. Others like many Italians were almost seasonal workers who returned home in the off season. They kept to themselves for the most part, forming enclaves of their own culture. The Mexicans of the Southwest formed barrios in the city. The Chinese had more men than women and their population tended to be older.

8. How did labor organize to protect its interests, and how did some businesses, like Ford, respond? Gompers and the AFL continued to organize skilled craftsmen but excluded blacks and women. Margaret Robins created the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) to organize women into labor unions. Reformers worked with the WTUL and supported it financially. Jane Addams and J. P. Morgan’s daughter were two influential supporters.

Others researched conditions and how to improve the situation of working women. The IWW founded in 1905 generated the most hope and fear; it accepted members from all walks of life, race, religion, and gender. Big Bill Heywood and other IWW leaders set out to overthrow the capitalist system and led many major strikes. Ford with one stroke of the pen created the $5 day. Doubling the wage rate and reducing the labor each day from 9 to 8 hours, he also created a personnel department to help workers with issues. He had 10,000 applicants outside his factory fence the next morning.

9. What were some of the characteristics of mass production? Clothing manufacturers developed clothes sizes and shoe sizes that fit most body types. The availability of cheaper “off the rack” clothing lowered the distinction between rich and poor.

10. What were some of the characteristics of the new urban culture? New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia were the giants among the rising industrial centers. Skyscrapers in the city center were followed by a ring pattern rippling outward. Immigrants living in the center were 221

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followed by working-class homes; the more affluent and rising neighborhoods were followed by the more affluent suburbs built around shopping strips. Railroads, not highways, tied everything together. Zoning controlled development, keeping skyscrapers out of factory areas, but in the South it became a tool for continued segregation.

11. How did people use their new leisure time? Baseball entrenched itself as the national pastime and movie theaters popped up all over the country. Phonographs and the development of vaudeville spread music all over. Jazz was introduced as music became not just a pastime but also a business.

12. What were some of the important changes in the arts in this period? Realist painters came to the fore, with the Aschan School paving the way for new art forms centered around city life. Dance advanced with more improvisation and human emotion taking a greater importance. Post-impressionist painters changed the direction of art and there was an explosion of poetry.

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CHAPTER 23 From Roosevelt to Wilson in the Age of Progressivism, 1900–1920 CHAPTER OUTLINE The Republicans Split The Spirit of Progressivism The Rise of the Professions The Social-Justice Movement The Purity Crusade Woman Suffrage, Women’s Rights A Ferment of Ideas: Challenging the Status Quo Reform in the Cities and States Interest Groups and the Decline of Popular Politics Reform in the Cities Action in the States The Republican Roosevelt Busting the Trusts “Square Deal” in the Coalfields Roosevelt Progressivism at Its Height Regulating the Railroads Cleaning Up Food and Drugs Conserving the Land The Ordeal of William Howard Taft Party Insurgency The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair Taft Alienates the Progressives Differing Philosophies in the Election of 1912 Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom The New Freedom in Action Wilson Moves Toward the New Nationalism Conclusion: The Fruits of Progressivism 222

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: KNIGHTS AND WOBBLIES Most historians today accept the idea that the labor-union movement in America has failed.

Labor never organized at any time more than about 35 percent of all workers, and that peak was reached in 1946. Since then, union membership has become less common, and few students expect to join a union. Considering the appalling conditions faced by workers in the early twentieth century, students may well wonder why labor failed.

Around the turn of the century, American labor had to choose one of three roads to travel. The first led back to the past; the second led to a socialist future; the third led to “bread-and-butter” trade unionism.

Americans did not easily accept the emergence of a permanent wage-working class.

Traditionally, artisans began as apprentices and worked their way up until they became masters.

Even journeymen, who worked for wages, often owned their own tools and were more like subcontractors than proletarians. Among the rural population, of course, the small family farm predominated, at least in ideal. It was this sort of labor system, in which every white male eventually became his own boss, that formed the basis for American democracy. The first unions to be organized were attempts to preserve that way of life, which was fast disappearing. The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, its very title an indication of how anachronistic it was, grew rapidly in the 1880s, reaching a membership of about one million by 1886. The Knights would hardly qualify as a labor union today because so many of its members were not what we think of as laborers. Farmers were the largest single occupation represented, and the Knights’ constitution included a demand that the government give out free land Terence Powderly, the Grand Master Workman, believed that “the main, all absorbing question of the hour is the land question .... ” The Knights became increasingly irrelevant to the hundreds of thousands working in factories and died out before 1900.

In direct contradiction to the dream of going back to an ideal past, the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, wanted to take American workers into a new socialist future. The Wobblies made no bones about their belief that it would take a violent class war to achieve their ends, and they openly advocated industrial sabotage. The Wobblies, however, failed to attract workers in any large numbers. They were the victims of conservative attacks, government persecution, police harassment, and a lack of party discipline, but it seems, also, that the idea of class conflict itself turned away American workers.

The third path open to labor, the one actually taken, was pioneered by the American Federation of Labor. Unlike the Knights and Wobblies, the AFL never attempted to unite all workers in a common cause. It began when leaders of different craft unions within the Knights broke away to pursue their own interests. Instead of trying to organize whole industries, which would have required a massive effort among unspecialized workers, the AFL unionized crafts, like the Cigar Makers or the Journeymen Tailors, most of whom were highly skilled artisans. Instead of trying to create a new political party, the AFL supported Democrats or Republicans who promised favorable legislation. Instead of striving to bring about a glorious future or to restore a golden 223

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past, the AFL worked for today and tomorrow, in the form of higher wages, shorter workweeks, and better working conditions.

This pragmatic approach had several negative consequences for labor. Most radical intellectuals in America in the twentieth century have felt little interest in the labor movement because it is so conservative and so interested in short-term solutions to immediate problems. When employers like Henry Ford realized that they could increase production by offering better working conditions, they undercut the entire rationale for joining a “bread-and-butter” union. In general, therefore, labor has failed. This is not to say, however, that American laborers have therefore suffered. Compared with workers in “socialist” nations, Americans wage earners have done well for themselves and their nation.

RELIVING THE PAST In a revealing debate between Morris Hilquit, of the Socialist party, and Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, before a congressional committee in 1916, the choices open to labor were discussed. Hilquit tried to get Gompers to say that the eventual result of the AFL’s demands for better hours and wages would be a socialist society. Gompers refused to admit any such thing. “We go further than you,” Gompers said. “You have an end; we have not.” The original source is United States Senate, Industrial Relations Commission, Final Report and Testimony . . ., 64th. Congress, First Session, 1916, pp. 1528-1530. If your library does not have a government-documents section, much of the debate has been printed in Loren Baritz, editor, The American Left: Radical Political Thought in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1971).

One of the most paternalistic factories in American history was the Amoskeag mill in Manchester, New Hampshire. It has been the subject of an excellent study by Tamara Hareven and Randolph Langenbach: Amoskeag (New York: Random House, 1978). The authors have reprinted a number of interviews with those who worked at the mill, some of whom started working there in the late nineteenth century. Antonia Bergeron, for example, began to work at Amoskeag in 1895. The account of her move from a Canadian village and her relationship with Irish workers in the mill is especially interesting. Many of the accounts offer a useful correction to the usual litany of horrors that students associate with the early factories. Mary Cunion, for example, began her narrative with the flat assertion, “I spent my happiest times in the mills.”

CHAPTER SUMMARY THE REPUBLICAN SPLIT The author begins with the growing personal split between Teddy Roosevelt and his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft. The split allowed the Progressive wing of the Democratic party to win the White House.

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THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESSIVISM Progressives never organized into a coherent movement but shared a general set of values. They tended to combine a sense of evangelical Protestant duty with faith in the benefits of science.

The result was a tremendous confidence in their ability to improve every aspect of American life, by law if necessary. Read the Document Andrew Carnegie, Wealth and Its Uses (1907) on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT were the six major characteristics of progressivism?

Starting in the 1890s and continuing into the 1920s, a major reform movement called progressivism swept across the country, touching the lives of millions of people. It sought cures for social and economic problems and was defined by six major characteristics: (1) a desire by progressives not to harm big business but to humanize and regulate it; (2) an optimism about human nature; (3) a willingness to intervene in people’s lives; (4) a tendency to turn more to the authority of the state and the government; (5) a belief in the environment as a key to reform; and (6) a widespread, nationwide base.

The Rise of the Professions: Progressive attitudes were especially strong among the young men and women who entered law, medicine, business, education, and social work. Proud of their skills, they made these occupations into professions by requiring tough entrance requirements and by forming national associations.

The Social-Justice Movement: Reformers realized that helping individuals here and there was not enough and turned their attention to larger social problems, such as poverty, bad housing and low wages, which they attacked with scientific precision.

The Purity Crusade: Progressives fought successfully against such vices as prostitution and alcohol. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union pressured nineteen states to adopt prohibition laws and played a pivotal role in pushing through the Eighteenth Amendment. Read the Document Report of the Vice Commission (1915) on myhistorylab.com Woman Suffrage, Women’s Rights: Many of the reform-minded progressives were women who joined agencies like the National Conference of Social Work and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. While these organizations successfully lobbied on the state level, women realized that they could influence Congress more directly if they had the vote, and they organized a strong movement for female suffrage, based on the idea that women would use political power to benefit the disadvantaged. In 1890 the National American Woman Suffrage Association was formed and worked effectively to have the Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920. View the Map Changing Lives of American Women, 1880–1930 on myhistorylab.com A Ferment of Ideas: Challenging the Status Quo: The progressives were pragmatists, as defined by the philosopher William James. For them, the value of an idea was measured by the action it inspired. Pragmatism rejected the belief that there were immutable laws governing society. John Dewey, a progressive educator, developed educational techniques that stressed personal growth, free inquiry, and individual creativity. In Denver, Judge Ben Lindsey pioneered 225

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improved conditions for urban children and earned an international reputation. Another major intellectual movement, socialism, also gained increased support during the era. A Socialist party was formed in 1901 and won a number of local elections. It ran Eugene Debs for president in 1912, polling over a million votes. Read the Document Eugene Debs, Socialism in America on myhistorylab.com REFORM IN THE CITIES AND STATES Progressives were strongest in urban areas, where they took control of local levels of government in order to solve social problems. During the Progressive Era, government power increased, even on the federal level, and the bureaucracy grew because progressives believed that government by experts was the solution to most problems.

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WHAT methods did progressive reformers use to attack problems in the cities and states?

Progressive reformers turned increasingly to the government, particularly the federal government, to carry out their measures. At the same time, ironically, fewer and fewer people tended to vote. Reformers focused largely on life in the cities, which had exploded in size.

Robert M. LaFollette, governor of and later U.S. senator from Wisconsin, personified the movement. His focus, like so many progressives, was on improving factory safety, regulating the railroads, and adopting political reforms.

Interest Groups and the Decline of Popular Politics: The percentage of people who voted declined rapidly in the Progressive Era, partly because interest groups, such as labor unions and professional associations, were so effective in getting favorable legislation by lobbying efforts.

Reform in the Cities: The urban reform leagues, which existed as little more than debating clubs in the 1880s, became more active after 1900. Copying business methods, they gave greater efficiency to urban government by forming a professional, nonpolitical civil service. In many cities, starting in 1900 with Galveston, Texas, appointed commissioners took the place of elected officials. The city manager idea also spread. In many cities such as Cleveland, where the mayor was elected, this era was famous for characters such as reform mayors Tom Johnson, who made Cleveland the best-governed city in the nation, and “Golden Rule” Jones of Toledo. Read the Document Walker Percy Under the Commission on myhistorylab.com Action in the States: Reformers realized that certain problems had to be solved on the state level, and state after state created regulatory commissions to investigate most aspects of economic life. As in the case of the railroads, the commissions sometimes damaged the industry they were supposed to regulate. On the political level, progressives added three new features to American government: the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. In 1917, progressives celebrated passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, which provides for the direct election of U.S. senators. Just as there were famous reform mayors, so were there reform governors. The most notable was Robert La Follette, whose “Wisconsin Idea” was a comprehensive program of reform that allied government with the academic community.

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THE REPUBLICAN ROOSEVELT Theodore Roosevelt, often defying convention, as when he invited Booker T. Washington to the White House, brought an exuberance to the presidency and surrounded himself with able associates. View the Image Theodore Roosevelt on myhistorylab.com

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HOW would you describe the personality and programs of Theodore Roosevelt?

Having promised to continue the policies of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt brought the force of his own personality to the White House. He attacked some trusts and, through the courts, broke up a railroad holding company. His intervention in the coal strike of 1902 reflected his active, energetic personality and represented a major advance in presidential power.

Busting the Trusts: Roosevelt believed that trusts could sometimes be good, but he intended to attack those he considered bad. In 1902 the government brought antitrust cases against the Northern Securities Company, a railroad holding company owned by Morgan and Rockefeller, and other companies. In 1904 Northern Securities was dissolved. The case established Roosevelt as a “trust-buster,” but the title is undeserved. Compared with Taft, Roosevelt started relatively few antitrust suits.

“Square Deal” in the Coalfields: In 1902 a prolonged strike called by the United Mine Workers against the coal mine operators in Pennsylvania threatened the entire economy. Roosevelt summoned both sides to the White House, and when the companies balked at a settlement, Roosevelt threatened to use the army to seize the mines. The companies gave in. In this case, as in others, Roosevelt saw his role as that of a broker between contending interests. View the Image TR as “Jack the Giant Killer”—Puck Cartoon on myhistorylab.com ROOSEVELT PROGRESSIVISM AT ITS HEIGHT Roosevelt easily won the election of 1904 and immediately embarked on a progressive reform program.

WHAT were the major measures of Theodore Roosevelt’s term from 1905 to 1909?

Winning easy reelection in 1904, Roosevelt turned to several favorite reform issues. He persuaded Congress to improve railroad regulation, backed pure food and drug laws, and enlarged national parks. In all these actions, he reflected the values of the progressive generation: a reliance on experts, a faith in the power of government to initiate reform, and a desire to tame the power of big business.

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Regulating the Railroads: Roosevelt addressed the complaints of farmers by passage of the Hepburn Act, which strengthened the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to set rates.

Cleaning Up Food and Drugs: The publication of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in 1906 shocked the nation into realizing how unsanitary the meatpacking industry was. After reading 227

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the book, Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act and other legislation to regulate patent medicines.

Conserving the Land: Roosevelt, always interested in conservation, almost quadrupled the number of acres protected by the federal government. He agitated for even more pro-labor legislation as his term came to an end. He had promised not to run again in 1908 and tapped William Taft as his successor.

THE ORDEAL OF WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT Taft was too lazy and too much an introvert to be a successful president. He had been an able administrator and was used to settling problems quietly. In addition, the conservative wing of the Republican party, cowed by Roosevelt, began to reassert itself.

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WHY was the presidency of William Howard Taft so difficult for him?

William Howard Taft suffered in comparison to his old boss, who had left him a variety of difficult problems to solve, including the tariff. The election of 1912, one of the most important in American history, pitted Taft’s Republicans against Woodrow Wilson’s Democrats and Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive party. Roosevelt campaigned on a program he called the New Nationalism and Wilson on the New Freedom, political philosophies that shaped the years ahead.

Party Insurgency: The issue that most divided the progressive and conservative wings of the Republican party was the tariff. It was generally agreed that the rates set by the Dingley Tariff had to be lowered, but progressives wanted deep cuts, especially in those products produced by the large trusts. Taft eventually sided with the conservatives, who passed the Payne-Aldrich Act of 1909. The progressives broke with Taft and began to look forward to electing Roosevelt in 1912.

The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair: Taft further antagonized progressives and Roosevelt when he fired Gifford Pinchot, a leading conservationist, because of his insubordination toward Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger, whom Pinchot accused of selling public lands to friends.

Taft Alienates the Progressives: Even when Taft attempted to support progressive measures, such as his successful effort to strengthen the ICC by the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, he found himself deserted by the progressives whenever he had to make even minor concessions for conservative votes. In the 1910 congressional elections, Taft attacked the progressives, weakening the entire Republican party and allowing the Democrats to gain control of Congress. Taft worked well with the Democratic Congress; together, they passed legislation protecting laborers and creating an income tax (the Sixteenth Amendment). Taft also pushed ahead with antitrust suits, including one against a merger that Roosevelt had approved. Roosevelt and Taft began to attack one another publicly, and in 1912 Roosevelt announced his candidacy for president.

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Differing Philosophies in the Election of 1912: Although Taft was nominated by the Republican party, he had no chance of victory. Roosevelt ran as the candidate of the progressive (or “Bull Moose”) party, and Woodrow Wilson was nominated by the Democrats. Roosevelt campaigned on the promise of a “New Nationalism,” in which the federal government would actively regulate and stimulate the economy and in which wasteful competition would be replaced by efficiency. Wilson promised a “New Freedom,” in which big business and the government would be restrained so that the individual could forge ahead on his own. Because the Republican vote was divided, the Democrats won both the White House and Capitol Hill. Listen to the Audio File Bull Moose Campaign Speech on myhistorylab.com WOODROW WILSON’S NEW FREEDOM Woodrow Wilson reached the White House through an academic rather than a political career.

He had been a history professor and the president of Princeton University before being elected governor of New Jersey. A progressive, an intellectual, stubborn and self-righteous, and an inspiring orator, Wilson was one of America’s most effective presidents.

WHAT were the central principles of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom?

Victorious in the 1912 election, Wilson set out to put into effect the central principles of his New Freedom program including tariff reform, an antitrust law, and the Federal Reserve Act, a measure that still guides our economy today. Soon, however, Wilson found greater and greater value in Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, which had emphasized government intervention and the adoption of measures to protect women, labor, and other groups. His presidency helped mold the new Democratic policies that led to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

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The New Freedom in Action: Wilson led Congress in the passage of several important measures. The Underwood Tariff Act of 1913 cut duties substantially; the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 reformed the banking system and gave the United States a stable but flexible currency and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 outlawed unfair trade practices and limited the use of court injunctions against labor unions. In 1914, the Federal Trade Commission was established to supervise business. With this much accomplished, Wilson abruptly announced that the “New Freedom” had been achieved in November 1914. Read the Document Woodrow Wilson, from The New Freedom (1913) on myhistorylab.com Wilson Moves Toward the New Nationalism: Wilson retreated from reform because he was distracted by the outbreak of war in Europe, because he needed conservative southern support, and because the Republicans seemed to make gains by attacking Wilson’s programs. In 1916, Wilson, who wished to be reelected, again pushed progressive reforms. He succeeded in helping farmers with the Federal Farm Loan Act. He intervened in strikes on the side of the workers. He tried to ban child labor. He increased income taxes on the rich. He gave his support to female suffrage. In blending elements of the New Freedom with elements of the New Nationalism, Wilson adopted a pragmatic approach to reform and won a close election in 1916. Watch the Video Charles E. Hughes, 1916 Presidential Campaign Speech on myhistorylab.com

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CONCLUSION: THE FRUITS OF PROGRESSIVISM The Progressive Era lasted little more than the decade between 1906 and 1916, but it had a permanent influence on American life. The progressives energized government at all levels to correct glaring inequities and brought intelligent planning to the work of reform. It was confidently expected that a benevolent bureaucracy would continue to manage American life in an enlightened way, but the slaughter and madness of World War I ended the optimism upon which progressivism had been based.

KEY TERMS: 1. Roosevelt’s Progressive (“Bull Moose”) party wanted to advance progressive ideas by unseating Taft and recapturing the White House in the election of 1912.

2. The social-justice movement focused national attention on the need for tenement house laws, more stringent child labor regulations, and better working conditions for women.

Followers sought to free people from the often devastating impact of urban life.

3. The merger of the two major suffrage organizations in 1890 resulted in the formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In part due to the organization’s efforts in 1918 Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, which stated that the right to vote shall not be denied “on account of sex.”

4. In the early twentieth century, new ideas began to emerge. A doctrine called pragmatism emerged that was based on the ideas of William James, a brilliant Harvard psychologist, who believed in dealing with things practically to see if they worked. Pragmatists were impatient with theories that held truth to be abstract; they believed that truth should work for the individual. They also believed that people were not only shaped by their environment but also helped to shape it.

5. The Hepburn Act strengthened the rate-making power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). It increased membership on the ICC from five to seven, empowered it to fix reasonable maximum railroad rates, and broadened its jurisdiction to include oil pipeline, express, and sleeping car companies.

6. Conservation protected the nation’s natural resources, but called for the wise use of them rather than locking them away. Working with Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt established the first comprehensive national conservation policy.

7. Roosevelt called his program the New Nationalism and called for efficiency in government and society. It exalted the executive and the expert; urged social-justice reforms to protect workers, women, and children; and accepted “good” trusts.

8. Whereas New Nationalism called for efficiency in government and society, New Freedom, as advocated by Woodrow Wilson, called for business competition and small government.

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9. The Underwood Tariff Act reduced the tariff rates of the Payne-Aldrich law of 1909 by about 15 percent. It also levied a graduated income tax to make up for lost revenue.

10. The Federal Reserve Act was an attempt to provide the United States with a sound but flexible currency. One of the most important domestic laws of the Wilson administration, it created a central banking system, consisting of twelve regional banks governed by the Federal Reserve Board.

11. The Clayton Antitrust Act (1914) attempted to improve the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by outlawing interlocking directorates and forbidding policies that created monopolies. It also made corporate officers responsible for antitrust violations and benefited labor by declaring that unions were not conspiracies in restraint of trade.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What were the causes and the results of the rise of the professions? As the professions grew rapidly, the young people who joined them wanted better organizations to assert themselves and help society. They were part of a new, rising middle class that did not come from wealth but had moved ahead through education and personal accomplishment to become doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. They formed societies to govern entrance to their professions and to accomplish goals and maintain professional standards.

2. What were the aims of the social-justice movement? Social cures concerned social-justice reformers more than individual charity. The movement focused on the need for tenement house laws, more stringent child labor legislation, and better working conditions for women.

Reformers worked to gain national attention, putting pressure on municipal agencies for improvements like better parks. Private and public actions were blended, and they turned increasingly toward government aid.

3. What motivated people who opposed alcohol, and what measures did they achieve?

They believed it wasted human resources. So many problems seemed to stem from the drinking of alcohol. The WCTU and Anti-Saloon League had successfully pressured 19 states into prohibiting alcohol, but it was not until the moral fervor of World War I that they were able to successfully get it banned across the United States. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1920, the sale, manufacturing, and transportation of alcohol was outlawed.

4. How did women go about getting the vote? In 1890 Susan B. Anthony led the merger of two women’s groups into the National American Woman Suffrage Association. When Carrie Chapman Catt was elected president, she used her superb organizational skills to change the argument and move the cause forward. Her peaceful approach stressed the idea that women’s gentility would work toward creating a better society and clean up politics. This approach appealed to the progressives who began to support the women’s suffrage movement, which culminated in the Nineteenth Amendment passed in 1920.

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5. In what ways did ideas change in the years after 1900 and open up new avenues to reform? A new doctrine called pragmatism helped usher in a change in the way people were thinking after 1900. William James, a key figure in American thought, developed the theory while at Harvard. The environment not only shaped people, but also people in turn shaped the environment. Other thinkers like John Dewey, a disciple of James, and Judge Ben Lindsey began to take a much closer look at environment and had different interpretations on how its change could benefit people, especially children.

6. What brought about the dramatic drop in voter turnout in these years? People found other ways to accomplish what they had once believed political parties could accomplish for them. Their chief tool became the interest group. Young people, immigrants, and ironically newly enfranchised women put more effort into interest groups that pressured officials outside the political lines to accomplish their goals.

7. What methods did reformers use to improve life in their cities? Reformers set about reorganizing city governments with an eye to getting the spoilsmen out and the professionals in. Some of their steps included tightening controls on corporate activities and broadening the scope of city regulation. They also updated tax assessment and became devoted to training a professional civil service to oversee planning and operations. Now the goal was efficiency and, above all else, results.

8. How did the states respond to the new industrial society? Reformers between 1890 and 1920 worked to stiffen state laws in a variety of areas. They worked to make tougher laws regulating women and child labor, regulating railroads and utilities. and imposing corporate taxes. They also worked to improve mental and penal institutions while directing more funds to state universities, which they saw as training grounds for future leaders. Three initiatives were supported by progressives to democratize government as well: the initiative, the referendum, and the recall.

9. What were Theodore Roosevelt’s views on trusts? Roosevelt believed there were good and bad trusts. Bad trusts needed to be watched and controlled, while good trusts could be left alone or supported. Roosevelt used the threat of trust-busting to keep businesses in line.

When Congress balked at his request to create a Department of Commerce and Labor with a Bureau of Corporations within it to investigate business practices, he claimed John D. Rockefeller was behind the resistance. The outcry that followed pushed Congress to pass the legislation.

10. In what ways did Theodore Roosevelt enlarge presidential power by intervening in the 1902 coal strike? By calling the two sides together for a conference in 1902, Roosevelt appeared to be trying to arbitrate a dispute. His leaking of a threat to send in the army encouraged other business leaders to put pressure on the mine owners. By following a middle course, neither pro-labor nor pro-owner, he raised the prestige of the White House. The fact he was willing to use force if necessary to obtain a middle ground brought respect as well.

11. Why and how did Theodore Roosevelt want to regulate the railroads? Railroad regulation was a popular issue; Roosevelt revealed Standard Oil’s incredible rebates to show 232

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the inconsistency of rates. He promised to postpone lowering the tariff to get his legislation through. The Hepburn Act was viewed as a major coup by Roosevelt. It added two more commissioners to the ICC and made its rulings binding, pending court appeal, which put the burden of proof on the businesses. The act also increased the scope of the ICC to include oil pipeline, express, and sleeping car companies.

12. What laws regulated the food and drug industries? After publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Roosevelt launched an investigation of the meatpacking industry. The results were so disgusting that Roosevelt threatened to make them public if Congress did not act.

The meat packers themselves supported a reform act and got one a little stronger than they bargained for. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 made stronger rules for meatpacking and more stringent government inspection. With the work of Samuel Hopkins Adams, Congress pushed through the Pure Food and Drug Act to regulate patent medicines, which also passed in 1906.

13. What did Theodore Roosevelt accomplish with regard to the environment? Roosevelt worked closely with Gifford Pinchot to establish the first comprehensive national conservation policy. When Roosevelt took office in 1901, there were 45 million acres in government preserves; by the time he left office that number had been increased to 195 million acres. Roosevelt believed in using land wisely, not locking it away.

14. What were the motives of the Republicans in Congress who opposed William Howard Taft? Republicans who viewed themselves as progressives came into conflict with Taft after he made concessions to conservative House Speaker Cannon and gave into the PayneAldrich Act, which raised tariffs. Taft came to resent the constant sniping, and murmurs grew louder of a Roosevelt return to the White House.

15. What was the Ballinger–Pinchot controversy? Ballinger, Taft’s new secretary of the interior, put up 100 acres of government land for sale that Pinchot had taken off. When Pinchot dug up evidence showing Ballinger’s sale of land to a consortium that included J.P. Morgan, Taft investigated but sided with Ballinger. Pinchot kept fighting, providing information for two news stories and a letter an Iowa senator read on the Senate floor. Taft had enough and fired Pinchot, which turned even more progressives and Roosevelt from him.

16. How did Taft lose the support of Republican progressives? Taft worked to get greater regulation passed through the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 and it did provide something for everyone. His mistake was making support of it a test of party loyalty. As the progressives in the party balked at certain provisions of the bill, Taft launched a campaign against Republican progressives in the midterm elections of 1910. He helped create anti-progressive Republican clubs to fight their reelection. It all backfired as the Democrats made a killing in the election, including gaining the governor’s office in Taft’s home state of Ohio. When Taft attacked the acquisition of Tennessee Coal and Iron Company by U.S. Steel in 1911, Roosevelt took it as a personal repudiation since he had approved the sale in 1907. Roosevelt declared “my hat is in the ring” when asked if he would run for president in 1912.

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17. What were the two opposing philosophies in the presidential election of 1912? Taft was out of the race almost before it began. Roosevelt brought his Bull Moose party with a new idea, the New Nationalism. He called for efficiency in government and society, and it stressed the executive and the expert. For the first time women played a prominent role in a campaign. Wilson and the Democrats brought the New Freedom to the election. This program emphasized less government and a free economy. He had based it on the ideas of Louis Brandeis and supported the reforms of the social-justice movement.

18. What characterized Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom program? Wilson’s effort and focus on specific issues were impressive, but when they passed and he seemed to indicate he was done, progressives were shocked. Wilson focused on reducing the tariff. He then moved onto banking reform, focusing on the creation of the Federal Reserve Act, which created the first efficient banking system since Andrew Jackson. The Clayton Antitrust Act rounded out his efforts; it prohibited unfair labor practices but most importantly it outlawed the use of the injunction in labor disputes.

19. In what five ways did Wilson move more closely to Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas of New Nationalism? When Republicans made significant gains in the midterm elections of 1914, Wilson was surprised. He began to take a more national approach to reform, focusing as Roosevelt had on government efficiency and the use of experts. His tariff commission was more efficient and used experts. Wilson’s handling of the railroad strike showed an effort at compromise but revealed strong use of executive authority when the railroad owners balked at compromise. Wilson’s swing toward women’s suffrage and labor relations was also a following of social-justice reform.

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CHAPTER 24 The Nation at War, 1901–1920 CHAPTER OUTLINE The Sinking of the Lusitania A New World Power Building the Panama Canal Ventures in the Far East Taft and Dollar Diplomacy Foreign Policy Under Wilson Troubles Across the Border Toward War The Neutrality Policy Freedom of the Seas The U-Boat Threat The Election of 1916 The Final Months of Peace Over There Mobilization War in the Trenches Over Here The Conquest of Convictions A Bureaucratic War Labor in the War The Treaty of Versailles A Peace at Paris Rejection in the Senate Conclusion: Postwar Disillusionment

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: SELLING THE WAR In recent years, the American people have responded very differently to their military efforts.

The response to Vietnam became intensely bitter, but Desert Storm was unanimously acclaimed.

More surprisingly, United States intervention in places like Grenada and Panama, or the routine bombing of antiaircraft sites in Iraq, are met with almost complete indifference. Students should be challenged to explain these differences. Certainly one factor is whether the government encourages emotional excess, as it did when the United States entered World War I. Having lectured the nation for three years on its duty to remain neutral in thought and action, Woodrow Wilson believed that he would have to take extraordinary measures to carry the people with him once he decided to declare war on Germany. Wilson may have overestimated the opposition to the war, but certainly he was right to worry about it. The “hyphenates,” such as the Irish-Americans and German-Americans, would oppose a war that allied the United States with England against Germany and Austria. Socialists would oppose what they considered a war for capitalism, and socialist ideals were more in vogue in 1917 than they are today. Reformers of all sorts-Progressives, Populists, and feminists-would oppose the war because they considered war to be inherently reactionary. Wilson even doubted the steadfastness of the average citizen when he or she learned what the war effort would require.

Above all, Wilson worried that the need to draft an army would set off the kind of riots that shook the nation during the Civil War. Most Americans, if they thought clearly about the subject at all, believed that the president would call for a volunteer army to go to France. But Wilson, having a progressive’s obsession with efficiency, preferred a system of raising troops rather than relying on spontaneous, emotional fits of patriotism.

In order to make the draft palatable, Wilson made it an agency staffed by civilians. About fortyfive hundred draft boards were appointed throughout the country, staffed by neighbors of the boys who would be sent to war. The draft boards were instructed to set up offices in the nation’s polling places so that going to register could be viewed almost as if one were going to vote. The government, aided by local chambers of commerce and other civic groups, made the day of registration, June 5, 1917, an occasion, in Wilson’s words, “of patriotic devotion and obligation.”

When the government was ready to induct men into the armed forces on July 20, the operation was carried out by lottery at the senate office building with the fullest possible publicity. (The first number pulled was 258.)

It was Wilson’s belief that he had to “sell” the war. That explains his creation of the Committee on Public Information, or Creel Committee, with its flood of posters (for instance, the famous poster of Uncle Sam pointing his index finger and saying “I Want YOU” comes from this period) and its innumerable slogans (“Tell It to the Marines”). The need to sell the war also explains Wilson’s increasingly idealistic articulation of the nation’s war aims (“a war to end all wars,” “a war to make the world safe for democracy”); it explains Wilson’s demand for legislation such as the Espionage Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act, and the Sedition Act, all of them aimed more at suppressing dissent than preventing sabotage. Wilson felt he had to stop those who would actively oppose the war from infecting the great mass of Americans, who were entirely too susceptible to the pacifist virus.

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Wilson probably misjudged the American people. He erred in thinking that those who opposed war before April 6, 1917, would continue to oppose it after its declaration. More likely, Wilson represented the American people better than he realized. Fiercely attached to peace at almost any cost and convinced that Germany had given the United States no choice but to fight, the American people, like their president, never wanted war but, once in it, were in for the kill.

RELIVING THE PAST Shortly before asking Congress for a declaration of war, President Wilson had a remarkable conversation with Frank Cobb, a newspaper reporter. After explaining to Cobb that he would avoid war if he could, Wilson predicted what a war would do to American society. He stated, “Once lead this people into war, and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.” He went on to discuss how America’s involvement would result in a harsh peace treaty and foresaw the disillusionment of the 1920s. All in all, the conversation was so uncannily correct about the future that some historians believe Cobb invented Wilson’s words many years later, but Wilson’s best biographer, Arthur Link, accepts the authenticity of the conversation. The original source is a biography of Cobb by John L. Heaton, but a more accessible source is Arthur S. Link, editor, Woodrow Wilson: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968).

Wilson’s prophecy that the American people would become intolerant came true, in part, because the government encouraged intolerance. The American people, however, played their part with considerable enthusiasm, and the violations of civil rights that followed make a sad chapter in our history, even when some of the episodes, such as renaming sauerkraut “victory cabbage” or renaming German measles “liberty measles,” border on the comical.

The very best social history of the first quarter of the twentieth century is Mark Sullivan’s Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933). The fifth volume covers the war years and deals with the anti-German panic that seized the nation.

CHAPTER SUMMARY THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA The author begins with an account of the episode that eventually led the United States into World War I. The incident is seen as forcing Wilson to declare war, in spite of his commitment to diplomacy.

A NEW WORLD POWER American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century had been aggressive and nationalistic.

As a colonial power with increasingly valuable investments outside the country, the United States became more and more involved in international affairs.

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WHAT were the main events that showed the United States was becoming a world power?

After winning the Spanish-American War, American presidents began to exert more and more influence in the world. Theodore Roosevelt took extraordinary steps to build the Panama Canal. He enlarged the country’s role in the Western Hemisphere and tried to deal with the growing power of Japan. Taft, on the other hand, adopted a different approach to foreign affairs, focusing on protecting American economic interests abroad.

Building the Panama Canal: Theodore Roosevelt believed the United States should be more active on the international scene and to that end greatly strengthened the navy. He also secured the American position in the Caribbean and Central America. America’s domination of the Caribbean was illustrated when the United States decided to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, which at that time belonged to Colombia. When the Colombian senate refused to allow the canal, in 1903, Roosevelt encouraged and abetted a revolution that separated Panama from Colombia. The new nation agreed to let the canal construction proceed, and it was opened in 1914. Roosevelt’s Caribbean policy established protectorates and subsidies to maintain hegemony there. There were frequent interventions in Latin America to protect the canal. After several nations defaulted on their international debts, thus provoking European reprisals, Roosevelt announced that the United States would intervene to ensure the stability and solvency of Latin American nations. In accordance with this “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, the United States intervened in the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Cuba. View the Image Roosevelt Throwing Dirt into Panama Canal on myhistorylab.com Ventures in the Far East: Under Roosevelt, the United States and Japan worked out several agreements that put Korea in the Japanese sphere of influence but kept Japan from interfering with the Philippines. Eventually, however, Japan resented the Open Door policy in China and began to demand special rights for itself.

Taft and Dollar Diplomacy: Taft tried to substitute economic force for military power in American diplomacy. In the Caribbean, this generally worked, and American bankers replaced Europeans in that area. In the Far East, Taft’s support for American economic influence in Manchuria alienated China, Japan, and Russia. Read the Document Dollar Diplomacy on myhistorylab.com FOREIGN POLICY UNDER WILSON Wilson had little experience or knowledge of diplomacy but felt that he could conduct a foreign policy based on moral force.

WHAT did Woodrow Wilson mean by “moral diplomacy”?

Taking office, Woodrow Wilson hoped to focus on events at home but soon found himself involved in crisis after crisis abroad. He first tried some new approaches that he called “moral diplomacy,” asking the United States and other countries to treat each other in a moral manner, especially in Europe and Mexico. In Mexico, he had praiseworthy aims but misjudged events and divisions in the country.

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Troubles Across the Border: Wilson’s tendency toward moral self-righteousness showed itself when he refused to recognize the government of Mexico in 1913 because it was headed by a man whom Wilson considered a murderer. When Wilson tried to use the U.S. Navy to block arms shipments to Mexico, several incidents ensued, resulting in the bombarding and seizing of Vera Cruz by the United States. Although Wilson backed down after that, he ordered the U.S. Army into Mexico in 1916, in pursuit of the guerrilla and bandit, “Pancho” Villa. View the Image Woodrow Wilson on myhistorylab.com TOWARD WAR The European system of alliances marched two great blocs into World War I. The Central Powers, headed by Germany, faced the Allied Powers, headed by England and France. Although his sympathies lay with England, Wilson hoped the United States could remain at peace. View the Image The Outbreak of World War I on myhistorylab.com WHAT were the reasons behind and the dangers of Wilson’s neutrality policy?

Wilson, like many Americans, was saddened by the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914. He immediately established a policy of neutrality, which was difficult to maintain. Neutrality, he hoped, would favor neither side and keep the United States out of war. Progressives were especially divided, knowing that war would distract attention from reform. Submarine warfare offered new threats, which Wilson tried to control but could not. On April 6, 1917, the United States joined the war.

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The Neutrality Policy: There were several reasons for the strong force of neutrality in America. Progressives considered war wasteful and irrational and suspected that big business instigated the conflict for profits. Immigrants generally preferred the United States to remain neutral, lest it come in on the wrong side. Americans also believed they had a long tradition of neutrality and saw no reason to intervene.

Freedom of the Seas: The United States experienced immediate violations of its neutral right to trade with Germany, despite a blockade by the English navy. Wilson protested but accepted England’s promise to reimburse American shippers when the war was over.

The U-Boat Threat: Germany’s use of submarines in reprisal for England’s naval blockade caused the greatest difficulty for Wilson’s diplomacy. Since submarines had to shoot without warning, they violated international law. When Americans were killed or injured in these attacks, most notably the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, Wilson protested and finally issued an ultimatum in April 1916. At that time, Germany backed down and pledged to honor America’s rights as a neutral country. Read the Document Adolf K. G. E. von Spiegel, U-boat 202 (1919) on myhistorylab.com The Election of 1916: Entry into the war was the central theme of the election of 1916.

Wilson advocated diplomacy and was attacked for cowardice—Roosevelt actually called Wilson “yellow.” Charles Evans Hughes called for action against Germany. Wilson was elected with important support from labor, progressives and women.

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The Final Months of Peace: Wilson moved to mediate the European conflict, but, by the beginning of 1917, Germany was confident that it could win through a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against England and all ships sailing to England. In reply, Wilson ordered American merchant vessels to arm themselves and ordered the U.S. Navy to fire on German submarines. In March, after U-boats sank five American ships, Wilson decided on war. On April 2, 1917, he asked for a declaration of war, and Congress, applauding, gave its consent. Read the Document The Zimmermann Telegram (1917) on myhistorylab.com OVER THERE The United States entered the war when Germany was on the verge of victory. This section describes America’s contribution to the Allied victory. Watch the Video American Entry into WWI on myhistorylab.com HOW did the United States’ entry affect World War I? The United States entered the war at a crucial time for Great Britain and its allies. The war brought about important changes, including the “draft,” which enlarged government authority and became the method for enlisting soldiers through the Vietnam War. Entry into the war gave the United States a stake in the peace treaty that ended the war.

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Mobilization: The United States had prepared no contingency plans for a military effort in Europe. There were only two hundred thousand soldiers in the army, but Wilson promptly instituted a draft that eventually called over two million men into military service. Listen to the Audio File “Over There” on myhistorylab.com War in the Trenches: The American and English navies teamed up to cut Allied losses to submarines by half. By June 1917, American troops began arriving in France, and by the next spring and summer, American forces were strong enough to help halt the final German offensive.

Americans performed outstandingly in both the battle of Château-Thierry and the battle of Belleau Wood. In September, the Americans pushed the Germans out of St. Mihiel and added tremendous punch to the Allied attack that led the Germans to ask for peace. Read the Document Trench Warfare on myhistorylab.com OVER HERE President Wilson moved to enlist the hearts and minds of the entire population in the war effort.

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WHAT programs and changes did World War I bring at home?

American participation in World War I drew on many of the techniques of progressive reformers, including using people with expertise and exploiting bureaucracy. The War Industries Board oversaw the production of all American factories; the Food Administration Board looked after food for the armies overseas. The government played a larger role in American life than ever before.

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was penalized, and dissenters, like Eugene Debs, were imprisoned. Later, fears of a worldwide Communist revolution led Wilson to send American troops into Russia to prevent the Bolsheviks from consolidating power. The crusade against Communism gathered such momentum that “radicals” were rounded up and expelled from the country, even after the war ended. Listen to the Audio File The Speech that Sent Debs to Jail on myhistorylab.com A Bureaucratic War: The war led to efficient government control of the economy. Various agencies, usually headed by businesspeople, supervised all aspects of production and distribution to ensure a maximum war effort. In some cases, the government seized businesses to keep them running, but for the most part, government and business cooperated, and business profited. Read the Document Newton D. Baker, Treatment of German Americans (1918) on myhistorylab.com Labor in the War: Labor also did well during the war. Union membership swelled, and Wilson did everything possible to avoid strikes. An acute labor shortage raised wages and drew Mexican Americans and women into war-related industries. Large numbers of African Americans left the South to find jobs in the northern factories. Coming from a rural background, blacks now had to adjust to the pace of industrial work and found that they were as disliked in the North as they were in the South. In East St. Louis, forty African Americans were killed in a riot in 1917, and riots in other cities took the lives of more blacks. But blacks, many of whom had seen combat in France, fought back, and the white death toll in the racial riots was also significant. Despite the tensions created by the war, the United States emerged from World War I as the world’s strongest economic power. Read the Document Abrams v. United States on myhistorylab.com THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES Wilson hoped to bring a world order based on justice from the chaos of war. He wanted to give defeated Germany generous treatment, and he insisted on the establishment of a League of Nations to guarantee the peace. This section explains the failure of Wilson’s peace plans.

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WHAT mistakes did Wilson make in negotiating the Treaty of Versailles?

Wilson tried to come to grips with the end of the war by creating the Fourteen Points, measures that sought to reduce armaments, lower trade barriers, offer self-determination to colonial subjects, and provide for a League of Nations to prevent further wars. He was forced to compromise when negotiating at Versailles and ran into stubborn opposition in the United States Senate. Despite urgings from fellow Democrats, he refused to compromise on key issues such as the League of Nations, and he lost ratification of the peace treaty.

A Peace at Paris: Wilson made his peace efforts a partisan issue, and he alienated many Republicans who might have worked with him. He discovered that the Allies were determined to punish Germany and that they could not be deflected from this goal. Wilson did succeed in creating the League of Nations, including Article X of its charter, which required each member nation to protect the territorial integrity of all other members. Anticipating a fight over the treaty in the Senate, Wilson agreed to limit the League’s jurisdiction so that it could not interfere in a nation’s domestic affairs. Read the Document President Wilson’s Fourteen Points on myhistorylab.com 241

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Rejection in the Senate: Wilson could have had the treaty ratified if he had been willing to accept changes in the League, but he refused. Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge organized opposition to the League and delayed a vote on the treaty. Wilson went directly to the people in a tour of the nation, but in October 1918, a stroke disabled him and doomed the League. In the election of 1920, Democrat James M. Cox ran against Republican Warren G. Harding. Harding won easily, and the Versailles Treaty was finally signed in 1921.

CONCLUSION: POSTWAR DISILLUSIONMENT Wilson hoped that a Democratic victory in the presidential election of 1920 would demonstrate the people’s desire for the League, but Republican Warren Harding won a landslide victory.

Wilson’s defeat in the struggle for a League of Nations coincided with a general feeling of disillusionment. Americans were convinced that they had been duped into war and that the war had changed nothing. The progressive spirit was one of the war’s last casualties.

KEY TERMS: 1. The Hay–Bunau–Varilla Treaty granted the United States control over a zone 10 miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama. In return, the United States guaranteed the independence of Panama and agreed to pay Panama a onetime fee of $10 million and an annual rental of $250,000.

2. Known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the new policy warned Latin American nations to keep their affairs in order or face U.S. intervention. Roosevelt was worried about regional stability and making sure to exclude foreign influence in Latin America. His first implementation of the Roosevelt Corollary was to take charge in 1905 of the Dominican Republic’s revenue system.

3. The “dollar diplomacy” policy promoted American financial and business interests abroad.

Along with its profit-seeking motives, it also sought to substitute economic ties for military alliances.

4. Rejecting dollar diplomacy, Wilson chose to pursue moral diplomacy to bring right to the world, preserve peace, and extend the benefits of democracy.

5. While some wanted a volunteer army like that which fought in the Spanish-American War, President Wilson turned to conscription. The Selective Service Act required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 (later changed to 18 to 45) to register for the draft.

6. The purpose of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) was to mobilize support for American involvement in World War I, not anti-German sentiment.

7. The Espionage Act of 1917 imposed prison sentences for aiding the enemy, obstructing military recruitment, or encouraging disloyalty and also allowed the postmaster general to remove from the mail any materials that incited treason or insurrection.

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8. The Sedition Act of 1918 imposed harsh penalties on anyone using disloyal language about the U.S. government, flag, or armed services uniforms.

9. The War Industries Board (WIB) oversaw the production of all American factories. The WIB determined priorities, allocated raw materials, and fixed prices; it told manufacturers what they could and could not produce.

10. Herbert Hoover convinced people, while head of the Food Administration, to save food by observing “meatless” and “wheatless” days to encourage citizens to make sacrifices for the war effort.

11. Wilson’s plan for peace was known as the Fourteen Points. The plan called for removal of barriers to trade, open peace accords, reduction of armaments, and the establishment of a League of Nations. While generous and optimistic, the Fourteen Points did not satisfy wartime hunger for revenge and thus were largely rejected by European nations.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What did Theodore Roosevelt do to build the Panama Canal? Roosevelt had Secretary of State John Hay negotiate the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901 with Britain.

This gave the United States the right to build an isthmian canal as long as all countries could use it. When negotiations with Colombia broke down, Roosevelt let it be known he would support a Panamanian revolution. The Panamanians got the message and revolted.

After recognizing the republic of Panama, the Hay–Bunau–Varilla Treaty granted the United States control of a canal zone 10 miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama. In return the United States guaranteed the independence of Panama and agreed to pay the same fees offered to Colombia. The canal opened on August 15, 1914.

2. What were Theodore Roosevelt’s policies toward China and Japan? Roosevelt had been concerned over Japanese power and when war broke out between the Japanese and Russians, he was not unhappy. However, as war dragged on he became nervous, and when the Japanese approached him to offer his aid in arbitrating the dispute he accepted.

The Russians who were losing and the Japanese who were financially drained accepted his terms. Roosevelt then had two agreements signed with the Japanese, one granting them a free hand in Korea and the other promising to uphold the status quo in the Pacific, maintain the Open Door policy, and support Chinese independence. The Korean policy violated the Open Door policy, but Roosevelt felt he had no choice. His Great White Fleet had been welcomed by the Japanese and was followed by the Root–Takahira Agreement, which agreed to maintain the status quo in the Pacific.

3. What was the essential idea behind Taft’s “dollar diplomacy”? By appointing Knox as his secretary of state, Taft hoped to continue Roosevelt’s foreign policy. Their dollar diplomacy strove to promote American financial and business interests abroad. Profit seeking, without a doubt, was a main motive, but it also sought to replace military alliances with economic ones.

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4. How and why did Wilson get involved in Mexico, and how did his involvement reflect his “moral diplomacy”? When Madero, the legitimate president of Mexico, was overthrown, Wilson refused to recognize Huerta, the dictator who had Madero murdered.

Wilson sought to put pressure on the government and blockaded the ports to prevent weapons from getting into Mexico. When a German boat docked and unloaded weapons, Wilson had the Marines take the port and shelled the city. Argentina, Brazil, and Chile mediated the dispute and tensions eased. Caranza, an associate of Madero, gained power, but when one of his generals revolted and attacked Americans in the United States, Wilson sent General Pershing on a punitive expedition to capture Pancho Villa, the general. At first Caranza supported the invasion, but as the U.S. forces went deeper into Mexico he changed his mind. Wilson finally recalled Pershing as events in Europe began to escalate. By interfering in the affairs of another country, Wilson revealed the theme— moralism, combined with pragmatic self-interest and a desire for peace—that also would shape his policies in Europe.

5. What were the factors behind Wilson’s neutrality policy? Initially America supported neutrality because there was no desire to become entangled in foreign affairs outside Latin America. Many progressive reformers like Jane Addams objected to war; they saw no point in helping the worker get better pay and working conditions in the factory only to kill millions in war. As both sides tugged at American sentiment, the natural support for the Allied cause began to grow.

6. In what ways did the demands of trade test American neutrality? With the greatest navy in the world, the British closed down trade to Germany once hostilities began. They allowed no direct trading with Germany and required all goods to go to a neutral country where they were inspected before going on to the Axis powers. Eventually they blacklisted countries that traded with the Axis and even censured their mail. As far as they took it, they were always careful not to disrupt Anglo-American relations. When an economic boom began to develop and loans and trade with the Allies drew the United States closer and closer to their cause, neutrality became more and more difficult.

7. How did German submarines threaten to involve the United States in the war?

Germany’s submarine campaign, which began in February 1915, led Wilson to protest sharply American neutrality. The Germans promised to respect American rights, but when Americans perished in May and August 1916 with the sinking of the Lusitania and the Arabic, Wilson demanded Germans protect civilian shipping. Lansing replaced Bryan as secretary of state and let the Germans know they would be held accountable for American losses. When the French steamer Sussex was torpedoed, Lansing urged Wilson to break relations with Germany, but he refused. On April 18, he informed the Germans that, unless attacks ceased, he would break relations with them. The Germans yielded with the Sussex pledge, promising to shoot on sight only enemy warships.

8. What were the two key issues and the main results of the 1916 presidential election?

The preparedness issue split the election into two groups: those who wanted to prepare for war and pacifists, many of whom were progressive reformers. Hughes, the candidate for the Republicans, seemed able as a former reform governor of New York to attract 244

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both conservative Republicans and progressives from the Roosevelt wing. Wilson maintained his pledge to keep America out of war, while at the same time asking Congress for more funds for the army and the navy to be prepared. Wilson went to bed thinking he’d lost and woke up to find out he’d won the election with California, New Mexico, and North Dakota pushing him to victory.

9. How did the United States finally get involved in the war? When the German ambassador announced on January 31, 1917, that the Germans would start sinking all shipping on February 1, the die was cast. From March 12 to March 21, German U-boats sank five American ships. Wilson called Congress into a special session and asked for a declaration of war. Finally, on April 6, the declaration passed. Even then, the country remained divided over entering the war.

10. How did the United States mobilize for war? Wilson selected “Black Jack” Pershing over older generals and chose conscription over a volunteer army. He thought it was more democratic and efficient. The Selective Service Act required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 register, even blacks. Four black regiments fought valiantly during the war, but none were allowed to march in the victory parade at the end of the war.

11. Why might World War I have been the most terrible war of all time? New weapons like machine guns, poison gas, and grenades took their toll. Massive bombardments led to shell shock and diseases as well as cold and fear all took their toll. The German offensive at Verdun took 600,000 lives, and 20,000 British died on the first day of an offensive on the Somme.

12. What measures did Wilson pass to sway American opinions? Three pieces of legislation were used by Wilson to sway American opinions in favor of the war. The Espionage Act of 1917 was first; it imposed sentences of up to 20 years for those accused of helping the enemy, obstructing recruitment, or encouraging disloyalty. Second, Wilson controlled the foreign language press through the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act of 1917.

Third, the Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties on those using profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the flag, the government, or even service uniforms.

13. What were the main bureaucratic measures that shaped American war policy in World War I? Congress and the president established nearly 5,000 new agencies, which cost the government $32 billion by the end of the war. Boards controlled virtually every aspect of the American economy. One of the most powerful was the War Industries Board, which oversaw the production of all American factories. Another agency was the Food Administration run by the future president, Herbert Hoover. He convinced people to have “meatless” and “wheatless” days, fixed prices, and encouraged people to plant victory gardens. The Fuel Administration introduced daylight savings time, gas and coal rationing, and even gasless days when motorists could not drive.

14. What were four effects the war had on labor? Labor, like business albeit more limited, entered into a partnership with government. Gompers sat on the Council of National Defense, an advisory group formed to unify labor, business, and government. Union 245

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membership increased to 4 million in 1919, with Wilson’s blessing. Wilson adopted many social-justice reforms like the eight-hour day and improved wages and working conditions. The War Labor Board standardized wages and hours, and it protected the right of labor to organize and collectively bargain. With manpower shortages women, blacks, and Mexican-Americans moved in to fill the void.

15. What were the main considerations in the negotiations over the peace treaty to end the war? Wilson’s decisions prior to departing for Paris hindered the treaty’s chances at home from the start. He traded various “small” concessions to attain his major goals of a League of Nations and national self-determination. Wilson violated the principal of selfdetermination by agreeing to create Czechoslovakia and Poland with large German populations. Germany was punished, which eliminated the idea of peace without victory, and the treaty was drafted behind closed doors instead of in the open.

16. Why was the treaty defeated in the Senate? With the various Republican groups divided by the strength of their opposition to the treaty, Wilson refused to negotiate with those who had mild objections. He took his case to the people but suffered a debilitating stroke. Lodge let the treaty out of committee, but with one reservation for each one of Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Wilson wouldn’t budge; he ordered the Democrats to vote no for the treaty with the reservations. Harding won the 1920 election and, three years after the war, Congress passed a joint resolution ending the war.

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CHAPTER 25 Transition to Modern America, 1919–1928 CHAPTER OUTLINE Wheels for the Millions The Second Industrial Revolution The Automobile Industry Patterns of Economic Growth City Life in the Roaring Twenties Women and the Family Popular Culture in the Jazz Age The Conservative Counterattack The Fear of Radicalism Prohibition The Ku Klux Klan Immigration Restriction The Fundamentalist Challenge Republican Politics Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover A New Kind of Conservatism The Election of 1928 Conclusion: The Old and the New

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE DEFECTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS Higher education is, and should be, disturbing to students because they are being challenged to defend or discard many of their most deeply held ideas and values. The danger, of course, is that students may come to believe that cynicism is the ultimate form of wisdom. The danger of such an attitude can be demonstrated by the remarkable defection of American intellectuals in the 1920s. They became so turned off by American society and values that they regarded even reform efforts as fraudulent.

The best example of the disaffected intellectual was Henry L. Mencken, resident “Sage of Baltimore,” who became the dominant literary and social critic of the decade. Mencken has not yet been surpassed in his ability to sustain a tirade for so long and at such a high level of humor.

Some of his definitions illustrate his biting wit: “A Puritan is anyone with an awful fear that somewhere, someone is enjoying himself” or “Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”

In 1923, Mencken and George Jean Nathan began editing the American Mercury, which became for the rest of the decade the chief weapon of the intellectuals against the “booboisie.”

In a typical issue, the journal carried essays like “Musings of an Inebriated Historian,” in which Clarence Alvord confessed that he had spent most of his life “in the repressive and artificial atmosphere of an American University..... ” or “What the French Think of Us,” where the reader discovered that the French defined America as the “the land where it is a crime to drink, make love, or be a Negro.” In its “Americana” section, the Mercury reprinted items from newspapers around the nation with appropriate commentary. For example: TENNESSEE Intellectual Recreation of the 100% White Protestant Nordic Blondes of Memphis, as Revealed by the Eminent Commercial Appeal: An oldest collar-button contest is causing much interest here.

Mencken, like many other intellectuals in the 1920s, applied a kind of half-baked Freudianism to “explain” the American character. Anglo-Saxons, Mencken explained, were for some reason unable to cope with their sexual instincts as infants and repressed them. As a result, in adulthood, these people became perverts, drunkards, and small-town bankers. Prohibition was considered to be the best example of this phenomenon. Since pleasure was sinful, Americans made it a crime to drink. But since most Americans were hypocrites who relished pleasure if it were secret and sinful, they drank like fish. The main character in Sinclair Lewis’s 1922 novel Babbit personified the small-souled, middle-class American.

Unlike the Anglo-Saxons, depicted in all their grim ferocity by Grant Wood in his masterpiece, American Gothic, Mencken’s followers felt that “natural” people could enjoy life. The French, for example, could be tutors to Americans in the ways of amour. The Italians could not help but sing.

Most significantly, the intellectuals patronized African Americans. Blacks, they thought, had never been infected by the “Puritan virus” and therefore expressed themselves openly and 248

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naturally. To some degree, the intellectuals during this period began to take African Americans seriously. The “Harlem Renaissance,” which occurred during this period, did not so much represent a sudden upsurge of creativity among blacks as it did the willingness of some whites to consider black music, verse, and prose as serious art. For the most part, however, intellectuals merely used African Americans as a kind of club with which to beat the Wasps. Implicit in their analysis of the African character was the same sort of racism that denied serious intelligence or profound emotion to blacks. Marc Connelly’s Green Pastures (1930) presented an affectionate view of a Black Heaven that was quaint, primitive, and childish.

Why American intellectuals should have so completely and abruptly given up on American society is difficult to explain, but whatever the reasons, its result was tragic. America in the 1920s was afflicted with major problems: Its national income was seriously maldistributed, African Americans and immigrants had not yet been fully integrated into American life, and the rural areas were already depressed. The intellectuals, who might have provided leadership for reform in the United States, abdicated this responsibility in the 1920s. When Mencken announced that he was going to run for president, he promised that, if elected, he would abolish the public school system, dump the Statue of Liberty into the Atlantic Ocean, and support legislation making it legal to assassinate public officials.

RELIVING THE PAST Two court trials dominated the 1920s. The first, the Scopes trial, was provoked in order to defend the issue of academic freedom but became a circus. This trial took place in Dayton, Tennessee, in the summer of 1925, and pitted the intellectuals against rural America. The most dramatic moment of the trial came when William Jennings Bryan took the stand as an expert on the Bible and was cross-examined by the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow. Mencken covered the trial for a Baltimore newspaper, and his reports are still very amusing. There is a good collection of documents relating to the trial in Jerry R. Tompkins, editor, D-Days at Dayton: Reflections on the Scopes Trial (Baton Rouge, LA: University Press, 1965).

The second trial did not have any comic overtones. It began with the murder of two men during a robbery in Boston on April 15, 1920, and ended with the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti on August 22, 1927. The Sacco and Vanzetti case, therefore, engaged the attention of the American public for the entire decade. In fact, their guilt or innocence is still debated. By far the best book on the subject, because it is so complete, is still Louis Joughlin and Edmund M. Morgan, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1948). Before he was executed, Vanzetti was interviewed by a newspaper reporter, Phil Strong.

Strong reported Vanzetti’s “last words.” Although some historians believe that Strong himself embellished the record, those Americans who thought of themselves as liberals in the 1920s and 1930s firmly believed that the words had been spoken as Strong reported them. Speaking in broken English and protesting his innocence for the last time, Vanzetti said that his execution would not mean the victory of injustice. Had he and Sacco been left alone, they would have died some day in obscurity. Now they were immortal. “The moment that you think of belongs to usthat last agony is our triumph.” Strong’s interview is reprinted in The Aspirin Age, 1919–1941, edited by Isabel Leighton (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1949). For a more recent work on 249

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this controversial subject, see William Young and David Kaiser, Postmortem: New Evidence in the Case of Sacco and Vanzetti (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985).

CHAPTER SUMMARY WHEELS FOR THE MILLIONS The author uses the assembly line at Henry Ford’s auto factory as an example of the tremendous abundance of consumer goods being created for the American people after World War I. The new emphasis on consumption, however, eroded traditional values of thrift and savings and provoked a cultural war.

THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The first Industrial Revolution took place when steam was harnessed to run heavy machinery.

The second took place in the 1920s when electricity replaced steam and the modern assembly line was introduced for the production of consumer goods. At this time, the United States developed the highest standard of living in the world. View the Image Ford Weekly Purchase Plan, 1925 on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT was new about the American economy in the 1920s?

The American economy in the 1920s underwent a second industrial revolution. Powered by electricity and featuring the mass production of automobiles and other consumer goods, the second industrial revolution lifted the American standard of living to new heights.

The Automobile Industry: The automobile industry epitomized the changes taking place in the economy. The car was an expensive item and once purchased was not quickly replaced. Auto makers, therefore, relied on model changes and advertising to stimulate sales. The auto industry itself fostered the growth of other businesses, like service stations, and encouraged the spread of the suburbs farther from the inner cities. Read the Document The Automobile Comes To Middletown on myhistorylab.com Patterns of Economic Growth: Other industries also flourished in the 1920s, including electricity, light metals, and the chemical industry. Professional managers who believed profitmaking was compatible with social responsibility replaced individual entrepreneurs, and corporations became the dominant business form. To a large degree, the success of large business brought standardization and uniformity to America at the cost of regional flavor. Every town had the same A&P, the same “five-and-ten.” Although there was real prosperity in the United States in the 1920s, there were also disguised economic problems. Traditiona l industries, such as railroads and coal, were in deep trouble, and farmers suffered from a decline in both exports and prices. Laborers saw their real wages rise but not nearly as rapidly as the income of the middle-class manager, who benefited the most from the new Industrial Revolution. The increasing income of the middle class created its own peculiar problem. Because the middle class had so much idle money, much of it went into speculation. It is not surprising that the 1920s 250

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ended in a stock-market crash. View the Image Advertisements from 1925 and 1927 on myhistorylab.com CITY LIFE IN THE ROARING TWENTIES Cities continued to grow dramatically with over half of the American population now in urban areas. New institutions and perspectives typified the changing cities.

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HOW did life in the cities change after World War I? During the 1920s the focus of American life shifted to the cities, which for the first time contained a majority of the American population. Women found new opportunities to express themselves, and sports, music, literature, and the arts flourished as never before.

Women and the Family: Although women continued to crusade for equal rights, and even lobbied for an Equal Rights Amendment, some younger women deserted these causes in favor of exercising individual freedom. The “flapper” drank, smoked, and demanded sex with the same gusto traditionally reserved to men. For the most part, however, women played the same role in society in the 1920s as they had in the 1790s; the greatest change in family life was the discovery of adolescence. Teenaged sons and daughters of the smaller, middle-class families no longer had to work and could indulge their craving for excitement. View the Image McClure’s Magazine Featuring a Flapper on myhistorylab.com Popular Culture in the Jazz Age: Cities became the scene of crime waves with powerful gangs involved in shootouts. Spectator sports were hugely popular, including both professional and college games. Eliot, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others captured an international audience.

African Americans were especially prominent in music and poetry, and Harlem became an exciting, stimulating cultural capital. Thrill seekers and pleasure seekers abounded. Young men and women openly discussed sex, which became an all-consuming topic of interest in movies, tabloids, and popular music. Watch the Video The Harlem Renaissance on myhistorylab.com THE CONSERVATIVE COUNTERATTACK Rural Americans resented urban culture, which they identified with communism, crime, and sexual immorality. The progressives attempted to force reform on the American people, which resulted in an upsurge of bigotry and an era of repression.

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HOW did conservatives resist the changes of the decade?

The dramatic changes of the 1920s alarmed many conservatives, who tried to resist by various methods. The police and the courts cracked down on radicals; prohibition outlawed liquor; the Ku Klux Klan attacked immigrants and racial minorities; Congress drastically restricted immigration; and fundamentalist Christians decried the changing code of morality and the teaching of evolution in the schools.

The Fear of Radicalism: Alarmed by the violent acts of a handful of anarchists and communists, the government resorted, in 1919, to illegal roundups of innocent people and the forcible deportation of aliens. The government’s actions encouraged lynchings and other acts of 251

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terror against “radicals” and immigrants. The Red Scare quickly subsided, but bigotry and fear of foreign influence played a part in the arrest, conviction, and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. Read the Document A. Mitchell Palmer on the Menace of Communism (1920) on myhistorylab.com Prohibition: Congress adopted the Prohibition Amendment in 1917, and in 1920 the production, sale, or transport of alcoholic beverages became illegal. Prohibition actually did cut down the consumption of alcohol in the general population, but the law was bitterly resented in urban areas and easily evaded by the upper classes. Bootlegging became a big business, and gangsters became socially respectable. By 1933, the prohibition experiment had failed, and the law was repealed. Listen to the Audio File Prohibition Is a Failure on myhistorylab.com The Ku Klux Klan: The Klan revived in the 1920s. It was no longer merely an antiblack movement. The Klan attacked Catholics, Jews, immigrants, liberated women, and almost anything that seemed “citified.” The Klan used violence on occasion but sought to win America by persuasion, and members even went into politics. It offered a sanctuary of traditional values for those frightened or disgusted by the modern world. By the mid-1920s, the Klan counted nearly five million members, but its violence and internal corruption led to its decline and virtual disappearance by the end of the decade. View the Image KKK March on Washington on myhistorylab.com Immigration Restriction: Nativist forces had scored their first success in restricting immigration in 1917, but complete victory came in 1924, when Congress severely restricted all immigration and gave preferential quotas to northern Europeans. Exempt from the quota, the number of Mexican immigrants increased, filling the need for unskilled labor. Read the Document Debating Immigration Restriction 1921 on myhistorylab.com The Fundamentalist Challenge: The 1920s witnessed a rebirth of fundamentalist Christianity.

Intellectuals believed that fundamentalism had been dealt a death blow in the Scopes trial of 1925, but rural Americans continued to believe in a literal reading of the Bible, and they took their religion with them when they migrated to the cities. View the Image Clarence Darrow at Scopes Trial on myhistorylab.com REPUBLICAN POLITICS On the surface, the era seemed to be dominated by the Republican party. Beneath the surface, the urban wing of the Democratic party was emerging as the single most powerful political force in the nation.

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HOW did the politics of the 1920s reflect changes in the economy and in American society?

The 1920s were a decade of Republican politics. Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover promoted measures that favored business and the wealthy classes. In the election of 1928, voters had a clear choice between Hoover, the candidate of the countryside and conservatism, and Al Smith, the candidate of the cities and change, and they chose Hoover in a landslide.

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Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover: These three Republicans enjoyed wide popularity because they appealed to traditional American values. The scandals connected with Harding became news only after his death; Coolidge represented America in his austerity and rectitude, while Hoover represented the self-made man. Watch the Video Warren G. Harding on myhistorylab.com A New Kind of Conservatism: In the election of 1920 Harding attempted to return the nation to “normalcy.” His successors raised tariffs and cut corporate and income taxes. All citizens paid less in taxes, but the wealthy saw the greatest tax cuts. Congress voted to help farmers, who suffered from low prices, but President Coolidge refused to go along because he preferred the government to keep hands off the economy. More and more, Republican policies resulted in close cooperation between government and business and expansion of the government bureaucracy.

The Election of 1928: The urban Democrats nominated Al Smith, governor of New York and a Roman Catholic, to run against Herbert Hoover, a Protestant from the Midwest.

Religion was the decisive issue in the campaign, and Hoover won easily, but Smith carried the nation’s twelve largest cities, a portent of the emerging Democratic majority.

CONCLUSION: THE OLD AND THE NEW Americans were struggling to enter the modern age during the 1920s, but there was a conflict between urban and rural values, between the frivolity of the jazz generation and the sobriety of their elders, between the American-born and recent immigrants. If the new age had delivered on its promise of increasing abundance, the forces of traditional values would have been routed, but the new economy was surprisingly fragile. Watch the Video Prosperity of the 1920s and the Great Depression on myhistorylab.com

KEY TERMS: 1. An outpouring of African American literature, theater, visual arts, and music, especially jazz came from the Harlem Renaissance.

2. World War I had brought about heightened nationalism with an aim toward achieving unity at the expense of ethnic diversity. After the war, it found a new target in communism.

Russia’s revolution in 1917 had frightened many Americans and the turn by American radicals toward communism only added to that fear, leading to the Red Scare.

3. In December 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. In January 1919, Nebraska became the thirty-sixth state to ratify it and prohibition became law.

4. Nativism, or hostility to things foreign, was reflected in the immigration legislation of the 1920s. The sharp increase in immigration in the late nineteenth century led to a broad-based nativist movement, spearheaded by organized labor and by New England aristocrats such as 253

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Henry Cabot Lodge, to restrict the flow of people from Europe. By 1917, Congress had enacted a literacy test that reduced the number of immigrants allowed into the country.

5. To regulate the influx of immigrants to America, the National Origins Quota Act reduced immigration from southern and eastern Europe and barred immigration from Asia.

6. In 1925 the Scopes trial caught the attention of the entire nation when high school biology teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution. The trial court convicted Scopes, affirming the fundamentalist view. In addition, aggressive fundamentalist sects such as the Churches of Christ, the Pentecostals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses grew rapidly in the wake of the trial.

7. In return for $400,000 in loans and bribes, Harding administration Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall had helped two oil promoters secure leases on naval oil reserves in two places.

The second location (Teapot Dome, Wyoming) gave its name to the scandal, the Teapot Dome scandal.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. How did the auto industry drive the rest of the economy? Huge quantities of steel were required for the mass production of cars. Demand for tires led to a boom in rubber factories and manufacturers of paint and glass had more orders than they could keep supplied. Real estate developers realized they no longer had to stay within transportation lines to build houses, as they could go further and further afield. Filling stations replaced blacksmith shops and the first shopping mall was built.

2. What other industries contributed to the boom of the 1920s? The electrical industry spawned appliances and fed more growth. Broadcasting and motion picture industries boomed. Chemical engineering and light metals showed tremendous growth as a variety of products required those materials in their production. Marketing as an industry not only took off but also became a key component in the success of new products and new companies.

3. How did women’s lives change during the 1920s? Women saw only a 1 percent increase in jobs in 1930 from 1920. The number of women doctors decreased, and men monopolized most of the professional jobs relegating women to teaching and nursing. While women had won the right to vote it did little for them; they continued to fight for political causes but after the failure of the child labor amendment in 1925 their political power declined. Flappers challenged authority, families became smaller with greater access to birth control, and more married women took jobs outside the home. Their pay was always less, but it did give them greater freedom.

4. What did people do with their spare time during the decade? As people found more leisure time, sports became a mania, both in spectators and participants. Nearly 2 million men and women were playing golf on 5,000 courses across America, while baseball and boxing saw their attendance soar. Figures like Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth became household names. The Harlem Renaissance in New York City attracted people to jazz clubs 254

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and theater. Vicarious thrills of all shapes and sizes grabbed people from pole sitting to Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic.

5. What was the “Red Scare? World War I had heightened nationalism, and society strove to attain unity at the expense of ethnic diversity. Communism became the first target and caused the first and most intense outbreak of national alarm, the antiradical hysteria known as the Red Scare. When American radicals turned toward communism after the Russian Revolution of 1917, it frightened many Americans. While only 60,000 American Communist party members at its height made the movement tiny, many occupied prominent positions. A series of events including bombings led to Bolshevik hysteria that only receded when prominent organizations like the Department of Labor and individuals like Warren Harding and Charles Evan Hughes stood up for remaining calm.

6. How effective was prohibition? Prohibition was only slightly effective in that it did lower the alcohol consumed by Americans in the 1920s, but really only in rural areas and among the urban poor. The middle class and wealthy switched to stronger drinks such as whiskey instead of beer and wine. Disrespect and even flaunting of the law ensued and bootleggers created a million-dollar, tax-free industry.

7. What groups did the Ku Klux Klan persecute during the 1920s? White Anglo-Saxon Protestants flocked to the Klan in the 1920s. Insecurity over societal changes and clever recruiting techniques helped bolster Klan numbers. They didn’t just go after blacks; the new Klan saw Italians, Russians, and Jews as well as Catholics as a threat to American culture.

They punished blacks, women who practiced the new morality, and aliens who would not conform. Punishments ranged from beatings to throwing acid and even murder. Peaceful attempts at coercion were made, but if they failed more brutal tactics were tried.

8. What was the National Origins Quota Act? The act passed in 1924 with overwhelming rural support. It limited European immigration to 150,000 a year and gave most quotas to Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia. This victory was the longest lasting for the rural counterattack because it survived until the 1960s. While it did curb Italians, Greeks, and Poles to a few thousand a year, it did nothing to stem the flow of Mexicans that was now coming across the Mexican border.

9. How did the Scopes trial reflect the strength of conservative religious thought? While most Americans viewed the trial with derision, as they saw nothing wrong with the teaching of evolution, subtler trends were emerging from the fundamentalist challenge. Church going increased and, while many sought calmer, more benevolent forms of Christianity, new and stricter fundamentalist sects emerged. Baptists and Methodists stuck to their views, while sects like the Church of Christ, Pentecostals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses all grew. The farmer drove 20 miles into town rather than visit the crossroads chapel. New fundamentalist churches had large congregations in California and Texas.

10. Who were the Republican presidents of the 1920s? Warren G. Harding of Ohio was swept into the White House on the hope that small-town American values might return. Weak, he delegated much of his authority and his administration was rocked with scandal. Calvin 255

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Coolidge took over upon Harding’s death and brought calm to the White House. His calm reassured the nation, but contemporaries mistook his epigrams for wisdom. When Coolidge decided he did not want to run for reelection in 1927, Herbert Hoover, the most able Republican of his day, was selected. Hoover epitomized the American myth of the self-made man and had served as secretary of commerce under both Harding and Coolidge. He saw business not as the enemy but as a partner to make America great.

11. What was new about the Republican approach to government? Republicans attempted a return to normalcy, as Hoover called it—no more high-strung calls for reform but an attempt to return to the conservative Republican practices of the McKinley days. Tariffs were raised and taxes lowered for the wealthiest; Americans were stunned to learn that J. P. Morgan Jr. and his 19 partners paid no income tax during most of the Depression in the 1930s.

Government bonds with business grew, as Hoover in particular created more agencies to help business become more efficient. The farm block egged on protectionism without getting at the root of the overproduction problem.

12. How did the election of 1928 summarize the divisions of the period? On the surface the election seemed to reflect the divisions of society as voters rejected an urban city politician who was Catholic and represented machine politics. Under the surface the demographics showed that a new urban Democratic electorate was forming, particularly in the cities. It was made up of Irish and Italians, Poles and Greeks, Jews and Catholics; the trick was going to be to unite this new electorate with the old traditional Democrats of the South and West.

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CHAPTER 26 Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1929–1939 CHAPTER OUTLINE The Struggle Against Despair The Great Depression The Great Crash The Effect of the Depression Fighting the Depression The Emergence of Roosevelt The Hundred Days Steps Toward Recovery Reforming American Life Challenges to FDR Social Security The Impact of the New Deal The Rise of Organized Labor The New Deal Record on Help to Minorities The New Deal’s End The Supreme Court Fight The New Deal in Decline Conclusion: The New Deal and American Life

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE TRIPLE A Students can generally understand most New Deal programs, even if they disagree with them, but the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 will probably puzzle them. What sense did it make for the government to pay farmers to plow under crops or kill animals at a time when people were too poor to buy meat or clothing? Students will be tempted to agree with the joke that Roosevelt solved the problem of poverty in the midst of plenty by getting rid of the plenty.

Ironically, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration was probably the most successful of all the New Deal agencies.

When Roosevelt took office, two segments of the economy were in a critical stage of collapse.

The most severe problem existed in banking, but agriculture was in nearly as bad a condition and had been depressed for a longer period. After World War I, two developments made it impossible for American farmers to market all the food and fiber that they produced. First of all, America’s overseas markets closed down. Because the United States had become the world’s greatest creditor nation, foreign nations had to send dollars to the United States to keep up with interest and principle payments. Those dollars could no longer be used to buy American foodstuffs.

The second adverse development was the increasing mechanization of American agriculture at a time when demand was decreasing. Whenever a farmer gave up his horse or mule and bought a tractor, he not only could plow more acreage, but also he had more acreage to plow. In the 1920s, an estimated twenty-five to thirty-five million acres of land were put into cultivation simply because they were no longer needed to feed horses and mules. The result of increased production and decreased demand was lower prices. For the consumer, lower prices are always good news, but for the producer, lower prices can spell disaster, and disaster for farmers usually takes the form of a foreclosure on farm and home.

The depression in the cities brought the farmers’ difficulties to a climax because it curtailed their most important market. As foreclosures became common, so did mobs of farmers who turned out to prevent sheriffs from evicting friends and neighbors. Sporadic and sometimes violent attempts were made to limit production of farm goods in order to raise prices. Milk trucks, for example, were ambushed and their contents spilled on the highways. By 1933, a Farmers’ Holiday Association had formed, threatening to declare a strike that would bring starvation to the cities.

When, at Roosevelt’s urging, Congress created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in May 1933, an immediate and dangerous crisis was at hand. The AAA acted expeditiously to boost farm prices of seven major commodities: wheat, cotton, corn, hogs, tobacco, rice, and milk. The AAA had to adopt drastic measures for two of these commodities because it had been created so late in the growing season. Cotton, which was selling at a nickel a pound because of the previous year’s surplus, had already been planted, and if harvested, would certainly sink even lower in price. The AAA had no choice but to pay farmers to plow under the plants. In an impressive feat of administrative energy, the AAA signed over 1,042,000 individual contracts to limit cotton production and took more than ten million acres out of cultivation. The result was a doubling of cotton prices by the beginning of 1934.

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The AAA made a drastic cutback also in hog production, and this aspect of its work was the most criticized. It should be understood that most of the corn harvested in the United States is consumed by hogs, and that the price of pork determines the price of corn. When the AAA went into operation, the farrowing season for hogs was well advanced. In order to limit production, the AAA paid farmers to kill piglets and pregnant sows. Urban Americans protested this massacre of the innocents, prompting Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace to ask whether “farmers should run a sort of old-folks home for hogs and keep them around indefinitely as barnyard pets.” It is often overlooked also that the AAA gave one hundred million pounds of pork to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration to be distributed free of charge to poor people.

Altogether, crop prices rose about 55 percent in the first six months after the creation of the AAA. Discontent among farmers dissipated rapidly. By 1936, when the Supreme Court ruled that the act of Congress establishing the AAA had been unconstitutional, the farm emergency was over, and it is as an emergency measure that the AAA should be judged. As Rexford Tugwell, assistant secretary of agriculture, said of the crop reduction programs, “We certainly don’t think we are entering upon a period of general limitations. This is merely temporary.”

RELIVING THE PAST Even more than the First or Second World War, the Great Depression blighted the lives of average Americans. Unlike warfare, of course, the damage done cannot be counted in deaths or in cities destroyed. It was rather the numbing shock of unemployment, the loss of a lifetime’s savings, the nagging fear of being thrown out of work, and the loss of confidence in self and in the nation that made the Depression such an ordeal. One result of the loss of security was the refusal of Americans to start families; the population grew more slowly in the decade of the 1930s than at any other time in American history. One small example of the kind of tragedies endured comes from a woman who remembered, “I was going with someone when the Depression hit. We probably would have gotten married. He was a commercial artist and had been doing very well. I remember the night he said, ‘They just laid off quite a few of the boys.’”

It never occurred to him that he would be next. He was older than most of the others and very sure of himself. This was not the sort of thing that was going to happen to him. Suddenly he was laid off. It hit him like a ton of bricks. And he just disappeared.” Studs Terkel, editor, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (New York: Avon Books, 1970).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president at a time when it seemed the nation was bereft of leadership and without a future. He used his inaugural address to immediately take command and to inspire the country with confidence. The most memorable line from this speech was his assurance to the people that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. ... ” Another part of the speech had far greater significance: Roosevelt said he would ask Congress for appropriate legislation to deal with the crisis. If Congress faltered, Roosevelt said, “I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis-broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” The inaugural address is reprinted in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York: 259

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Random House, 1938), Volume 2. These volumes are especially interesting because Roosevelt wrote prefaces for them and annotated them.

CHAPTER SUMMARY THE STRUGGLE AGAINST DESPAIR The author recounts the different memories people had of the Great Depression: a farmer who saw wheat being burned because it was too cheap to sell, a college student who noticed how many of her classmates’ fathers had abandoned their families out of a sense of shame, a man who remembered hiding the truth of scarcity from his children. The memories were different, but the misery was shared.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION After the collapse of the economy in 1929, optimism turned to bleak despair.

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WHAT were the causes and effects of the Great Depression?

The Great Depression resulted from the imbalances in the American economy that developed during the 1920s. Wealth was unequally distributed, depriving millions of the purchasing power necessary to keep America’s factories and farms operating at full capacity.

The depression threw millions out of work, out of their homes, onto the highways, and into despair.

The Great Crash: It was apparent in 1927 that the market for consumer goods was being saturated, but Americans were too engaged in watching the stock market to notice. Stock prices began to soar in the spring of 1928, attracting investments from individuals and corporations.

Although the crash in 1929 directly affected only the three million Americans who owned stock, the resulting credit crunch stifled business, leading to layoffs and further decline in the demand for consumer goods. It is obvious now that the economy would have been far healthier if the money that went into speculation had gone into wages, but Americans were pioneering a new industrial system and had no past experience to guide them. View the Map The Great Depression on myhistorylab.com The Effect of the Depression: The Depression brought physical and psychological hardship to all classes of Americans. The middle class lost its belief in ever-increasing prosperity, and thousands of young people wandered, homeless and jobless, throughout the country. Read the Document Women on the Breadlines on myhistorylab.com FIGHTING THE DEPRESSION When the Republicans failed to end the Depression, the Democrats became the majority party.

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HOW did Franklin Roosevelt fight the Depression?

Franklin Roosevelt led the fight against the depression by persuading Congress to pass a series of relief, recovery, and reform measures known collectively as the New Deal. Begun during the Hundred Days, the New Deal reorganized American industry, assisted American agriculture, and put Americans to work conserving and restoring the nation’s resources.

The Emergence of Roosevelt: Hoover hoped that voluntary action and private charity would get the nation through the Depression, but as conditions worsened, the president approved aid to farmers and bankers. Franklin Roosevelt, born to wealth and privilege, had a successful but minor political career before 1921, when he was crippled by polio. FDR overcame the handicap, was elected governor of New York, and took control of the Democratic party. A man of infinite charm, a magnificent speaker, and a politician to the bone, Roosevelt easily defeated Hoover in 1932 by putting together a coalition of southern and western farmers, industrial workers, immigrants, and Catholics. Watch the Video Responding to the Great Depression: Whose New Deal? on myhistorylab.com The Hundred Days: In his first three months as president, Roosevelt saved the banking system from collapse and enacted fifteen major laws, some of which (like federal insurance of bank accounts) have become permanent. Roosevelt did not attempt to nationalize the economy; he wished only to reform and restore it. Watch the Video FDR’s First Inaugural Address on myhistorylab.com Steps Toward Recovery: Roosevelt attempted to spur industrial recovery through the National Recovery Administration (NRA). Under this program, different industries worked out codes that would eliminate cut-throat competition and ensure labor peace. The codes generally favored big business and were unenforceable. In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled the NRA unconstitutional.

Roosevelt’s solution to the Depression in agriculture was the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, under which farmers were paid to take land out of cultivation. Smaller harvests resulted in higher farm prices and larger farm incomes, but much of the land taken out of cultivation had been worked by sharecroppers and tenant farmers. These people were now dispossessed and moved to the cities. Read the Document An Attack on New Deal Farm Policies on myhistorylab.com REFORMING AMERICAN LIFE In his first two years as president, Roosevelt responded to immediate problems. In 1935, he began to propose measures that would permanently reform the economic institutions of the nation.

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HOW did the New Deal reform American life?

In responses to the challenges of Charles Coughlin, Francis Townsend, and Huey Long, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to approve sweeping measures to reform American life.

Chief among these was the Social Security Act, which established a system of old-age and disability pensions designed to alleviate poverty among the elderly and those unable to work.

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Challenges to FDR: Roosevelt’s inability to bring about full recovery made it possible for more radical demagogues to attract support. Father Charles Coughlin wanted to nationalize the banks; Francis Townsend wanted to distribute wealth by taking it from the young and giving it to the elderly. Until his assassination, Huey Long was so popular that he seemed a real threat to run as an independent for president. Watch the Video President Roosevelt Focuses on America’s Youth on myhistorylab.com Social Security: In 1935, Roosevelt helped push the Social Security Act through Congress.

Although critics complained that too few people would eventually collect pensions and that the law’s unemployment package was inadequate, Roosevelt believed that it was the best that he could hope for at the time. Read the Document Frances Perkins and the Social Security Act (1935, 1960) on myhistorylab.com THE IMPACT OF THE NEW DEAL The New Deal helped labor unions most, women and minorities least.

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WHAT was the lasting impact of the New Deal?

The New Deal encouraged the emergence of organized labor as a major force in American economic life. It modestly improved the lot of African Americans, although it failed to tackle the racial prejudice that was at the heart of much black poverty. It did little for Mexican Americans and other Latinos, and only a bit more for Native Americans.

Rise of Organized Labor: In 1932, unions were in decline. Passage of the National Recovery Act encouraged union organizers, and John L. Lewis formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), designed to organize unskilled workers. The CIO succeeded, often against violent resistance, in organizing unions in the steel and automobile industries. By the end of the 1930s, the CIO had five million members. Still, only 28 percent of urban workers belonged to a union in 1940. Read the Document Bob Stinson, Flint Sit Down Strike, 1936 on myhistorylab.com The New Deal Record on Help to Minorities: Some New Deal programs actually hurt racial minorities. The crop-reduction program allowed white employers to fire or evict African American and Hispanic workers and tenants. But other programs, like public works, helped, and prominent New Deal figures, Harry Hopkins or Eleanor Roosevelt for example, convinced minorities that the government was on their side. One minority, American Indians, gained greater control over their own affairs through the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. View the Image Arkies on the Road on myhistorylab.com THE NEW DEAL’S END The New Deal reached its peak in 1936, when Roosevelt was reelected. After that, although Roosevelt continued to be personally popular, he had great trouble in getting Congress to pass his programs.

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HOW and why did the New Deal end?

After a high point in 1936, the New Deal declined as a result of Roosevelt’s overreaching in the court-packing scheme, growing resistance among conservatives of both parties, and a sharp recession in 1937 that reminded the country that for all the New Deal’s accomplishments, it hadn’t ended the Great Depression.

The Supreme Court Fight: Roosevelt had long harbored a grudge against the Court because it had ruled adversely on several New Deal measures. In 1937, he asked Congress to give him the right to “pack” the Court. The proposal stirred up a tempest of protest, and FDR had to retreat. His loss in this contest emboldened his opponents.

The New Deal in Decline: FDR could no longer dominate Congress, and his attempts in 1938 to unseat several conservative Democrats failed. Even worse, Roosevelt’s abrupt cutback of funds for relief agencies in 1936 caused a severe slump in 1937. Roosevelt was blamed, and he finally had to resort again to huge government spending. By the end of 1938, the Republican party had revived.

CONCLUSION: THE NEW DEAL AND AMERICAN LIFE The New Deal did not end the Depression, it did little for those without political clout, and it did not fundamentally alter the nation’s economic system. Nevertheless, legislation like Social Security and the Wagner Act had enduring results and the political realignment of the 1930s lasted for decades. FDR did not solve the economic problems he inherited, but he helped the American people endure and survive the Great Depression. Watch the Video Dorothea Lange and Migrant Mother on myhistorylab.com

KEY TERMS: 1. The New Deal was Roosevelt’s program of measures aimed at relief, reform, and recovery to bring America out of the Great Depression.

2. The Bonus Army was composed of jobless World War I veterans who traveled to Washington, D.C., in 1932 to demand immediate payment of their bonuses as voted by Congress in 1924. They were forcibly dispersed by General Douglas MacArthur, making President Hoover very unpopular with the American public.

3. To explain what was going on, in conversational tones, with regard to issues such as banking, social security, and World War II, Roosevelt held the fireside chats over the radio.

4. As part of the New Deal measures, Roosevelt hoped the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) would help build dams to control floods, ease navigation, and produce electricity.

5. To provide young men between the ages of 18 and 25 with government jobs in reforestation and other conservation projects, Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

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6. Providing work relief for the unemployed was the main objective of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

7. A major New deal program, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) permitted manufacturers to establish industry-wide codes of “fair business practices,” setting prices and production levels. The NRA also provided for minimum wage and maximum working hours for labor and guaranteed labor the right to organize and bargain collectively.

8. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), created by Congress in 1933, allocated acreage among individual farmers, paying them subsidies to take land out of production. It didn’t work very well at first. Because Henry A. Wallace, secretary of agriculture, didn’t want to wait until the 1934 planting season to implement the program, farmers were paid in 1933 to plow under crops they had already planted and to kill livestock they were raising. The AAA worked better in 1934 and 1935 as land removed from production led to smaller harvests and rising farm prices.

9. The Social Security Act established a system of old-age, unemployment, and survivors’ insurance funded by wage and payroll taxes.

10. By providing federal support, the Wagner Act enabled unions to better organize workers and to extend collective bargaining to the nation’s auto and steel industries.

11. Roosevelt’s “court-packing” scheme was an attempt by Roosevelt to change the makeup of the Supreme Court in 1937. Claiming the Court was falling behind, he asked Congress to pass legislation that would appoint a new justice for each member of the Court who was over 70 up to a maximum of six. Congress saw this as a dangerous precedent, and even though it was not illegal, the Senate blocked early action on the proposal.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What caused the great crash? In a nutshell, overproduction: U.S. factories had produced more goods than Americans could consume. The market itself was not completely saturated; there were just millions of Americans who could not afford the products being offered.

Other factors that contributed to the crash and subsequent depression included excessive speculation, of course, as well as unstable economic conditions in Europe, the agricultural decline since 1919, and corporate mismanagement.

2. How did the Great Depression affect individual lives? People were affected physically and mentally. Men and women lived in lean-tos made of scrap metal and wood, while families went without meat and fresh vegetables for months. It was the psychological burden that was greatest, as year after year Americans suffered from grinding poverty with no relief.

Those who were unemployed stood in lines for hours, while crops rotted in the fields because prices were too low to make picking them worthwhile. African Americans and Mexican Americans were hit brutally hard, as blacks were often the first ones to be fired and nearly 500,000 Mexican Americans were deported back to Mexico, even in some cases families with children born in the United States.

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3. How did Franklin Roosevelt’s background prepare him to deal with the Great Depression? Roosevelt’s strong-willed mother had instilled in him an incredible selfconfidence. His bout with polio gave him the experience of personal suffering to make him sympathetic to others and yet able to drive them on as well. It also gave him incredible political appeal as a man who had overcome personal suffering. Roosevelt was able to take advantage of the opportunity the Great Depression offered him and he understood well the give and take of politics. Flattery was a tool he used easily to win over doubters and he was a master at manipulating the media.

4. What were the principle accomplishments of the Hundred Days? Starting with his inauguration speech declaring we had nothing to fear but fear itself, Roosevelt attacked the Depression like an enemy of the United States. He asked for and received special powers from Congress. His bank holiday, the closing of banks on March 5, while passing legislation to better monitor and support them, led to a reopening on March 13 that saw customers deposit more than they had withdrawn during the runs on the banks. This banking crisis settled down as Roosevelt made it clear he was going to reform and restore the American economic system but not change it drastically. His most auspicious New Deal program may have been the TVA, which delivered power, water, and better navigation to the Tennessee Valley. The CCC put jobless young men from the cities to work in forests building roads, fighting fires, and planting trees.

5. How did the New Deal try to promote recovery of industry and agriculture? Industrial recovery came first with the creation of the National Recovery Administration. It sought to achieve economic advance through planning and cooperation between government, business, and labor. While it was not mandatory to join the NRA, more than 500 industries had seen codes adopted through the agencies work by the summer of 1933. These codes set minimums for wages and conditions protecting labor, but they also established realistic limits on production and price guidelines. In farming the Agricultural Adjustment Administration was established. It didn’t see success until 1934 and 1935, but that was because Wallace had tried to implement the limits on crops too early. When farmers had to destroy crops and livestock in 1933 with people hungry, it did not look good for the New Deal. Farm income rose for the first time since World War I, but it was more from the subsidies given farmers than an actual rise in market prices.

6. Who were Charles Coughlin, Francis Townsend, and Huey Long, and what did they want? Three demagogues emerged to challenge Roosevelt and his New Deal programs.

Father Charles Coughlin struck first from his pulpit in Detroit. With a mixture of crank economic schemes and anti-Semitic rhetoric, he appealed to the discontented. A second voice emerged from California, where Francis Townsend developed a scheme to help the elderly who were suffering greatly during the depression. Townsend Clubs spread across the country based on the idea that everyone over 60 be given $200 a month that must be spent in 30 days. Perhaps the greatest threat came from Louisiana where Huey Long announced his “Share the Wealth” movement in 1934. A senator from Louisiana, Long advocated seizing all fortunes of more than $5 million and taxing incomes greater than $1 million at 100 percent to finance a plan giving each American a home worth $5,000 and an annual income 265

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of $2,500. Democrats feared Long might run as a third-party candidate in the next election and split the party, but an assassin killed him in September 1935.

7. What motivated the Social Security Act, and what did it accomplish? Americans were reminded by the Townsend movement that they alone among the developed countries of the world lacked a system to take care of the elderly, disabled, and unemployed. A presidential committee was formed to study the problem and make recommendations. The bill they submitted accomplished three things: an old-age pension financed equally by a tax on workers and employers, a system of unemployment compensation with employers paying a federal payroll tax and states setting the benefit amounts, and finally matching federal grants for the states to make welfare payments to the blind, handicapped, needy, elderly, and dependent children. Critics saw its weaknesses and Roosevelt knew it went against the grain for many Americans, but he felt the fact that people were earning their pension would preclude any politician from scrapping the program.

8. How did the New Deal benefit organized labor? The AFL remained focused on skilled workers. When Lewis argued with leadership and was expelled, he created the CIO pledging to use the Wagner Act to organize unskilled labor. The steel industrial giants gave up without a fight, realizing labor had the advantage with the federal government on its side.

GM resisted at first, but when labor employed the tactic of sitting down at their posts in the factories and threatened to break equipment if forcibly removed, they gave in and signed a contract with the UAW. Ford fought back using strikebreakers but cut a deal by 1941. Even with all the gains only 28 percent of all Americans belonged to unions by 1940. Many in the restaurant industry, retail, and service trades still worked long hours for low wages in poor conditions.

9. What did the New Deal accomplish, and not accomplish, for minorities? The New Deal did help African Americans survive, but it failed to confront racial injustice in the relief programs. Black relief payments were less than those for whites. NRA codes permitted lower wage scales for blacks and the AAA evicted many black farmers and sharecroppers.

Seventy-five percent of African Americans switched to the Democratic party and voted for Roosevelt in the elections. The New Deal provided assistance to 40 percent of the African American population during the depression. While FDR’s record was not perfect, he had done more than any president since Lincoln to help blacks.

10. What prompted Roosevelt to try to “pack” the Supreme Court, and how did the effort turn out? Congress was stunned by Roosevelt’s proposal in 1937 on how to handle the Supreme Court’s resistance to New Deal legislation. He recommended legislation that would add as many as six judges to the Court, one for each justice over 70 on the Court. He claimed that since the Supreme Court was so far behind in its caseload, these new judges would help speed things up. When Congress balked, but the Court passed several controversial decisions in favor of the New Deal, Roosevelt felt he had made his point and allowed his legislation to die in the Senate.

11. How did the New Deal end? When Roosevelt attempted to drive conservative southern Democrats from Congress, it backfired miserably on him. To make things worse, in the 266

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summer of 1937 the economy slipped into a recession. Roosevelt attempted to balance the budget prematurely and it cost the United States two additional years of hard times.

Republicans gained and the New Deal halted.

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CHAPTER 27 America and the World, 1921–1945 CHAPTER OUTLINE A Pact Without Power Isolationism The Lure of Pacifism and Neutrality War in Europe The Road to War From Neutrality to Undeclared War Showdown in the Pacific Turning the Tide Against the Axis Wartime Partnerships Halting the German Blitz Checking Japan in the Pacific The Home Front The Arsenal of Democracy A Nation on the Move Victory War Aims and Wartime Diplomacy Triumph and Destruction in the Pacific Conclusion: The Transforming Power of War

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: ROSIETHE RIVETER Rosie the Riveter stands for all the women who left home during World War II and went to work producing the weapons so crucial to America’s victory over Japan and Germany. Rosie became a heroine during the war, and she remains today a loved and relevant figure. The city of Richmond, California, recently dedicated a monument to her. Ironically, Rosie was never meant to outlive the war, and her survival may be used to illustrate to your students the mutability of symbols. What was created by the government for a patriotic purpose became, in time, subversive of the established social order.

Rosie was born from the government’s fear that women would not replace men in the heavy industrial plants that produced tanks, planes, ships, explosives, and the other material necessary for modern warfare. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, less than a third of all adult women worked for wages, and the rate was even lower for married women. Those statistics seemed to confirm the conventional wisdom that women did not like working outside the home and took wage work only until they married. In order to mount a fully effective industrial offensive, the United States would have to persuade millions of women to leave the kitchen and the nursery, where they held socially honored positions, and enter the grungy world of the factory, to work eight hours a day, six days a week. The factories paid well, thirty to fifty dollars a week, but government officials did not believe that high wages would attract women who had husbands to support them. It would be necessary to appeal to the patriotism of American women. That was Rosie’s mission.

Rosie was not the first or only symbol of the woman war worker. There was Wendy the Welder, Miss Victory, and a slew of posters without names, like the WE CAN DO IT! woman, going off to the factory in overalls, her sleeves rolled up, flexing her muscles. Rosie the Riveter did not become the eponym of the women factory workers until the song of that name, written by John Jacob Loeb and Redd Evans in 1942, began to catch on. As it did, government public relations agencies and the news media found and publicized real Rosies, like Rose Monroe who worked as a welder in a plane factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan. By war’s end, every woman working in a war plant was a Rosie, but the most famous of all was the Rosie drawn by Norman Rockwell for the May 29, 1943, cover of The Saturday Evening Post. This Rosie was a redhead of bulging biceps and prodigious thighs, who sat saucily, her goggles and face visor thrown back, eating a sandwich, her massive rivet gun slung easily across her ample lap.

So far as the government was concerned, Rosie was meant to recruit women into war work only for the duration. She was not supposed to lead women into thinking that their factory jobs would last into the postwar period. With victory, the government hoped, women would happily return to the kitchen. Rosie was therefore depicted as inescapably feminine and a bit out of place in the factory. The Rosie of the WE CAN DO IT! poster wore mascara and nail polish to work. The Rosie of the song longed for the life of nightclubs and cocktail parties that she patriotically denied herself while her boyfriend fought in the Marines. Even Rockwell’s muscular Rosie carried a compact and a dainty handkerchief into the factory. Rosie was supposed to rivet until the war was over and then rediscover her true self in changing diapers.

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The women war workers did not buy the last part of the government’s message. A survey in 1944 found that 85 percent of women war workers wanted to remain in heavy industry after the war, mainly because they needed money for such family expenses as rent, food, and medical attention. Since few women were willing to give up jobs that the government, employers, and union leaders had reserved for the men returning from military service, women were simply fired in massive numbers at the end of the war. Almost all of the women who made tanks during the war were dismissed within a year of V-J Day, as those factories converted to the production of cars. Altogether, nearly three million women who had jobs in 1945 were unemployed in 1946.

Had Rosie been no more than a tool of government propaganda, she would have been long forgotten, and if she were only the symbol of women betrayed by false promises, she would be hardly interesting. Rosie became much more. She became a symbol of women’s pride in doing a job well that they were not supposed to be able to do at all. Those women who entered the war plants confronted a hostile, macho culture in which dirt, discomfort, and danger were supposed to be scorned or ignored. One woman, assigned to a small platform sixty feet above a concrete floor, asked nervously how often people fell off. “Just once,” the foreman grimly replied. Toilets in the plants were usually so foul that only desperation made them endurable, and the constant noise of screeching and pounding, of metal against metal, of grinding and hammering, made it impossible to hear or think. Despite the odds, women were amazed to discover that they worked as well as men once they had the necessary training and experience. It was a two-woman team who set the record for most rivets shot during a ten-hour shift. Furthermore, in small ways and large, women made the workplace less hostile. Because of their demands, factories became cleaner and safer, employers set up child-care facilities, the government mandated equal pay for equal work. Though Rosie riveted for only a few years, she performed so well that she now speaks to succeeding generations of women of their right to work to the limits of their abilities at whatever they wish.

RELIVING THE PAST Combat in the Second World War blended century-old techniques of infantry action with the most awesome scientific advances in mass destruction. American soldiers fought on small Pacific atolls, through the North African desert, in jungles, and across the plains of Europe. No theater of operations was more difficult or more frustrating than the campaign to drive the Germans out of Italy. In their attacks on the Gothic line, American troops suffered the kind of attrition that had characterized trench warfare in World War I. Private First-Class Theodore J. Drozdowski, of the 363rd Regiment, 91st Division, remembered attacking a nameless German strong point. “Private James R. Wixon was firing at the machine gun, but he was killed. Sergeant McKelvey kept moving and when he got close enough he threw a Molotov cocktail, then ran and jumped into the pillbox. I heard him hollering at the Germans and the next thing I knew five Jerries came running out of the hole with Sergeant McKelvey behind them. He sent them back and we never had any more trouble from the pillbox after that.” This account comes from the regimental history of the 363rd, written by Ralph E. Strootman (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1947). It is only one of innumerable regimental histories, most of which were based on after-action reports and therefore gives an excellent picture of the war from the foot soldier’s point of view.

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On August 6, 1945, the world entered the age of atomic warfare. The specially trained crew of the B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, left Tinian early that morning and flew for seven hours until they were over Hiroshima. Everything about the flight was absolutely routine. As usual, in the final minute or so of the bombing run, the pilot handed over control of the plane to the bombardier. At 9:13:30 the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, radioed the bombardier, Major Tom Ferebee, “It’s all yours.” Ferebee guided the plane over his aiming point and at 9:14:17 pushed a button. Exactly one minute later, the bomb fell from the plane, and its release was noted in the log: “Bomb away.” Forty-three seconds later there was a blinding flash, followed by a tremendous shock wave. Even those aboard the Enola Gay who understood the weapon were surprised by the force of the explosion. The commanding officer, Captain Bob Lewis, wrote in his own log book: “My God. What have we done?” On the way back, the crew noted the presence of eight ships in Mishima, the potential target for another day. The best account of the flight, incorporating the plane’s log and interviews with the crew, is Joseph L. Marx, Seven Hours to Zero (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967).

CHAPTER SUMMARY A PACT WITHOUT POWER The author begins with one of the most fatuous moments in American history. On August 27, 1928, the United States signed a treaty outlawing war. This chapter covers a period when Americans adopted wishful thinking as a foreign policy. As the United States retreated into isolationism, fascism and communism gained strength, and it took a world war to halt their spread.

ISOLATIONISM Americans became even more determined to avoid foreign entanglements in the 1930s, when the Depression made domestic concerns seem more important and when the rise of militaristic regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan made war seem likely. Watch the Video Hitler and Roosevelt on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT was isolationism, and why was it so appealing to Americans in the 1920s and 1930s?

American disillusionment with the outcome of World War I led to a policy of isolationism, by which Americans hoped to avoid responsibility for the peace of Europe and Asia and to spare themselves the agony of war if peace failed. Isolationism had traditionally served Americans well, and many Americans expected that it would continue to do so.

The Lure of Pacifism and Neutrality: Most Americans suspected that they had been duped by the munitions makers into going to war in 1917 and resolved never again to fight a meaningless war. Led by Senator Gerald Nye, Congress passed neutrality legislation in 1935 that prohibited U.S. trade with or loans to any nation at war. Roosevelt made no attempt to block this legislation but refused to invoke the laws when Japan invaded China, thereby allowing China to buy arms from the United States. View the Map World War II in Europe on myhistorylab.com 270

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War in Europe: Roosevelt generally approved of English and French efforts to appease Hitler, but when Hitler seized Czechoslovakia, FDR attempted to revise the neutrality acts to give an advantage to England and France. Congress, however, refused. By July 1939, Roosevelt openly attacked the neutrality acts, but when World War II began in September 1939, Roosevelt reluctantly declared the acts in force.

THE ROAD TO WAR From 1939 to 1941, the American people gave their moral support to England and France and moved slowly into active alliance with them.

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HOW did the United States go from neutrality in the 1930s to war in 1941?

Franklin Roosevelt gradually led the United States from neutrality in the 1930s to war in 1941, responding to the aggression of Germany and Japan with a series of carefully chosen political and diplomatic steps, including aid to Britain, an undeclared naval war against Germany, and economic pressure on Japan, which lashed out by attacking Pearl Harbor.

From Neutrality to Undeclared War: From 1939 on, Roosevelt led the nation gradually into a position of helping England without actually entering the war. In November 1939, he persuaded Congress to allow any belligerent to buy American goods on a “cash and carry” basis. When Germany knocked France out of the war in 1940, Roosevelt stepped up aid to England, especially after his election to a third term in 1940. America began to give or loan war supplies to England and even began to transport these goods across the Atlantic, thereby creating incidents with German submarines. The nation debated the neutrality question intensely, and a consensus began to develop that a Nazi victory in Europe would threaten Western civilization.

FDR tried to mold public opinion but feared getting too far in front of it. Read the Document Charles Lindbergh, Radio Address (1941) on myhistorylab.com Showdown in the Pacific: Japan had added to its conquests while the war raged in Europe.

When Japan invaded and occupied large areas of China, the United States responded by limiting exports to Japan of strategic materials such as oil. This action in no way restrained the Japanese, who promptly allied themselves with Germany and Italy in 1940 and pushed into Indochina. In response, the United States ended all trade with Japan. Japan decided to negotiate with the United States but to attack if all Japanese demands were not granted. Japan wanted a free hand in China and the restoration of normal trade relations. The United States demanded that Japan take its troops from China. When diplomacy failed, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, in a surprise attack that crippled the Pacific fleet. The next day Roosevelt asked for a declaration of war, and it was granted immediately. Germany and Italy then declared war on the United States. It had taken years for the American people to realize their stake in defeating the Axis powers, but after Pearl Harbor, the American people were united in their determination to win the war. View the Image Attack on Pearl Harbor on myhistorylab.com

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TURNING THE TIDE AGAINST THE AXIS When America came into the war, the Axis was on the offensive everywhere. It took two years before the United States, England, and Russia could seize the initiative, and another two years to crush their enemies.

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HOW did America and its allies halt the advances of Germany and Japan?

The United States formed an alliance with Britain and the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan. American and British forces fought the Germans in North Africa and Italy, while Soviet forces beat back the Germans in Russia. American ships and planes defeated Japanese forces at the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea. Wartime Partnerships: One of the greatest advantages the Allies had over the Axis powers was the complete partnership between the United States and England, cemented by the personal friendship between FDR and Churchill. The Soviet Union was less satisfied with the alliance. Despite receiving American supplies, the Soviet Union often felt it was fighting alone against the Germans in Europe. These wartime tensions persisted even after victory.

Halting the German Blitz: The United States agreed to England’s strategy of chewing on the edges of German strength and invaded North Africa in November 1942. By May 1943, German troops there had been defeated, and the United States and England invaded Italy. Mussolini fell from power, but the Allies advanced slowly up the peninsula, sustaining heavy casualties. In the meantime, Russia decisively defeated Germany at the battle of Stalingrad and began to push into eastern Europe. View the Map World War II in Europe and North Africa on myhistorylab.com Checking Japan in the Pacific: The conquest of Japan was given second priority, and a twopronged drive was planned to defeat the Japanese. The army under Douglas MacArthur began a drive through New Guinea to the Philippines, while the navy under Chester Nimitz attacked westward from Pearl Harbor, island hopping to the Philippines. After the American victory at Midway in June 1942, U.S. forces moved into Japanese-held territories. View the Map World War II in the Pacific on myhistorylab.com THE HOME FRONT The war ended the Depression as American factories began to turn out tanks and aircraft at a tremendous rate. The economy was regulated for a maximum military effort, and scarce items, such as canned food, were rationed for civilians. The war introduced sweeping social changes, as women entered the workforce in large numbers, and the move from farm to factory accelerated.

The return of prosperity especially benefited the lowest-paid wage earners whose incomes actually rose faster than that of the rich. Since much of the wealth being earned could not be easily spent because of wartime restrictions, the nation’s savings increased rapidly, laying the foundation for postwar prosperity.

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HOW did American domestic life change during World War II? During the war American industry mobilized as never before, churning out arms and other equipment at a rate unimagined before 1941. The war effort provided jobs that allowed 272

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women and minorities to enter the workforce in record numbers. The war also led to discrimination against Japanese Americans, of whom 120,000 were forced into concentration camps.

The Arsenal of Democracy: The needs of the war effort, especially the need to expand manufacturing, led to profiteering, shortages, and rationing. Roosevelt wanted large tax increases, but Congress balked and the national debt soared. Nevertheless, most Americans saw their incomes rise substantially. View the Image Heil Hitler Poster on myhistorylab.com A Nation on the Move: During the war, the American people began to move to the South and West. The war encouraged early marriages and the birthrate began to climb. The result was a series of problems, such as housing shortages, more divorces, and neglected children. Some groups improved their conditions during the war. Women took jobs formerly reserved for men and saw their incomes rise by 50 percent. African Americans, despite persistent prejudice, demanded and got equal opportunities in war-related industries, which encouraged even greater migration from the rural South. Mexican Americans also migrated to the cities and found factory jobs. One large migration was a forced one. About 120,000 Japanese residents, many of them United States citizens, were moved from the West Coast and placed in detention camps. In 1944, the Supreme Court rejected their appeal for release, but in 1988 Congress finally acknowledged the injustice that had been done and voted compensation for the survivors of a horrible experience. Watch the Video Rosie the Riveter on myhistorylab.com VICTORY After 1943, the Allies began the task of conquering Germany. U.S. and British forces landed in France in June 1944 and in less than a year made a junction with Russian soldiers, who had overrun Germany and taken Berlin. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally.

Watch the Video Nazi Murder Mills, Warning: This Clip Is Very Graphic on myhistorylab.com

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HOW did the war end, and what were its consequences?

The war in Europe ended after the D-Day invasion of Normandy by American and British troops and the invasion of Germany by American, British, French, and Soviet troops. The collapse of German resistance resulted in the partition of Germany among the victors. The war in the Pacific ended after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and left the United States in undisputed control of Japan.

War Aims and Wartime Diplomacy: The United States and Russia were divided over what they hoped the war would accomplish. Russia believed that eastern Europe should be her prize for having suffered the most to conquer Germany. The United States wanted a collective security arrangement that included the United Nations. In a series of conferences at Yalta and Potsdam, the differences between the United States and Russia became more evident. Watch the Video The Big Three—Yalta Conference on myhistorylab.com Triumph and Destruction in the Pacific: In 1944, American forces cleared the Japanese from New Guinea and the Central Pacific, took the Philippines, and began intense air attacks on Japan.

Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but would be costly if an invasion had to be launched. On August 273

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6, 1945, the United States used the atomic bomb against Japan. This weapon had taken nearly seven years and billions of dollars to develop. After a second A-bomb attack, Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945. Watch the Video Truman on the End of World War II on myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF WAR World War II left the United States as the most powerful nation on earth, with worldwide responsibilities abroad, and at home a legacy of government intervention to improve the lives of its citizens.

KEY TERMS: 1. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 between the United States and France to outlaw war between the two nations was actually the result of a determined American effort to avoid involvement in the European alliance system.

2. The resurgence of militarism in Germany, Italy, and Japan resulted in the three totalitarian nations signing a pact in 1937 that created a Berlin–Rome–Tokyo axis that became known as the Axis Powers. This alliance was ostensibly aimed at communism and the Soviet Union, but it threatened the entire world.

3. The three neutrality acts passed by Congress in 1935 to 1937 were designed to keep the United States out of war.

4. President Roosevelt believed that aiding Britain would help America’s own self-defense.

Isolationists denounced the Lend-Lease plan as both unnecessary and untruthful. They believed there was no real way to “lend” war equipment.

5. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, convinced Roosevelt, the rest of government, and the American people that it was necessary to go to war.

6. The Allied invasion in Normandy, France, known as D-Day began June 6, 1944. It was extremely successful. By August 25, a little more than a month after the invasion began, Paris was liberated.

7. The Allied forces advanced, capturing the industrial Ruhr basin, which finally led them to breaking the Nazi concentration camps where the Nazi Holocaust, the slaughter of 6 million Jews and others whom Hitler despised, occurred.

8. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945 the Allies agreed to final plans for the defeat of Germany and the terms of its occupation. The Soviets agreed to allow free elections in Poland, but the elections were never held.

9. The Manhattan Project was a top-secret U.S. program that involved scientists, many of whom were refugees from Europe, who were working from 1939 at the University of 274

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Chicago; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and a remote laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to develop the atom bomb.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What was the purpose of the neutrality acts? They were passed by Congress to keep the United States out of war. The first act passed in 1935 banned the sale of arms to nations at war and advised Americans not to travel on their ships. A second act was passed in 1936; it forbade loans to countries at war. The final act passed in 1937 made the previous prohibitions permanent and required that all trade, except munitions, be on a cash-and-carry basis.

2. What was the American response to the outbreak of war in Europe? As appeasement began to crumble and Roosevelt began to slowly press for a revision of the neutrality acts, Congress and the Senate remained firm. When Hitler violated his promises at Munich, France and England declared war, and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany, questions began concerning the isolationist assurances that the United States could remain neutral through a major European conflict.

3. How did FDR overcome the opposition to war? Because of American resistance to war, led by the isolationists, Roosevelt moved cautiously at first. He sent 50 old destroyers to England and began to push for aid to the Allies. Americans, shocked that Germany had gained in six months what it could not acquire during four years of World War I, began to move toward the interventionist point of view. Roosevelt moved slowly until he won his third term. At that point he felt America was behind him and he pushed for the Lend-Lease Act to further trade with the Allies. He moved the United States slowly toward war but needed the Axis to give him a reason to jump into the war; the Japanese complied by bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

4. What led Japan to attack Pearl Harbor? As the United States put economic pressure on Japan, it continued to expand in French Indochina. The U.S. embargo on fuel oil and sheet metal could be tolerated, but when the United States put all oil under embargo Japan began to move toward war. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, to begin the war with the United States.

5. What countries were America’s principal allies during the war? Only the United States and Britain were able to form a complete partnership, but there were other allies that worked through difficulties. China was not happy the United States had committed to focus on Germany first. Roosevelt ignored the Free French Government under De Gaulle and focused on the pro-Nazi regime in Vichy France because it controlled the French navy. Relations with the Soviet Union started at a disadvantage as the Soviets had refused to pay the Russian war debts from World War I and had supported communists in the United States. It was, however, the inability of the United States and Britain to open a second front sooner that caused a rift the world would pay for following the end of World War II. 275

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6. Where did the Allies achieve early victories over Germany? Allied forces after some setbacks drove Rommel from North Africa where 300,000 German soldiers were taken prisoner. Russia broke the German army at Stalingrad and the United States followed up its success in Africa with an invasion of Sicily in Italy.

7. How did the United States break Japan’s momentum in the Pacific? The U.S. ability to attack the Japanese at long range because of its air superiority gave the United States a much needed victory at the small outpost of Midway. U.S. control of the Central Pacific was a key factor. The United States followed this up with a land attack in the Solomon Islands, finally driving the Japanese out of the islands at Guadalcanal.

8. How was industry reorganized during the war? At first industry ran itself. Factories that had been half full during the 1930s began to roar with activity. Auto plants were turned into tank and airplane factories. Henry Kaiser in California got his shipyards to reduce production time for merchant vessels from 105 days to 14 days. In large part the United States won because it built more weapons and war materials than the Japanese and Germans combined and it built ships faster than the German U-boats could sink them. Roosevelt was eventually forced to create a War Production Board, which allowed business to claim rapid depreciation and thus huge tax credits for new plants. They also received lucrative cost-plus contracts for desperately needed goods.

9. How did the war affect women and minorities? While most groups gained economically from the war, each group still found issues in which equal treatment was lacking. Women saw a 50 percent increase in pay and entered fields that had been exclusively open to men.

There were also concerns over their “latchkey” children, as most women entering the workforce were married and middle-aged. Schools had trouble keeping up with the influx of new children. Blacks gained some benefits economically in the civilian sphere. A. Phillip Randolph was able to get President Roosevelt to form the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) to eliminate racial discrimination in war industries. Black employment in federal jobs rose from 60,000 in 1941 to 200,000 in 1945. In fairness the labor shortage did more for blacks than the FEPC did. Both blacks and Mexicans experienced prejudice with race riots in New York for blacks and riots in Los Angeles for Mexicans. One black soldier stated, “Here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man.”

10. How did the objectives of the United States and Soviet Union conflict? The Soviet mistrust of the West only grew as the Allies took longer and longer to get into the war. The Soviets determined to conquer and hold as much of Eastern Europe as they could. America came to believe its failure to join the League of Nations had caused the war and Americans and their government determined to give collective security under the United Nations one more try. The Soviets agreed to join as well and to jump in against the Japanese after Germany was defeated. Once the Allies met for the second time at Yalta the military situation had shifted to favor the Soviets and they drove a hard bargain. They refused to give up Poland and Eastern Europe but did promise to hold elections. Stalin reiterated his promise to join the United Nations and enter the Pacific war three months after the defeat of 276

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Germany. Roosevelt had offered concessions in Asia in return, including control of Manchuria.

11. What was the role of the atomic bomb in ending the war against Japan? Truman had been unaware of the existence of the bomb until he became president. He followed the recommendation of the Manhattan Project committee in dropping the bomb. American objectives were simple: end the war and save thousands of American lives. There was some thought of how the Soviets might view this powerful weapon, but revenge for Pearl Harbor and ending the war quickly were at the forefront of the decision. Weather dictated Hiroshima as the first target where 60,000 died and 4 square miles of the city was incinerated. After a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the emperor personally ordered his advisors to surrender to the United States.

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CHAPTER 28 The Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1960 CHAPTER OUTLINE The Potsdam Summit The Cold War Begins The Division of Europe The Atomic Dilemma Containment The Truman Doctrine The Marshall Plan The Western Military Alliance The Berlin Blockade The Cold War Expands The Military Dimension The Cold War in Asia The Korean War The Cold War at Home Truman’s Troubles Truman Vindicated The Loyalty Issue McCarthyism in Action The Republicans in Power Conclusion: The Continuing Cold War

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE PRESIDENT AND THE GENERAL Students today may have become too accustomed to the idea that American military forces go into combat subject to political direction or interference. That indeed has been the nation’s most recent experience. During the Vietnam War, the secretary of defense became better known than the general in command of the troops, and during the invasion of Panama, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acting from Washington, D.C., actually supervised a bombing run for one of the American aircraft. While civilian control of the military has long been an American tradition, this close involvement in battlefield tactics has not. Generals were usually left to fight the wars. There was, therefore, a potential conflict between the nation’s military and political leaders, the last spectacular example of which was President Truman’s dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur, commander of United States and United Nations forces in Korea, in April 1955.

Truman’s personal dislike for MacArthur does not explain why the general was fired. As Truman later said, “I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals.” MacArthur was fired because American political and military objectives in Korea diverged in the early months of 1951. MacArthur never saw much glory in the carnage of a battlefield. Decorated for valor in the field on several occasions during World War I, he still testified that the sight of corpses in Korea caused him to vomit. He had been conspicuously sparing of his troops’ lives in World War II, and it offended all of his instincts as a general to sacrifice men in a stalemate. MacArthur made the point time and again that “in war, there is no substitute for victory.”

Victory, however, is always defined politically as well as militarily, and MacArthur either could not or would not see that. One cannot help sympathize, however, because the political leaders of the nation did not follow a consistent policy. Before the North Korean invasion, South Korea seemed of little importance to the United States. Truman had no desire to commit the United States to the reunification of Korea and even acted to prevent the South Koreans from trying to unite their country by force by denying them tanks and other offensive weapons.

In January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson announced that Korea would have to depend on itself and the United Nations for defense against a communist attack.

However, when North Korea forces crossed the thirty-eighth parallel, Truman believed that Moscow was testing the American will to fight. He ordered an immediate military response. The United Nations joined the American effort, but the United States would have fought in Korea alone if necessary. Originally, therefore, America became involved in Korea to prove its strength to the Russians, and the Truman administration believed that a strong American response would itself end the invasion. When North Korea overran most of the peninsula, however, it became the American objective to defeat the invaders and to liberate South Korea. This was accomplished when MacArthur pulled off the Inchon invasion.

Ironically, the victory at Inchon was so complete that America’s political objectives again changed. It was now possible to unify Korea. Some of the United Nations allies asked the United States to hold its troops beneath the thirty-eighth parallel, and on October 2, the Soviet delegate to the U.N. Security Council asked for a cease-fire, indicating that Russia would be willing to 278

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settle for a return to the pre-invasion situation. While the Americans hesitated, South Korean forces raced across the border. American troops followed when no word came from Washington that they should stop.

The great risk in going north, as Truman and MacArthur realized, was that China or Russia might intervene, but this risk was discounted. At their Wake Island conference, for example, Truman and MacArthur mainly discussed how to rebuild Korea as one nation. When the Chinese did come into the war and pushed American forces well below the thirty-eighth parallel, it seemed at first to both Truman and MacArthur that the Chinese advance could not be stopped. At this point, it became American policy to fight the war solely to preserve the freedom of South Korea. From this position, Truman never again deviated.

In the first months of 1951, however, the Chinese drive stalled, and United Nations forces advanced once again to the thirty-eighth parallel. It seemed to MacArthur and others that the Chinese army was on the verge of collapse and he wished to finish it off by pushing north.

Truman, however, refused to give permission and felt it was now time to end the war through diplomacy. Because MacArthur publicly opposed this policy, he was fired.

It is not easy even in retrospect to say who was right in this momentous quarrel, but the conflict clearly demonstrated the need to use the nation’s military power within the context of a clear political purpose, a lesson not easily learned.

RELIVING THE PAST In a democracy, where public opinion counts for much, it is difficult to shift foreign policy abruptly. In 1945, the American people considered Germany and Japan their enemies, and even though these nations had been reduced to rubble, there was still a fear that they might rise again to threaten world peace. It is difficult now to recapture that mood, but because so many Americans feared and hated Germany and Japan, they believed that Russia was a necessary ally. It took some doing to convince the American public that Russia was instead the nation’s principle enemy. The most influential effort in that regard among the nation’s intellectual elite appeared in an article in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs. “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” signed by “X,” had been written by George Kennan, at that time a State Department official. “It is clear,” Kennan wrote, “that the main element of any U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient, but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansion tendencies.....” Kennan had used the key word that has described American policy toward Russia all through the Cold War. For the general public, the word “containment” is probably too abstract. Winston Churchill used a far more telling phrase in describing the Soviet Union’s expansion into central Europe. In a speech delivered in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1947, Churchill told the American people, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” It is interesting that both Kennan and Churchill based the policies they recommended on a psychological sketch of the Soviet character. Churchill’s speech, which is characteristically eloquent, was printed in full in the New York Times.

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CHAPTER SUMMARY THE POTSDAM SUMMIT The author begins with the Potsdam Conference between Truman and Stalin just after the defeat of Germany. He contrasts Truman, good-hearted but stubborn, with Stalin, brutal but pragmatic. They quickly clashed over the fate of postwar Germany, a presage of the conflict to come between the United States and the Soviet Union.

THE COLD WAR BEGINS The Cold War developed gradually when the United States and Russia failed to resolve three crucial issues-control of postwar Europe, economic aid, and, most important, nuclear disarmament.

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HOW did the Cold War begin?

The Cold War began as the United States and the Soviet Union discovered that their interests in Europe conflicted. Each feared the other, and each, acting on its fears, took actions that heightened the other’s fears. Atomic weapons made the mistakes of miscalculation far greater than in the past and made everyone more fearful.

The Division of Europe: In 1945, Russian troops occupied Eastern Europe and American troops occupied Western Europe. The Soviet Union, concerned about national security, was determined to establish regimes in Eastern Europe that would be friendly or subservient. The United States did not appreciate Russia’s concern and insisted on national self-determination through free elections throughout Europe. The result was that Stalin converted Eastern Europe into a system of satellite nations through harsh and brutal means. Read the Document Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech (March 5, 1946) on myhistorylab.com The Atomic Dilemma: The most crucial postwar question concerned the atomic bomb. When the Russians discovered that the United States and England were working secretly on the bomb, Stalin ordered his scientists to start work on the same weapon. Thus, the nuclear arms race began in 1943, before the war ended. After the war, the United States proposed a gradual elimination of all nuclear weapons, but the plan (the Baruch Plan) was so gradual that it would have preserved the U.S. atomic monopoly for years. The Soviet Union, with a larger conventional army than America, proposed the immediate abolition of all atomic weapons. Read the Document Atomic Age Begins on myhistorylab.com CONTAINMENT The United States, hoping to take England’s place as the supreme arbiter of world affairs, decided to deal with the Soviet Union from a position of strength. The resulting policy was called “containment.”

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WHAT was containment, and why was it adopted?

Containment was the American policy of preventing the expansion of Soviet power and influence. It was adopted as a way of preserving American interests without excessively risking war.

The Truman Doctrine: The first application of the containment doctrine came in 1947, when Truman asked Congress to supply funds to keep Greece and Turkey within the western sphere of influence. The Truman Doctrine marked an informal declaration of cold war against the Soviet Union. Watch the Video President Truman and the Threat of Communism on myhistorylab.com The Marshall Plan: The United States also acted to prevent the spread of communist influence in war-torn Western Europe. In 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed an economic aid package to enable Europe to reconstruct its industries. Russia refused this aid because it had political conditions, but the Marshall Plan, adopted by Congress in 1948, did foster prosperity in Western Europe that in turn stimulated the American economy. Read the Document George Marshall, The Marshall Plan (1947) on myhistorylab.com The Western Military Alliance: The third and final step in the first phase of the containment policy was the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance that included the United States, Canada, and most of Western Europe. The Senate approved the treaty in 1949, and soon after, U.S. troops were stationed in Europe. NATO was an overreaction to the Soviet danger and simply intensified Russia’s fear of the Western powers. View the Map Cold War in Europe, 1950 on myhistorylab.com The Berlin Blockade: The Russians responded to containment by cutting off access to Berlin in June 1948. Truman refused to withdraw the American troops stationed there and instead ordered an airlift to supply the city. After Truman’s unexpected reelection in 1948, the Russians retreated and ended their blockade in 1949. The crisis, which took the world to the edge of war, ended with an American political victory but served to illustrate the division of Europe between the two superpowers. This division soon spread beyond the European scene.

THE COLD WAR EXPANDS The United States and Russia began arming themselves to the teeth in the late 1940s, and they finally divided Asia as they had divided Europe.

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HOW did the Cold War expand from Europe to Asia?

The Cold War expanded from Europe to Asia when the United States and the Soviet Union took opposite sides in the Chinese civil war. Shortly after the communist victory in China, the Cold War spilled into Korea, where communist North Korea battled anticommunist South Korea, with the United States siding with South Korea and the Soviet Union and Communist China backing North Korea.

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The Military Dimension: The United States improved its security after World War II. The 1947 National Security Act established the Department of Defense to unify the armed forces, the Central Intelligence Agency to coordinate intelligence-gathering activities, and the National Security Council to advise the president on security matters. For the most part, the United States put most of its growing defense budget into building up the air force. After Russia developed an atomic bomb, the United States began work on a hydrogen bomb. The Truman administration was determined to win the Cold War regardless of cost. Read the Document National Security Council Memorandum Number 68 (1950) on myhistorylab.com The Cold War in Asia: In 1945 both Russia and America occupied large areas of Asia. The United States moved quickly to consolidate its hold over Japan and the Pacific Islands that were once ruled by Japan. China, however, lay between the American and Russian spheres of influence and was torn between pro-Western Chiang Kai-shek and communist Mao Zedong.

When Mao won and China entered the Soviet orbit, the Truman administration, attacked by Republicans for losing China, refused to recognize communist China and began building up Japan.

The Korean War: The Cold War turned hot in June 1950, when communist forces from North Korea, with Russian approval and Chinese support, invaded South Korea, part of the American sphere of influence. Whether Russia ordered the invasion is unknown, but Truman believed it had. He made the defense of South Korea a United Nations effort, but the brunt of the fighting was borne by Americans. When North Korean forces were routed, Truman decided to unify Korea by force, despite Chinese warnings. When China did enter the war, American troops were pushed back into South Korea, and the war became a stalemate. The most significant result of the war was massive American rearmament. America was now ready to stop Soviet expansion, anywhere in the world, by force of arms. Watch the Video The Korean War Armistice on myhistorylab.com THE COLD WAR AT HOME The Cold War made it difficult for Truman to continue the economic policies of the New Deal and led to fears of communist subversion. The Republicans used these fears to revive their party.

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HOW did the Cold War affect life in America?

The Cold War spawned widespread fears of communist subversion in the United States. It led to a campaign to ensure loyalty on the part of government workers and fostered the broader phenomenon of McCarthyism, an exaggerated effort to find communists in nearly every corner of American life. Although McCarthyism eventually burned itself out, it contributed to the election of Eisenhower in 1952, which ended twenty years of Democratic control of the White House.

Truman’s Troubles: Surrounded by ineffective cronies and prone to stubborn selfrighteousness, Truman faced an apathetic public, inflation, and labor unrest as he attempted to extend New Deal reforms. His increasing unpopularity allowed the Republicans to win a majority of Congress in the 1946 elections.

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Truman Vindicated: By 1948, it seemed impossible that Truman could be reelected. The Republican candidate, Thomas Dewey, took victory for granted while southern Democrats and northern liberals deserted Truman. Nevertheless, the president was reelected by the old Roosevelt coalition, which still felt a sense of gratitude for New Deal programs and which resented such Republican policies as the Taft-Hartley Act, perceived as anti-union. The Republicans had not made foreign policy an issue in the election but now looked for ways to challenge Truman’s handling of the Cold War. View the Image President Harry Truman, 1948 on myhistorylab.com The Loyalty Issue: Not for the first time in their history, the American people feared that the nation was being attacked from within. A few sensational spy cases and Truman’s own overheated rhetoric gave some credence to irrational fears. The Truman administration itself tried to calm the public by violating civil rights in a campaign against “subversives,” but the Democrats were generally blamed for “losing” China to Communism and for Russia’s development of a hydrogen bomb. Read the Document Ronald Reagan, Testimony before HUAC (1947) on myhistorylab.com McCarthyism in Action: In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, exploited the fear of Communism within the government. Using the technique of the multiple lie, by making so many accusations that the innocent never had an opportunity to respond, McCarthy frightened the Senate, bedeviled the administration, and even attacked the army. His rough treatment of privileged bureaucrats attracted wide support, most especially from Republicans in the Midwest and Irish, Italian, and Polish workers. Listen to the Audio File Joseph P. McCarthy Speech on myhistorylab.com The Republicans in Power: The Republican party won the presidency in 1952 by nominating the enormously popular Dwight Eisenhower, who promised to end the Korean War. Once elected, Eisenhower settled for a stalemate in Korea. Rather than face McCarthy head-on, Eisenhower waited for the senator to make a fool of himself, which he did by trying to prove that the United States Army was a hotbed of treason. Watch the Video Ike for President: Campaign Ad, 1952 on myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: THE CONTINUING COLD WAR Eisenhower feared the effect of permanent war on American society. He warned that a “military- industrial complex” was developing with the potential of distorting a peaceful, prosperous way of life. Although he left office convinced that he had failed to end the Cold War, he had actually begun the process of coexistence.

KEY TERMS: 1. Although Truman, Churchill, and Stalin discussed the future of Europe, all the agreements reached were “broken as soon as the unconscionable Russian Dictator returned to Moscow.”

At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Stalin had essentially set out to deceive both Churchill and Truman. This would lead to the onset of the Cold War. 283

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2. The Soviets saw the American demand for free elections as subversive, because they knew that popularly chosen regimes would be unfriendly to Russia. Because of this, Stalin brought down the Iron Curtain (suppression of individual rights throughout Eastern Europe) and created satellite governments.

3. Soviet insistence on immediate nuclear disarmament without inspection doomed the Baruch Plan, with its emphasis on inspection that would preserve the American atomic monopoly indefinitely, and led to a nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

4. A policy of containment was adopted because it was “a long-term, patient but firm, and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” In the long run, the plan did prove successful.

5. The Truman Doctrine was an informal declaration of cold war stating that the United States would lend aid to any nation fighting communism.

6. The Marshall Plan worked extremely well to rebuild the war-torn economies of Western European nations. After the plan was approved by Congress in 1948, the investment paid huge dividends over the next four years, generating a broad industrial revival in Western Europe that became self-sustaining by the 1950s.

7. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in 1949 as a military mutual-defense pact between the United States, Canada, and ten European nations. There were two main features: First, the United States committed itself to the defense of Europe and, second, in order to reassure worried Europeans, the United States promised to honor its agreement.

8. The Berlin airlift was a response to a Soviet land blockade of Berlin in 1948 that included a massive airlift of food, fuel, and supplies into Berlin every 24 hours. It was successful because it forced the Soviets to end the blockade in 1949.

9. Congress passed the National Security Act in 1947 in response to perceived threats from the Soviet Union after World War II. It established the Department of Defense and created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Council.

10. Its purpose was to redefine America’s national defense policy. NSC-68 committed the United States to a massive military buildup to meet the challenge posed by the Soviet Union.

11. The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed the closed shop and secondary boycotts. It also authorized the president to seek injunctions to prevent strikes that posed a threat to national security.

12. A charge of communists working in the State Department began a crusade lasting four and a half years to hunt down alleged communists in government. Senator McCarthy of Wisconsin would charge a government official with being a communist and when they came to answer the charge, he would create a new and different charge. In all cases the charges were never 284

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proven to be true, and it became a witch hunt. The strident nature of the campaign led to it be called McCarthyism.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What caused the division of Europe after World War II? The Russians were unwilling to allow Poland or the other Eastern bloc countries to form non-Communist governments. They had been invaded too many times through Poland, and saw the Western efforts at national self-determination as subversive. Germany was the key example, where the West democratized its zones, while Russia communized its zone, which included Berlin.

2. How did the atomic bomb influence international relations? Because the Americans and the British had kept the development of the bomb secret problems were bound to occur.

Eisenhower’s recommendation that the United States must hold on to the bombs it had and limit the capability of others to produce bombs stemmed from the massive U.S. military drawdown after the war that led to the Baruch Plan. A plan of inspections and sanctions did not go over well, especially with the Soviets who still had a massive army and wanted that strength to be an advantage for them.

3. What was the significance of the Truman Doctrine? By creating a policy that was tantamount to an informal declaration of war, the United States guaranteed the Cold War would occur. The president’s request for $400 million for the military guaranteed support for his containment policy, but the Truman Doctrine guaranteed the United States was on a collision course with the Soviet Union around the globe.

4. What was the purpose of the Marshall Plan? Marshall and Acheson realized that Europe was failing to recover from World War II and the United States needed to become economically involved in that recovery to save Europe and protect it from Sovietization.

Marshall, at a speech at Harvard, offered aid to all the countries of Europe including Russia and her satellites. It was a huge gamble, but it paid off when the Soviets refused the aid and then crushed the Czech revolt a few months later. Congress moved overwhelmingly to support the Marshall Plan and it successfully led to Europe’s recovery and self-sustaining economies developed by the 1950s.

5. What were the important features of NaTO? For the first time since the treaty with France after the revolution, the United States agreed to an entangling treaty. First, the United States would defend Europe, the language of the treaty stating an attack against one member was an attack against all. This meant the American atomic shield extended over Europe as well.

When Truman sent Eisenhower to Europe in late 1950 with four army divisions, that became the second significant feature of NATO. Europeans believed this would deter the Soviets from invading Europe for fear of American involvement.

6. How did the United States respond to the Berlin blockade? America and her allies responded to the Soviet blockade with the Berlin airlift. The idea of sending an armored column was rejected and a two-phase policy enacted. A massive airlift was organized to provide food for 2 million civilians and 10,000 troops, and 2,500 tons of supplies were 285

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carried through the air to Berlin every 24 hours. In case the Soviets got daring and attempted to interrupt the airlift, Truman sent 60 B-29s capable of carrying atomic bombs to England.

He was bluffing, but the Russians never called him on it, as the B-29s did not have atomic bombs. Stalin did not interrupt the flow of supplies, but he did refuse all diplomatic overtures to work out the crisis.

7. What changes did the Cold War prompt in American military institutions and policies?

It was universally agreed that the U.S. military needed to be integrated into one system, a belief that was reinforced by the Cold War. The National Security Act established a Department of Defense to be headed by a civilian secretary of cabinet rank to preside over the armed services. Both the CIA and the NSC were created as well. The CIA would coordinate all intelligence gathering, while the NSC would be made up of cabinet secretaries to advise the president on national security. The Truman administration was willing to spend upward of 50 percent on the national defense. Congress provided an increase in military spending, and while all the services were supposed to be equal, the Air Force quickly rose to the top of the food chain in the atomic world with its ability to deter attack and retaliate if the deterrence failed.

8. What was the role of the United States in China’s civil war? America attempted, to no avail, to prevent the Chinese civil war. Marshall attempted to form a coalition government between the Nationalists and Mao’s communists. Chiang, the leader of the Nationalists, insisted he was going to liquidate the communists, while Mao attempted to play the United States off against Russia. The Nationalists were so corrupt and inept that when fighting broke out the communists drove them from the mainland to the small island of Formosa (Taiwan today). Mediation had failed and intervention so close to the end of World War II was impossible.

9. How did the Korean War begin? How did it end? When North Korea crossed the 38th parallel in June 1950, it did so with Soviet and Chinese support. Stalin had warned Korean leader Kim Il Sung that if “he got kicked in the teeth. . .” he would do nothing; Mao would have to help. Mao too reluctantly signed off on the invasion at least deferring to the Russian belief that the United States would not support the South. They were wrong. The United States responded within days sending U.S. troops to fight in Korea. The war finally ended with a stalemate ensuing between the two sides, but the United States had rearmed and began a global contest against the Soviets in arms as well as words.

10. What troubles did the country encounter on converting from war to peace? As Congress ended wartime controls, prices and wages rose quickly. When prices rose by 25 percent, labor demanded higher pay to offset the loss of overtime and labor unrest ensued. The spring of 1946 saw the culmination of the unrest with a coal miners’ strike that nearly shut down the industry of the United States and a debilitating railroad strike. Truman was sensitive to labor demands so he let businesses negotiate higher wages; they then passed the increase on to the consumer in higher costs. Truman criticized Congress for ending wartime price controls but provided no blueprint on how to lower inflation. Homemakers blamed the president for the high prices, while labor attacked him for asking Congress for the power to draft the striking railroad workers into the army.

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11. What were the key issues in the 1948 presidential election? While Truman’s failed efforts in domestic policy seemed to be the issues that would open the door for his defeat by the Republicans, it turned out to be his foreign policy hard line that enabled him and the Democrats to hold onto the White House and retake Congress. The old Roosevelt coalition of farmers, organized labor, urban ethnic groups, and blacks shocked the pollsters. Truman had barnstormed the country and it reminded people of everything good the Democrats had given them during the Depression. Truman’s hard-line policies against the Soviets, the Truman Doctrine, and the Marshall Plan showed a strong counter to Soviet aggression.

12. How did the fear of communism permeate American domestic life? An American fear of radicalism had existed almost from the beginning of the Republic. The Alien and Sedition Acts to the nativism of the 1930s and the first Red Scare showed American fear. A second Red Scare emerged when the Canadians uncovered a Soviet spy ring in 1946. The House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) held hearings that revealed there had been communists active in the Agriculture and Treasury Departments in the 1930s. Truman claimed it was a “red herring” but when he enacted his own loyalty programs to make sure there were no communists working for the government it only seemed to reaffirm the fears of the public.

13. How did Joseph McCarthy use the power of fear to win a devoted following?

McCarthy’s ability to exploit the press using accusations combined with promises of future revelations, created an atmosphere of fear in Washington. McCarthy delighted in making startling charges of communist sympathies against high profile figures in and out of government. His opposition to Maryland Senator Millard Tydings led to his losing reelection.

McCarthy attacked the Secretary of State and even General George Marshall. His attacks on the wealthy and powerful gained him a devoted following among groups as diverse as Catholics and ethnic groups. A simple solution of defeating the enemy at home, rather than in an expensive foreign war appealed to many.

14. What foreign and domestic issues influenced the election of Eisenhower in 1952?

Republicans were able to capitalize in 1952 on the frustrations of Americans. The stalemate in Korea and the second Red Scare convinced many Americans it was time for a change.

When scandals involving Truman aides appeared, people began looking for someone to “clean up Washington.” As Nixon, Eisenhower’s running mate, hammered away on domestic issues, Eisenhower himself threw the knockout punch, promising to go to Korea himself to end the conflict.

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CHAPTER 29 Affluence and Anxiety, 1945–1960 CHAPTER OUTLINE Levittown: The Flight to the Suburbs The Postwar Boom Postwar Prosperity Life in the Suburbs The Good Life?

Areas of Greatest Growth Critics of the Consumer Society The Struggle over Civil Rights Civil Rights as a Political Issue Desegregating the Schools The Beginnings of Black Activism Conclusion: Restoring National Confidence

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE WAR ON POVERTY The tendency of Americans to use overblown rhetoric requires constant correction, and students cannot be reminded too often that words matter and that false analogies can frustrate good intentions. It has become common, for example, to describe anything requiring government exertion as a war. Jimmy Carter carried the trend to absurdity when he described energy conservation as “the moral equivalent” of war, and we have had wars on drugs, on pollution, on illiteracy, on intolerance, and on various diseases. The “war on poverty” illustrates the danger of using a false rhetoric as the basis for public policy.

President Johnson declared “unconditional war” on poverty in 1964. Poverty was a timely issue because it had been recently rediscovered, especially with the publication of The Other America

by Michael Harrington in 1962. Harrington awakened the nation to the fact that not everyone shared the general prosperity of the 1950s; indeed, Harrington argued that as many as 50 million Americans lived in poverty. In need of a more precise target, the Johnson administration calculated the famous “poverty line,” relating income to family size. For example, a non-farm family of four with an annual income below $3,130 was considered poor, while a farm family of the same size with an income less than $1,925 was in the same situation. Using those figures, the Johnson administration calculated that there were about 35 million poor Americans.

Having fixed the target, the government devised a proper strategy. Just as in Vietnam, the objective was not so much to kill people as to win hearts and minds. Those who rediscovered poverty in the 1960s redefined the poor. Throughout American history, the poor had been those with character defects, those with exceptional hard luck, or those too old or too ill to work.

African Americans always constituted a disproportionate part of the poor, mainly because of racism. It was commonly assumed that almost anyone could become poor, and nearly all of the poor were regarded as “deserving,” or entitled to charity. In the 1960s, for the first time, the poor became “others.” Harrington, for example, described a “psychology of poverty,” characterized by “pessimism and fatalism.” The poor had a different family structure and deviant sexual mores.

They had a unique culture that perpetuated their poverty from generation to generation. The war on poverty attacked this supposed culture of poverty in many ways. Programs like Head Start were intended to rescue children before they inculcated the hopelessness of their parents. The most remarkable aspect of the war effort was the community action grants, which required “maximum feasible participation” of the poor themselves in determining how the money was to be spent. It was expected that the gift of responsibility would awaken the poor, thus transforming despair into hope, passivity into activism.

The American people received a stream of communiques from the front lines, all designed to assure them that the war was being won. Poverty did decrease. By 1976, there were 10 million fewer persons living below the poverty line, which had been adjusted for inflation, than there had been in 1964, and some economists, like Martin Anderson, argued that poverty had been eliminated as a national problem. But the success of the government’s programs was hardly noticed because they were judged by a false criterion. Conservatives claimed that the war had been won and that the government could now demobilize. Liberals argued that the war was actually being lost and that the nation had to fight harder. Harrington, for example, claimed that 289

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there were still as many poor in 1984 as there had been in 1964. The public generally agreed with the liberals but drew different conclusions. If massive amounts of money had been thrown into an unsuccessful war, it was time to concede defeat. Just as escalation in Vietnam seemed to produce only greater escalation by the enemy, it seemed that the government was paying people to remain poor. The feeling, most clearly expressed by Ronald Reagan, began to grow that government was not the solution; government was the problem. In an odd twist of logic, welfare became the cause of poverty and the quickest way to end poverty was to end welfare. That sort of reasoning made it possible for the “centrist” Democrat, Bill Clinton, to cooperate with Congressional Republicans, like Newt Gingrich, to “end welfare as we know it” and to substitute a new system built around term limits, the idea being to remind welfare recipients that the nation will support them only as a temporary measure.

Amid all the rhetoric, the government continued to collect data and discovered what had always been the common sense of the matter. People drift in and out of poverty; most poor people work and most of them are as opportunistic as every other good American. When jobs are available, the poor take them and poverty declines. There is, it is true, a class of people described by the government as “persistently poor.” In 1978, they were defined as those who had lived below the poverty line for eight straight years. A minority of them were those with character defects and those with exceptional hard luck. Most of them, about three-quarters, were those who were too old or too ill to work.

RELIVING THE PAST In 1949, fewer than 3 percent of all American homes had television sets. By the end of the 1950s, television was as common in American homes as indoor plumbing. The effects of the rabbit-eared box with its quivering black-and-white images were many, immediate, and dramatic. Two incidents in the 1950s demonstrate one of the more remarkable results of television- its tendency to blur the distinction between real life and life on the screen.

On January 19, 1953, Lucille Ball gave birth to a boy on the same day that her alter ego, Lucy Ricardo, gave birth to a boy on the popular situation-comedy series, I Love Lucy. Lucy’s pregnancy had been followed by the nation with rapt attention, mostly because Lucy Ricardo had become “family” to most Americans, and in part because CBS carefully managed the publicity surrounding the pregnancy and birth. The network even hired a Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a Jewish rabbi as consultants to make sure nothing was said to offend any of the three main religious groups. The script called for Lucy Ricardo to have a boy, and Lucille Ball did have a boy. There are probably millions of Americans who still do not clearly distinguish Desi Arnaz, Jr., from Ricky Ricardo.

The ability of television to create real-life, long-running soap operas was demonstrated in the pathetic case of Charles Van Doren. In 1956, the NBC quiz show Twenty-One was being dominated week after week by a contestant whom the producers of the show considered unattractive. Unfortunately, he was unbeatable in a contest of general, trivial knowledge. The producers finally induced Charles Van Doren, a young man whose television persona was considered positive, ratings-wise, to cooperate in a fix. Van Doren received questions and answers in advance and became invincible. By late 1956, Van 290

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Doren had become a national hero as he went on week after week, answering questions from a bewildering variety of subjects. The public especially appreciated his hesitations, his audible stream of consciousness, his sweating. Intellectuals were especially pleased and learned articles were written about Van Doren’s thought processes. By February 1957, Van Doren had amassed $138,000 and was besieged with letters from fans and offers from Hollywood. But his fear of discovery had also grown, and he begged the producers to have him lose. The end was spectacular. On February 18, he was matched against Vivienne Nearing and could only tie with her. On February 25, Mrs. Nearing again tied Van Doren. The suspense built up unbearably. On March 11, Van Doren finally lost. His earnings fell to $129,000, but he was given a job at NBC. In 1958, charges of having fixed the quiz show began to surface. This led to Van Doren’s admission in November 1959 that he had indeed cooperated in a sham. In admitting his guilt, Van Doren exclaimed, “I’ve learned a lot about life.” He seemed not to realize that life and television were no longer mutually exclusive categories. In 1995, Robert Redford produced and directed an accurate, dramatic account of the episode in the film Quiz Show.

CHAPTER SUMMARY LEVITTOWN: THE FLIGHT TO THE SUBURBS The author starts this chapter with William Levitt’s decision in 1947 to build cheap, comfortable houses on Long Island, within commuting distance of New York City. Before long, young couples purchased the homes and began raising families. Levittown’s success was part of the most important social developments in postwar America, the move from city to suburb. The chapter explains that movement and discusses both the benefits and costs. The author includes a discussion of the pervasive fear of atomic warfare and the beginning of the black protest against inequality.

THE POSTWAR BOOM For fifteen years after 1945, America enjoyed rapid economic growth, and, by the end of the 1950s, Americans finally overcame their fear of another depression.

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HOW did the American economy evolve after World War II? The American economy boomed after World War II, as the nation recovered from the Great Depression and the war. The GNP doubled between 1940 and 1960, with individuals spending heavily on housing, automobiles, and other consumer goods, and the government spending heavily on defense. New communities emerged in the suburbs of old cities and in the Sunbelt states of the West and South.

Postwar Prosperity: By 1950, pent-up consumer demand and production finally came into line, and the economy boomed. Defense spending added a further stimulus. The baby boom and the shift of the population to suburbia stimulated the consumer goods industry. Items such as cars, appliances, and television sets were in great demand. Businesspeople increased their capital investments, and employment expanded. However, there were problems. Farming and the older industrial areas of the country suffered, and the rate of economic growth slowed in the late 291

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1950s. Overall, however, the American people had gone from poverty and depression to unparalleled prosperity in one generation. View the Map Population Shifts,1940–1950 on myhistorylab.com Life in the Suburbs: The very rich and the very poor did not live in the suburbs, but there was considerable variety in the middle-class Americans who did make up suburbia. In all suburbs, however, two characteristics prevailed. Everyone depended on the automobile, and families did more things together. This latter phenomenon discouraged traditional feminism, but with more and more women entering the workplace, a new feminism was emerging. Read the Document Ladies Home Journal, “Young Mother” (1956) on myhistorylab.com THE GOOD LIFE? Despite prosperity, Americans were generally anxious and unhappy during the 1950s.

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How did American culture change after the war?

American culture reflected both the promise of material prosperity and the failure of material goods to yield true happiness. More people went to church than ever before; more young people went to college. Television provided endless information and entertainment. But suburban life exhibited a shallow sameness that prompted critics to wonder if it all was worthwhile.

Areas of Greatest Growth: Church membership, school attendance, and television watching grew at rapid rates, but in each area there was much to criticize. Progressive education seemed to teach nothing, religion seemed godless, and television seemed to be a dreary wasteland of sitcoms and quiz shows. Watch the Video Postwar Growth and Social Change on myhistorylab.com Critics of the Consumer Society: Social critics, like John Keats, William Whyte, and David Riesman, attacked the emerging suburban culture as dull and depersonalizing. C. Wright Mills charged that the modern corporation reduced workers to robots, while “Beat” poets and artists, like Jack Kerouac, extolled a counterculture of slovenly dress, drugs, and sexual promiscuity.

THE STRUGGLE OVER CIVIL RIGHTS In the struggle against Russia, Americans wished to believe that they enjoyed a moral superiority, but that belief was contradicted by the continuing legal discrimination suffered by African Americans.

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HOW did the civil rights movement develop in the 1940s and 1950s?

Civil rights became a major issue in the period after World War II. Truman desegregated the military, and federal courts ordered the desegregation of schools. Black activists such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., led protests against segregation on buses and in other areas of public life. Students organized sit-ins at lunch counters and parks.

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Civil Rights as a Political Issue: Although President Truman failed to persuade Congress to pass civil rights legislation, he acted on his own authority to integrate the armed forces, and he made civil rights part of the liberal Democratic agenda. In appreciation, African Americans voted for him enthusiastically, and those votes gave him his victory in 1948. Watch the Video The Desegregation of the Military and Blacks in Combat on myhistorylab.com Desegregating the Schools: Civilrights advocates concentrated on integrating the nation’s school systems. Their greatest success came in 1954 when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Brown case, ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional and ordering desegregation “with all deliberate speed.” Whites in the Deep South responded with massive resistance and desegregation proceeded slowly. Eisenhower adopted a hands-off policy until the state of Arkansas violated a federal court order to integrate a high school in Little Rock.

Eisenhower sent federal troops to protect the black children’s right to attend school and established the Commission on Civil Rights. Progress toward an integrated society remained fitful, but a turning point in racial policy had been reached in 1954. Read the Document Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) on myhistorylab.com The Beginnings of Black Activism: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the organization most responsible for the victory in the Brown case, continued to rely on federal courts to attack discrimination, but in 1955 a new leader using new tactics pushed the civil rights movement in a more activist direction. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a mass boycott of segregated public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. His doctrine of nonviolent protest was adopted by young blacks who scored dramatic victories by simply sitting in places where local laws prohibited blacks from sitting. Read the Document Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement on myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: RESTORING NATIONAL CONFIDENCE The American people were more optimistic at the end of the 1950s than they had been when the decade began, but they still worried about major problems. They no longer feared another economic depression, but they knew that the Cold War continued, and they were beginning to realize that racial injustice sullied their principles of fair play and equal justice.

KEY TERMS: 1. Levittown symbolized the movement to the suburbs and the housing developments constructed in cookie-cutter fashion to accommodate the new suburbanites with their postwar wealth.

2. It meant that postwar America would have a much greater population. In fact, the baby boom led to a 19 percent growth in the nation’s population between 1950 and 1960, the highest growth rate since 1910.

3. In 1954, in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court reversed the doctrine of “separate but equal” and ruled that school desegregation should proceed “with all deliberate speed.”

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4. The Montgomery bus boycott started out with a modest goal: bus seats taken on a firstcome, first-served basis, with African Americans being seated from the back and the whites from the front of each bus. As the protest continued, however, and as they endured both legal harassment and sporadic acts of violence, the protestors began to be more assertive. Soon they were insisting on a complete end to segregated seating. The Montgomery bus boycott ended in victory a year later when the Supreme Court ruled the Alabama segregated seating law unconstitutional.

5. Martin Luther King, Jr., founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to direct the crusade against segregation.

6. Those that broke with King and his call for passive resistance formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960. They were scornful of integration and interracial cooperation and advocated greater militancy and acts of violence.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What drove the prosperity of the postwar decades? American consumers were finally able to spend, especially on consumer goods. During the depression and war, controls both natural and artificial had kept spending in check. The $37 billion Americans had in savings provided quite a stimulus toward consumption. American factories could barely keep up and the American GNP was 50 percent higher in 1960 than it had been in 1940. Businesses like manufacturing, auto, and electronics all boomed. American capital investment rose to more than $10 billion a year, and the number of people working rose above the long-sought goal of 60 million people.

2. How did the growth of suburbs change the way Americans lived? Americans’ lives changed in a variety of ways due to the growth of suburbs. The nuclear family became the focus and as a result grandparents, aunts, and uncles were seen only on special occasions.

There were fewer class distinctions as doctors and lawyers might live next to a master plumber or an office manager. Most were exclusively white, but a few outside New York and Miami were ethnically mixed, which allowed blacks and Jews to experience this culture that had been close to them before. Fathers could commute along the highways and expressways built in the 1950s, while children might take buses to school. Mothers still, however, had to take children to piano lessons and other activities. Shopping centers popped up, first in the form of strip malls along the way, then in full-fledged indoor malls with as many as 500 parking spaces. New home buyers wanted more space, after having lived with parents and other families.

3. What was the effect of television on American life? Television took off in the 1950s. Three networks had taken over the airwaves by 1957, pushing radio out. It reached over 40 million sets on 500 different stations. Advertisers quickly took over the new medium using techniques like the soap opera, taped commercials, and quiz shows that had all worked on radio. Creativity was at first encouraged by people’s insatiable demand for new programs.

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several quiz show contestants were caught cheating, adventures like Bonanza and The Untouchables quickly took over the airwaves.

4. What did critics find lacking in American postwar culture? Critics found the new American culture to be too materialistic. The beats like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg published works that set the tone. “Beats” came from the quest for beatitude, a state of inner grace sought in Zen Buddhism. “Beatniks,” as Middle America labeled them, challenged respectability with long hair and outlandish clothing. They were notorious for their sexual promiscuity and drug use; they had dropped out of a society they felt they had no use for.

Abstract expressionists in the artist community stressed individualism and freedom from the constraints of traditional formulaic art. Jackson Pollack and others saw the process of painting as important as the painting itself.

5. How did civil rights shape the politics of the postwar years? Civil rights led to a split in the Democratic party in the postwar years. When Truman’s presidential commission came back with a ten-point plan that suggested a civil rights commission and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), Truman had these suggestions blocked by southern Democrats in Congress. When he added a civil rights plank to the Democratic platform for the 1948 campaign, southern Dixiecrats walked out and formed their own states’ rights party. African Americans in the North, however, voted overwhelmingly for Truman.

Blacks in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Detroit, and other major cities all voted Democratic and civil rights became a major part of the Democratic platform.

6. What was the importance of the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka? Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and lawyers from the NAACP challenged segregation and the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had ruled separate but equal was legal. Newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren agreed and in the majority decision stated “that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Warren and the Court knew desegregation would not happen overnight, so in 1955 they left it to the lower courts to sort out.

7. By what means did African American individuals and groups challenge segregation?

African American individuals led the movement to desegregate after the successful court battles of the NAACP. Individuals like Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott that gave America a new civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King organized the boycott and formed the SCLC to get blacks better organized for the desegregation fight. King modeled his strategies off great nonviolent leaders like Gandhi and Thoreau. Students and individuals boycotted lunch counters and public pools as well. The SNCC was formed to continue the nonviolent movement of civil rights; 50,000 students had desegregated public facilities in more than 100 southern cities by 1961.

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CHAPTER 30 The Turbulent Sixties, 1960–1968 CHAPTER OUTLINE Kennedy versus Nixon: The First Televised Presidential Candidate Debate Kennedy Intensifies the Cold War Containment in Southeast Asia Containing Castro: The Bay of Pigs Fiasco Containing Castro: The Cuban Missile Crisis The New Frontier at Home Moving Slowly on Civil Rights “I Have a Dream” LBJ’s Great Society Johnson in Action The Election of 1964 The Triumph of Reform Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War The Vietnam Dilemma Escalation Stalemate Years of Turmoil Protesting the Vietnam War The Cultural Revolution “Black Power” Ethnic Nationalism Women’s Liberation The Return of Richard Nixon Vietnam Undermines Lyndon Johnson The Republican Resurgence Conclusion: The End of an Era

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: THE CUBAN M ISSILE CRISIS Now that the Cold War is over, students should be reminded that it was real and that there was a time in recent memory when the entire planet came close to annihilation in an exchange of nuclear weapons.

The Cuban missile crisis grew out of John F. Kennedy’s belief that the United States had to adopt a more aggressive policy toward Russia and Nikita Khrushchev’s reckless willingness to take chances. Khrushchev’s decision to place missiles in Cuba led to a six-day crisis in the fall of 1962 that could easily have led to armed conflict between the two nuclear superpowers. Russian sources now available reveal that there were Soviet warheads in Cuba and that an American invasion might have been met by nuclear force. In retrospect, what seems most important about the crisis is that both Kennedy and Khrushchev were determined to avoid atomic warfare even at the cost of backing down in defeat.

Both sides “learned” lessons from the crisis that plunged each nation into later disasters. The Kennedy people were proud of the way they handled the missile crisis for two reasons: They had given the impression that they were tough, and they had been flexible. Kennedy would not have gone to war with Russia, but the navy was prepared to fire on any ship that attempted to run the blockade, and an air strike on Cuba was probably only forty-eight hours away when Russia capitulated. Some of Kennedy’s advisors urged him to treat the issue as if it were merely a confrontation between the United States and Cuba, but Kennedy refused. He was not sure whether or not the Soviet Union initiated the placement of those weapons, but he was determined to hold Russia responsible for them, and all American pressure during the crisis was aimed against the Kremlin. In his televised address on October 22, for example, Kennedy warned that any missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as having been launched from the Soviet Union and that the United States would respond in kind.

On the other hand, the Kennedy administration believed that it had handled the crisis with exemplary flexibility. Many of Kennedy’s advisors, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged immediate military action when the missiles were detected, but people like Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara argued instead for a “quarantine” of Cuba. The great virtue of the blockade, it was felt, was that it offered the president the opportunity to pressure the Russians in gradual stages, so that they could back down without loss of face at any stage. The fact that the missiles were removed was, of course, a victory for the Americans, but it was a victory based on military superiority, not flexible diplomacy. When faced with its next foreign policy crisis in Vietnam, the United States tried to settle the issue with a similar blend of toughness and flexibility with horrendous results.

The Russians, too, learned the wrong lessons. For the Kremlin, the episode was a fiasco that led to Khrushchev’s deposition and a determination that the next time the two nations came into conflict, the Soviet Union would hold the balance of power. The Russians began a massive military buildup that increased their advantage in conventional forces and may even have given them parity with the United States in terms of strategic missiles, but the cost was stupendous. By 1980, it is estimated, the Russian defense budget consumed a quarter of the gross national 297

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product. Dragged down by that burden, Russian leaders had to find some way out of the Cold War, but Gorbachev’s attempt to restructure the Soviet economy encouraged dissident forces long suppressed and turned the Russian retreat into a rout. Students are always told that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, but they should also be made aware that it is just as dangerous to learn the wrong lessons from the past.

RELIVING THE PAST The 1960s were an especially violent decade in American history. By far the most shocking event, the one that all those of age will remember until their dying day, was the assassination in Dallas of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The tragic event was investigated by a special presidential commission, the Warren Commission, which received testimony from scores of eyewitnesses. Whether the panel reached the correct conclusion about the episode has, of course, been the subject of intense argument. It is a profoundly moving experience to read some of the accounts of Kennedy’s last moments. His wife, Jacqueline, remembered shouting, “I love you, Jack” as she cradled his shattered head in her lap. The evidence and testimony considered by the Warren Commission is published in Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, 26 volumes (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964, 26 volumes). Jacqueline Kennedy’s testimony appears in volume 5. An abridged version of the Hearings, entitled The Witnesses (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) was compiled by the New York Times.

The Kennedy assassination was only the first of several that robbed the United States of some of its most talented leaders. The violence that struck them down had its counterpoint in the urban riots that demonstrated racial divisions present in the United States. In Detroit, forty-three persons died in the rioting, but it was the explosion in the Watts section of Los Angeles in August 1965 that alerted the nation to a new and frightening phenomenon. In Watts, as much testimony showed, even middle-class blacks voiced support of the rioters, and there were few innocent bystanders. Even when they knew the fires they set endangered themselves, black teenagers raised the cry, “Burn, baby, burn!” And for the next few summers, city after city did burn. There is a somewhat academic account of the major riots in the Kerner Commission report, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968).

For a livelier account of the Watts riot that incorporates a good deal of eyewitness testimony, see Jerry Cohen and William S. Murphy, Burn, Baby, Burn: The Los Angeles Race Riot, August, 1965 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1966).

CHAPTER SUMMARY KENNEDY VERSUS NIXON: THE FIRST TELEVISED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DEBATE The author begins with the Kennedy-Nixon 1960 TV debate because it demonstrates several important themes of this chapter. Kennedy won a narrow victory because he had mastered the art of television and projected a fresh, exciting image. After his election, Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, achieved many of their goals, but the war in Vietnam and violent 298

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protests at home made the 60s an especially stormy era in American history. Watch the Video Kennedy–Nixon Debate on myhistorylab.com KENNEDY INTENSIFIES THE COLD WAR John F. Kennedy, a long-time “Cold Warrior,” surrounded himself with bright young men who shared his belief that the United States should take a hard line against Russia. Read the Document John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address (1961) on myhistorylab.com

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HOW did the Cold War intensify under Kennedy?

Kennedy intensified the Cold War by increasing American support to South Vietnam and by pressuring the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Kennedy raised troop levels in Vietnam and authorized the overthrow of Diem. He ordered a covert operation against Castro at the Bay of Pigs (which failed) and delivered an ultimatum to the Soviets to pull their missiles out of Cuba (which succeeded).

Containment in Southeast Asia: Kennedy believed that the Third World, especially Southeast Asia, was the focus of U.S.-Soviet rivalry and continued Eisenhower’s support for the Diem regime in Saigon. Even the gradual introduction of 16,000 American military “advisors” could not stop the Communist advance, and Kennedy accepted a military coup against Diem in November 1963 in the hope that a stronger government would take his place. The coup, however, backfired. It resulted in even greater political instability, an even stronger Communist advance, and a deeper American involvement in Vietnam. Read the Document Policy Statement About U.S. Objectives in Southeast Asia on myhistorylab.com Containing Castro: The Bay of Pigs Fiasco: The Cold War peaked in Cuba. Kennedy inherited a plan to overthrow Fidel Castro from the Eisenhower administration and pushed it ahead. The resultant fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in no way lessened Kennedy’s determination to topple the Castro regime.

Containing Castro: The Cuban Missile Crisis: The climax of Kennedy’s anti-Soviet crusade came in Cuba in October 1962. The Soviet Union, probably trying to neutralize America’s increasing military superiority, placed offensive missiles in Cuba. Kennedy and his advisors worked out a strategy to blockade Cuba, to be followed if necessary by an invasion. The president informed the nation of the crisis on October 22, and for six days the world was on the edge of catastrophe. Khrushchev finally backed down and agreed to remove the missiles.

Kennedy’s popularity soared, his party gained in the congressional elections, and the American people felt a sense of pride. The crisis had one good effect in that the United States and the Soviet Union began to moderate the Cold War, but the crisis had ill effects, too. The Russians began a crash program to build up their navy and their nuclear arsenal. Watch the Video President John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis on myhistorylab.com

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THE NEW FRONTIER AT HOME Kennedy assembled a competent, activist staff, including his brother, Robert, to enact a legislative and economic reform program. The president himself, cool, intelligent and articulate, was the administration’s greatest asset. View the Image Robert Kennedy on myhistorylab.com WHAT was the “New Frontier,” and what did it accomplish?

The “New Frontier” was Kennedy’s domestic program, and on its most important issue, civil rights, it achieved mixed results. Kennedy supported civil rights but only hesitantly and not very effectively. Black activists, especially Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pushed the cause of racial equality farther than Kennedy was prepared to take it.

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Moving Slowly on Civil Rights: Kennedy campaigned on a strong civil rights platform but did not want to alienate southern Democrats in Congress. He responded very slowly to incidents of racism in the South until a mob attacked a “freedom bus” in Birmingham, Alabama. Kennedy sent federal marshals to protect the freedom riders and acted promptly again when the states of Alabama and Mississippi attempted to prevent African Americans from attending state universities. Watch the Video Photographing the Civil Rights Movement on myhistorylab.com “I Have a Dream”: Kennedy was forced into a more active role in the struggle for racial justice by civil rights activists. In 1963 Martin Luther King organized a massive protest against segregation in Birmingham that was broken up by the local police using brutal tactics. Kennedy intervened on the side of the African Americans and finally asked Congress for civil rights laws.

In order to keep the pressure on Kennedy, civil rights leaders organized a March on Washington in August 1963, highlighted by King’s speech describing an integrated America. When Kennedy died in November 1963, his civil rights record was such that he disappointed many who had supported him, but his use of the executive power to foster integration should be noted. Kennedy delayed asking Congress for laws on civil rights until the nation had come to a consensus that such legislation was needed. Watch the Video Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech at the March on Washington, August 1963 on myhistorylab.com LBJ’S GREAT SOCIETY Kennedy’s assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald left the nation stunned, but Lyndon Johnson moved quickly to restore confidence by promising to continue Kennedy’s programs. In fact, Johnson went beyond Kennedy in the struggle for economic and racial equality. View the Image Lyndon B. Johnson on myhistorylab.com

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WHAT were Johnson’s domestic priorities, and what were his achievements?

Johnson’s “Great Society” included civil rights reform, notably the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act; Medicare, which provided health insurance for the elderly; and federal aid to education, which focused on children disadvantaged by poverty.

Johnson in Action: Johnson was energetic and forceful but appeared crude and insincere on television. He had spent thirty years in Congress, however, and knew how to manage it. He easily got Kennedy’s tax cut passed and, by putting pressure on northern Republicans, 300

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succeeded in gaining passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, banning all public segregation and protecting voting rights.

The Election of 1964: Johnson chose to make America’s persistent poverty his own special issue. He had Congress pass a variety of programs in his “war on poverty” in 1964. The programs generally encouraged self-help and reduced poverty by a significant degree. When the Republicans ran Barry Goldwater, an outspoken conservative, to oppose Johnson in 1964, the result was a Democratic landslide. Watch the Video Lyndon Johnson Presidential Campaign Ad: Little Girl vs. Mushroom Cloud on myhistorylab.com The Triumph of Reform: Johnson acted quickly to get Congress to enact Medicare and Medicaid and to pump over $1 billion into education. After one of King’s demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, was attacked brutally by the police, Johnson sent help to the blacks and asked Congress for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act led to a dramatic increase in black voters.

In nine months, Lyndon Johnson had accomplished more than any president since Roosevelt and had moved the nation beyond the New Deal. Yet Johnson’s personal popularity was always low, and his foreign policy problems caused many to forget his great achievements. View the Map Impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on myhistorylab.com JOHNSON ESCALATES THE VIETNAM WAR Johnson, like Kennedy, was convinced that appeasement led to war and continued a hawkish foreign policy. To avoid another Cuba, he flexed American muscle in Latin America, even sending troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965. Above all, he feared the effect on his political career if he “lost” Vietnam to the communists.

HOW did Johnson’s Vietnam policy evolve?

Johnson seized upon an ambiguous incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to persuade Congress to grant him authority to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. He initiated a major troop buildup and air attacks against North Vietnam. The escalation failed to achieve Johnson’s goal of a secure South Vietnam, producing only a bloody stalemate.

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The Vietnam Dilemma: Johnson inherited a mess in Vietnam. The United States had violated the Geneva Accords in order to install Ngo Dinh Diem, but he was unable to suppress the Vietcong guerrillas. In 1963, Kennedy accepted a military coup in which Diem was killed, but that led to further political instability, communist gains, and a greater probability of more American involvement. Vietnam plagued Johnson from the day he took office. Saigon was on the verge of collapse, but Johnson refused to send American combat forces. He relied instead on economic aid, military advisors, and covert actions. During one such operation, United States destroyers and North Vietnamese gunboats fired upon one another in the Gulf of Tonkin, an incident that gave Johnson the opportunity to ask Congress for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964. Johnson wanted congressional support for domestic political purposes and to threaten North Vietnam, but it gradually began to seem that Johnson had tricked Congress into authorizing a military escalation. Johnson’s credibility began to erode. View the Map Vietnam War on myhistorylab.com 301

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Escalation: As South Vietnam came closer to defeat, Johnson began a steady escalation of the war. He feared the political consequences of a military defeat, but he did not want to divert resources needed for the Great Society to fight in Southeast Asia. As a result, the United States’ effort in Vietnam was calculated to do just enough to bring Hanoi into peace negotiations, and the President adopted a policy of secrecy and deceit in order to assure the American people that Vietnam was a minor problem that required no great national sacrifice.

Stalemate: Johnson’s policy of gradual escalation failed. Even after committing half a million troops by 1968, and after massive bombing raids, the United States was no closer to victory.

General William Westmoreland, the American commander, adopted a policy of wanton destruction and attrition that increased American losses and enraged the people of South Vietnam. In January 1968, the Vietcong were able to launch attacks all over the country, the Tet Offensive, that demonstrated how futile the American effort was. The next May, Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection and that he would reduce American forces while trying to negotiate peace. Johnson in Vietnam on View the Image myhistorylab.com YEARS OF TURMOIL The period between 1965 and 1968 was one of exceptional unrest at home and continued escalation of the war in Vietnam.

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WHY were there protests in the 1960s?

During the 1960s, students protested the war in Vietnam, condemning its destruction of both American and Vietnamese life. Many young people rebelled against the values of their parents, experimenting with new kinds of music, new styles of clothing, and new types of drugs.

Black militants demanded faster progress toward racial equality and sometimes employed violence to achieve it. César Chávez led a campaign to improve the lot of Mexican American farmworkers. Feminists sought greater equality for women.

Protesting the Vietnam War: Driven by a sense of guilt because they were exempt from the draft, college students vigorously protested the Vietnam War. Demonstrations grew bigger and bolder until in October 1967 over 100,000 protesters besieged the Pentagon. Public and university authorities finally suppressed the demonstrations by a combination of force and concessions. Watch the Video Protests Against the Vietnam War on myhistorylab.com The Cultural Revolution: In such aspects of life as clothing, drugs, sex, and especially music, the new generation rejected older values. Some people, such as Jerry Rubin, carried the protest to extremes and provoked only outrage. The movement on the whole, however, posed a serious challenge to what was considered the hypocrisy of American society. Listen to the Audio File Timothy Leary, Going Out” (1966) on myhistorylab.com “Black Power”: Civil rights activists realized that they had to do something about the increasing poverty of African Americans in northern cities that had caused a series of riots beginning in 1964 and reaching their climax in Newark and Detroit in 1967. In this atmosphere, moderate leaders such as Martin Luther King lost influence to militants, some of whom urged black 302

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separatism and armed struggle. King tried to regain his position by leading a crusade against poverty. His assassination in 1968 sparked riots across America. One of the enduring achievements of this rise of a militant black power movement was a great increase in African American pride. Read the Document Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, from Black Power on myhistorylab.com Ethnic Nationalism: Other minority groups such as the American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Italians, and Poles emulated African Americans by asserting their own cultural distinctions.

One group, the Chicanos, carried their ethnic nationalism into a labor protest when César Chávez organized the National Farm Workers’ Association in 1965. Chávez struggled for five years to force farm operators to pay decent wages in the California grape fields.

Chicanos also succeeded in having the federal government mandate and support bilingual education.

Women’s Liberation: In 1963, Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique, inspired a new feminist crusade. Women began to use the 1964 Civil Rights Act to attack inequality in employment, and the movement took distinct positions on abortion and rape. As in every crusade, extremists emerged, but most women were moderates who simply wanted equality.

Congress agreed and sent the Equal Rights Amendment to the states in 1972.

THE RETURN OF RICHARD NIXON Three years of turmoil reached their peak in 1968 when the presidential election coincided with a turning point in the Vietnam War and massive protests in the streets. The election of Richard Nixon demonstrated the desire of the American people for national reconciliation.

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HOW did the Vietnam War influence American politics?

Johnson’s failure in Vietnam discredited his administration and produced a widespread desire for change. Johnson abandoned plans to run for reelection in 1968, and thereby opened the door to Nixon, who promised a new policy in Vietnam and defeated Humphrey and Wallace in a tight contest.

Vietnam Undermines Lyndon Johnson: In early 1968, the Vietcong surprised American forces by launching the Tet offensive. Although the assault was eventually repulsed, the communists had won a decisive political victory. Influential Americans, including the influential CBS anchorman, Walter Cronkite, concluded that the war could not be won. In March, President Johnson, defeated by Vietnam, announced that he would not seek another term as president. American involvement in Vietnam cost Johnson the presidency and cast a long shadow over American politics.

The Republican Resurgence: In contrast to the Democrats, Republicans harmoniously nominated Richard Nixon, who promised to end the Vietnam War. Humphrey’s campaign started to gain when he finally attacked the war, but Humphrey was hurt by the candidacy of George Wallace, whose populist campaign appealed to white ethnic groups in the North as well as to

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southern whites. Nixon narrowly won the 1968 election. Read the Document Richard Nixon, Vietnamization on myhistorylab.com CONCLUSION: THE END OF AN ERA The Republican victory in 1968 ended a thirty-year era of liberal reform and activist foreign policy. The American people wanted a less intrusive, less powerful central government.

KEY TERMS: 1. Kennedy’s New Frontier promised to revitalize the stagnant economy and enact reform legislation in education, health care, and civil rights.

2. Castro’s forces were well-trained and had air superiority. They had no difficulty in quashing the Bay of Pigs invasion.

3. Nikita Khrushchev had secretly deployed 42 missiles in Cuba. The consequences were that the Cuban missile crisis actually wound up escalating the arms race, as both sides were convinced that they had to gain the edge in nuclear superiority.

4. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored a freedom ride to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in all bus and train stations used in interstate commerce. The freedom rides were eventually successful, as the attorney general finally convinced the Interstate Commerce Commission to issue an order banning segregation in interstate terminals and buses.

5. Despite pleas from the government for an end to demonstrations and protests, civil rights leaders kept pressure on the Kennedy administration. At the March on Washington, more than 200,000 marchers gathered for a daylong rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

6. The level of funding was not enough for the new Office of Economic Opportunity, but the war on poverty along with the economic growth provided a tax cut did help reduce the ranks of the poor by nearly 10n million between 1964 and 1967.

7. It was the greatest and most far reaching liberal reform program since the New Deal. The Great Society reform program accomplished much: Medicare and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which gave African Americans the right to vote for the first time because it realized the Fifteenth Amendment.

8. The Medicare program provided Social Security funding for hospitalization insurance for people over 65 and the disabled and a supplementary Medicaid program for the poor.

9. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave African Americans the right to vote for the first time because the Fifteenth Amendment was never realized in the South after the rise of Jim Crow laws.

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10. With the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Congress finally allowed Johnson to use armed force in Vietnam.

11. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) protested shortcomings in American life, notably racial injustice and the Vietnam War. It was fairly successful in that it drew much attention and led thousands of campus protests before dissolving at the end of the 1960s.

12. The National Organization for Women (NOW) called for equal employment opportunity and equal pay for women. NOW also championed the legalization of abortion and passage of an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

13. It was a blow to American public opinion and the Tet offensive led LBJ to end the escalation of the war and seek a negotiated peace.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What was Kennedy’s dilemma in Vietnam? Kennedy’s quandary was that only the South Vietnamese could win their own war, but he was not willing to let South Vietnam go the way of China either. He declined to follow General Maxwell Taylor’s advice to send in 8,000 ground troops, instead increasing military advisors and American economic aid. Eventually there were more than 16,000 advisors in South Vietnam and when the military and others became disillusioned with the South Vietnamese president; Kennedy was forced to go along with a scheme that led to President Diem’s removal and eventual murder.

2. What was the Bay of Pigs affair? On April 16, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. They had been trained by the CIA in Guatemala during the Eisenhower administration. The plan was for them to launch a coup that would topple the Castro regime in Cuba, but it was a disaster. Kennedy insisted it be a covert act, even canceling the bombing of the beachhead they were to land on. Castro’s forces easily defeated the exiles, killing 500 and rounding up the rest. Kennedy took full responsibility for the fiasco but showed no remorse in his speech to the American public.

3. What were the causes and consequences of the Cuban missile crisis? The Cuban missile crisis really begins with the Kennedy administration’s decision to limit U-2 overflights of Cuba for fear the Russian Surface to Air Missiles (SAM) would shoot one down and cause an incident. When regular flights resumed, they revealed clearly the construction of missile sites and that they were nearly complete. Kennedy kept the information secret at first while he planned. He announced to America the existence of the missiles and his plan to remove them, blaming Khrushchev for the crisis. Cuba was put under quarantine and the two superpowers engaged in a stare down. Finally, 16 Soviet ships heading to Cuba stopped and the Russians sent a rambling note to Kennedy. Russia would remove the missiles if America promised not to invade Cuba. With 250,000 American troops concentrated in Florida and ready to invade the president agreed, ignoring a second note that demanded the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The Soviets dismantled the missiles.

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4. What was Kennedy’s response to the civil rights movement? Indirect executive action became Kennedy’s solution to try to avoid losing the support of southern Democrats in Congress. He appointed prominent African Americans to key positions like Weaver as housing secretary and Marshal to the appeals court. Robert Kennedy expanded the Eisenhower administration’s efforts to expand voting rights, but he could not force the FBI to protect SNCC members who were trying to register blacks. Vice President Johnson led a presidential commission on Equal Employment Opportunities, which worked with defense industries and government contractors to increase jobs for African Americans. CORE rejected Kennedy’s approach and launched the freedom rides to test the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing segregation in all bus and train stations used for interstate commerce.

When a mob attacked the freedom riders, Kennedy was more concerned with the disruption they caused than their injuries. Finally Robert Kennedy convinced the Interstate Commerce Commission to ban segregation, and then the rides stopped. The effort to desegregate universities led to violence and U.S. marshals and the National Guard had to be used in Mississippi and Alabama to desegregate.

5. How did King’s role evolve during the Kennedy years? King put the pressure on the Kennedy administration to take a more active role in supporting civil rights. It all started with King’s organization of a massive protest in Birmingham. Police Commissioner “Bull” Connor played right into King’s strategy, when King’s massive protests led to arrests and children had replaced the arrested soldiers. Connor used dogs, fire hoses, and clubs to disperse the 6,000 children, while a horrified nation watched. Kennedy brokered a deal to satisfy the protestors and addressed the nation as to the necessity of government action. King kept the pressure on with the March on Washington until the administration sponsored civil rights legislation to increase African American voting rights and provide equal access to all public accommodations.

6. How did Johnson’s personality influence his politics? Consensus was Johnson’s primary goal. He was indifferent to ideology, moving from New Deal liberalism to oil-and-gas conservatism throughout his career. Johnson had cultivated conservatives and liberals within the Senate. He supported Eisenhower’s civil rights legislation but weakened it to make sure it didn’t alienate southern Democrats. When attempting to push through Kennedy’s budget, Johnson lowered it to ensure he would get support from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Byrd. Byrd voted against the tax cut Johnson proposed, but he let it out of committee and worked for Johnson behind the scenes.

7. What were the key issues in the election of 1964? LBJ made his war on poverty a central part of the campaign. He focused on the reform program he termed the Great Society, but at the same time he stressed a balanced budget and fiscal orthodoxy. As Goldwater attacked the TVA and other reforms and advocated a more conservative foreign policy, he began to slip in the polls and Johnson poured it on shooting for a landslide, which he got. Goldwater carried only Arizona and five states from the Deep South.

8. What were the major reforms of Johnson’s Great Society? Three major reforms were enacted by Johnson as part of his Great Society agenda, but in reality he had enacted more reforms than any president since FDR. His first bold move was to settle for Medicare, 306

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knowing America’s resistance to health care reform. This plan mandated health care for the elderly through the Social Security program. Those over 65 and the disabled received health care insurance, while the poor received a supplementary Medicaid program. He supported a child benefit approach to get the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 passed through Congress. This gave $1 billion in federal aid, with the majority going to the poorest school districts. Civil rights became the most difficult reform for LBJ to enact, but once again sparked by Martin Luther King Jr., it got done. He worked legislation through Congress to get the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. It increased African American numbers on Alabama voting rolls by 166,000 and in Mississippi by 400 percent. Before the end of the 89th Congress’s first session, it had passed 89 bills; in nine months President Johnson had enacted the entire Democratic program of legislation.

9. What happened in the Gulf of Tonkin, and how did it reflect Johnson’s Vietnam problem? Johnson followed Kennedy’s nondirect military intervention program in Vietnam, but he had increased advisors and support of covert operations against the North Vietnamese.

When two American destroyers were fired on in the Gulf of Tonkin and they fired back, Johnson launched an air strike on North Vietnamese port facilities. He asked Congress to approve, even though he did not need congressional approval. This led to deteriorating circumstances for Johnson. He wanted the South Vietnamese to fight their own war, but his continued support of covert operations guaranteed America could get dragged into further involvement. By asking Congress for approval, which he overwhelmingly got, he ensured Goldwater could not use the incident as campaign material, but he set himself up to look like he had deceived Congress and could now use with impunity American forces in Vietnam as he saw fit.

10. How and why did Johnson escalate American involvement in Vietnam? As the situation in Saigon continued to deteriorate and it became clear the North was going to win the war, Johnson had choices to make. He could move for a political settlement as Undersecretary of State George Ball advocated, or he could commit more U.S. personnel and assets to the fight.

Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy had gotten the United States involved; it was left to LBJ to decide how to get the United States out. He chose further involvement, cutting McNamara’s request for troops; he still authorized the build-up knowing it meant the end of his social programs. Johnson believed the United States had to stay the course and that increased military action would bring Hanoi to the peace table, but it failed. He increased the bombing, including Hanoi, and added the dispatch of 50,000 troops with a further 50,000 committed to further involvement in Vietnam.

11. What was the result of the escalation? As a result of the escalation the North Vietnamese were able to use civilian deaths to arouse world opinion against the United States. The only thing that was really accomplished was the North Vietnamese were not able to win the war.

The economy of the North with little or no industry meant a lack of targets to bomb. Refusal to bomb Haiphong allowed Soviet and Chinese weapons to flow freely into North Vietnam.

In the end, only a bloody stalemate was achieved as the communists avoided pitched battles and civilian casualties grew and grew.

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12. What forms did opposition to the war in Vietnam take? Students led most of the opposition to the war, but housewives and young professionals were also involved. The first student “teach-ins” began in 1965 at the University of Michigan. These were more like organized discussions or debates but were followed by the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society, which organized concerts in Washington attended by 20,000 students and war protestors. Many college students were exempted from the draft and as most of those were coming from wealthy families there was speculation that there was a sense of guilt felt by the protestors toward the war and it expressed itself in their protests. In October 1967, 100,000 protestors marched on the Pentagon with slogans like “Hell no we won’t go,” and “How many babies did you kill today LBJ?” Students staged their most daring protest in 1968, when the SDS and African American radicals at Columbia University joined forces to seize five buildings in April. Police finally regained control after eight days, but the brutal repression ignited other protests across the country.

13. How did young people challenge adult culture during the 1960s? Young people challenged prevailing adult values in a myriad of ways. They used clothing, hairstyles, and especially music and sexual conduct to make their point. While blue jeans and love beads replaced wristwatches and suits, music became the touchstone for the movement. As these “flower children” grew out their hair and beards, they transitioned musically from Joan Baez and Bob Dylan to the rock sound of the Beatles. Finally, the “acid rock” of groups like the Grateful Dead culminated in a barefoot, braless explosion with a concert in Woodstock, New York, where 400,000 young people participated in a three-day festival that included rock music, drug, and public sex. The Yippie movement of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman simply capitalized on the mood of social protest to win attention.

14. What was “Black Power,” and what did it represent? As blacks became more frustrated with the economic failures, rioting began to break out starting in 1964. The worst riots took place in 1967 in Newark and Detroit where 43 people were killed and thousands injured when mobs attacked stores expressing their burning grievance at a consumer society that had left them out. Black militants like Stokely Carmichael took over the SNCC and called for southern blacks to take power in communities where they outnumbered whites. He stated, “I’m not going to beg the white man for anything I deserve. I’m going to take it!” His calls for “black power” were trumpeted by other militant black leaders. King was left out, as he had been discredited for his stance against the war and was moving toward attacking poverty when he was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968.

15. What did Cesar Chavez want, and what did he get? Chavez wanted to organize the Mexican American farm workers in California. He appealed to ethnic nationalism in mobilizing the grape and lettuce pickers to strike against the grape growers in the San Joaquin Valley in 1965. A national boycott by the pickers and their supporters led to successful gains in 1970, but the cost was that 95 percent of those workers engaged in the battle lost their homes, their cars, and their livelihood. It emboldened and strengthened Mexican Americans, who began to use the formerly derogatory term “Chicano” to refer to themselves. They obtained Mexican American Studies programs at UCLA and emboldened high school students to walk out in Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Phoenix to get bilingual programs of studies.

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16. What were the aims of the women’s rights movement? Women wanted equality with men and the same rights many minority groups were working toward. Women used the 1964 Civil Rights Act to file lawsuits for equal pay and demand that companies provide day care for their infant and preschool children. Other women entered politics to lobby against laws that were unfair to women. As the movement grew in strength, they attacked abortion laws and worked to make rape laws stronger. As more radical voices gained a pulpit, many moderate women were repulsed by attacks on family and sex but supported efforts to get women equality in society.

17. How did Vietnam bring Johnson down? The Tet offensive proved to Americans that Johnson had been lying about how close the end of the war was. While the communists suffered tremendous losses on the battlefield as a result of the offensive, they won a brilliant political battle. When Walter Cronkite came back after a tour of Vietnam announcing the United States was headed for stalemate, Johnson reluctantly agreed. After conferring with World War II warriors and Cold War warriors such as Omar Bradley and Dean Acheson, Johnson began to listen to his new Secretary of State Clark Clifford and scaled down the bombing and sought peaceful negotiations with the North Vietnamese. To show his sincerity Johnson promised not to run or accept the nomination in the 1968 election.

18. How did Nixon capitalize on Johnson’s troubles? Nixon had been left for dead politically after losing the California governor’s race in 1962. He rebuilt himself slowly and gained the nomination on the first vote at the Republican convention of 1968 in Miami Beach. He wisely took the middle ground, giving the appearance of someone who wanted to end division and bring peace to the country. It seemed to many observers he had some secret plan to end the war, one he did not reveal, and he wanted to heal old wounds. His opponent Humphrey struggled from a rough primary campaign, which culminated in the assassination of Robert Kennedy and a bloody convention in Chicago. However, once Humphrey broke with Johnson and Johnson ended the bombing of North Vietnam, Humphrey was able to rebound enough to almost tie Nixon in the popular vote. It was the racist third party with the pro-segregationist governor Wallace of Alabama that sealed the Democrats’ fate, as his campaign broke the New Deal coalition in the cities of the Northeast.

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CHAPTER 31 To a New Conservatism, 1969–1988 CHAPTER OUTLINE Reagan and America’s Shift to the Right The Tempting of Richard Nixon Détente Ending the Vietnam War The Watergate Scandal Oil and Inflation War and Oil The Great Inflation Private Lives, Public Issues The Changing American Family Gains and Setbacks for Women The Gay Liberation Movement Politics and Diplomacy after Watergate The Ford Administration Carter and American Malaise Troubles Abroad The Reagan Revolution The Election of 1980 Cutting Taxes and Spending Reagan and the World Challenging the “Evil Empire” Confrontation in Central America Trading Arms for Hostages Reagan the Peacemaker Conclusion: Challenging the New Deal

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: STUDENTS IN REBELLION During the decade of the sixties, it sometimes seemed as if everyone in America were protesting something. The protests most likely to interest college students today were those that disrupted colleges and universities across the nation.

American colleges have always endured a certain level of protest, but the student demonstrations that began at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 introduced an era of increasingly violent protest that brought the integrity of the entire system of higher education into question.

The explosion at Berkeley combined local and national issues, such as the right to conduct political rallies on campus, outrage at the university for calling in the police to break up demonstrations, support for the civil rights movement, and demands for a greater antipoverty effort. The Berkeley scenario soon became all too familiar; a relatively small student protest would be forcibly repressed, leading to even greater protest and even more brutal repression until the university no longer functioned. Over time, students engaged more quickly in illegal and violent acts while college administrators became notably more timid. At Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the trustees were held captive by students; at Pomona College in California, at San Francisco State, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and at the University of California at Santa Barbara, bombs placed by students killed or injured people.

Because the university authorities could not secure order, they called in outside authorities. At Jackson State in Mississippi in 1966, the National Guard shot and killed a student to suppress a massive protest. In 1968, after protesters seized a number of buildings at Columbia University, the New York City police clubbed hundreds of students and faculty in a sweep of the campus. In May 1970, after students burned a building at Kent State University, the Ohio National Guard entered the campus and shot to death four students. The Kent State tragedy unleashed a crescendo of violent demonstrations across the nation. At Jackson State, two students were killed and a dozen wounded, and by June 1, 1970, over eight hundred colleges and universities reported serious disturbances. The governor of California, Ronald Reagan, closed down the entire system of public education in his state to restore order.

It soon became apparent that the protests in the spring 1970 semester represented the climax of five terrible years. By 1973, radicals and conservatives agreed that students had lost the interest or the will to engage in violent confrontations with authority, and the new decade was already being described as “the quiet seventies.” Scholars, of course, immediately began to explain why the student demonstrations had begun and why they ended so abruptly. Of the many causes mentioned, some are especially interesting. Many students in the sixties feared that the increasing material abundance of American life was leading to spiritual decadence; they acted out of rage, therefore, to assert the superiority of emotion over intellect. Students also demonstrated because they saw themselves as agents of social change, a role that should have been, but was not, played by the American working class. Most obviously, the struggle against racial injustice and the Vietnam War formed the crucible in which the student protest was molded.

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restaurants and other facilities in the South, and African American students remained active throughout the decade. White students generally stood in awe of their black colleagues and attributed to them an overwhelming moral superiority and a greater degree of physical and mental toughness that entitled them to leadership. This role, however, the blacks generally rejected. As whites entered the civil rights movement, many blacks became suspicious of them and began to discourage their participation. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, for example, expelled whites, and the “Black Power” slogan emphasized the unique demands of the African American community. This racial split had various consequences. For one thing, African American students generally focused their protests more clearly and demanded concessions that universities could actually grant, such as Black Studies programs. As white students drifted away from the civil rights movement, they adopted other priorities, such as opposition to the war in Vietnam, an issue that the university could not solve.

The Vietnam War did not begin the campus rebellion, but by 1965 it had become the central issue among white student protesters. In that year, college students were deferred from military service, an act probably inspired by the government’s attempt to silence opposition. Student deferments, however, had the contrary effect. Some of the most violent opponents of the war found a refuge on campus and lent their considerable skills of organization and agitation to any and every perceived injustice in academic life. To be deferred, students had to remain in “good standing” at their schools, which meant maintaining a certain grade-point average. Professors became painfully aware as they graded exams that they held the power of life and death over students, and college administrators suffered tremendous pressure because it was they who had to inform the Selective Service Administration if a student fell out of “good standing.” The student deferment actually served to underline the close connection that had long existed between American universities and the “immoral” American military machine. It was this real and intimate connection between the university and the government that students protested, and many of the protests were designed not to destroy the university but to restore it to its ivytowered innocence.

Can the sixties come again? Student protests are a daily part of the academic routine, but the sixties will not be repeated unless a large number of local incidents coalesce into a movement with recognizable leaders and general grievances. The United States is no longer involved in an unpopular and unsuccessful war, nor do most whites today concede the moral legitimacy of the civil rights movement. The prospects for a sixties-style student uprising therefore seem impossibly remote. On the other hand, new issues and a new configuration of forces would result in another, different era of student rebellion.

RELIVING THE PAST During Johnson’s and Nixon’s terms in office, two sets of records that were never intended for public release came into the public domain. The result in each case was to create grave suspicion in the minds of American citizens about the intelligence and integrity of their highest officials.

The first set of documents, usually called the Pentagon Papers, was an internal study of the decision-making process that had led to American involvement in the Vietnam War. What seems most remarkable about the way America drifted into war was the intention of public officials to 312

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hide so much from the public, apparently on the assumption that the American people were not tough enough to support the policy of threat and blackmail that was supposed to force North Vietnam to cease its aid to the Vietcong. Even when President Johnson decided in April 1965 to put American ground forces into combat, he tried to prevent public knowledge of the decision.

His National Security Action Memorandum #328, issued April 6, 1965, approved an increase in the number of American troops in Vietnam and more aggressive use of United States Marines already stationed there. The president desired that these actions “be taken as rapidly as practicable, but in ways that should minimize any appearance of sudden changes in policy. ... ” The New York Times edition of the Pentagon Papers (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971) includes a helpful chronology of events and an introduction to the documents without which the reader is likely to get lost.

The second set of records is the series of conversations recorded by President Nixon, usually called the Watergate tapes. The tapes, of course, proved to be an unmitigated disaster for Nixon, but they provide a fascinating look at the workings of the presidency. It should be noted that there are several versions of the tapes. President Nixon released 1,254 pages of transcripts on April 30, 1974, and these were reprinted in installments by the New York Times. However, the House Judiciary Committee, to whom the tapes were sent, published transcripts of the tapes that often differ significantly from the president’s version. To confuse the matter a bit more, the most crucial of the tapes, the one with the “smoking gun” conversation between Nixon and Haldeman on June 23, 1972, was not part of the original package of tapes sent to the Judiciary Committee.

In that conversation, which occurred only six days after the Watergate burglary, Nixon replied to Haldeman’s briefing on the subject, “All right, fine, I understand it all.” Nixon was forced by the Supreme Court to release this tape on August 5, 1974; five days later he resigned. The most complete edition of the tapes so far was edited by Stanley I. Kutler, Abuse of Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).

CHAPTER SUMMARY REAGAN AND AMERICA ’S SHIFT TO THE RIGHT The author begins this chapter by tracing Ronald Reagan’s rise to political power. A New Deal Democrat whose long movie career was coming to an end in the 1960s, Reagan was becoming increasingly conservative, and in 1964 was invited to speak at the Republican national convention in support of Barry Goldwater. The speech electrified the audience and made Reagan the darling of the conservative movement. He warned Americans that they had a stark choice to make between liberty and tyranny, but he did so in a relaxed, confident way, unlike the strident Goldwater. The success of the speech led to Reagan’s election as governor of California in 1966 and his reelection in 1970. As governor, Reagan was surprisingly pragmatic, even raising taxes, and worked well with a Democratic legislature, but he maintained his hold on the heart of conservatives, who were increasing in numbers every year, by opposing taxes, student protesters, abortion, the Supreme Court ruling against prayer in public schools, and other “liberal” policies.

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become again a great and good nation was irresistible. View the Map Postwar Migration to the Sunbelt on myhistorylab.com THE TEMPTING OF RICHARD NIXON Richard Nixon won a contentious election in 1968 and began a tenure with promises of bipartisan cooperation and ended with resignation in disgrace

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WHAT were the major accomplishments and failures of the Nixon presidency?

Nixon opened diplomatic relations with China and initiated détente with the Soviet Union.

He withdrew American troops from Vietnam, ending a quarter century of American involvement in that unhappy country. But his role in the Watergate scandal led to a constitutional crisis that didn’t end until Nixon had been forced from office in disgrace.

Détente: Nixon and his closest foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissinger, based their approach to international issues on cold, logical assumptions. They saw the Cold War as a traditional superpower rivalry to be managed, not won. They felt that America must make a strategic retreat. They planned to use trade and improved relations with China to neutralize Russia, after which the United States would compete more vigorously with Western Europe and Japan. In 1971, Kissinger paved the way for Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972, a prelude to America’s recognition of communist China. This visit persuaded the Russians to agree to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) treaty in Moscow in 1972. There seemed to be a genuine desire on both sides to reduce Cold War tensions.

Ending the Vietnam War: Nixon followed a three-part plan to get the United States out of Vietnam. He gradually reduced the number of American troops there, while at the same time he intensified American bombing and adopted a hard line at the peace talks. His increased military pressure resulted in the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, which set off renewed antiwar protests, most notably at Kent State University, where four students were killed by the National Guard. However, the peace talks did progress, and in January 1973 they concluded with a disguised American surrender that virtually guaranteed a communist takeover in South Vietnam. Nixon had extricated the nation from a quagmire at the price of defeat.

The Watergate Scandal: Nixon had to accept defeat in Vietnam because he was deeply involved in covering up the burglary of the Democratic Committee’s office during the presidential campaign of 1972. Although the Watergate burglary was kept out of that campaign, the scandal was becoming a major issue by 1972. When the Senate investigated, it discovered the existence of White House tapes that quickly revealed Nixon’s involvement in the scandal.

Nixon tried in vain to suppress this evidence, but the Supreme Court ruled that he must hand over the tapes, and a House committee voted to recommend impeachment. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned. The crisis demonstrated how much the power of the executive branch had grown, but it also illustrated the vitality of American institutions. The press, the federal judiciary, and Congress had all behaved splendidly. Unfortunately, Watergate destroyed the trust the American people had in their government and began a mood of cynicism. Watch the Video Richard Nixon, “I am not a crook” on myhistorylab.com 314

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OIL AND INFLATION War in the Middle East set off a chain of events leading to rapidly rising prices for everything and plunged the nation into recession.

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HOW were oil and inflation linked during the 1970s?

Oil prices jumped dramatically in the 1970s, as a result of growing demand for oil and of turmoil in the oil-producing regions of the Middle East. The rising oil prices contributed to a sharp increase in the overall price level, leading to the worst inflation in modern American history.

War and Oil: In October 1973, the United States came to the defense of Israel when it was attacked by Egypt and Syria, leading the oil-producing Arab nations to declare a boycott of the United States. The shortage of oil meant long lines at gas stations in America and wildly escalating prices for gas. Before long, the economy fell into recession. The immediate crisis ended with a settlement of the war in the Middle East in March 1974, but the economic damage had already been done. View the Map Conflict in the Middle East on myhistorylab.com The Great Inflation: The rapid increase in oil prices, if not the only cause for inflation, was the primary cause. The prices of homes, cars, food, and other items skyrocketed. Real income declined. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter were unable to take effective action to stop the price rise, and it was finally left to the Federal Reserve to do so by raising interest rates. View the Image Gerald Ford on myhistorylab.com PRIVATE LIVES, PUBLIC ISSUES During the 1970s, the traditional, two-parent family continued to disappear in America; women increased their share of the workforce, and an active gay rights campaign for civil rights began.

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HOW did private life change during this period?

The private lives of Americans underwent substantial changes during the 1970s. The divorce rate rose significantly, and the number of married couples with children declined.

Women entered the professions in greater numbers, and Roe v. Wade guaranteed their right to abortion. Gay men and lesbian women achieved greater freedom than before, though they still lacked certain rights accorded to heterosexuals.

The Changing American Family: From 1970 to 1990, fewer and fewer American families had a father who was the sole breadwinner. Cohabitation without marriage became common and divorce rates doubled. At the same time, “family values” became a popular political slogan.

Gains and Setbacks for Women: The greatest change in the position of married women was their entry into the workplace. Some of them achieved remarkable success, but most were relegated to low-paying jobs or to such “female” jobs as nursing. Women’s wages were only 315

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about three-quarters those of men. Organized feminists, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), pushed for an Equal Rights Amendment but failed. They were more successful in protecting the right to abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade, but abortion was becoming a highly controversial subject. View the Image Jimmy Carter Signs The House Of Representatives Resolution for The ERA on myhistorylab.com The Gay Liberation Movement: In 1969, homosexuals rioted against police brutality in New York City, sparking a more militant effort to end discrimination. The Gay Liberation Front and other organizations urged closet homosexuals to take pride in their sexual orientation and to demand equal rights. They were successful in having states decriminalize homosexual acts and persuaded the Democratic party to adopt their cause. The onset of AIDS in the 1980s hurt the cause of gay liberation. Some homosexuals responded with violence, but most continued to use accepted political practices to push their agenda with some success. Congress voted money for AIDS, and the public became less hostile in some ways, as, for example, in protecting gays from being fired from their jobs just because of their homosexuality. On other issues, the public was less sympathetic. When Bill Clinton tried to carry out his campaign pledge to prohibit discrimination against gays in the armed forces, he had to back down, and the public remained extremely hostile to the idea of gay marriage. In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed permitting states not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. View the Image Sign at a Gay Pride March on myhistorylab.com POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY AFTER WATERGATE The confrontation between president and Congress over the Watergate affair left the nation leaderless at a crucial time.

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WHY did the presidencies of Ford and Carter largely fail?

Ford and Carter had to deal with the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, as well as the economic disruptions that followed the oil price rises of the 1970s. Ford alienated many Americans by pardoning Nixon, and Carter fumbled the hostage crisis in Iran.

The Ford Administration: Gerald Ford doomed his presidency by pardoning Nixon for any and all crimes he might have committed. Ford also soured his relations with the Democratic majority in Congress by allowing disclosure of some of the illegal, covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Kennedy and Johnson years and by opposing Democratic bills protecting the environment and civil rights. Watch the Video Gerald Ford Presidential Campaign Ad: Feeling Good About America on myhistorylab.com Carter and American Malaise: Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia, won the presidency by campaigning as someone outside the political establishment who would restore decency and morality to government, but he failed as a president because he lacked political vision and was too much of an outsider to make the government work. In 1979 he publicly blamed the American people for a “national malaise” that very much reflected his own lack of substance. Watch the Video Jimmy Carter and the crisis of confidence on myhistorylab.com

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Troubles Abroad: After the defeat in Vietnam, the American people preferred an isolationist foreign policy, but Carter was inexorably pulled into intervention abroad. In Nicaragua, he supplied military aid to the established government in its struggle against a socialist insurgency; and in the Middle East, he brokered a peace pact between Israel and Egypt, but Carter’s greatest problem was with Iran where a radical Muslim revolution ousted the shah in 1978, after which, in 1979, students seized the United States embassy and kept its personnel hostage for the rest of Carter’s term as president. A failed rescue effort reinforced the impression that the Unites States was becoming powerless. View the Image The Signing of the Camp David Accords on myhistorylab.com THE REAGAN REVOLUTION It was apparent that the nation was becoming more conservative ever since the 1950x, and though this trend was interrupted by Watergate, the nomination of the genial Ronald Reagan in 1980 ensured victory for the Republican party.

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WHAT was the “Reagan revolution”?

The Reagan revolution was the return to conservatism in American politics and diplomacy upon Reagan’s 1980 election as president. Reagan pledged to reduce the role of government in American life, and to restore American honor and confidence abroad.

The Election of 1980: Carter’s failure to rescue the hostages in Iran or to restore the economy, along with Reagan’s likeability, made the election a landslide. Reagan did well in the Republican strongholds-the West and South-but he even took many traditional Democratic votes among Jews and union members. Only African Americans remained solidly within the old New Deal coalition. Watch the Video Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign Ad: Burning the Midnight Oil on myhistorylab.com Cutting Taxes and Spending: Reagan promised to downsize the federal government and immediately began to carry out that promise. He persuaded Congress to cut the income tax by 25 percent over three years and to cut spending on various social programs by over $40 billion.

Read the Document Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address on myhistorylab.com REAGAN AND THE WORLD In order to restore America’s international position, Reagan began a steep increase in military spending and conducted an aggressive foreign policy.

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HOW did Reagan reshape American foreign relations?

Reagan rejected the policy of détente and challenged the Soviet Union more directly than any American president in decades. He called for the creation of the SDI missile system, and he waged covert war against leftists in Central America. The Iran-Contra affair, in which Reagan traded arms for hostages, tarnished his reputation, but he recovered sufficiently to negotiate the INF treaty with the Soviet Union.

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Challenging the “Evil Empire”: Reagan sincerely believed that the Soviet Union was the “focus of evil in the modern world” and had to be overcome. Bowing to pressure from peace groups in Europe and America, Reagan offered the Russians some very unfavorable deals on arms reductions, and when the Russians predictably refused them, the United States deployed cruise missiles in Europe and began development of a “star wars” antimissile system. The Russians responded by building up their nuclear arsenal. Read the Document Ronald Reagan, Speech to the House of Commons (1982) on myhistorylab.com Confrontation in Central America: Reagan adopted an interventionist policy in Latin America wherever leftist guerrillas attempted to overthrow governments characterized by corruption and military dictatorship. In Nicaragua, Reagan made enemies of the Sandinistas and tried to subvert them by covert action, even after Congress made such attempts illegal. In October 1983, American forces invaded Grenada to oust a government that had close ties to Cuba. View the Map Conflict in Central America, 1970–1998 on myhistorylab.com Trading Arms for Hostages: Reagan acquiesced in the sale of advanced weapons to Iran in the hope that the Iranians would use their influence to free some Americans held hostage in Lebanon, but when the Iranians learned how profitable it was to sell hostages, more Americans were kidnapped. In the meantime, members of the National Security Council used the proceeds from the arms sale to finance guerrilla forces in Nicaragua in direct violation of a congressional law prohibiting such aid. When these covert operations were exposed in 1986, it seemed as if another president would face impeachment. Eventually, lower-ranking officials took total responsibility for the actions, and Reagan was spared. Watch the Video The Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s on myhistorylab.com Reagan the Peacemaker: The advent of Mikhail Gorbachev to power in Russia allowed Reagan to adopt a more conciliatory attitude. The two leaders came close to making tremendous cuts in all offensive missiles and did in fact agree to eliminate all intermediate range missiles. In addition, the Soviets moved out of Angola and Afghanistan. The sudden friendship of the United States and the Soviet Union erased doubts over Reagan’s handling of foreign policy and restored his immense popularity as he left office CONCLUSION: CHALLENGING THE NEW DEAL Despite the troubles of his last two years in office, Reagan successfully carried off a revolution in American government. He made it clear that the American people should rely less on the federal government and more on private enterprise to make their society work.

KEY TERMS: 1. The Moral Majority was founded by Jerry Falwell, a Virginia radio and television evangelist, to combat “amoral liberals,” drug abuse, “coddling” of criminals, homosexuality, communism, and abortion.

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2. Neoconservatives were former liberals who advocated a strong stand against communism abroad and free market capitalism at home. The intellectuals stressed the positive values of American society in contrast to liberals who emphasized social ills.

3. Détente—a relaxation of tension with the Soviets— appealed to Nixon because it was a way to lessen the possibility of nuclear war in the 1970s.

4. The agreements that came out of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I were most important as a symbolic first step toward control of the nuclear arms race. They signified that the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to achieve a settlement of their differences by peaceful means.

5. A break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington was carried out under the direction of White House staff members. The Senate appointed a special committee to investigate the Watergate scandal and Nixon was forced to release the taped transcripts of Oval Office conversations that proved Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up to the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment probe.

6. In late 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quadrupled the price of oil. The huge increase had a devastating impact on the American economy.

7. The first goal of women’s movement was ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). It failed because working-class women were afraid the protection given by various states to women in menial jobs like maids, dishwashers, and laundry workers concerning hours and wages would be lost. The ERA was also opposed by some right-wing activists who claimed it would lead to women being drafted and gay marriage.

8. Women had a constitutional right to abortion during the early stages of pregnancy according to the Roe v. Wade decision.

9. The Camp David accords led Israel and Egypt to sign a peace treaty in 1979.

10. Iranians were furious over the fact that Jimmy Carter permitted the shah to enter the United States for medical treatment. Carter responded at first to the Iranian hostage crisis by relying on diplomacy and economic reprisals in vain. In April 1980, Carter then authorized a desperate rescue mission that ended in failure. Carter’s ineffective response became a political handicap in the upcoming presidential election.

11. Reagan believed that tax cuts would stimulate the economy by giving individuals greater incentive to earn more money, which would lead to greater investments and eventually larger tax revenues at a lower rate. Supply-side economics was successful as Reagan slashed the budget by cutting into government social service programs and trimming taxes, which changed the direction of the economy.

12. The nuclear arms race had reached a more dangerous level than ever before, prompting the United States to step up research and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 319

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an antimissile system based on the use of lasers and particle beams to destroy incoming missiles in outer space. The media dubbed it “star wars.”

13. High officials in the Reagan administration secretly selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to finance the Contra rebels in Nicaragua caused the Iran-Contra affair.

14. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) aimed to provide for the destruction of all intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe and permitted onsite inspection for the first time during the Cold War.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What was détente and why did it appeal to Nixon? Détente appealed to Nixon and Kissinger because they saw it as a way to strategically withdraw from a situation the United States was not winning, that is, the Cold War. A relaxation of tensions with the Soviet Union, which is what détente was, would allow the United States to regain the initiative in this traditional power struggle, which is what they saw the Cold War to be. America’s economic strength, trade, could be used to get the Russians to do what the United States wanted. So grain and technology became the weapons of choice to bring the Russians to the table. Nixon also went to China, which the Soviets saw as a dangerous adversary, and reestablished relations. Both these moves led to the SALT I agreements, which made it appear that the United States and Russia were trying to settle their nuclear disagreements politically.

2. How did the Vietnam War end? Nixon developed a threefold strategy to ending the war in Vietnam. He would gradually withdraw troops from Vietnam, while training the South Vietnamese army to take over combat. Next he would renew bombing but accompany that with a hard line at the negotiating table with Hanoi. American troop strength dropped from 540,000 in 1969 to less than 30,000 by 1972, but his renewed bombing stirred up protest again in the United States. Nixon decided to bomb North Vietnamese supply routes in Laos and Cambodia, eventually launching air and ground assaults into Cambodia. Student demonstrations on college campuses broke out across the nation. When four students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University, Nixon called them thugs and most of the nation seemed to agree with him. It was his negotiation part of the strategy that worked best. When negotiations got close to finishing, but the North tried to add a few items at the last minute, Nixon stepped up bombing of Hanoi and the North signed the treaty in January 1973. The Communists waited two years but eventually launched an assault that met virtually no resistance, which took all of Vietnam. Ten years and 60,000 American lives proved Vietnam to be a tragic failure.

3. Why was Nixon forced to resign? Unlike previous presidential scandals, the Watergate scandal was about power, not money. Nixon had created a group to monitor leaks and put a stop to them; these “plumbers” started out by investigating national security breaches but got involved in the presidential campaign of 1972. Soon they were spying on his Democratic opponents and playing political dirty tricks; five got caught breaking into the Democratic National Convention at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. Nixon tried to cover this all up; he fired some involved, refused to provide tape recordings of his Oval Office meetings, 320

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and waited for it to blow over. When the Supreme Court ruled he had to turn over the tapes and Congress drafted three articles of impeachment, Nixon resigned.

4. Why did oil prices quadruple in the 1970s? OPEC’s announced cut in oil production by 5 percent in 1973, with promises to cut 5 percent more each month until Israel returned the lands she gained in the Yom Kippur War, sparked an oil crisis. When the United States provided emergency aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia cut oil shipments to the United States, the crisis heightened. People filled their cars constantly for fear gas would run out. President Nixon asked people to lower their thermostats and stop driving for pleasure. The United States, with only 6 percent of the world’s population, had become responsible for nearly 40 percent of the world’s energy consumption.

5. How did rising oil prices help trigger the inflation of the 1970s? Americans had taken cheap fuel prices for granted. When oil prices spiked in the 1970s, it led to drastic increases in inflation. The problem was that oil or its equivalent in energy is required to produce and transport manufactured goods, and the rising oil prices had increased the prices of nearly everything else, including most services. Thus oil prices became the primary factor in the inflation of the 1970s.

6. How did American life change in the 1970s? Significant changes occurred in family life during the 1970s. Households with married couples and one child dropped from 30 percent in the 1970s to 23 percent in 2000. Half of all first marriages ended in divorce, while the traditional family unit declined. Most mothers not only worked outside the home, but also many had become the sole support for their children. In 20 years the proportion of children who lived with only one parent doubled. One-third of all impoverished households were headed by women, while 40 percent of the nation’s poor were now made up of children.

7. What new challenges and opportunities faced women during the decade? Women faced a mixed bag when it came to challenges and opportunities during the era. In many ways economically they found themselves making advancements. Six million more married women entered the workforce as two incomes became more and more the norm to keep up with inflation. They filled 61 percent of 19 million new jobs created during the decade; this is where the flip side emerges as many of the new jobs were entry-level or low-paying service positions. Women did begin to enter the corporate board rooms, but many entering maledominated fields encountered glass ceilings or were relegated to business positions guaranteed to hinder their reaching the top. The two most important initiatives yielded different results. The ERA failed to gain passage and was resisted not only by men but also by some women who saw it as damaging to the family. Their efforts in regards to Roe v.

Wade provided their most success as they held off challenges to the decision.

8. What was “gay liberation,” and how did the movement develop? The gay liberation movement sprang out of the two-day Stonewall riots in New York City. Gays and lesbians refused to tolerate being victims any more for their sexual orientation. Their movement demanded an end to discrimination against homosexuals. The basic theme of the movement encouraged all homosexuals to “come out of the closet.” They felt gays should affirm their sexual identity with pride; the very process of coming out would bring freedom and self321

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respect. Hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians responded to this call and formed thousands of local clubs and organizations. They won notable victories: In 1974 the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder and, by 1980, half the states had repealed their sodomy statutes. The ultimate victory came in 1980 when the Democratic National Convention added a gay rights plank to its platform.

9. What ended Ford’s honeymoon with the American people? Ford’s honeymoon with the American public only lasted one month because he gave a full presidential pardon to former President Nixon for all crimes he may have committed. Ford then found himself fighting for the CIA, and when he blurted out it may have been involved in assassinations, he made it worse. His efforts to help both may have been meant to put an end to both issues quickly, but they both backfired.

10. What mood did Carter detect in American society? Carter during his campaign touched on the sense that Americans were tired of lies and stated he’d never lie. While his claim to be an outsider helped with his election, it proved to make governing difficult for him as he seemed to have no real plan. In 1979, when he appeared to be losing the nation’s confidence he gave a speech, after consulting his advisors, in which he seemed to accuse the American public of creating a crisis of confidence that was affecting America’s very heart and soul.

The media dubbed it his “national malaise” speech and, when he followed it by firing two of his cabinet members, he could no longer hide his failure.

11. What happened at Camp David, and why were Americans taken hostage in Iran? While Carter’s domestic failures mounted, he seemed to have better luck in foreign affairs, especially in the Middle East. He brought Israeli Prime Minister Begin and Egyptian President Sadat to Camp David where for 13 days they met and crafted the guidelines for what would become a peace treaty in 1979. The treaty that came out of the Camp David accords returned the Sinai to the Egyptians but left the Palestinian situation unsettled. Carter had continued the close relationship Nixon and Kissinger had formed with the shah of Iran.

When he was forced from power, Carter allowed him to come to the United States for medical treatment. Iranian militants subsequently seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 53 Americans hostage.

12. Why did Americans find Reagan so attractive? Reagan’s candidacy was summed up in a question he asked the American people, “Were they better off now than they were four years ago?” The answer was a resounding no and the election bore that out as Reagan made inroads in areas of the country that had been Democratic mainstays since the Great Depression.

Reagan had appealed to workers blaming Carter for inflation that hurt their purchasing power. He gained support among the military for blaming Carter for allowing America to get blindsided by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and he promised to rebuild the military, pouring billions of dollars into it.

13. What was Reagan’s philosophy on taxes? Reagan felt taxes were too high and called for a three-year plan that would reduce personal income taxes by 10 percent each year. The Democrats countered with a two-year plan that would reduce taxes only by 15 percent.

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Reagan compromised and offered a plan that would reduce taxes by 5 percent the first year, but 10 percent both of the following years. His plan passed both houses of Congress in July.

14. Why did Reagan think the Soviet Union was evil, and what did he intend to do about it?

Russian actions led to Reagan’s belief they were an “evil empire.” He saw them bent on world revolution and believed they would lie, cheat, and commit any crime to accomplish their goals. He used this to get Congress to increase the defense budget drastically, maintaining the same hard line Carter had started after the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

Reagan abandoned détente and implemented a 1979 decision to place 572 Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe within range of Moscow and other Soviet bloc capitals.

This was to match the Soviet missiles that were already pointed at NATO countries. Despite uneasiness in Europe, Soviet protests, and loud protests back home, Reagan stood firm.

15. How did Reagan deal with leftists in Central America? Central America in Reagan’s mind was in danger from the Soviet threat as much as anywhere else. Too often the United States had sided with right-wing dictators when unable to find a moderate regime. Carter had tried to provide U.S. aid to keep the Sandinistas from growing closer to the Soviets and the Cubans. When Reagan took office he cut off that aid. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy as they moved closer to Cuba and Russia. When Congress balked at his request for increased funding and the authority to oust the Sandinistas, Reagan opted for covert action. He funded rebels through the CIA; rebels launching from Honduras and Costa Rica tried to disrupt the Sandinistas. When Congress passed the Boland Act prohibiting a U.S. agency from spending money in Central America, the rebels were left in a precarious position.

16. What was the Iran-Contra affair? In mid-1985, National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane came up with the idea of selling missiles to Iran in exchange for hostages in Lebanon held by groups the Iranians supported. The Iranians were locked in a bitter war with Iraq and were desperate for weapons. McFarlane used young Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North to enact the scheme. It grew when Poindexter, a navy admiral, replaced McFarlane and North convinced him they could sell weapons like the anti-tank TOW missile and the anti-aircraft Hawk missile and take the profits and use to support the guerrillas in Nicaragua. This was unconstitutional because it violated Congress’s power of the purse and the Boland Act prohibiting funds going anywhere in Central America. Aides tried to shield Reagan and nothing was attached to the president, but his reputation was tarnished and several aides including North and Poindexter were prosecuted.

17. What did the INF Treaty do? As Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated, thawing relations between the two superpowers, they came to an agreement that led to the INF Treaty. In the treaty the two sides agreed to remove and destroy all intermediate-range missiles in Europe.

This marked the most important arms-control treaty since SALT I and led many to hope it marked the beginning of the end for the Cold War.

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CHAPTER 32 Into the Twenty-First Century, 1989–2010 CHAPTER OUTLINE “This Will Not Stand”: Foreign Policy in the Post–Cold War Era The First President Bush Republicans at Home Ending the Cold War The Gulf War The Changing Faces of America A People on the Move The Revival of Immigration Emerging Hispanics Advance and Retreat for African Americans Americans from Asia and the Middle East The New Democrats Clinton and Congress Scandal in the White House Republicans Resurgent The Disputed Election of 2000 George W. Bush at Home The War on Terrorism Widening the Battlefield Bush Reelected Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials The Great Recession New Challenges and Old Doubting the Future Conclusion: The End of the American Future—Or Not?

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TOWARD DISCUSSION: AMERICA, YEAR 2000 According to the United States Census Bureau, the population of the United States was exactly 281,421,906 at the time the 2000 census was completed. Although it will take a few more years to fully tabulate and report the data, there are tantalizing hints in the 2000 census that the United States is going through another demographic transformation.

The demographic history of the United States has always been unpredictable. Just when it seems that the nation is about to settle into a certain form, it experiences changes so profound that one might speak of a new America. In its earliest, most formative stage, the United States was a nation of young male farmers of British and German descent with a large minority of enslaved African Americans. The first great demographic change took place in the ethnic composition of the white population when a massive immigration of eastern and southern Europeans arrived around 1900. That “new immigration” coincided with the industrialization and urbanization of the nation, and by 1950 it seemed as if the United States was becoming a typically “postindustrial” society. Women had become a majority by 1945, and the population was aging. The “baby boom” of the 1950s reversed those trends for at least two decades, and it was not until 1980 that the United States resumed its way toward a predictable population profile. The median age increased from 30 in 1980 to 33 in 1990, and women were becoming an increasing majority in the older age categories. The birth rate had dipped below zero population growth and the decennial increase in the population was under 10 percent in the 1980s, the lowest rate of increase since the decade of the Great Depression.

It now seems, based on preliminary data from the latest census, that the United States began a new demographic history in the 1990s, triggered again by the newest “new immigration.” The United States still receives people from every country on the globe, but the most important sources of immigration by far are Asia and Latin America. The percentage gains being made by Asians are spectacular, but their absolute numbers are still too small to make future trends safely predictable. It is the Hispanic part of the population that deserves most attention because it is already huge and rapidly increasing. Hispanics have become the nation’s largest minority, and the “white” and “black” segments of the population are shrinking as a proportion of the whole. “Whites” have already become less than half the total population of California.

Aside from the growing size of the Hispanic population, the 2000 census is notable because it shows a surprising reversal of longstanding trends. The American population grew by more than 13 percent in the 1990s, which translates into an additional 33 million people, the largest decennial increase in the nation’s entire history, an especially surprising development considering the sluggish growth of the previous decade. Immigration, of course, accounted for much of the increase, but natural increase seems also to be a factor. The country is certainly becoming younger and more male and may even be entering another “baby boom.”

Looked at superficially, the 2000 census makes it appear that the age-old trend of Americans to move south and west continues. The mythical population center of the United States shifted about 40 miles southwestward between 1990 and 2000, and now rests at Edgar Springs, Missouri. Looked at in more detail, the 2000 census suggests that a surprising reversal in migratory patterns is about to begin. The population decline of the nation’s largest cities has 325

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finally ceased, and places like New York and San Francisco are now regaining people. Just as the growth of the Sun Belt was initially spurred by retirees in search of an easy climate, it may be that the big cities, with their public transportation systems, their abundance of cultural attractions and their growing sense of personal safety, are just beginning to draw older people from the suburban sprawl that has become an especially serious problem in the desert Southwest. It is a trend worth watching.

The 2000 census also shows a substantial increase in the portion of the population over 65 years of age. Those over 65 now make up 12 percent of the population, three times the figure in 1900.

RELIVING THE PAST The advent of portable television cameras means that every significant event is now videotaped.

When John Kennedy was shot in 1963, the tragedy was filmed by only one person, an amateur using a home-movie camera. When Ronald Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981, the entire sequence happened on television. The fact that cameramen from the major news media were present at the scene is instructive. Reagan had driven from the White House to a downtown hotel to deliver a routine, inconsequential speech. After the speech, he left the hotel and had only to walk the width of a sidewalk to reach the safety of his bullet-proof limousine. The chances that anything would happen were exceedingly slim, yet a pool of reporters, the “death watch,” was on hand just in case. It must have cost millions of feet of tape and thousands of wasted hours of watchful waiting, but the film of the attempted assassination is truly astonishing. We see Reagan’s look of puzzlement as he is struck by a bullet; we see Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy leap into the line of fire and take a bullet in the chest; we see the gunman smothered and subdued; we see three bodies bleeding on the pavement as the president’s car speeds away.

What the media does for the powerful and famous, the camcorder does for the average person. In the future, no baby will be born, no child will be baptized or bar mitzvahed, no couple will be married, nobody will bowl 300 or make a hole-in-one, no person will be promoted or retired, and perhaps none of us will die, without the occasion being recorded, so that what we did once, we will do again and again in replay, in freeze-frame or slow motion, in living color. The task of “Reliving the Past,” which once required an historian’s labor and imagination, will be reduced to pushing a few buttons. In the future, the past will be always with us.

CHAPTER SUMMARY “THIS WILL NOT STAND”: FOREIGN POLICY IN THE POST–COLD WAR ERA The author begins with Saddam Hussein’s surprise invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The president, George W.H. Bush, was caught off guard but quickly made the decision to expel the Iraqis, based primarily on the sense that the end of the Cold War would encourage small nations to settle regional quarrels by force now that such wars would not involve the United States or the Soviet Union. Bush was willing to show that the United States, as the world’s only superpower,

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was willing to keep the peace. Watch the Video George Bush Presidential Campaign Act on myhistorylab.com

THE FIRST PRESIDENT BUSH Bush was elected president in 1998 because he had served eight years as Reagan’s vice president. Although he did not win reelection, he did score some major victories in his foreign policy.

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WHAT were the important issues in George H. W. Bush’s presidency, and how were they handled?

In domestic affairs, the first President Bush focused on fixing the savings and loan industry and balancing the budget. In foreign affairs, he managed the end the Cold War peacefully and successfully. The Gulf War of 1991 liberated Kuwait and weakened the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein but didn’t remove Saddam from power in Baghdad.

Republicans at Home: Bush continued Reagan’s policy of reducing the role of the federal government, but he had to intervene to bail out the banking system and had agreed to raise taxes to bring down the massive national debt of the Reagan era. In breaking his pledge not to raise taxes, he angered Republicans, and never again recovered his popularity. View the Image George H.W. Bush on myhistorylab.com Ending the Cold War: Shortly after Bush’s inauguration, there was a major uprising in China against the government, and the Soviet Union began to implode. Bush approached both developments cautiously. He did not want to interfere with America’s growing trade with China, and he did not want to see Russia sink into turmoil. Watch the Video The Berlin Wall on myhistorylab.com The Gulf War: Bush responded to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait by organizing an international coalition that attacked the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait. After air power reduced Saddam’s troops to immobility, a land assault was mounted that cleared Kuwait in just 100 hours. Bush, however, did not push on to Baghdad, so Saddam remained in power, and was a constant nuisance for years to come. Read the Document George Bush, Address to the Nation on Persian Gulf (1991) on myhistorylab.com THE CHANGING FACES OF AMERICA The two most dramatic demographic changes over the last twenty years have been the movement of the population to the South and West and the arrival of immigrants from Third World countries.

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HOW did the American population shift and grow between 1990 and 2010?

Americans continued to migrate to the Sunbelt in the 1990s and early 2000s, and immigration continued to grow. Hispanics formed the largest segment of the immigrant 327

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population and included several million illegal immigrants. African Americans gained ground economically but in many communities still suffered from poverty, as Hurricane Katrina demonstrated.

A People on the Move: By 1990, a majority of Americans lived in the South and West, and in 1990, Los Angeles passed Chicago as the nation’s second-largest city. The elderly, usually retired persons, were an especially important part of the migration because they carried considerable political clout. Important differences exist between rural and urban areas. The 2000 census also revealed that the portion of the population over 65 is growing rapidly. View the Map Americans Move to the Sunbelt on myhistorylab.com The Revival of Immigration: Immigration increased rapidly after Congress changed the law to encourage more people from the Third World in 1965, but the numbers of those living in the United States in 2005 that were born abroad reached a record high. Immigrants from Latin America made up a majority of the new arrivals, and they tended to settle in the urbanized areas of such states as California, New York, and Florida. The flood of immigrants, as usual, provoked debate about the future of the nation. Read the Document Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 on myhistorylab.com Emerging Hispanics: “Hispanics,” those who came from Central America, South America, or the Caribbean or who were the children of prior immigrants from those areas, became the nation’s largest ethnic minority in 2002. In general, they were young, poor, relatively uneducated, and willing to work for cheap wages. Concerns about the large numbers of Mexicans coming into California and the Southwest prompted Congress to take action. An amnesty was offered to those already in America illegally, but Congress promised to enforce the immigration laws more strictly in the future. That effort, however, failed to stop illegal immigrants from continuing to seek work in the United States.

Advance and Retreat for African Americans: For African Americans, the years after 1990 saw both progress and disappointment. More blacks were finishing high school and going on to college, and more blacks owned their own businesses, but blacks were still much poorer than whites and still more likely to spend time in prison. In many ways, blacks were still treated like second-class citizens, which explained much of the resentment that led to a riot in Los Angeles in 1991, in which over 50 people were killed. Blacks also experienced more losses from Hurricane Katrina because their homes tended to be in more vulnerable areas, and many lacked the ability to flee before the storm.

Americans from Asia and the Middle East: Asian Americans are at present the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States. They are in general well-educated and affluent, but some groups, especially refugees from Vietnam and Laos, are among the nation’s poorest people.

Another rapidly growing ethnic group comes from the Middle East, especially from Arab countries. After 9/11 prejudice against Arab Americans ran high, but in general Americans of Middle Eastern origin have done well in America. View the Map Immigration to the United States on myhistorylab.com

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THE NEW DEMOCRATS The Democrats realized that the country’s economic woes would hurt Bush’s chances for reelection, so there was a stubborn contest for the nomination, which Bill Clinton, former governor of Arkansas, won.

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WHAT were the accomplishments and failures of the Clinton administration?

Clinton balanced the federal budget and helped revive the economy, which boomed during the 1990s. The North American Free Trade Agreement eliminated tariff barriers among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. But personal scandals led to Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate, which he survived, although not without serious damage to his own reputation and that of the Democrats.

Clinton and Congress: True to his campaign, Clinton made the economy his top priority and adopted fiscally conservative measures, for instance, by cutting spending and raising taxes. To make the United States more competitive, he endorsed a Republican measure, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated tariffs on trade between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Nevertheless, Clinton was despised by Republicans, who took advantage of his supposed involvement in a suspicious real-estate venture, “Whitewater,” to slander him.

Under the leadership of “Newt” Gingrich, the Republicans won the congressional elections in 1999, and tried to make Clinton a lame duck. They finally overreached when they actually shut down the federal government, and Clinton was able to win re-election in 1996. Watch the Video Bill Clinton’s First Inauguration on myhistorylab.com Scandal in the White House: The special prosecutor assigned to investigate Whitewater, Kenneth Starr, could not make a case that Clinton had done anything improper, but he did discover that Clinton had been carrying on a sexual affair with a young White House intern.

When Starr revealed the sordid story, the Republican House of Representatives tried to impeach the president but merely disgusted the American people. The impeachment effort failed, but Clinton’s reputation was torn to shreds. Read the Document Exhibition of Articles of Impeachment (1999) myhistorylab.com REPUBLICANS RESURGENT The Democrats were optimistic going into the presidential election of 2000 because the economy was in excellent shape, but the results shocked them.

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HOW did George W. Bush become president, and what did he do in the White House?

George W. Bush became president in an election that turned on a ballot dispute in Florida, which was resolved only by the intervention of the Supreme Court. As president, Bush persuaded Congress to cut taxes and, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to authorize invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in Iraq started well but bogged down amid an insurgency against the American-supported government in Baghdad.

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The Disputed Election of 2000: The Democratic nominee, Al Gore, who had served as Clinton’s vice president for eight years, was tarred by that association. His opponent, George Bush, son of the forty-first president and governor of Texas, appealed to the Republican base, especially to the Christian Right. The campaign was complicated by the decision of Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, to run as the Green party candidate. When the balloting was over on election night, Gore had a majority of the popular vote but not enough electoral votes to be elected. The decision would ultimately depend on Florida where the vote was extremely close.

When it was finally awarded to Bush, Gore asked for a partial recount, and the Republicans went to court to block him. The result was a series of rulings by the Florida Supreme Court to conduct a statewide recount, but that decision was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in a 5– 4 decision. The election demonstrated how divided the American people were by geography, class, gender, and race. View the Image Bill Clinton and Al Gore on the South Lawn on myhistorylab.com George W. Bush at Home: Having inherited a shrinking national debt and determined to cut taxes, Bush successfully argued in 2001 that the money the government collected properly belonged to the people and should be restored to them. Congress enacted a massive tax reduction. When the economy suddenly went into recession in 2001, and the national debt began to climb, Bush argued that taxes should be cut again to provide an incentive to spend, and Congress agreed. Bush’s other main legislative achievement was an education reform that mandated constant testing by the nation’s schools to see which were performing and which failing.

The War on Terrorism: On September 11, 2001, terrorists crashed planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and into the Pentagon in Washington, killing over 3,000 persons. It was quickly known that the operation had been organized by al-Qaeda, a network headed by Osama bin Laden, who had already attacked American interests around the world. He was being given refuge in Afghanistan by the government there, so it was immediately apparent that the United States would topple that government. With solid support from the world community, Bush used air power and an alliance with local war lords to install a new government in Kabul, but Osama bin Laden was not captured or killed. At home, Bush responded to 9/11 by creating a new Department of Homeland Security, and by persuading Congress to pass a “patriot act,” giving the federal government extensive powers to investigate suspected terrorists. Passed easily, the legislation soon raised concerns about the erosion of civil liberties. Read the Document George Bush Address to the Nation on myhistorylab.com Widening the Battlefield: Even before 9/11, Bush adopted an activist, unilateral foreign policy, but after 9/11, he placed the nation on a permanent war-footing and proclaimed that he had sufficient authority to attack countries like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, the “axis of evil.” To back up his words, Bush asked Congress for more money for the armed forces and began to prepare the American people for an invasion of Iraq by claiming that Saddam Hussein had a large arsenal of biological, chemical, and even nuclear weapons. Congress authorized the use of force, but the UN, allowed to send inspectors back to Iraq, could not find evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. When France and Russia threatened to veto UN authorization for the war, Bush proceeded anyway. In March 2000 the 330

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invasion began with a sudden air strike, followed by a thrust by American and British infantry and armor. Baghdad quickly fell, but no weapons of mass destruction were found, Iraq fell into anarchy, and insurgents began to attack the American occupation forces. Even worse were signs that the different religious and ethnic groups in Iraq were beginning to fight one another, raising fears of a civil war, with American troops caught in the middle.

Bush Reelected: In 2004 Bush ran as a resolute commander-in-chief who would keep the country safe against terrorist attacks. His opponent, John Kerry, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, ran close but Bush won both the popular and electoral vote. The Republicans also strengthened their hold on Congress. Flushed with victory, Bush made “reform” of Social Security his top priority, but he was totally unable to persuade the people, or even the Republican Congress, to follow him. At the same time, the news from Iraq continued to be discouraging, and by 2006, a great majority of the American people wanted to see their troops brought home.

BARACK OBAMA’S TRIUMPH AND TRIALS The fact the new president, Barack Obama, was an African American didn’t make the problems he was inheriting any less daunting.

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HOW did Barack Obama deal with the financial crisis he faced upon entering office?

The President’s inaugural address gave the country hope, but the warm feeling soon blew off with a bleak economy. Congress and the President were able to stabilize the financial sector, but unemployment rose peaking at 10 percent in 2009.

The Great Recession: The financial crisis scared the Bush Administration and Congress into creating a relief package worth hundreds of billions of dollars for the financial sector. It was not enough to save giants like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. The crisis left the American public shaken and looking for a new alternative. They found it in the Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama, who promised new hope.

New Challenges and Old: Americans were still divided over many questions. Affirmative action was controversial because it raised the question of how much, if anything, the nation owed to African Americans for centuries of slavery and officially sponsored racial discrimination.

Abortion remained a cutting-edge issue, especially now that the Supreme Court had a solid majority that might overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. It was apparent too that most Americans felt there should be a limit placed on gay rights, particularly in the matter of marriage. Even the theory of evolution was controversial, although most Americans did not want to see quasireligious doctrines like “intelligent design” placed in the school curriculum. Read the Document Dissent Within the World Episcopal Church Over Gay Rights on myhistorylab.com Doubting the Future: The future seems no brighter than the present. It is becoming harder for the present generation to believe that their children would have richer lives, or that such programs as Social Security will exist in the future. Among other problems, the national debt 331

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is becoming increasingly held by foreign nations, illegal immigration shows no sign of slowing, the price of oil continues to increase, and global warming seems more and more dangerous.

CONCLUSION: THE END OF THE AMERICAN FUTURE—OR NOT Americans live in the most powerful nation on earth yet feel extraordinarily vulnerable. There is no agreement on fundamental values or what the future of the country should be. History teaches us that Americans have faced tremendous problems in the past, and have sometimes risen to the challenge of solving them and sometimes failed to do so. It is still too early to say how this generation of Americans will respond to these challenges.

KEY TERMS: 1. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) banned discrimination against the disabled in employment and mandated easier access to all public and commercial buildings. People with disabilities began to be able to get access to jobs and places they had been blocked from in the past.

2. America and its allies determined that Iraq’s aggression could not be tolerated. When economic sanctions failed, President Bush formed an international coalition to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm.

3. An area below the 37th parallel, stretching across the country from the Carolinas to California has been referred to as the Sunbelt. Its population had started growing with the building of defense plants during World War II, but it exploded after the war with the stimulus of Cold War defense spending. When low labor costs and favorable climate in the 1970s attracted both high-technology firms and more established industries, growth accelerated.

4. Critics of undocumented aliens, illegal immigrants from Mexico, charged that aliens took jobs from U.S. citizens, kept wages artificially low, and received extensive welfare and medical benefits that strained budgets in states such as Texas and California.

5. Clinton scored a victory when Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, a free trade plan that joined the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a common market without tariff barriers.

6. Newt Gingrich, a young congressman from Georgia, asked all the Republican candidates in 1994 to sign a ten-point Contract with America. A balanced budget amendment, term limits, a line-item veto for the president and a middle-class tax cut, all familiar conservative goals, were a part of the contract.

7. Because of the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush instituted the war on terror.

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8. Two main components of the U.S. policy of unilateralism are accepting fully the role the nation had been playing since the end of the Cold War (global policeman) and implementing this policy by maintaining “military strength beyond challenge.” Critics argue that it is foolish for a nation to act alone without consulting other nations.

9. After his “axis of evil” speech, Bush focused on what he and his Pentagon advisors called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that they claimed Saddam Hussein had been secretly amassing. The United States demanded that UN inspectors be allowed to enter Iraq to search for these weapons.

10. Perhaps one of the most critical areas that kept affirmative action with its policies designed to ensure greater participation by minorities at the forefront of discussion was its role in higher education. Bakke v. Regents of the University of California in 1978 allowed race to be used as one factor in determining admission to colleges and universities. Many conservatives were dissatisfied with the decision and attacked affirmative action.

ANSWERS TO QUICK CHECK QUESTIONS: 1. What were the principal domestic accomplishments of the Bush administration?

Only the Americans with Disabilities Act emerged as a major piece of domestic legislation in the Bush administration. Effective in July 1992, all public buildings, restaurants, and stores had to be made accessible to the handicapped. It also prohibited discrimination against the handicapped in hiring and transportation.

2. How did Bush help end the Cold Ward? After starting cautiously, especially in China, the Bush administration offered economic assistance to Russia and other members of the CIS. He also helped to facilitate the reunification of Germany after the fall of East Germany. He and Gorbachev signed START I to reduce nuclear warheads to less than 10,000. Yeltsin and Bush agreed in 1992 to START II, which would eliminate land missiles with multiple warheads to just over 3,000, a level not seen since the mid-1960s.

3. What provoked the Gulf War of 1991, and how did it turn out? Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 led President Bush to condemn his action and form a coalition to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Saudi Arabia was convinced to allow U.S. troops to land and establish bases in the kingdom. This operation, known as Desert Shield, protected Saudi Arabia from any possible invasion and helped the United States prepare for a ground invasion of Kuwait to drive the Iraqis out. The coalition formed slowly, but when even the Russians moved to support it the pieces fell into place. The president was able to swing some Democrats to his way of thinking after economic sanctions failed and the Senate approved the use of force by just five votes. U.S. forces decimated the Iraqis, first in the air and then on the ground and Operation Desert Storm was over in just five weeks for the air war and 100 hours for the ground assault. The war was over and Saddam’s vaunted Republican Guard was sent fleeing back to Iraq.

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4. Why did Americans migrate to the Sunbelt? Americans first migrated to the Sunbelt region for jobs that became available with the defense plants that built equipment for World War II. When defense jobs exploded because of the military build-up during the Cold War, Americans continued to pour into the Sunbelt region. In the 1970s, a favorable climate and the influx of technology firms only kept the increased population trend going.

The increase caused problems in the region as it led to greater urbanization, an increase in ethnic diversity, and social unrest.

5. What prompted the renewed growth in immigration? New immigrants tended to be coming from Latin America and settled in urban areas. Six states became home to these new immigrants: California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. They created growing pressure on public services but were beneficial to consumers and employers because they worked for low wages. A study also showed in the long run that they more than paid for the social services they used.

6. Why was immigration from Mexico so controversial? Beside some of the cultural differences, the main difficulty lay in the lack of education as Hispanics dropped out of high school at higher rates than any other group. Hispanic activists argued, “You either educate us or build more jails and welfare services.” Critics complained of the subculture they felt was developing because of all the illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexican border.

They argued that aliens took jobs from U.S. citizens, kept wages artificially low, and received welfare and medical benefits that strained state budgets.

7. How did Hurricane Katrina reveal problems of African American life? Hurricane Katrina exposed how many African Americans were living in New Orleans. They had no car to flee the hurricane and, if they had, most could not afford lodging costs to stay outside the city. It was reflective of the struggle of blacks in other parts of the United States. The black poverty rate was 25 percent and the median income for black families was less than two-thirds that of whites.

8. How did the new immigration from Asia and the Middle East differ from earlier phases of immigration? Education was the single greatest difference between Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants as compared to earlier groups. Three out of four Asian youths graduated from high school as compared to fewer than one out of two for blacks and Hispanics. Asians had the highest college graduation rate and members who went on to get doctorates, while more than half the Middle Eastern immigrants graduated from college. Some Asian groups, like the Laotian refugees who settled in Minnesota, had difficulty finding work because of their struggles learning how to read and write English.

Middle Eastern immigrants were made nervous by the events of September 11.

9. What victories did Clinton score in domestic affairs? Clinton’s domestic successes were primarily economic in nature. He cajoled, shamed, and threatened enough legislators to pass an increase in taxes and budget cuts, which led to a total deficit reduction of $496 billion in four years. President Bush had worked on NAFTA and Clinton was able to finish it believing it would secure American prosperity and spread American values. His critics believed it would lead to a loss of American jobs to Mexico.

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10. Why was Clinton impeached? Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr had sent Congress a report outlining 11 possible impeachment charges. Perjury was the key charge, but Starr went too far when he graphically detailed in his 452-page report Clinton’s sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. People found the details offensive and with Hillary Clinton, standing beside her husband, came to see it as a private matter between husband and wife.

11. What was controversial about the 2000 election? Gore had more popular votes than Bush and a lead in the electoral college of 267to 246, but Florida’s numbers were in doubt. Gore had been declared the winner by the national media early in the evening, but that changed overnight. Several districts in Florida used the old punch card method to record votes, and in three heavily Democratic counties Gore had asked for a recount because some of the chads, pieces of paper punched out, were still not easily counted.

Florida courts ordered a recall twice, but the Supreme Court finally ruled against a recall by a 5 to 4 decision. Gore conceded graciously the next morning.

12. What was George W. Bush’s tax policy? George W. Bush argued tax cuts would stimulate the economy. He convinced Congress to pass a staggering $1.35 trillion tax cut to be completed over ten years. Rebates were offered by Congress as a short-term stimulus, but the cuts critics argued would cost $1 trillion in government revenue.

13. What prompted America’s war on terrorism? The war on terror had two aspects. The first was to punish those who had attacked the United States on September 11. Those who planned the acts and those who had harbored them became the enemy. U.S. forces also strove as the second part of the war to protect America from future attacks. A variety of tactics were used and government agencies worked together to rout out al-Qaeda, including driving al-Qaeda supporters, the Taliban, out of the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, continued to avoid capture.

14. Why did Bush order the invasion of Iraq? Under the new NSS strategy known as unilateralism, the president wanted to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. When the UN inspectors could find no sign of the weapons and, even though the UN had not authorized the use of force, U.S. forces were sent in. After just three weeks of fighting, critics and supporters alike were surprised to see U.S. Marines enter Baghdad unopposed, followed by Iraqi civilians toppling Saddam’s statue in Baghdad’s main square.

15. How did Bush win re-election? Bush and the Republicans focused on the war in Iraq, arguing it was bad to change commanders in the middle of a war. Kerry and the Democrats argued he had stolen the 2000 election and that his war in Iraq was taking away from the war on terror. Both candidates tried to tap into the Internet to rally their supporters. The vitriolic nature of the campaign led to high emotions and the highest voter turnout in years, solidifying the red and blue state split in America.

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industries by the Bush administration shook voter confidence and allowed a reexamination of the Democratic candidate. Senator Barrack Obama ran a brilliant campaign on the byword “Hope” and the slogan “Yes, we can!” He won by gaining 53 percent of the vote.

17. What were the principal issues in the culture wars of the early twenty-first century?

Three principal issues consumed the culture wars of the early twenty-first century.

Affirmative action, even with an African American in the White House, remained a volatile issue. Race had become an issue for admission to college. Two cases ruled for affirmative action, one against, but the last involving a case at the University of Michigan established the practice of using affirmative action to maintain a diverse student body, which was good for the university. Abortion remained another hot issue as pro-abortion activists worried President Bush’s Supreme Court selections would overturn Roe v.

Wade. It never came to pass but generated much angst and discussion. Lastly, gay rights emerged as a new central issue in America with the effort to obtain equal marital rights.

18. What questions clouded America’s future? A myriad of issues came to concern Americans, starting with the American economy and whether or not it could recover its resiliency. As the elderly population in America grew, the strain on the federal government worried Americans and fed even greater concerns as to how America’s growing deficit should be managed. Retirement seemed to be getting farther away from many middle-class Americans and the trend in health care costs made Americans even more anxious. Immigration issues and environmental issues occupied people’s thoughts and had economic ramifications as well.

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