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The Frenchman who wrote the above description of Americans in 1782 observed a very different society from the struggling colonial villages that had existed in the 17th century. The British colonies had grown, and their inhabitants had evolved a culture distinct from any in Europe. This chapter describes the mature colonies and asks: If Americans in the 1760s constituted a new kind of society, what were its characteristics and what forces shaped its "new people"? Population Growth At the start of the new century, in 1701, the English colonies on the Atlantic Coast had a population of barely 250,000 Europeans and Africans. By 1775, the figure had jumped to 2,500,000, a tenfold increase within the span of a single lifetime. Among African Americans, the population increase was even more dramatic: from about 28,000 in 1701 to 500,000 in 1775. The spectacular gains in population during this period resulted from two factors: immigration of almost a million people and a sharp natural increase, caused chiefly by a high birthrate among colonial families. An abundance of fertile American land and a dependable food supply attracted thousands of European settlers each year and also supported the raising of large families. European Immigrants Newcomers to the British colonies came not only from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, but also from other parts of Western and Central Europe. Many immigrants, most of whom were Protestants, came from France and Ger- man-speaking kingdoms and principalities. Their motives for leaving Europe were many. Some came to escape religious persecution and wars. Others sought COLONIAL SOCIETY IN THE 18TH CENTURY 45 economic opportunity either by farming new land or setting up shop in a colo- nial town as an artisan or a merchant. Most immigrants settled in the middle colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware) and on the western frontier of the southern colonies (Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia). In the 18th century, few immigrants headed for New England, where land was both limited in extent and under Puritan control. English Settlers from England continued to come to the American colo- nies. However, with fewer problems at home, their numbers were relatively small compared to others, especially the Germans and Scotch-Irish. Germans This group of non-English immigrants settled chiefly on the rich farmlands west of Philadelphia, an area that became known as Pennsylvania Dutch country. They maintained their German language, customs, and religion (Lutheran, Amish, Brethren, Mennonite, or one of several smaller groups) and, while obeying colonial laws, showed little interest in English politics. By 1775, people of German stock comprised 6 percent of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish These English-speaking people emigrated from northern Ireland. Since their ancestors had moved to Ireland from Scotland, they were commonly known as the Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish. They had little respect for the British government, which had pressured them into leaving Ireland. Most settled along the frontier in the western parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. By 1775, they comprised 7 percent of the population. Other Europeans Other immigrant groups included French Protestants (called Huguenots), the Dutch, and the Swedes. These groups made up 5 per- cent of the population of all the colonies in 1775. Africans The largest single group of non-English immigrants did not come to Amer- ica by choice. They were Africans-or the descendants of Africans-who had been taken captive, forced into European ships, and sold as enslaved laborers to southern plantation owners and other colonists. Some Africans were granted their freedom after years of forced labor. Outside the South, thousands of Afri- can Americans worked at a broad range of occupations, such as being a laborer, bricklayer, or blacksmith. Some of these workers were enslaved and others were free wage earners and property owners. Every colony, from New Hampshire to Georgia, passed laws that discriminated against African Americans and limited their rights and opportunities. By 1775, the African American population (both enslaved and free) made up 20 percent of the colonial population. About 90 percent lived in the southern colonies in lifelong bondage. African Americans formed a majority of the popu- lation in South Carolina and Georgia. 46 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Structure of Colonial Society Each of the thirteen British colonies developed distinct patterns of life. How- ever, they all also shared a number of characteristics. General Characteristics Most of the population was English in origin, language, and tradition. How- ever, both Africans and non-English immigrants brought diverse influences that would modify the culture of the majority in significant ways. Self-government The government of each colony had a representative assembly that was elected by eligible voters (limited to white male property own- ers). In only two colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, was the governor also elected by the people. The governors of the other colonies were either appointed by the crown (for example, New York and Virginia) or by a proprietor (Pennsyl- vania and Maryland). Religious Toleration All of the colonies permitted the practice of different religions, but with varying degrees of freedom. Massachusetts, the most conser- vative, accepted several types of Protestants, but it excluded non-Christians and Catholics. Rhode Island and Pennsylvania were the most liberal. No Hereditary Aristocracy The social extremes of Europe, with a nobil- ity that inherited special privileges and masses of hungry poor, were missing in the colonies. A narrower class system, based on economics, was developing. Wealthy landowners were at the top; craft workers and small farmers made up the majority of the common people. Social Mobility With the major exception of the African Americans, all people in colonial society had an opportunity to improve their standard of liv- ing and social status by hard work. The Family The family was the economic and social center of colonial life. With an expanding economy and ample food supply, people married at a younger age and reared more children than in Europe. More than 90 percent of the people lived on farms. While life in the coastal communities and on the frontier was hard, most colonists had a higher standard of living than did most Europeans. Men While wealth was increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a few, most men did work. Landowning was primarily reserved to men, who also dominated politics. English law gave the husband almost unlimited power in the home, including the right to beat his wife. Women The average colonial wife bore eight children and performed a wide range of tasks. Household work included cooking, cleaning, making clothes, and providing medical care. Women also educated the children. A woman usually worked next to her husband in the shop, on the plantation, or on the farm. Divorce was legal but rare, and women had limited legal and political rights. Yet the shared labors and mutual dependence with their husbands gave most women protection from abuse and an active role in decision-making. COLONIAL SOCIETY IN THE 18TH CENTURY 47 The Economy By the 1760s, almost half of Britain's world trade was with its American colo- nies. The British government permitted limited kinds of colonial manufacturing, such as making flour or rum. It restricted efforts that would compete with Eng- lish industries, such as textiles. The richness of the American land and British mercantile policy produced colonies almost entirely engaged in agriculture. As the people prospered and communities grew, increasing numbers be- came ministers, lawyers, doctors, and teachers. The quickest route to wealth was through the land, although regional geography often provided distinct op- portunities for hardworking colonists. New England With rocky soil and long winters, farming was limited to subsistence levels that provided just enough for the farm family. Most farms were small-under 100 acres-and most work was done by family members and an occasional hired laborer. The industrious descendants of the Puritans profited from logging, shipbuilding, fishing, trading, and rum-distilling. Middle Colonies Rich soil produced an abundance of wheat and corn for export to Europe and the West Indies. Farms of up to 200 acres were common. Often, indentured servants and hired laborers worked with the farm family. A variety of small manufacturing efforts developed, including iron-making. Trad- ing led to the growth of such cities as Philadelphia and New York. Southern Colonies Because of the diverse geography and climate of the southern colonies, agriculture varied greatly. Most people lived on small subsis- tence family farms with no slaves. A few lived on large plantations of over 2,000 acres and relied on slave labor. Plantations were self-sufficient-they grew their own food and had their own slave craftworkers. Products were mainly tobacco in the Chesapeake and North Carolina colonies, timber and naval stores (tar and pitch) in the Carolinas, and rice and indigo in South Carolina and Georgia. Most plantations were located on rivers so they could ship exports directly to Europe. Monetary System One way the British controlled the colonial economy was to limit the use of money. The growing colonies were forced to use much of the limited hard currency-gold and silver-to pay for the imports from Britain that increasingly exceeded colonial exports. To provide currency for domestic trade, many colonies issued paper money, but this often led to inflation. The British government also vetoed colonial laws that might harm British merchants. Transportation Transporting goods by water was much easier than at- tempting to carry them over land on rough and narrow roads or trails. Therefore, trading centers such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston were located on the sites of good harbors and navigable rivers. Despite the difficulty and expense of maintaining roads and bridges, overland travel by horse and stage became more common in the 18th century. Taverns not only provided food and lodging for travelers, but also served as social centers where news was exchanged and politics discussed. A postal system using horses on overland routes and small ships on water routes was operating both within and between the colonies by the mid-18th century. 48 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Religion Although Maryland was founded by a Catholic proprietor, and larger towns such as New York and Boston attracted some Jewish settlers, the overwhelm- ing majority of colonists belonged to various Protestant denominations. In New England, Congregationalists (the successors to the Puritans) and Presbyterians were most common. In New York, people of Dutch descent often attended ser- vices of the Reformed Church, while many merchants belonged to the Church of England, also known as Anglicans (and later, Episcopalians). In Pennsylvania, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers were the most common groups. Anglicans were dominant in Virginia and some of the other southern colonies. Challenges Each religious group, even the Protestants who dominated the colonies, faced problems. Jews, Catholics, and Quakers suffered from the most serious discrimination and even persecution. Congregationalist ministers were criticized by other Protestants as domineering and for preaching an overly com- plex doctrine. Because the Church of England was headed by the king, it was viewed as a symbol of English control in the colonies. In addition, there was no Church of England bishop in America to ordain ministers. The absence of such leadership hampered the church's development. Established Churches In the 17th century, most colonial governments taxed the people to support one particular Protestant denomination. Churches financed through the government are known as established churches. For example, in Virginia, the established church was the Church of England. In Massachusetts Bay it was the Congregational Church. As various immigrant groups increased the religious diversity of the colonies, governments gradually reduced their support of churches. In Virginia, all tax support for the Anglican Church ended shortly after the Revolution. In Massachusetts by the time of the Revolution, members of other denominations were exempt from supporting the Congregational Church. However, some direct tax support of the denomination remained until the 1830s. The Great Awakening In the first decades of the 18th century, sermons in Protestant churches tended to be long intellectual discourses and portrayed God as a benign creator of a per- fectly ordered universe. Ministers gave less emphasis than in Puritan times on human sinfulness and the perils of damnation. In the 1730s, however, a dramatic change occurred that swept through the colonies with the force of a hurricane. This was the Great Awakening, a movement characterized by fervent expres- sions of religious feeling among masses of people. The movement was at its strongest during the 1730s and 1740s. Jonathan Edwards In a Congregational church at Northampton, Massa- chusetts, Reverend Jonathan Edwards expressed the Great Awakening ideas in a series of sermons, notably one called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741). Invoking the Old Testament scriptures, Edwards argued that God was rightfully angry with human sinfulness. Each individual who expressed deep COLONIAL SOCIETY IN THE 18TH CENTURY 49 penitence could be saved by God's grace, but the souls who paid no heed to God's commandments would suffer eternal damnation. George Whitefield While Edwards mostly influenced New England, George Whitefield, who came from England in 1739, spread the Great Awaken- ing throughout the colonies, sometimes attracting audiences of 10,000 people. In barns, tents, and fields, he delivered rousing sermons that stressed that God was all-powerful and would save only those who openly professed belief in Jesus Christ. Those who did not would be damned into hell and face eternal torments. Whitefield taught that ordinary people with faith and sincerity could understand the gospels without depending on ministers to lead them. Religious Impact The Great Awakening had a profound effect on reli- gious practice in the colonies. As sinners tearfully confessed their guilt and then joyously exulted in being "saved," emotionalism became a common part of Protestant services. Ministers lost some of their former authority among those who now studied the Bible in their own homes. The Great Awakening also caused divisions within churches, such as the Congregational and Presbyterian, between those supporting its teachings ("New Lights") and those condemning them ("Old Lights"). More evangelical sects such as the Baptists and Methodists attracted large numbers. As denominations competed for followers, they also called for separation of church and state. Political Influence A movement as powerful as the Great Awakening affected all areas of life, including politics. For the first time, the colonists- regardless of their national origins or their social class-shared in a common experience as Americans. The Great Awakening also had a democratizing effect by changing the way people viewed authority. If common people could make their own religious decisions without relying on the "higher" authority of min- isters, then might they also make their own political decisions without deferring to the authority of the great landowners and merchants? This revolutionary idea was not expressed in the 1740s, but 30 years later, it would challenge the author- ity of a king and his royal governors. Cultural Life In the early 1600s, the chief concern of most colonists was economic survival. People had neither the time nor the resources to pursue leisure activities or cre- ate works of art and literature. One hundred years later, however, the colonial population had grown and matured enough that the arts could flourish, at least among the well-to-do southern planters and northern merchants. Achievements in the Arts and Sciences In the coastal areas, as fear of American Indians faded, people displayed their prosperity by adopting architectural and decorative styles from England. Architecture In the 1740s and 1750s, the Georgian style of London was widely imitated in colonial houses, churches, and public buildings. Brick and stucco homes built in this style were characterized by a symmetrical placement 50 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM of windows and dormers and a spacious center hall flanked by two fireplaces. Such homes were found only on or near the eastern seaboard. On the frontier, a one-room log cabin was the common shelter. Painting Many colonial painters were itinerant artists who wandered the countryside in search of families who wanted their portraits painted. Shortly before the Revolution, two American artists, Benjamin West and John Copley, went to England where they acquired the necessary training and financial sup- port to establish themselves as prominent artists. Literature With limited resources available, most authors wrote on seri- ous subjects, chiefly religion and politics. There were, for example, widely read religious tracts by two Massachusetts ministers, Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. In the years preceding the American Revolution, writers including John Adams, James Otis, John Dickinson, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson issued political essays and treatises highlighting the conflict between Ameri- can rights and English authority. The lack of support for literature did not stop everyone. The poetry of Phillis Wheatley is noteworthy both for her triumph over slavery and the quality of her verse. By far the most popular and successful American writer of the 18th century was that remarkable jack-of-all-trades, Benjamin Franklin. His witty aphorisms and advice were collected in Poor Richard's Almanack, a best-selling book that was annually revised from 1732 to 1757. Science Most scientists, such as the botanist John Bartram of Philadelphia, were self-taught. Benjamin Franklin won fame for his work with electricity and his developments of bifocal eyeglasses and the Franklin stove. Education Basic education was limited and varied among the colonies. Formal efforts were directed to males, since females were trained only for household work. Elementary Education In New England, the Puritans' emphasis on learn- ing the Bible led them to create the first tax-supported schools. A Massachusetts law in 1647 required towns with more than fifty families to establish primary schools for boys, and towns with more than a hundred families to establish grammar schools to prepare boys for college. In the middle colonies, schools were either church-sponsored or private. Often, teachers lived with the families of their students. In the southern colonies, parents gave their children whatever education they could. On plantations, tutors provided instruction for the owners' children. Higher Education The first colonial colleges were sectarian, meaning that they promoted the doctrines of a particular religious group. The Puri- tans founded Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636 in order to give candidates for the ministry a proper theological and scholarly education. The Anglicans opened William and Mary in Virginia in 1694, and the Congregation- alists started Yale in Connecticut in 1701. The Great Awakening prompted the creation of five new colleges between 1746 and 1769: COLONIAL SOCIETY IN THE 18TH CENTURY 51 • College of New Jersey (Princeton), 1746, Presbyterian • King's College (Columbia), 1754, Anglican • Rhode Island College (Brown), 1764, Baptist • Queens College (Rutgers), 1766, Reformed • Dartmouth College, 1769, Congregationalist Only one nonsectarian college was founded during this period. The College of Philadelphia, which later became the University of Pennsylvania, had no reli- gious sponsors. On hand for the opening ceremonies in 1765 were the college's civic-minded founders, chief among them Benjamin Franklin. Ministry During the 17th century, the Christian ministry was the only pro- fession to enjoy widespread respect among the common people. Ministers were often the only well-educated person in a small community. Physicians Colonists who fell prey to epidemics of smallpox and diph- theria were often treated by "cures" that only made them worse. One common practice was to bleed the sick, often by employing leeches or bloodsuckers. A beginning doctor received little formal medical training other than acting as an apprentice to an experienced physician. The first medical college in the colonies was begun in 1765 as part of Franklin's idea for the College of Philadelphia. Lawyers Often viewed as talkative troublemakers, lawyers were not com- mon in the 1600s. In that period, individuals would argue their own cases before a colonial magistrate. During the 1700s, however, as trade expanded and legal problems became more complex, people felt a need for expert assistance in court. The most able lawyers formed a bar ( committee or board), which set rules and standards for aspiring young lawyers. Lawyers gained further respect in the 1760s and 1770s when they argued for colonial rights. John Adams, James Otis, and Patrick Henry were three such lawyers whose legal arguments would ultimately provide the intellectual underpinnings of the American Revolution. The Press News and ideas circulated in the colonies principally by means of a postal sys- tem and local printing presses. Newspapers In 1725, only five newspapers existed in the colonies, but by 1776 the number had grown to more than 40. Issued weekly, each newspa- per consisted of a single sheet folded once to make four pages. It contained such items as month-old news from Europe, ads for goods and services and for the return of runaway indentured servants and slaves, and pious essays giving advice for better living. Illustrations were few or nonexistent. The first cartoon appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette, placed there by, of course, Ben Franklin. The Zenger Case Newspaper printers in colonial days ran the risk of being jailed for libel if any article offended the political authorities. In 1735, John Peter Zenger, a New York editor and publisher, was brought to trial on a charge of libelously criticizing New York's royal governor. Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that his client had printed the truth about the governor. 52 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM According to English common law at the time, injuring a governor's reputation was considered a criminal act, no matter whether a printed statement was true or false. Ignoring the English law, the jury voted to acquit Zenger. While this case did not guarantee complete freedom of the press, it encouraged newspapers to take greater risks in criticizing a colony's government. Rural Folkways The majority of colonists rarely saw a newspaper or read any book other than the Bible. As farmers on the frontier or even within a few miles of the coast, they worked from first daylight to sundown. The farmer's year was divided into four ever-recurring seasons: spring planting, summer growing, fall harvesting, and winter preparations for the next cycle. Food was usually plentiful, but light and heat in the colonial farmhouse were limited to the kitchen fireplace and a few well-placed candles. Entertainment for the well-to-do consisted chiefly of card playing and horse-racing in the southern colonies, theater-going in the middle colonies, and attending religious lectures in Puritan New England. The Enlightenment In the 18th century, some educated Americans felt attracted to a European movement in literature and philosophy that is known as the Enlightenment. The leaders of this movement believed that the "darkness" of past ages could be corrected by the use of human reason in solving most of humanity's problems. A major influence on the Enlightenment and on American thinking was the work of John Locke, a 17th-century English philosopher and political theorist. Locke, in his Two Treatises of Government, reasoned that while the state (the government) is supreme, it is bound to follow "natural laws" based on the rights that people have simply because they are human. He argued that sovereignty ultimately resides with the people rather than with the state. Furthermore, said Locke, citizens had a right and an obligation to revolt against whatever govern- ment failed to protect their rights. Other Enlightenment philosophers adopted and expounded on Locke's ideas. His stress on natural rights would provide a rationale for the American Revolution and later for the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. Emergence of a National Character The colonists' motivations for leaving Europe, the political heritage of the Eng- lish majority, and the influence of the American natural environment combined to bring about a distinctly American viewpoint and way of life. Especially among white male property owners, the colonists exercised the rights of free speech and a free press, became accustomed to electing representatives to colo- nial assemblies, and tolerated a variety of religions. English travelers in the colonies remarked that Americans were restless, enterprising, practical, and for- ever seeking to improve their circumstances. COLONIAL SOCIETY IN THE 18TH CENTURY 53 Politics By 1750, the 13 colonies had similar systems of government, with a governor acting as chief executive and a separate legislature voting either to adopt or reject the governor's proposed laws. Structure of Government There were eight royal colonies with governors appointed by the king (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia). In the three proprietary colonies (Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware), governors were appointed by the proprietors. The governors in only two of the colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, were elected by popular vote. In every colony, the legislature consisted of two houses. The lower house, or assembly, elected by the eligible voters, voted for or against new taxes. Colonists thus became accustomed to paying taxes only if their chosen representatives approved. (Their unwillingness to surrender any part of this privilege would become a cause for revolt in the 1770s.) In the royal and proprietary colonies, members of the legislature's upper house-or council-were appointed by the king or the proprietor. In the two self-governing colonies, both the upper and lower houses were elective bodies. Local Government From the earliest period of settlement, colonists in New England established towns and villages, clustering their small homes around an open space known as a green. In the southern colonies, on the other hand, towns were much less common, and farms and plantations were widely separated. Thus, the dominant form of local government in New England was the town meeting, in which people of the town would regularly come together, often in a church, to vote directly on public issues. In the southern colonies, local government was carried on by a law-enforcing sheriff and other officials who served a large territorial unit called a county. Voting If democracy is defined as the participation of all the people in the making of government policy, then colonial democracy was at best limited and partial. Those barred from voting-white women, poor white men, slaves of both sexes, and most free blacks-constituted a sizable majority of the colonial popula- tion. Nevertheless, the barriers to voting that existed in the 17th century were beginning to be removed in the 18th. Religious restrictions, for example, were removed in Massachusetts and other colonies. On the other hand, voters in all colonies were still required to own at least a small amount of property. Another factor to consider is the degree to which members of the colonial assemblies and governors' councils represented either a privileged elite or the larger society of plain citizens. The situation varied from one colony to the next. In Virginia, membership in the House of Burgesses was tightly restricted to cer- tain families of wealthy landowners. In Massachusetts, the legislature was more open to small farmers, although there, too, an educated, propertied elite held 54 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM power for generations. The common people everywhere tended to defer to their "betters" and to depend upon the privileged few to make decisions for them. Without question, colonial politics was restricted to participation by white males only. Even so, compared with other parts of the world, the English colo- nies showed tendencies toward democracy and self-government that made their political system unusual for the time. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: WAS COLONIAL SOCIETY DEMOCRATIC? Was colonial America "democratic" or not? The question is important for its own sake and also because it affects one's perspective on the Ameri- can Revolution and on the subsequent evolution of democratic politics in the United States. Many historians have focused on the politics of colonial Massachusetts. Some have concluded that colonial Massachu- setts was indeed democratic, at least for the times. By studying.

Chapter 3

Chapter 5 'The American Revolution and Confederation, 1774 - 1787'

R.1iament's passage of the Intolerable Acts in 1774 intensified the conflict between the colonies and Great Britain. In the next two years, many Ameri- cans reached the conclusion-unthinkable only a few years earlier-that the only solution to their quarrel with the British government was to sever all ties with it. How did events from 1774 to 1776 lead ultimately to this revolutionary outcome? The First Continental Congress The punitive Intolerable Acts drove all the colonies except Georgia to send del- egates to a convention in Philadelphia in September 1774. The purpose of the convention-later known as the First Continental Congress-was to respond to what the delegates viewed as Britain's alarming threats to their liberties. How- ever, most Americans had no desire for independence. They simply wanted to protest parliamentary infringements of their rights and restore the relationship with the crown that had existed before the Seven Years' War. The Delegates The delegates were a diverse group, whose views about the crisis ranged from radical to conservative. Leading the radical faction-those demanding the greatest concessions from Britain-were Patrick Henry of Virginia and Samuel Adams and John Adams of Massachusetts. The moderates included George Washington of Virginia and John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. The conservative delegates-those who favored a mild statement of protest-included John Jay of New York and Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania. Unrepresented were the loyal colonists, who would not challenge the king's government in any way. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND CONFEDERATION, 1774-1787 85 Actions of the Congress The delegates voted on a series of proposed measures, each of which was intended to change British policy without offending moderate and conserva- tive colonists. Joseph Galloway proposed a plan, similar to the Albany Plan of 1754, that would have reordered relations with Parliament and formed a union of the colonies within the British empire. By only one vote, Galloway's plan failed to pass. Instead, the convention adopted these measures: 1. It endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, a statement originally issued by Massachusetts. The Resolves called for the immediate repeal of the Intolerable Acts and for colonies to resist them by making military preparations and boycotting British goods. 2. It passed the Declaration and Resolves. Backed by moderate delegates, this petition urged the king to redress (make right) colonial grievances and restore colonial rights. In a conciliatory gesture, it recognized Par- liament's authority to regulate commerce. 3. It created the Continental Association (or just Association), a net- work of committees to enforce the economic sanctions of the Suffolk Resolves. 4. It declared that if colonial rights were not recognized, delegates would meet again in May 1775. Fighting Begins Angrily dismissing the petition of the First Continental Congress, the king's government declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion and sent addi- tional troops to put down any further disorders there. The combination of colonial defiance and British determination to suppress it led to violent clashes in Massachusetts-what would prove to be the first battles of the American Revolution. Lexington and Concord On April 18, 1775, General Thomas Gage, the commander of British troops in Boston, sent a large force to seize colonial military supplies in the town of Concord. Warned of the British march by two riders, Paul Revere and Wil- liam Dawes, the militia ( or Minutemen) of Lexington assembled on the village green to face the British. The Americans were forced to retreat under heavy British fire; eight of their number were killed in the brief encounter. Who fired the first shot of this first skirmish of the American Revolution? The evidence is ambiguous, and the answer will probably never be known. Continuing their march, the British entered Concord, where they destroyed some military supplies. On the return march to Boston, the long column of British soldiers was attacked by hundreds of militiamen firing at them from behind stone walls. The British suffered 250 casualties-and also considerable humiliation at being so badly mauled by "amateur" fighters. 86 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Bunker Hill Two months later, on June 17, 1775, a true battle was fought between opposing armies on the outskirts of Boston. A colonial militia of Massachusetts farm- ers fortified Breed's Hill, next to Bunker Hill, for which the ensuing battle was wrongly named. A British force attacked the colonists' position and man- aged to take the hill, suffering over a thousand casualties. Americans claimed a victory of sorts, having succeeded in inflicting heavy losses on the attacking British army. The Second Continental Congress Soon after the fighting broke out in Massachusetts, delegates to the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in May 1775. The congress was divided. One group of delegates, mainly from New England, thought the colonies should declare their independence. Another group, mainly from the middle colonies, hoped the conflict could be resolved by negotiating a new relationship with Great Britain. Military Actions The congress adopted a Declaration of the Causes and Necessities for Taking Up Arms and called on the colonies to provide troops. George Washington was appointed the commander-in-chief of a new colonial army and sent to Boston to lead the Massachusetts militia and volunteer units from other colonies. Con- gress also authorized a force under Benedict Arnold to raid Quebec in order to draw Canada away from the British empire. An American navy and marine corps was organized in the fall of 1775 for the purpose of attacking British shipping. Peace Efforts At first the congress adopted a contradictory policy of waging war while at the same time seeking a peaceful settlement. Many in the colonies did not want independence, for they valued their heritage and Britain's protection, but they did want a change in their relationship with Britain. In July 1775, the delegates voted to send an "Olive Branch Petition" to King George III, in which they pledged their loyalty and asked the king to intercede with Parliament to secure peace and the protection of colonial rights. King George angrily dismissed the congress' plea and agreed instead to Parliament's Prohibitory Act (August 1775), which declared the colonies in rebellion. A few months later, Parliament forbade all trade and shipping between Britain and the colonies. Thomas Paine's Argument for Independence In January 1776, a pamphlet was published that quickly had a profound impact on public opinion and the future course of events. The pamphlet, written by THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND CONFEDERATION, 1774-1787 87 Thomas Paine, a recent English imntigrant to the colonies, argued strongly for what until then had been considered a radical idea. Entitled Common Sense, Paine's essay argued in clear and forceful language for the colonies becoming independent states and breaking all political ties with the British monarchy. Paine argued that it was contrary to common sense for a large continent to be ruled by a small and distant island and for people to pledge allegiance to a king whose government was corrupt and whose laws were unreasonable. The Declaration of Independence After meeting for more than a year, the congress gradually and somewhat reluctantly began to favor independence rather than reconciliation. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution declaring the colonies to be independent. Five delegates including Thomas Jefferson formed a committee to write a statement in support of Lee's resolution. The declaration drafted by Jefferson listed specific grievances against George Ill's government and also expressed the basic principles that justified revolution: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." The congress adopted Lee's resolution calling for independence on July 2; Jefferson's work, the Declaration of Independence, was adopted on July 4, 1776. The Revolutionary War From the first shots fired on Lexington green in 1775 to the final signing of a peace treaty in 1783, the American War for Independence, or Revolutionary War, was a long and bitter struggle. As Americans fought they also forged a new national identity, as the former colonies became the United States of America. About 2.6 million people lived in the 13 colonies at the time of the war. Maybe 40 percent of the population actively participated in the struggle against Britain. They called themselves American Patriots. Around 20 to 30 percent sided with the British as Loyalists. Everyone else tried to remain neutral and uninvolved. Patriots The largest number of Patriots were from the New England states and Vir- ginia. Most of the soldiers were reluctant to travel outside their own region. They would serve in local militia units for short periods, leave to work their farms, and then return to duty. Thus, even though several hundred thousand people fought on the Patriot side in the war, General Washington never had more than 20,000 regular troops under his command at one time. His army was chronically short of supplies, poorly equipped, and rarely paid. 88 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM African Americans Initially, George Washington rejected the idea of African Americans serving in the Patriot army. However, when the British promised freedom to enslaved people who joined their side, Washington and the congress quickly made the same offer. Approximately 5,000 African Americans fought as Patriots. Most of them were free citizens from the North, who fought in mixed racial forces, although there were some all-African- American units. African Americans took part in most of the military actions of the war, and a number, including Peter Salem, were recognized for their bravery. loyalists Tories The Revolutionary War was in some respects a civil war in which anti-British Patriots fought pro-British Loyalists. Those who maintained their allegiance to the king were also called Tories (after the majority party in Parliament). Almost 60,000 American Tories fought next to British sol- diers, supplied them with arms and food, and joined in raiding parties that pillaged Patriot homes and farms. Members of the same family sometimes joined opposite sides. For example, while Benjamin Franklin was a leading patriot, his son William joined the Tories and served as the last royal governor of New Jersey. How many American Tories were there? Estimates range from 520,000 to 780,000 people-roughly 20 to 30 percent of the population. In New York, New Jersey, and Georgia, they were probably in the majority. Toward the end of the war, about 80,000 Loyalists emigrated from the states to settle in Canada or Britain rather than face persecution at the hands of the victorious Patriots. Although Loyalists came from all groups and classes, they tended to be wealthier and more conservative than the Patriots. Most government officials and Anglican clergy in America remained loyal to the crown. American Indians At first, American Indians tried to stay out of the war. Eventually, however, attacks by colonists prompted many American Indians to support the British, who promised to limit colonial settlements in the West. Initial American losses and Hardships The first three years of the war, 1775 to 1777, went badly for Washington's poorly trained and equipped revolutionary army. It barely escaped complete disaster in a battle for New York City in 1776, in which Washington's forces were routed by the British. By the end of 1777, the British occupied both New York and Philadelphia. After losing Philadelphia, Washington's demoralized troops suffered through the severe winter of 1777-1778 camped at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND CONFEDERATION, 1774-1787 89 Economic troubles added to the Patriots' bleak prospects. British occupa- tion of American ports resulted in a 95 percent decline in trade between 1775 and 1777. Goods were scarce and inflation was rampant. The paper money issued by Congress, known as continentals, became almost worthless. Alliance With France The turning point for the American revolutionaries came with a victory at Saratoga in upstate New York in October 1777. British forces under General John Burgoyne had marched from Canada in an ambitious effort to link up with other forces marching from the west and south. Their objective was to cut off New England from the rest of the colonies (or states). But Burgoyne's troops were attacked at Saratoga by troops commanded by American generals Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. The British army was forced to surrender. The diplomatic outcome of the Battle of Saratoga was even more important than the military result. News of the surprising American victory persuaded France to join in the war against Britain. France's king, Louis XVI, was an absolute monarch who had no interest in aiding a revolutionary movement. Nevertheless, he saw a chance to weaken his country's traditional foe, Great Britain, by helping to undermine its colonial empire. France had secretly extended aid to the American revolutionaries as early as 1775, giving both money and supplies. After Saratoga, in 1778, France openly allied itself with the Americans. (A year later, Spain and Holland also entered the war against Britain.) The French alliance proved a decisive factor in the American struggle for independence because it widened the war and forced the British to divert military resources away from America. Victory Faced with a larger war, Britain decided to consolidate its forces in America. British troops were pulled out of Philadelphia, and New York became the chief base of British operations. In a campaign through 1778-1779, the Patriots, led by George Rogers Clark, captured a series of British forts in the Illinois coun- try to gain control of parts of the vast Ohio territory. In 1780, the British army adopted a southern strategy, concentrating its military campaigns in Virginia and the Carolinas where Loyalists were especially numerous and active. Yorktown In 1781, the last major battle of the Revolutionary War was fought near Yorktown, Virginia, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Strongly supported by French naval and military forces, Washington's army forced the surrender of a large British army commanded by General Charles Cornwallis. Treaty of Paris News of Cornwallis's defeat at Yorktown was a heavy blow to the Tory party in Parliament that was conducting the war. The war had become unpopular in Britain, partly because it placed a heavy strain on the economy and the government's finances. Lord North and other Tory ministers resigned and were replaced by Whig leaders who wanted to end the war. 90 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM In Paris, in 1783, a treaty of peace was finally signed by the various bel- ligerents. The Treaty of Paris provided for the following: (1) Britain would recognize the existence of the United States as an independent nation. (2) The Mississippi River would be the western boundary of that nation. (3) Americans would have fishing rights off the coast of Canada. (4) Americans would pay debts owed to British merchants and honor Loyalist claims for property con- fiscated during the war. Organization of New Governments While the Revolutionary War was being fought, leaders of the 13 colonies worked to change them into independently governed states, each with its own constitution (written plan of government). At the same time, the revolutionary Congress that originally met in Philadelphia tried to define the powers of a new central government for the nation that was coming into being. State Governments By 1777, ten of the former colonies had written new constitutions. Most of these documents were both written and adopted by the states' legislatures. In a few of the states (Maryland, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina), a proposed constitution was submitted to a vote of the people for ratification (approval). Each state constitution was the subject of heated debate between conser- vatives, who stressed the need for law and order, and liberals, who were most concerned about protecting individual rights and preventing future tyrannies. Although the various constitutions differed on specific points, they had the fol- lowing features in common: List of Rights Each state constitution began with a "bill" or "declara- tion" listing the basic rights and freedoms, such as a jury trial and freedom of religion, that belonged to all citizens by right and that state officials could not infringe (encroach on). Separation of Powers With a few exceptions, the powers of state govern- ment were given to three separate branches: (1) legislative powers to an elected two-house legislature, (2) executive powers to an elected governor, and (3) judicial powers to a system of courts. The principle of separation of powers was intended to be a safeguard against tyranny-especially against the tyranny of a too-powerful executive. Voting The right to vote was extended to all white males who owned some property. The property requirement, usually for a minimal amount of land or money, was based on the assumption that propertyowners had a larger stake in government than did the poor and propertyless. Office-Holding Those seeking elected office were usually held to a higher property qualification than the voters. The Articles of Confederation At Philadelphia in 1776, as Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Indepen- dence, John Dickinson drafted the first constitution for the United States as a THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND CONFEDERATION, 1774-1787 91 nation. Congress modified Dickinson's plan to protect the powers of the indi- vidual states. The Articles of Confederation, as the document was called, was adopted by Congress in 1777 and submitted to the states for ratification. Ratification Ratification of the Articles was delayed by a dispute over the vast American Indian lands west of the Alleghenies. Seaboard states such as Rhode Island and Maryland insisted that these lands be under the jurisdiction of the new central government. When Virginia and New York finally agreed to cede their claims to western lands, the Articles were ratified in March 1781. Structure of Government The Articles established a central government that consisted of just one body, a congress. In this unicameral (one-house) leg- islature, each state was given one vote, with at least 9 votes out of 13 required to pass important laws. Amending the Articles required a unanimous vote. A Committee of States, with one representative from each state, could make minor decisions when the full congress was not in session. THE UNITED STATES IN 1783 GULF OF MEXICO CANAD� L__J ( 1783) r-i United States O 100 200 MIies 0 100 200 300 KIiometers 92 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Powers The Articles gave the congress the power to wage war, make trea- ties, send diplomatic representatives, and borrow money. However, Congress did not have the power to regulate commerce or to collect taxes. To finance any of its decisions, the congress had to rely upon taxes voted by each state. Neither did the government have executive power to enforce its laws. Accomplishments Despite its weaknesses, the congress under the Arti- cles did succeed in accomplishing the following: 1. Winning the war. The U.S. government could claim some credit for the ultimate victory of Washington's army and for negotiating favor- able terms in the treaty of peace with Britain. 2. Land Ordinance of 1785. Congress established a policy for surveying and selling the western lands. The policy provided for setting aside one section of land in each township for public education. 3. Northwest Ordinance of 1787. For the large territory lying between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, the congress passed an ordi- nance (law) that set the rules for creating new states. The Northwest Ordinance granted limited self-government to the developing terri- tory and prohibited slavery in the region. Problems with the Articles The 13 states intended the central govern- ment to be weak-and it was. The government faced three kinds of problems: 1. Financial. Most war debts were unpaid. Individual states as well as the congress issued worthless paper money. The underlying problem was that the congress had no taxing power and could only request that the states donate money for national needs. 2. Foreign. European nations had little respect for a new nation that could neither pay its debts nor take effective and united action in a crisis. Britain and Spain threatened to take advantage of U.S. weakness by expanding their interests in the western lands soon after the war ended. 3. Domestic. In the summer of 1786, Captain Daniel Shays, a Mas- sachusetts farmer and Revolutionary War veteran, led other farmers in an uprising against high state taxes, imprisonment for debt, and lack of paper money. The rebel farmers stopped the collection of taxes and forced the closing of debtors' courts. In January 1787, when Shays and his followers attempted to seize weapons from the Springfield armory, the state militia of Massachusetts broke Shays's Rebellion. Social Change In addition to revolutionizing the politics of the 13 states, the War for Inde- pendence also profoundly changed American society. Some changes occurred immediately before the war ended, while others evolved gradually as the ideas of the Revolution began to filter into the attitudes of the common people. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND CONFEDERATION, 1774-1787 93 Abolition of Aristocratic Titles State constitutions and laws abolished old institutions that had originated in medieval Europe. No legislature could grant titles of nobility, nor could any court recognize the feudal practice of primogeniture (the first born son's right to inherit his family's property).Whatever aristocracy existed in colonial America was further weakened by the confiscation of large estates owned by Loyalists. Many such estates were subdivided and sold to raise money for the war. Separation of Church and State Most states adopted the principle of separation of church and state; in other words, they refused to give financial support to any religious group. The Angli- can Church, which formerly had been closely tied to the king's government, was disestablished (lost state support) in the South. Only in three New England states-New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts-did the Congrega- tional Church continue to receive state support in the form of a religious tax. This practice was finally discontinued in New England early in the 1830s. Women During the war, both the Patriots and Loyalists depended on the active support of women. Some women followed their men into the armed camps and worked as cooks and nurses. In a few instances, women actually fought in battle, either taking their husband's place, as Mary McCauley (Molly Pitcher) did at the Battle of Monmouth, or passing as a man and serving as a soldier, as Deborah Sampson did for a year. The most important contribution of women during the war was in main- taining the colonial economy. While fathers, husbands, and sons were away fighting, women ran the family farms and businesses. They provided much of the food and clothing necessary for the war effort. Despite their contributions, women remained in a second-class status. Unanswered went pleas such of those of Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams: "I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors." Slavery The institution of slavery contradicted the spirit of the Revolution and the idea that "all men are created equal." For a time, the leaders of the Revolu- tion recognized this and took some corrective steps. The Continental Congress abolished the importation of enslaved people, and most states went along with the prohibition. Most northern states ended slavery, while in the South, some owners voluntarily freed their slaves. However, in the decades following the Revolutionary War, more and more slaveowners came to believe that enslaved labor was essential to their econ- omy. As explained in later chapters, they developed a rationale for slavery that found religious and political justification for continuing to hold human beings in lifelong bondage. 94 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM

Chapter 22 'World War I and its Aftermath, 1914 - 1920'

The sequence of events in 1914 leading from peace in Europe to the outbreak of a general war occurred with stunning rapidity: • SARAJEVO, JUNE 28: A Serbian nationalist assassinates Austrian Arch- duke Francis Ferdinand-the heir apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire-and his wife. • VIENNA, JULY 23: The Austrian government issues an ultimatum threat- ening war against Serbia and invades that country four days later. • ST. PETERSBURG, JULY 3 r: Russia, as an ally of Serbia, orders its army to mobilize against Austria. • BERLIN, AUGUST r: Germany, as Austria's ally, declares war against Russia. • BERLIN, AUGUST 3: Germany declares war against France, an ally of Russia, and immediately begins an invasion of neutral Belgium because it offers the fastest route to Paris. • LONDON, AUGUST 4: Great Britain, as an ally of France, declares war against Germany. The assassination of the archduke sparked the war, but the underly- ing causes were (1) nationalism, (2) imperialism, (3) militarism, and (4) a 454 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM combination of public and secret alliances, as explained above, which pulled all the major European powers into war before calm minds could prevent it. It was a tragedy that haunted generations of future leaders and that motivated President Woodrow Wilson to search for a lasting peace. President Wilson's first response to the outbreak of the European war was a declaration of U.S. neutrality, in the tradition of Washington and Jefferson, and he called upon the American people to support his policy by not taking sides. However, in trying to steer a neutral course, Wilson soon found that it was dif- ficult-if not impossible-to protect U.S. trading rights and maintain a policy that favored neither the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, and Russia) nor the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empires of Turkey). During a relatively short period (1914-1919), the United States and its people rapidly moved through a wide range of roles: first as a contented neutral country, next as a country waging a war for peace, then as a victorious world power, and finally, as an alienated and isolationist nation. Neutrality In World War I (as in the War of 1812), the trouble for the United States arose as the belligerent powers tried to stop supplies from reaching the enemy. Hav- ing the stronger navy, Great Britain was the first to declare a naval blockade against Germany by mining the North Sea and seizing ships-including U.S. ships-attempting to run the blockade. President Wilson protested British sei- zure of American ships as a violation of a neutral nation's right to freedom of the seas. Submarine Warfare Germany's one hope for challenging British power at sea lay with a new naval weapon, the submarine. In February 1915, Germany answered the British blockade by announcing a blockade of its own and warned that ships attempt- ing to enter the "war zone" (waters near the British Isles) risked being sunk on sight by German submarines. Lusitania Crisis The first major crisis challenging U.S. neutrality occurred on May 7, 1915, when German torpedoes hit and sank a British pas- senger liner, the Lusitania. Most of the passengers drowned, including 128 Americans. In response, Wilson sent Germany a strongly worded diplomatic message warning that Germany would be held to "strict accountability" if it continued its policy of sinking unarmed ships. Secretary of State William Jen- nings Bryan objected to this message as too warlike and resigned from the president's cabinet. Other Sinkings In August 1915, two more Americans lost their lives at sea as the result of a German submarine attack on another passenger ship, the Arabic. This time, Wilson's note of protest prevailed upon the German WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1914-1920 455 government to pledge that no unarmed passenger ships would be sunk without warning, which would allow time for passengers to get into lifeboats. Germany kept its word until March 1916 when a German torpedo struck an unarmed merchant ship, the Sussex, injuring several American passengers. Wilson threatened to cut off U.S. diplomatic relations with Germany-a step preparatory to war. Once again, rather than risk U.S. entry into the war on the British side, Germany backed down. Its reply to the president, known as the Sussex pledge, promised not to sink merchant or passenger ships without giv- ing due warning. For the remainder of 1916, Germany was true to its word. Economic links With Britain and France Even though the United States was officially a neutral nation, its economy became closely tied to that of the Allied powers, Great Britain and France. In early 1914, before the war began, the United States had been in a busi- ness recession. Soon after the outbreak of war, the economy rebounded in part because of orders for war supplies from the British and the French. By 1915, U.S. businesses had never been so prosperous. In theory, U.S. manufacturers could have shipped supplies to Germany as well, but the British blockade effectively prevented such trade. Wilson's policy did not deliberately favor the Allied powers. Nevertheless, because the presi- dent more or less tolerated the British blockade while restricting Germany's submarine blockade, U.S. economic support was going to one side (Britain and France) and not the other. Between 1914 and 1917, U.S. trade with the Allies quadrupled while its trade with Germany dwindled to the vanishing point. Loans In addition, when the Allies could not finance the purchase of everything they needed, the U.S. government permitted J.P. Morgan and other bankers to extend as much as $3 billion in secured credit to Britain and France. These loans promoted U.S. prosperity as they sustained the Allies' war effort. Public Opinion If Wilson's policies favored Britain, so did the attitudes of most Americans. In August 1914, as Americans read in their newspapers about German armies marching ruthlessly through Belgium, they perceived Germany as a cruel bully whose armies were commanded by a mean-spirited autocrat, Kaiser Wilhelm. The sinking of the Lusitania reinforced this negative view of Germany. Ethnic Influences In 1914, first- and second-generation immigrants made up over 30 percent of the U.S. population. They were glad to be out of the fighting and strongly supported neutrality. Even so, their sympathies reflected their ancestries. For example, German Americans strongly identified with the struggles of their "homeland." And many Irish Americans, who hated Britain because of its oppressive rule of Ireland, openly backed the Central Powers. On the other hand, when Italy joined the Allies in 1915, Italian Americans began cheering on the Allies in their desperate struggle to fend off German assaults on the Western Front (entrenched positions in France). 456 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM OPPOSING SIDES IN WORLD WAR I RUSSIA l 200 400 MIies O 200 400 600 KIiometers AFRICA Overall, though, the majority of native-born Americans wanted the Allies to win. Positive U.S. relations with France since the Revolutionary War bol- stered public support for the French. Americans also tended to sympathize with Britain and France because of their democratic governments. President Wilson himself, as a person of Scotch-English descent, had long admired the British political system. British War Propaganda Not only did Britain command the seas but it also commanded the war news that was cabled daily to U.S. newspapers and magazines. Fully recognizing the importance of influencing U.S. public opinion, the British government made sure the American press was well sup- plied with stories of German soldiers committing atrocities in Belgium and the German-occupied part of eastern France. The War Debate After the Lusitania crisis, a small but vocal minority of influential Republicans from the East-including Theodore Roosevelt-argued for U.S. entry into the war against Germany. Foreign policy realists believed that a German victory WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1914-1920 457 would change the balance of power and United States needed a strong British navy to protect the status-quo. However, the majority of Americans remained thankful for a booming economy and peace. Preparedness Eastern Republicans such as Roosevelt were the first to recognize that the U.S. military was hopelessly unprepared for a major war. They clamored for "pre- paredness" (greater defense expenditures) soon after the European war broke out. At first, President Wilson opposed the call for preparedness, but in late 1915, he changed his policy. Wilson urged Congress to approve an ambitious expansion of the armed forces. The president's proposal provoked a storm of controversy, especially among Democrats, who until then were largely opposed to military increases. After a nationwide speaking tour on behalf of prepared- ness, Wilson finally convinced Congress to pass the National Defense Act in June 1916, which increased the regular army to a force of nearly 175,000. A month later, Congress approved the construction of more than 50 warships (battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines) in just one year. Opposition to War Many Americans, especially in the Midwest and West, were adamantly opposed to preparedness, fearing that it would soon lead to U.S. involvement in the war. The antiwar activists included Populists, Progressives, and Socialists. Lead- ers among the peace-minded Progressives were William Jennings Bryan, Jane Addams, and Jeannette Rankin-the latter the first woman to be elected to Congress. Woman suffragists actively campaigned against any military buildup (although after the U.S. declaration of war in 1917, they supported the war effort). The Election of 1916 President Wilson was well aware that, as a Democrat, he had won election to the presidency in 1912 only because of the split in Republican ranks between Taft conservatives and Roosevelt Progressives. Despite his own Progressive record, Wilson's chances for reelection did not seem strong after Theodore Roosevelt declined the Progressive party's nomination for president in 1916 and rejoined the Republicans. (Roosevelt's decision virtually destroyed any chance of the Progressive party surviving.) Charles Evans Hughes, a Supreme Court justice and former governor of New York, became the presidential can- didate of a reunited Republican party. "He Kept Us Out of War" The Democrats adopted as their campaign slogan: "He kept us out of war." The peace sentiment in the country, Wil- son's record of Progressive leadership, and Hughes' weakness as a candidate combined to give the president the victory in an extremely close election. Dem- ocratic strength in the South and West overcame Republican power in the East. 458 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Peace Efforts Wilson made repeated efforts to fulfill his party's campaign promise to keep out of the war. Before the election, in 1915, he had sent his chief foreign policy adviser, Colonel Edward House of Texas, to London, Paris, and Berlin to nego- tiate a peace settlement. This mission, however, had been unsuccessful. Other efforts at mediation also were turned aside by both the Allies and the Central Powers. Finally, in January 1917, Wilson made a speech to the Senate declar- ing U.S. commitment to his idealistic hope for "peace without victory." Decision for War In April 1917, only one month after being sworn into office a second time, President Wilson went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. What had happened to change his policy from neutrality to war? Unrestricted Submarine Warfare Most important in the U.S. decision for war was a sudden change in German military strategy. The German high command had decided in early January 1917 to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. Germany recognized the risk of the United States entering the war but believed that, by cutting off supplies to the Allies, they could win the war before Americans could react. Germany communicated its decision to the U.S. government on January 31. A few days later, Wilson broke off U.S. diplomatic relations with Germany. Immediate Causes Wilson still hesitated, but a series of events in March 1917 as well as the presi- dent's hopes for arranging a permanent peace in Europe convinced him that U.S. participation in the war was now unavoidable. Zimmermann Telegram On March 1, U.S. newspapers carried the shock- ing news of a secret offer made by Germany to Mexico. Intercepted by British intelligence, a telegram to Mexico from the German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, proposed that Mexico ally itself with Germany in return for Germany's pledge to help Mexico recover lost territories: Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The Zimmermann Telegram aroused the nationalist anger of the American people and convinced Wilson that Germany fully expected a war with the United States. Russian Revolution Applying the principle of moral diplomacy, Wilson wanted the war to be fought for a worthy purpose: the triumph of democracy. It bothered him that one of the Allies was Russia, a nation governed by an autocratic czar. This barrier to U.S. participation was suddenly removed on March 15, when Russian revolutionaries overthrew the czar's government and proclaimed a republic. (Only later in November would the revolutionary gov- ernment be taken over by Communists.) WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1914-1920 459 Renewed Submarine Attacks In the first weeks of March, German sub- marines sank five unarmed U.S. merchant ships. Wilson was ready for war. Declaration of War On April 2, 1917, President Wilson stood before a special session of senators and representatives and solemnly asked Congress to recognize that a state of war existed between Germany and the United States. His speech condemned Germany's submarine policy as "warfare against mankind" and declared: "The world must be made safe for democracy." On April 6, an overwhelming majority in Congress voted for a declaration of war, although a few pacifists, including Robert La Follette and Jeanette Rankin, defiantly voted no. Mobilization U.S. mobilization for war in 1917 was a race against time. Germany was pre- paring to deliver a knockout blow to end the war on German terms. Could the United States mobilize its vast economic resources fast enough to make a difference? That was the question Wilson and his advisers confronted in the critical early months of U.S. involvement in war. Industry and Labor The Wilson administration, with Progressive efficiency, created hundreds of temporary wartime agencies and commissions staffed by experts from busi- ness and government. The legacy of this mobilization of the domestic economy under governmental leadership proved significant in the Great Depression New Deal programs. For example: • Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street broker, volunteered to use his extensive contacts in industry to help win the war. Under his direction, the War Industries Board set production priorities and established centralized control over raw materials and prices. • Herbert Hoover, a distinguished engineer, took charge of the Food Administration, which encouraged American households to eat less meat and bread so that more food could be shipped abroad for the French and British troops. The conservation drive paid off; in two years, U.S. overseas shipment of food tripled. • Harry Garfield volunteered to head the Fuel Administration, which directed efforts to save coal. Nonessential factories were closed, and daylight saving time went into effect for the first time. • Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, headed the Railroad Administra- tion which took public control of the railroads to coordinate traffic and promoted standardized railroad equipment. 460 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM • Former president William Howard Taft helped arbitrate disputes between workers and employers as head of the National War Labor Board. Labor won concessions during the war that had earlier been denied. Wages rose, the eight-hour day became more common, and union membership increased Finance Paying for the costly war presented a huge challenge. Wilson's war govern- ment managed to raise $33 billion in two years by a combination of loans and taxes. It conducted four massive drives to convince Americans to put their savings into federal government Liberty Bonds. Congress also increased both personal income and corporate taxes and placed an excise tax on luxury goods. Public Opinion and Civil liberties The U.S. government used techniques of both patriotic persuasion and legal intimidation to ensure public support for the war effort. Journalist George Creel took charge of a propaganda agency called the Committee on Public Information, which enlisted the voluntary services of artists, writers, vaude- ville performers, and movie stars to depict the heroism of the "boys" (U.S. soldiers) and the villainy of the kaiser. They created films, posters, pamphlets, and volunteer speakers-all urging Americans to watch out for German spies and to "do your bit" for the war. War hysteria and patriotic enthusiasm provided an excuse for nativist groups to take out their prejudices by charging minorities with disloyalty. One such group, the American Protective League, mounted "Hate the Hun" campaigns and used vigilante actions to attack all things German-from the performing of Beethoven's music to the cooking of sauerkraut. Under the order of the U.S. Secretary of Labor, manufacturers of war materials could refuse to hire and could fire American citizens of German extraction. Espionage and Sedition Acts A number of socialists and pacifists bravely risked criticizing the government's war policy. The Espionage Act (1917) pro- vided for imprisonment of up to 20 years for persons who either tried to incite rebellion in the armed forces or obstruct the operation of the draft. The Sedition Act (1918) went much further by prohibiting anyone from making "disloyal" or "abusive" remarks about the U.S. government. About 2,000 people were prosecuted under these laws, half of whom were convicted and jailed. Among them was the Socialist leader Eugene Debs, who was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for speaking against the war. Case of Schenck v. United States The Supreme Court upheld the con- stitutionality of the Espionage Act in a case involving a man who had been imprisoned for distributing pamphlets against the draft. In 19 I 9, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes concluded that the right to free speech could be limited when it represented a "clear and present danger" to the public safety. WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1914-1920 461 Armed Forces As soon as war was declared, thousands of young men voluntarily enlisted for military service. Still, the military felt it needed more soldiers and sailors. Selective Service Act (1917) To meet this need, Secretary of War New- ton D. Baker devised a "selective service" system to conscript (draft) men into the military. He wanted a democratic method run by local boards for ensuring that all groups in the population would be called into service. The government required all men between 21 and 30 (and later between 18 and 45) to register for possible induction into the military. Under the Selective Service Act, about 2.8 million men were eventually called by lottery, in addition to the almost 2 million who volunteered to serve. About half of all those in uniform made it to the Western Front. African Americans Racial segregation applied to the army as it did to civil- ian life. Almost 400,000 African Americans served in World War I in segregated units. Only a few were permitted to be officers, and all were barred from the Marine Corps. Nevertheless, W. E. B. Du Bois believed that the record of service by African Americans, fighting to "make the world safe for democracy," would earn them equal rights at home when the war ended. However, he would be bitterly disappointed. Effects on American Society All groups in American society-business and labor, women and men, immigrants and native-born had to adjust to the realities of a wartime economy. More Jobs for Women As men were drafted into the military, the jobs they vacated were often taken by women, thousands of whom entered the workforce for the first time. Women's contributions to the war effort, both as volunteers and wage earners, finally convinced Wilson and Congress to support the 19th Amendment. Migration of Mexicans and African Americans Job opportunities in war- time America, together with the upheavals of the revolution in Mexico, caused thousands of Mexicans to cross the border to work in agriculture and mining. Most were employed in the Southwest, but a significant number also traveled to the Mid- west for factory jobs. African Americans also took advantage of job opportunities opened up by the war and migrated north. African American Population, 1900 to 1960 Region 1900 1930 1960 Northeast 385,000 1,147,000 3,028,000 Midwest 496,000 1,262,000 3,446,000 South 7,923,000 9,362,000 11,312,000 West 30,000 120,000 1,086,000 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. All numbers in the above table are rounded. 462 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Fighting the War By the time the first U.S. troops were shipped overseas in late 1917, millions of European soldiers on both sides had already died in trench warfare made more murderous in the industrial age by heavy artillery, machine guns, poi- son gas, tanks, and airplanes. A second revolution in Russia by Bolsheviks ( or Communists) took that nation out of the war. With no Eastern Front to divide its forces, Germany concentrated on one all-out push to break through Allied lines in France. Naval Operations Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare was having its intended effect. Merchant ships bound for Britain were being sunk at a staggering rate: 900,000 tons of shipping was lost in just one month (April 1917). U.S. response to this Allied emergency was to undertake a record-setting program of ship con- struction. The U.S. Navy also implemented a convoy system of armed escorts for groups of merchant ships. By the end of 1917, the system was working well enough to ensure that Britain and France would not be starved into submission. American Expeditionary Force Unable to imagine the grim realities of trench warfare, U.S. troops were eager for action. The idealism of both the troops and the public is reflected in the popular song of George M. Cohan that many were singing: Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word over there That the Yanks are coming, The Yanks are coming, The drums rum-tumming ev'ry where- The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was commanded by General John J. Pershing. The first U.S. troops to see action were used to plug weak- nesses in the French and British lines, but by the summer of 1918, as American forces arrived by the hundreds of thousands, the AEF assumed independent responsibility for one segment of the Western Front. Last German Offensive Enough U.S. troops were in place in spring 1918 to hold the line against the last ferocious assault by German forces. At Chateau-Thierry on the Marne River, Americans stopped the German advance (June 1918) and struck back with a successful counterattack at Belleau Wood. Drive to Victory In August, September, and October, an Allied offensive along the Meuse River and through the Argonne Forest (the Meuse-Argonne offensive) succeeded in driving an exhausted German army backward toward the German border. U.S. troops participated in this drive at St. Mihiel-the southern sector of the Allied line. On November 11, 1918, the Germans signed an armistice in which they agreed to surrender their arms, give up much of their navy, and evacuate occupied territory. WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1914-1920 463 U.S. Casualties After only a few months of fighting, U.S. combat deaths totaled nearly 49,000. Many more thousands died of disease, including a flu epidemic in the training camps, bringing total U.S. fatalities in World War I to 112,432. Making the Peace During the war, Woodrow Wilson never lost sight of his ambition to shape the peace settlement when the war ended. In January 1917 he had said that the United States would insist on "peace without victory." A year later he pre- sented to Congress a detailed list of war aims, known as the Fourteen Points, designed to address the causes of World War I and prevent another world war. The Fourteen Points Several of the president's Fourteen Points related to specific territorial ques- tions: for example, Germany had to return the regions of Alsace and Lorraine to France, and to evacuate Belgium in the west and Romania and Serbia in the east. Of greater significance were the following broad principles for securing the peace: • Recognition of freedom of the seas • An end to the practice of making secret treaties • Reduction of national armaments • An "impartial adjustment of all colonial claims" • Self-determination for the various nationalities • Removal of trade barriers • "A general association of nations . . . for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike" The last point was the one that Wilson valued the most. The international peace association that he envisioned would soon be named the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles The peace conference following the armistice took place in the Palace of Ver- sailles outside Paris, beginning in January 1919. Every nation that had fought on the Allied side in the war was represented. No U.S. president had ever trav- eled abroad to attend a diplomatic conference, but President Wilson decided that his personal participation at Versailles was vital to defending his Fourteen Points. Republicans criticized him for being accompanied to Paris by several Democrats, but only one Republican, whose advice was never sought. 464 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR I (1919) AFRICA II L._JtheWar New Nations After 200 400 Miles O 200 400 600 KIiometers SOVIET UNION (1921) The Big Four Other heads of state at Versailles made it clear that their nations wanted both revenge against Germany and compensation in the form of indemnities and territory. They did not share Wilson's idealism, which called for a peace without victory. David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clem- enceau of France, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy met with Wilson almost daily as the Big Four. After months of argument, the president reluctantly agreed to compromise on most of his Fourteen Points. He insisted, however, that the other delegations accept his plan for a League of Nations. Peace Terms When the peace conference adjourned in June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles included the following terms: 1. Germany was disarmed and stripped of its colonies in Asia and Africa. It was also forced to admit guilt for the war, accept French occupation of the Rhineland for 15 years, and pay a huge sum of money in reparations to Great Britain and France. 2. Applying the principle of self-determination, territories once controlled by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia were taken by the Allies; independence was granted to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, and Poland; and the new nations of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were established. 3. Signers of the treaty would join an international peacekeeping organi- zation, the League of Nations. Article X of the covenant (charter) of the League called on each member nation to stand ready to protect the independence and territorial integrity of other nations. WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1914-1920 465 The Battle for Ratification Returning to the United States, President Wilson had to win approval of two-thirds of the Senate for all parts of the Treaty of Versailles, including the League of Nations covenant. Republican senators raised objections to the League, especially to Article X, arguing that U.S. membership in such a body might interfere with U.S. sover- eignty and might also cause European nations to interfere in the Western Hemisphere (a violation of the Monroe Doctrine). Increased Partisanship After the War Wilson made winning Senate ratifi- cation difficult. In October 1918 he had asked voters to support Democrats in the midterm elections as an act of patriotic loyalty. This political appeal had backfired badly. In the 1918 election, Republicans had won a solid majority in the House and a majority of two in the Senate. In 1919 Wilson needed Republican votes in the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. Instead, he faced the determined hostility of a lead- ing Senate Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge. Opponents: Irreconcilables and Reservationists Senators opposed to the Treaty of Versailles formed two groups. The irreconcilable faction could not accept U.S. membership in the League, no matter how the covenant was worded. The res- ervationist faction, a larger group led by Senator Lodge, said they could accept the League if certain reservations were added to the covenant. Wilson had the option of either accepting Lodge's reservations or fighting for the treaty as it stood. He chose to fight. Wilson's Western Tour and Breakdown Believing that his policy could pre- vail if he could personally rally public support, Wilson boarded a train and went on an arduous speaking tour to the West to make speeches for the League of Nations. On September 25, 1919, he collapsed after delivering a speech in Colorado. He returned to Washington and a few days later suffered a massive stroke from which he never fully recovered. Rejection of the Treaty The Senate defeated the treaty without reservations. When it came up with reservations, the ailing Wilson directed his Senate allies to reject the compromise, and they joined with the irreconcilables in defeating the treaty a second time. After Wilson left office in 1921, the United States officially made peace with Germany. It never ratified the Versailles Treaty nor joined the League of Nations. Postwar Problems Americans had trouble adjusting from the patriotic fervor of wartime to the eco- nomic and social stresses of postwar uncertainties. Demobilization During the war, 4 million American men had been taken from civilian life and the domestic economy. Not all the returning soldiers could find jobs right away, but many who did took employment from the women and African Americans who, for a short time, had thrived on war work. The business boom of wartime also went flat, as factory orders for war production fell off. With European farm products back on the market, farm prices fell, which hurt U.S. farmers. In the cities, consumers went on a 466 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM buying spree, leading to inflation and a short boom in 1920. The spree did not last. In 1921, business plunged into a recession, and 10 percent of the American workforce was unemployed. The Red Scare In 1919, the country suffered from a volatile combination of unhappiness with the peace process, fears of communism fueled by the Communist takeover in Russia, and worries about labor unrest at home. The anti-German hysteria of the war years turned quickly into anti-Communist hysteria known as the Red Scare. These anti-radical fears also fueled xenophobia that resulted in restrictions on immigration in the 1920s. Palmer Raids A series of unexplained bombings caused Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to establish a special office under J. Edgar Hoover to gather infor- mation on radicals. Palmer also ordered mass arrests of anarchists, socialists, and labor agitators. From November 1919 through January 1920, over 6,000 people were arrested, based on limited criminal evidence. Most of the suspects were foreign born, and 500 of them, including the outspoken radical Emma Goldman, were deported. The scare faded almost as quickly as it arose. Palmer warned of huge riots on May Day, 1920, but they never took place. His loss of credibility, coupled with rising concerns about civil liberties, caused the hysteria to recede. labor Conflict In a nation that valued free enterprise and rugged individualism, a large part of the American public regarded unions with distrust. Their antiunion attitude softened dur- ing the Progressive era. Factory workers and their unions were offered a "square deal" under Theodore Roosevelt and protection from lawsuits under the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. During the war, unions made important gains. In the postwar period, however, a series of strikes in 1919 as well as fear of revolution turned pub- lic opinion against unions. Strikes of 1919 The first major strike of 1919 was in Seattle in February. Some 60,000 unionists joined shipyard workers in a peaceful strike for higher pay. Troops were called out, but there was no violence. In Boston, in September, police went on strike to protest the firing of a few police officers who tried to unionize. Massachu- setts Governor Calvin Coolidge sent in the National Guard to break the strike. Also in September, workers for the U.S. Steel Corporation struck. State and federal troops were called out and, after considerable violence, the strike was broken in January 1920. Race Riots The migration of African Americans to northern cities during the war increased racial tensions. Whites resented the increased competition for jobs and housing. During the war, race riots had erupted, the largest in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917. In 1919, racial tensions led to violence in many cities. The worst riot was in Chicago, where 40 people were killed and 500 were injured. Conditions were no better in the South, as racial prejudice and fears of returning African American soldiers led to an increase in racial violence and lynchings by whites.

Chapter 8 'Nationalism and Economic Development, 1816 - 1848'

The election of James Monroe as president in 1816 (less than two years after the last battle of the War of 1812) inaugurated what one newspaper editorial characterized as an "Era of Good Feelings." The term gained wide currency and was later adopted by historians to describe Monroe's two terms in office. The Era of Good Feelings The period's nickname suggests the Monroe years were marked by a spirit of nationalism, optimism, and goodwill. In some ways, they were. One party, the Federalists, faded into oblivion and Monroe's party, the Democratic- Republicans, adopted some of their policies and dominated politics. This perception of unity and harmony, however, can be misleading and oversimplified. Throughout the era people had heated debates over tariffs, the national bank, internal improvements, and public land sales. Sectional- ist tensions over slavery were becoming ever more apparent. Moreover, a sense of political unity was illusory, since antagonistic factions within the Democratic-Republican party would soon split it in two. The actual period of "good feelings" may have lasted only from the election of 1816 to the Panic of 1819. 150 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM James Monroe As a young man, James Monroe had fought in the Revolutionary War and suffered through the Valley Forge winter. He had become prominent in Vir- ginia politics and had served as Jefferson's minister to Great Britain and as Madison's secretary of state. He continued the Virginia dynasty: of the first five presidents, four were from Virginia. The other, John Adams, was from Massachusetts. In the election of 1816, Monroe defeated the Federalist, Rufus King, overwhelmingly-183 electoral votes to 34. By 1820, the Federalist party had practically vanished and Monroe received every electoral vote except one. With no organized political opposition, Monroe represented the growing nationalism of the American people. Under Monroe, the country acquired Florida, agreed on the Missouri Compromise, and adopted the Monroe Doctrine. Cultural Nationalism The popular votes for James Monroe were cast by a younger generation of Americans whose concerns differed from those of the nation's founders. The young were excited about the prospects of the new nation expanding west- ward and had little interest in European politics now that the Napoleonic wars (as well as the War of 1812) were in the past. As fervent nationalists, they believed their young country was entering an era of unlimited prosperity. Patriotic themes infused every aspect of American society, from art to schoolbooks. Heroes of the Revolution were enshrined in the paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, and John Trumbull. A fictionalized biography extolling the virtues of George Washington, written by Parson Mason Weems, was widely read. The expanding public schools embraced Noah Webster's blue-backed speller, which promoted patriotism long before his famous dictionary was published. The basic ideas and ideals of national- ism and patriotism would dominate most of the 19th century. Economic Nationalism Parallel with cultural nationalism was a political movement to support the growth of the nation's economy. Subsidizing internal improvements (the building of roads and canals) was one aspect of the movement. Protecting budding U.S. industries from European competition was a second aspect. Tariff of 1816 Before the War of 1812, Congress had levied low tariffs on imports as a method for raising government revenue. Then, during the war, manufacturers erected many factories to supply goods that previously had been imported from Britain. Now in peacetime, these American manufactur- ers feared that British goods would be dumped on American markets and take away much of their business. Congress raised tariffs for the express purpose of protecting U.S. manufacturers from competition. This was the first protec- tive tariff in U.S. history-the first of many to come. NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1816-1848 151 New England, which had little manufacturing at the time, was the only sec- tion to oppose the higher tariffs. Even the South and West, which had opposed tariffs in the past and would oppose them in the future, generally supported the 1816 tariff, believing that it was needed for national prosperity. Henry Clay's American System Henry Clay of Kentucky, a leader in the House of Representatives, proposed a comprehensive method for advanc- ing the nation's economic growth. His plan, which he called the American System, consisted of three parts: (1) protective tariffs, (2) a national bank, and (3) internal improvements. Clay argued that protective tariffs would promote American manufacturing and also raise revenue with which to build a national transportation system of federally constructed roads and canals. A national bank would keep the system running smoothly by providing a national cur- rency. The tariffs would chiefly benefit the East, internal improvements would promote growth in the West and the South, and the bank would aid the econo- mies of all sections. Two parts of Clay's system were already in place in 1816, the last year of James Madison's presidency. Congress in that year adopted a protective tariff and also chartered the Second Bank of the United States. (The charter of the First Bank-Hamilton's brainchild-had been allowed to expire in 1811.) On the matter of internal improvements, however, both Madison and Mon- roe objected that the Constitution did not explicitly provide for the spending of federal money on roads and canals. Throughout his presidency, Monroe consistently vetoed acts of Congress providing funds for road-building and canal-building projects. Thus, the individual states were left to make internal improvements on their own. South $0.3 million CANAL BUILDING, 1820 to 1840 $1.1 million 1820 West $1.0 million South $0.5 million South $1.2 million Northeast $6.0 million $7.5 million 1830 West $4.7 million $14.3 million 1840 Source: Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 152 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Panic of 1819 The Era of Good Feelings was fractured in 1819 by the first major financial panic since the Constitution had been ratified. The economic disaster was largely the fault of the Second Bank of the United States, which had tight- ened credit in a belated effort to control inflation. Many state banks closed and unemployment, bankruptcies, and imprisonment for debt increased sharply. The depression was most severe in the West, where many people were in debt because they speculated on land during the postwar euphoria. In 1819, the Bank of the United States foreclosed on large amounts of western farmland. As a result of the bank panic and depression, nationalistic beliefs were shaken. In the West, the economic crisis changed many voters' political outlook. Westerners began calling for land reform and expressing strong opposition to both the national bank and debtors' prisons. Political Changes A principal reason for the rapid decline of the Federalist party was its fail- ure to adapt to the changing needs of a growing nation. Having opposed the War of 1812 and presided over a secessionist convention at Hartford, the party seemed completely out of step with the nationalistic temper of the times. After its crushing defeat in the election of 1816, it ceased to be a national party and failed to nominate a presidential candidate in 1820. Changes in the Democratic-Republican Party Meanwhile, the Dem- ocratic-Republican party, as the only remaining national party, underwent serious internal strains as it adjusted to changing times. Members such as John Randolph clung to the old party ideals of limited government and a strict inter- pretation of the Constitution. Most members, however, adopted what had once been Federalist ideas, such as the need for maintaining of a large army and navy and support for a national bank. Some members reversed their views from one decade to the next. For example, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, strongly opposed both the tariffs of 1816 and 1824 but then supported even higher tariff rates in 1828. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina was another Democratic-Republican leader who reversed positions. An outspoken war hawk and nationalist in 1812, Calhoun championed states' rights after 1828. Political factions and sectional differences became more intense dur- ing Monroe's second term. When Monroe, honoring the two-term tradition, declined to be a candidate again, four other Republicans sought election as president in 1824. How this election split of the Democratic-Republican party and led to the emergence of two rival parties is explained in Chapter 10. Marshall's Supreme Court and Central Government Powers One Federalist official continued to have major influence throughout the years of Democratic-Republican ascendancy: John Marshall. He had been appointed to the Supreme Court in 1800 by Federalist President John Adams and was still leading the Court as its chief justice. His decisions consistently favored the NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1816-1848 153 central government and the rights of property against the advocates of states' rights. Even when justices appointed by Democratic-Republican presidents formed a majority on the Court, they often sided with Marshall because they were persuaded that the U.S. Constitution had created a federal government with strong and flexible powers. Several of Marshall's decisions became land- mark rulings that defined the relationship between the central government and the states. The first of these cases, Marbury v. Madison (1803), established the principle of judicial review. It was described in Chapter 7. Six others influential cases are described below. Fletcher v. Peck (1810) In a case involving land fraud in Georgia, Mar- shall concluded that a state could not pass legislation invalidating a contract. This was the first time that the Supreme Court declared a state law to be uncon- stitutional and invalid. (In Marbury v. Madison, the Court ruled a federal law unconstitutional.) Martin v. Hunter's Lease (1816) The Supreme Court established that it had jurisdiction over state courts in cases involving constitutional rights. Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) This case involved a law of New Hampshire that changed Dartmouth College from a privately chartered col- lege into a public institution. The Marshall Court struck down the state law as unconstitutional, arguing that a contract for a private corporation could not be altered by the state. McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) Maryland attempted to tax the Second Bank of the United States located in Maryland. Marshall ruled that a state could not tax a federal institution because "the power to tax is the power to destroy," and federal laws are supreme over state laws. In addition, Marshall settled the long-running debate over constitutionality of the national bank. Using a loose interpretation of the Constitution, Marshall ruled that, even though no clause in the Constitution specifically mentions a national bank, the Constitution gave the federal government the implied power to create one. Cohens v. Virginia (1821) A pair of brothers named Cohens were con- victed in Virginia of illegally selling lottery tickets for a lottery authorized by Congress for Washington, D.C. While Marshall and the Court upheld the conviction, they established the principle that the Supreme Court could review a state court's decision involving any of the powers of the federal government. Gibbons v. Ogden (1821) Could the state of New York grant a monopoly to a steamboat company if that action conflicted with a charter authorized by Congress? In ruling that the New York monopoly was unconstitutional, Mar- shall established the federal government's broad control of interstate commerce. Western Settlement and the Missouri Compromise Less than ten years after the start of the War of 1812, the population west of the Appalachian Mountains had doubled. Much of the nationalistic and economic interest in the country was centered on the West, which presented both oppor- tunities and new questions. 154 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Reasons for Westward Movement Several factors combined to stimulate rapid growth along the western frontier during the presidencies of Madison and Monroe. Acquisition of American Indians' Lands Large areas were open for set- tlement after American Indians were driven from their lands by the victories of Generals William Henry Harrison in the Indiana Territory and Andrew Jackson in Florida and the South. Economic Pressures T he economic difficulties in the Northeast from the embargo and the war caused people from this region to seek a new future across the Appalachians. In the South, tobacco planters needed new land to replace the soil exhausted by years of poor farming methods. They found good land for planting cotton in Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Improved Transportation Pioneers had an easier time reaching the fron- tier as a result of the building of roads and canals, steamboats, and railroads. Immigrants More Europeans were being attracted to America by specu- lators offering cheap land in the Great Lakes region and in the valleys of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Mississippi rivers. New Questions and Issues Despite their rapid growth, the new states of the West had small populations relative to those of the other two sections. To enhance their limited political influence in Congress, western representatives bargained with politicians from other sections to obtain their objectives. Of greatest importance to the western states were: (1) "cheap money" (easy credit) from state banks rather than from the Bank of the United States, (2) low prices for land sold by the federal gov- ernment, and (3) improved transportation. However, on the critical issue of slavery, westerners could not agree whether to permit it or to exclude it. Those settling territory to the south wanted slavery for economic reasons (labor for the cotton fields), while those settling to the north had no use for slavery. In 1819, when the Missouri Territory applied to Congress for statehood, the slavery issue became a subject of angry debate. The Missouri Compromise Ever since 1791-1792, when Vermont entered the Union as a free state and Kentucky entered as a slave state, politicians in Congress had attempted to pre- serve a sectional balance between the North and the South. Keeping a balance in the House of Representatives was difficult because population in the North was growing more rapidly than in the South. By 1818 the northern states held a majority of 105 to 81 in the House. However, in the Senate, the votes remained divided evenly: 11 slave and 11 free states. As long as this balance was pre- served, southern senators could block legislation that they believed threatened the interests of their section. Missouri's bid for statehood alarmed the North because slavery was well established there. If Missouri came in as a slave state, it would tip the political NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1816-1848 155 balance in the South's favor. Furthermore, Missouri was the first part of the Louisiana Purchase to apply for statehood. Southerners and northerners alike worried about the future status of other new territories applying for statehood from the rest of the vast Louisiana Purchase. Tallmadge Amendment Representative James Tallmadge from New York ignited the debate about the Missouri question by proposing an amendment to the bill for Missouri's admission. The amendment called for (1) prohibiting the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and (2) requiring the children of Missouri slaves to be emancipated at the age of 25. If adopted, the Tallmadge Amendment would have led to the gradual elimination of slavery in Missouri. The amendment was defeated in the Senate as enraged southerners saw it as the first step in a northern effort to abolish slavery in all states. THE UNITED STATES IN 1821 AFTER THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE GULF OF MEXICO � Open to slavery LJ Closed to slavery 250 500 Miles O 250 500 Kilometers 156 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Clay's Proposals After months of heated debate in Congress and through- out the nation, Henry Clay won majority support for three bills that, taken together, represented a compromise: 1. Admit Missouri as a slave-holding state. 2. Admit Maine as a free state. 3. Prohibit slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Territory north of latitude 36° 30'. Both houses passed the bills, and President Monroe added his signature in March 1820 to what became known as the Missouri Compromise. Aftermath Sectional feelings on the slavery issue subsided after 1820. The Missouri Compromise preserved sectional balance for more than 30 years and provided time for the nation to mature. Nevertheless, if an era of good feel- ings existed, it was badly damaged by the storm of sectional controversy over Missouri. After this political crisis, Americans were torn between feelings of nationalism (loyalty to the Union) on the one hand and feelings of sectionalism (loyalty to one's own region) on the other. Foreign Affairs Following the War of 1812, the United States adopted a more aggressive, nationalistic approach it its relations with other nations. During Madison's presidency, when problems with the Barbary pirates again developed, a fleet under Stephen Decatur was sent in 1815 to force the rulers of North Africa to allow American shipping the free use of the Mediterranean. President Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams continued to follow a nationalistic policy that actively advanced American interests while maintaining peace. Canada Although the Treaty of Ghent of 1814 had ended the war between Britain and the United States, it left unresolved most of their diplomatic differences, including many involving Canada. Rush-Bagot Agreement (1817) During Monroe's first year as president, British and American negotiators agreed to a major disarmament pact. The Rush-Bagot Agreement strictly limited naval armament on the Great Lakes. In time the agreement was extended to place limits on border fortifications as well. Ultimately, the border between the United States and Canada was to become the longest unfortified border in the world. Treaty of 1818 Improved relations between the United States and Britain continued in a treaty that provided for (1) shared fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland; (2) joint occupation of the Oregon Territory for ten years; and (3) the setting of the northern limits of the Louisiana Territory at the 49th paral- lel, thus establishing the western U.S.-Canada boundary line. NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1816-1848 157 Florida During the War of 1812, U.S. troops had occupied western Florida, a strip of land on the Gulf of Mexico extending all the way to the Mississippi delta. Pre- viously, this land had been held by Spain, Britain's ally. After the war, Spain had difficulty governing the rest of Florida (the peninsula itself) because its troops had been removed from Florida to battle revolts in the South Ameri- can colonies. The chaotic conditions permitted groups of Seminoles, runaway slaves, and white outlaws to conduct raids into U.S. territory and retreat to safety across the Florida border. These disorders gave Monroe and General Andrew Jackson an opportunity to take military action in Spanish Florida, a territory long coveted by American expansionists. Jackson's Military Campaign In late 1817, the president commissioned General Jackson to stop the raiders and, if necessary, pursue them across the border into Spanish west Florida. Jackson carried out his orders with a ven- geance and probably went beyond his instructions. In 1818, he led a force of militia into Florida, destroyed Seminole villages, and hanged two Semi- nole chiefs. Capturing Pensacola, Jackson drove out the Spanish governor, and hanged two British traders accused of aiding the Seminoles. Many members of Congress feared that Jackson's overzealousness would precipitate a war with both Spain and Britain. However, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams persuaded Monroe to support Jackson, and the British decided not to intervene. Florida Purchase Treaty (1819) Spain, worried that the United States would seize Florida and preoccupied with troubles in Latin America, decided to get the best possible terms for Florida. By treaty in 1819, Spain turned over all of its possessions in Florida and its own claims in the Oregon Territory to the United States. In exchange, the United States agreed to assume $5 million in claims against Spain and give up any U.S. territorial claims to the Spanish province of Texas. The agreement is also called the Adams-Onfs Treaty. The Monroe Doctrine Although focused on its own growth, the United States did not ignore the ambitions of Europe in the Western Hemisphere. The restoration of a number of monarchies in Europe after the fall of Napoleon in 1815 produced a back- lash against republican movements. Restored monarchies in France, Austria, and Prussia, together with Russia, worked together to suppress liberal elements in Italy and Spain. They also considered helping Spain to return to power in South America, where a number of republics had recently declared their inde- pendence. In addition, Russia's presence in Alaska worried both Britain and the United States. Using their trading posts in Alaska as a base, Russian seal hunters had spread southward and established a trading post at San Francisco Bay. British and U.S. leaders decided they had a common interest in protecting North and South America from possible aggression by a European power. 158 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM British Initiative British naval power deterred the Spanish from attempt- ing a comeback in Latin America. But to maintain British trade with the Latin American republics required diplomacy. British Foreign Secretary George Canning proposed to Richard Rush, the U.S. minister in London, a jointAnglo- American warning to the European powers not to intervene in South America. American Response Monroe and most of his advisers thought Canning's idea of a joint declaration made sense. However, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams disagreed. He believed that joint action with Britain would restrict U.S. opportunities for further expansion in the hemisphere. Adams reasoned as fol- lows: (1) If the United States acted alone, Britain could be counted upon to stand behind the U.S. policy. (2) No European power would risk going to war in South America, and if it did, the British navy would surely defeat the aggres- sor. President Monroe decided to act as Adams advised-to issue a statement to the world that did not have Britain as a coauthor. The Doctrine On December 2, 1823, President Monroe inserted into his annual message to Congress a declaration of U.S. policy toward Europe and Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine, as it came to be called, asserted as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. Monroe declared further that the United States opposed attempts by a European power to interfere in the affairs of any republic in the Western Hemisphere. Impact Monroe's bold words of nationalistic purpose were applauded by the American public but soon forgotten, as most citizens were more concerned with domestic issues. In Britain, Canning was annoyed by the doctrine because he recognized that it applied, not just to the other European powers, but to his country as well. The British too were warned not to intervene and not to seek new territory in the Western Hemisphere. The European monarchs reacted angrily to Monroe's message. Still, they recognized that their purposes were thwarted, not by his words, but by the might of the British navy. The Monroe Doctrine had less significance at the time than in later decades, when it would be hailed by politicians and citizens alike as the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America. In the 1840s, President James Polk was the first of many presidents to justify his foreign policy by referring to Monroe's warning words. A National Economy In the early 1800s, the Jeffersonian dream of a nation of independent farm- ers remained strong in rural areas. As the century progressed, however, an increasing percentage of the American people were swept up in the dynamic NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1816-1848 159 economic changes of the Industrial Revolution. Political conflicts over tariffs, internal improvements, and the Bank of the United States reflected the impor- tance to people's lives of a national economy that was rapidly growing. Population Growth Population growth provided both the laborers and the consumers required for industrial development. Between 1800 and 1825, the U.S. population doubled; in the following 25 years it doubled again. A high birthrate accounted for most of this growth, but it was strongly supplemented after 1830 by immigrants arriv- ing from Europe, particularly from Great Britain and Germany. The nonwhite population-African Americans and American Indians-grew despite the ban on the importation of slaves after 1808. However, as a percentage of the total population, nonwhites declined from almost 20 percent in 1790 to 15 percent in the 1850s. By the 1830s, almost one-third of the population lived west of the Allegh- enies. At the same time, both old and new urban areas were growing rapidly. UNITED STATES POPULATION, 1790 to 1860 35 - 30 - - 25 - ,Q - ·- 20 - 0 - m 15 - 0 - 10 - - - 5 - I I I I I I I I 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 160 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Transportation Vital to the development of both a national and an industrial economy was an efficient network of interconnecting roads and canals for moving people, raw materials, and manufactured goods. Roads Pennsylvania's Lancaster Turnpike, built in the 1790s, connected Philadelphia with the rich farmlands around Lancaster. Its success stimulated the construction of other privately built and relatively short toll roads that, by the mid-1820s, connected most of the country's major cities. Despite the need for interstate roads, states' righters blocked the spending of federal funds on internal improvements. Construction of highways that crossed state lines was therefore unusual. One notable exception was the National, or Cumberland Road, a paved highway and major route to the west extending more than a thousand miles from Maryland to Illinois. It was begun in 1811 and completed in the 1850s, using both federal and state money, with the dif- ferent states receiving ownership of segments of the highway. Canals The completion of the Erie Canal in New York State in 1825 was a major event in linking the economies of western farms and eastern cities. The success of this canal in stimulating economic growth touched off a frenzy of canal-building in other states. In little more than a decade, canals joined together all of the major lakes and rivers east of the Mississippi. Improved transportation meant lower food prices in the East, more immigrants settling in the West, and stronger economic ties between the two sections. Steamboats The age of mechanized, steam-powered travel began in 1807 with the successful voyage up the Hudson River of the Clermont, a steam- boat developed by Robert Fulton. Commercially operated steamboat lines soon made round-trip shipping on the nation's great rivers both faster and cheaper. Railroads Even more rapid and reliable links between cities became pos- sible with the building of the first U.S. railroad lines in the late 1820s. The early railroads were hampered at first by safety problems, but by the 1830s they were competing directly with canals as an alternative method for carry- ing passengers and freight. The combination of railroads with the other major improvements in transportation rapidly changed small western towns such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago into booming commercial centers of the expanding national economy. Growth of Industry At the start of the 19th century, a manufacturing economy had barely begun in the United States. By midcentury, however, U.S. manufacturing surpassed agriculture in value, and by century's end, it was the world's leader. This rapid industrial growth was the result of a unique combination of factors. Mechanical Inventions Protected by patent laws, inventors looked for- ward to handsome rewards if their ideas for new tools or machines proved practical. Eli Whitney was only the most famous of hundreds of Ameri- cans whose long hours of tinkering in their workshops resulted in improved NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1816-1848 161 technology. Besides inventing the cotton gin in 1793, Whitney devised a sys- tem for making rifles out of interchangeable parts during the War of 1812. Interchangeable parts then became the basis for mass production methods in the new northern factories. Corporations for Raising Capital In 1811, New York passed a law that made it easier for a business to incorporate and raise capital (money) by selling shares of stock. Other states soon imitated New York's example. Owners of a corporation risked only the amount of money that they invested in a venture. Changes in state corporation laws facilitated the raising of the large sums of capital necessary for building factories, canals, and railroads. Factory System When Samuel Slater emigrated from Britain, he took with him the British secrets for building cotton-spinning machines, and he put this knowledge to work by helping establish the first U.S. factory in 1791. Early in the next century, the embargo and the War of 1812 stimulated domes- tic manufacturing, and the protective tariffs enacted by Congress helped the new factories prosper. MAJOR CANALS, ROADS, AND RAILROADS 1820-1850 GULF OF MEXICO Philadelphia N • - Railroads - Roads and Turnpikes -·-·- Canals O 100 200 Miles O 100 200 300 Kilometers 162 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM In the 1820s, New England emerged as the country's leading manufactur- ing center as a result of the region's abundant waterpower for driving the new machinery and excellent seaports for shipping goods. Also, the decline of New England's maritime industry made capital available for manufacturing, while the decline of farming in the region yielded a ready labor supply. Other north- ern states with similar resources and problems-New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania-followed New England's lead. As the factory system expanded, it encouraged the growth of financial businesses such as banking and insurance. Labor At first, factory owners had difficulty finding workers for their mills. Factory life could not compete with the lure of cheap land in the West. In response to this difficulty, textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, recruited young farm women and housed them in company dormitories. In the 1830s, other factories imitated the Lowell System. Many factories also made extensive use of child labor. (Children as young as seven left home to work in the new factories.) Toward the middle of the century northern manufacturers began to employ immigrants in large numbers. Unions Trade ( or craft) unions were organized in major cities as early as the 1790s and increased in number as the factory system took hold. Many skilled workers (shoemakers and weavers, for example) had to seek employ- ment in factories because their earlier practice of working in their own shops (the crafts system) could no longer compete with lower-priced, mass-produced goods. Long hours, low pay, and poor working conditions led to widespread dis- content among factory workers. A prime goal of the early unions was to reduce the workday to ten hours. The obstacles to union success, however, were many: (1) immigrant replacement workers, (2) state laws outlawing unions, and (3) frequent economic depressions with high unemployment. Commercial Agriculture In the early 1800s, farming became more of a commercial enterprise and less a means of providing subsistence for the family. This change to cash crops was brought about by a blend of factors. Cheap Land and Easy Credit Large areas of western land were made available at low prices by the federal government. State banks also made it easy to acquire land by providing farmers with loans at low interest rates. Markets Initially, western farmers were limited to sending their products down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to southern markets. The advent of canals and railroads opened new markets in the growing factory cities in the East. Cotton and the South Throughout the 19th century, the principal cash crop in the South was cotton. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793 transformed the agriculture of an entire region. Now that they could easily separate the cotton fiber from the seeds, southern planters found cotton more profitable than tobacco and indigo, the leading crops of the colonial period. They invested their capital in the pur- chase of slaves and new land in Alabama and Mississippi and shipped most of their cotton crop overseas for sale to British textile factories. NATIONALISM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, 1816-1848 163 Effects of the Market Revolution Specialization on the farm, the growth of cities, industrialization, and the development of modern capitalism meant the end of self-sufficient households and a growing interdependence among people. These changes combined to bring about a revolution in the marketplace. The farmers fed the workers in the cities, who in turn provided farm families with an array of mass-produced goods. For most Americans, the standard of living increased. At the same time, however, adapting to an impersonal, fast-changing economy presented chal- lenges and problems. Women As American society became more urban and industrialized, the nature of work and family life changed for women, many of whom no longer worked next to their husbands on family farms. Women seeking employment in a city were usually limited to two choices: domestic service or teaching. Factory jobs, as in the Lowell System, were not common. The overwhelming majority of working women were single. If they married, they left their jobs and took up duties in the home. In both urban and rural settings, women were gaining relatively more con- trol over their lives. Marriages arranged by one's parents were less common, and some women elected to have fewer children. Nevertheless, legal restric- tions on women remained. For example, they could not vote. Economic and Social Mobility Real wages improved for most urban workers in the early 1800s, but the gap between the very wealthy and the very poor increased. Social mobility (moving upward in income level and social status) did occur from one generation to the next, and economic opportunities in the United States were greater than in Europe. Extreme examples of poor, hard-working people becoming millionaires, however, were rare. Slavery At the outset of the 19th century, many people throughout the nation believed and hoped that slavery would gradually disappear. They thought that the exhaustion of soil in the coastal lands of Virginia and the Carolinas and the constitutional ban on the importation of slaves after 1808 would make slav- ery economically unfeasible. However, the rapid growth of the cotton industry and the expansion of slavery into new states such as Alabama and Mississippi ended hopes for a quiet end to slavery. As the arguments over the Missouri Compromise suggested, the slavery issue defied easy answers. 164 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Population of Enslaved African Americans 1800 1830 1860 New York 20,613 75 0 Maryland 106,635 102,994 87,189 Virginia 346,671 469,767 490,865 Georgia 59,699 217,531 462,198 Alabama ----- 117,549 435,080 Mississippi ----- 65,659 436,631 Arkansas ----- 4,576 111,115 All States 893,605 2,009,043 3,953,760 Source: State-level data from Historical Census Browser from the University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center. Data drawn from the U.S. Census

Chapter 17 'The Last West and the New South, 1865 - 1900'

During the post-Civil War era most of the large-scale industrial development took place in the Northeast and Midwest, while the South and West most often supplied raw materials and consumed northern manufactured goods. Some in the South and West resented this apparent colonial status, which helped to shape the politics in the final decades of the 19th century. However, the South and West were not defined by their economic roles alone. Their geography, people, and cultures shaped their regional characteristics well into the future. The West: Settlement of the Last Frontier After the Civil War, many Americans began settling in the vast arid territory in the West that included the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Western Plateau. Before 1860, these lands between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast were known as "the Great American Desert" by pioneers passing through on the way to the green valleys of Oregon and the goldfields of California. The plains west of the 100th meridian had few trees and usually received less than 15 inches of rainfall a year, which was not considered enough moisture to support farming. While the winter blizzards and hot dry summers discouraged settlement, the open grasslands of the plains supported an estimated 15 million bison, or buffalo. The buffalo in tum provided food, clothing, shelter, and even tools for many of the 250,000 American Indians living in the West in 1865. THE LAST WEST AND THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 339 STATES ADMITTED TO THE UNION 1864-1896 ----� i � Washington . I..,..____ 100° & D , ' ------ 1 'E'v, , 1889 ' I \ r------,- � S < 1 j l --- '-�------J \ Montana / N.Dakota ', , l 1889 I 1889 I I t..... I \ \ Oregon / � f-----1-----' Minn [ l ' ,--- I I < • I w1·sc 1 Id h �-� -------i ' . --- 1 a O / , S.Dakota I l_� --.,.. ___ /G 1890 1 W . /G 1889 \ _"l I ---- / yommg , r------ l I S -,----1 1890 r------1 --,�,? ',- / I I ' I ) 1 , 1 , Nebraska ' owa , I N d �-- I f ,S eva a / ;--------L__ 1867 1 ,} \ 1864 I I I ",-----'1 \ 1 Utah , S 1--J _______ ,, ', ' 1 1896 1 G I I ' ' , , 1 Colorado I C • I > ") al. \ t--_ / 1876 / 1 Kansas \Missouri'- \ I ----�-------- j I J I \( Arizona / Ne ·, -���- ;�a �:���------\ ) • I w I / Territory I Mexico f Territory I Ark. / -. 1., I � .... , I f -r-, 1 Territory u· --�Jrr�� � "'\ Te�rns , r __ ',, ..._ _;_r-.;,------ : l (---) '-'I I / La. -----ca �,,-le�D-riv�e-s � .N \,J""'""'·\:I' G S Mining , o 100 200 300 MIies .\ 0 100200300 Kilometers I '-..._ In only 35 years, conditions on the Great Plains changed so dramatically that the frontier largely vanished. By 1900, the great buffalo herds had been wiped out. The open western lands were fenced in by homesteads and ranches, crisscrossed by steel rails, and modernized by new towns. Ten new western states had been carved out of the last frontier. Only Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma remained as territories awaiting statehood. Progress came at a cost. The frenzied rush for the West's natural resources not only nearly exterminated the buffalo, but also seriously damaged the environment. Most significantly, the American Indians who lived in the region paid a high human and cultural price as land was settled by miners, ranchers, and farmers. The Mining Frontier The discovery of gold in California in 1848 caused the first flood of newcomers to the territory. The California Gold Rush was only the beginning of a fever- ish quest for gold and silver that would extend well into the 1890s and would help to settle much of the region. A series of gold strikes and silver strikes in what became the states of Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and South Dakota kept a steady flow of hopeful prospectors pushing into the western mountains. The discovery of gold near Pike's Peak, Colorado, in 1859 brought 340 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM nearly 100,000 miners to the area. In the same year, the discovery of the fabu- lous Comstock Lode ( which produced more than $340 million in gold and silver by 1890) was responsible for Nevada entering the Union in 1864. Idaho and Montana also received early statehood, largely because of mining booms. California's great gold rush of 1849 set the pattern for other rushes. First, individual prospectors would look for traces of gold in the mountain streams by a method called placer mining, using simple tools such as shovels and wash- ing pans. Such methods eventually gave way to deep-shaft mining that required expensive equipment and the resources of wealthy investors and corporations. Rich strikes created boomtowns overnight-towns that became infamous for saloons, dance-hall girls, and vigilante justice. Many of these, however, became lonely ghost towns within a few years after the gold or silver ran out. Some towns, such as Nevada's Virginia City (created by the Comstock Lode), did grow, adding theaters, churches, newspapers, schools, libraries, railroads, and police. Mark Twain started his career as a writer working on a Virginia City newspaper in the early 1860s. A few towns that served the mines, such as San Francisco, Sacramento, and Denver, expanded into prosperous cities. Chinese Exclusion Act Most of the mining towns that endured and grew were more like industrial cities than the frontier towns depicted in western films. As the mines developed, mining companies employed experienced min- ers from Europe, Latin America, and China. In many mining towns, half the population was foreign-born. About one-third of the western miners in the 1860s were Chinese immigrants. Native-born Americans resented the compe- tition. In California, hostility to foreigners took the form of a Miner's Tax of $20 a month on all foreign-born miners. Political pressure from western states moved Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which prohib- ited further immigration to the United States by Chinese laborers. Immigration from China was severely restricted until 1965. The 1882 law was the first major act of Congress to restrict immigration on the basis of race and nationality. Mining not only stimulated the settlement of the West but also reshaped the economics and politics of the nation. The vast increase in the supply of silver created a crisis over the relative value of gold- and silver-backed currency, which became a bitter political issue in the 1880s and 1890s. The mining boom left environmental scars that remain visible today, and it had a disastrous effect on American Indians, who lost their lands to miners pursuing instant riches. The Cattle Frontier The economic potential of the vast open grasslands that reached from Texas to Canada was realized by ranchers in the decades after the Civil War. Earlier, cattle had been raised and rounded up in Texas on a small scale by Mexican cowboys, or vaqueros. The traditions of the cattle business in the late 1800s, like the hardy "Texas" longhorn cattle, were borrowed from the Mexicans. By the 1860s, wild herds of about 5 million head of cattle roamed freely over the Texas grasslands. The Texas cattle business was easy to get into because both the cattle and the grass were free. THE LAST WEST AND THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 341 The construction of railroads into Kansas after the war opened up eastern markets for the Texas cattle. Joseph G. McCoy built the first stockyards in the region, at Abilene, Kansas, to hold cattle destined for Chicago. There, they could be sold for the high price of $30 to $50 per head. Dodge City and other cow towns sprang up along the railroads to handle the millions of cattle driven up the Chisholm, Goodnight-Loving, and other trails out of Texas during the 1860s and 1870s. The cowboys, many of whom were African Americans or Mexicans, received about a dollar a day for their dangerous work. The long cattle drives began to come to an end in the 1880s. Overgrazing destroyed the grass and a winter blizzard and drought of 1885-1886 killed off 90 percent of the cattle. Another factor that closed down the cattle frontier was the arrival of homesteaders, who used barbed wire fencing to cut off access to the formerly open range. Wealthy cattle owners turned to developing huge ranches and using scientific ranching techniques. They raised new breeds of cattle that produced more tender beef by feeding them hay and grains. The Wild West was largely tamed by the 1890s, but in these few decades, Ameri- cans' eating habits changed from pork to beef and people created the legend of the rugged, self-reliant American cowboy. The Farming Frontier The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged farming on the Great Plains by offer- ing 160 acres of public land free to any family that settled on it for a period of five years. The promise of free land combined with the promotions of rail- roads and land speculators induced hundreds of thousands of native-born and immigrant families to attempt to farm the Great Plains between 1870 and 1900. About 500,000 families took advantage of the Homestead Act. However, five times that number had to purchase their land, because the best public lands often ended up in the hands of railroad companies and speculators. Problems and Solutions The first "sodbusters" on the dry and treeless plains often built their homes of sod bricks. Extremes of hot and cold weather, plagues of grasshoppers, and the lonesome life on the plains challenged even the most resourceful of the pioneer families. Water was scarce, and wood for fences was almost nonexistent. The invention of barbed wire by Joseph Glid- den in 1874 helped farmers to fence in their lands on the lumber-scarce plains. Using mail-order windmills to drill deep wells provided some water. Even so, many homesteaders discovered too late that 160 acres was not adequate for farming the Great Plains. Long spells of severe weather, together with falling prices for their crops and the cost of new machinery, caused the failure of two- thirds of the homesteaders' farms on the Great Plains by 1900. Western Kansas alone lost half of its population between 1888 and 1892. Those who managed to survive adopted "dry farming" and deep-plowing techniques to use the moisture available. They also learned to plant hardy strains of Russian wheat that withstood the extreme weather. Ultimately, dams and irrigation saved many western farmers, as humans reshaped the rivers and physical environment of the West to provide water for agriculture. 342 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Closing of the Frontier The Oklahoma Territory, once set aside for the use of American Indians, was opened for settlement in 1889, and hundreds of homesteaders took part in the last great land rush in the West. The next year, the U.S. Census Bureau declared that the entire frontier-except for a few pockets-had been settled. Turner's Frontier Thesis Reacting to the closing of the frontier, historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote an influential essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1893). Turner argued that 300 years of fron- tier experience had shaped American culture by promoting independence and individualism. The frontier was a powerful social leveler, breaking down class distinctions and thus fostering social and political democracy. Furthermore, the challenges of frontier life caused Americans to be inventive and practical- minded-but also wasteful in their attitude toward natural resources. The closing of the frontier troubled Turner. He saw the availability of free land on the frontier as a safety valve for harmlessly releasing discontent in American society. The frontier had always held out the promise of a fresh start. Once the frontier was gone, would the United States be condemned to follow the patterns of class division and social conflict that troubled Europe? While many debate the Turner thesis, historians acknowledge that by the 1890s the largest movement of Americans was to the cities and industrialized areas. Not only was the era of the western frontier coming to a close, but the dominance of rural America was also on a decline. American Indians in the West The American Indians who occupied the West in 1865 belonged to dozens of different cultural and tribal groups. In New Mexico and Arizona, Pueblo groups such as the Hopi and Zuni lived in permanent settlements as farmers raising corn and livestock. The Navajo and Apache peoples of the Southwest were nomadic hunter-gatherers who adapted a more settled way of life, not only raising crops and livestock but also producing arts and crafts. In the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon), such tribes as the Chinook and Shasta developed complex communities based on abundant fish and game. About two-thirds of the western tribal groups lived on the Great Plains. These nomadic tribes, such as the Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, and Comanche, had given up farming in colonial times after the introduction of the horse by the Spanish. By the 1700s, they had become skillful horse riders and developed a way of life centered on the hunting of buffalo. Although they belonged to tribes of several thousand, they lived in smaller bands of 300 to 500 members. In the late 19th century, their conflicts with the U.S. government were partly the result of white Americans having little understanding of the Plains people's loose tribal organization and nomadic lifestyle. Reservation Policy In the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson's policy of removing eastern American Indians to the West was based on the belief that lands west of the Mississippi would permanently remain "Indian country." This expectation soon proved false, as wagon trains rolled westward on the Oregon THE LAST WEST AND THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 343 Trail, and plans were made for building a transcontenintal railroad. In 1851, in councils (negotiations) at Fort Laramie and Fort Atkinson, the federal gov- ernment began to assign the Plains tribes large tracts of land-or reservations -with definite boundaries. Most Plains tribes, however, refused to restrict their movements to the reservations and continued to follow the migrating buf- falo wherever they roamed. Indian Wars In the late 19th century, the settlement of thousands of min- ers, ranchers, and homesteaders on American Indian lands led to violence. Fighting between U.S. troops and Plains Indians was often brutal, with the U.S. Army responsible for several massacres. In 1866, during the Sioux War, the tables were turned when an army column under Captain William Fetterman was wiped out by Sioux warriors. Following these wars, another round of trea- ties attempted to isolate the Plains Indians on smaller reservations with federal ...... AMERICAN INDIANS IN THE WEST -------�r----- -- , I ---------,--------, - W: hi / 1 ,01 k·" � Bear Paw 1 as ngton 1 v ac ':Jeet M t . 1 s· ' 1 oun am I wux \ ', Chinook f \ M 1877 1 _,,., N Dakota 1 ,__ 1 ontana I H' · 1 ----:,:----.1 � H' Crow Little I 7l _,,., \ Ne � CJ Big Horn �---------ft--( �;eerce !· ,11876 I -jl Sioux' Oregon < =. ,--- --:w----..J 1 1 '- ,�-�, Sio,�x ·H' 1 I I � '---;....-:. / BLACKIH[LLS s. Dakota I / Idaho "Ph's Route Fetterman I \ --- r I Massacre 1866 I Wounded Knee,---- ,!r----�-- I /"P Ch L ,118_!1�---- /' ) Modoc War 1 ---J __ _promontory I eyenne 1 ----- '- -, 1872-1873 / ---,-PointJ O Wyoming I 1, Modoc I P · t f � / am e / (") Fort Arapalw i Nebraska \ , ' - --"rs Laramie• 1 , I I __________ . 1 __ "* Pawnee 1 I N d I Great ...,(. _,,., Arapaho \ \ eva a / Salt Lake / H' ,r �------------- - ', / Utah / � I Cheyenne \ 1 Territory 1 0 Colorado 1 , I I I California \ / Ute / C Sand Creek ,l I Kansas \ / ------____ J ___ �-��!sa��- 1��'! ._L _ _ __ _______ _ _ _ \ I N' I \ / avaJo _,,., 1 ....... f ----;----, , I H' / ';:t. Kwwa I Indian oc, Y Arizona 1 ,r \ Territory �l Territory : Red River 1 War G Q I () ) Fort Apache• 1 1874-1875 �-,,�_,,,_- --- c, I -<, ,r I ',, Apache / ', _,Ml __ _. �--rtl_J Skeleton Canyon 1886 ,r Battle Between U.S. Army and American Indians 250 250 500 Kilometers 500 Miles MEXICO Comanche Texas 344 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM agents promising government support. However, gold miners refused to stay off American Indians' lands if gold was to be found on them, as indeed it was in the Dakotas' Black Hills. Soon, minor chiefs not involved in the treaty-making and younger warriors denounced the treaties and tried to return to ancestral lands. A new round of conflicts in the West began in the 1870s. The Indian Appro- priation Act of 1871 ended recognition of tribes as independent nations by the federal government and nullified previous treaties made with the tribes. Con- flicts included the Red River War against the Comanche in the southern plains and a second Sioux War led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in the northern plains. Before the Sioux went down to defeat, they ambushed and destroyed Colonel George Custer's command at Little Big Hom in 1876. Chief Joseph's courageous effort to lead a band of the Nez Perce into Canada ended in defeat and surrender in 1877. The constant pressure of the U.S. Army forced tribe after tribe to comply with Washington's terms. In addition, the slaughter of most of the buffalo by the early 1880s doomed the way of life of the Plains people. The last effort of American Indians to resist U.S. government controls came through a religious movement known as the Ghost Dance. Leaders of the movements believed it could return prosperity to American Indians. In the government's campaign to suppress the movement, the famous Sioux medicine man Sitting Bull was killed during his arrest. Then in December 1890, the U.S. Army gunned down more than 200 American Indian men, women, and children in the "battle" (massacre) of Wounded Knee in the Dakotas. This final tragedy marked the end of the Indian Wars on the crimsoned prairie. Assimilationists The injustices done to American Indians were chroni- cled in a best-selling book by Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (1881). Although this book created sympathy for American Indians, especially in the eastern United States, it also generated support for ending Indian culture through assimilation. Reformers advocated formal education, job training, and conversion to Christianity. They set up boarding schools such as the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania to segregate American Indian children from their peo- ple and teach them white culture and farming and industrial skills. Dawes Severalty Act (1887) A new phase in the relationship between the U.S. government and American Indians was incorporated in the Dawes Act of 1887. The act was designed to break up tribal organizations, which many felt kept American Indians from becoming "civilized" and law-abiding citizens. The Dawes Act divided the tribal lands into plots of up to 160 acres, depending on family size. U.S. citizenship was granted to those who stayed on the land for 25 years and "adopted the habits of civilized life." Under the Dawes Act, as intended, the government distributed 47 million acres of land to American Indians. However, 90 million acres of former reser- vation land-often the best land-was sold over the years to white settlers by THE LAST WEST AND THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 345 the government, speculators, or American Indians themselves. The new policy proved a failure. By the turn of the century, disease and poverty had reduced the American Indian population to just 200,000 persons, most of whom lived as wards of the federal government. Changes in the 20th Century In 1924, in partial recognition that forced assimilation had failed, the federal government granted U.S. citi- zenship to all American Indians, whether or not they had complied with the Dawes Act. As part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s, Congress adopted the Indian Reorganization Act ( 1934 ), which promoted the re- establishment of tribal organization and culture. Today, more than 3 million American Indians, belonging to 500 tribes, live within the United States. The Latino Southwest After the Mexican War ended in 1848, the Spanish-speaking landowners in California and the Southwest were guaranteed their property rights and granted citizenship. However, drawn-out legal proceedings often resulted in the sale or loss of lands to new Anglo arrivals. Hispanic culture was preserved in dominant Spanish-speaking areas, such as the New Mexico territories, the border towns, and the barrios of California. Mexican Americans moved to find work, such as to the sugar beet fields and the mines of Colorado, and the building of western railroads. Before 1917, the border with Mexico was open and few records were kept for either seasonal workers or permanent settlers. Mexicans, like their European counterparts, were drawn by the explosive economic development of the region. The Conservation Movement The concerns over deforestation sparked the conservation movement, and the breathtaking paintings and photographs of western landscapes helped to push Con- gress to preserve such western icons as Yosemite Valley as a California state park in 1864 (a national park in 1890), and to dedicate the Yellowstone area as the first Source: Logging in California, 1909. Library of Congress 346 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM National Park in 1872. Carl Schurz, as Secretary of the Interior in the in the 1880s, advocated creation of forest reserves and a federal forest service to pro- tect federal lands from exploitation. Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland reserved 33 million acres of national timber. With the closing of the frontier era, Americans grew increasingly con- cerned about the loss of public lands and the natural treasures they contained. The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 and the Forest Management Act of 1897 with- drew federal timberlands from development and regulated their use. While most "conservationists" believed in scientific management and regulated use of natural resources, "preservationists," such as John Muir, a leading founder of the Sierra Club in 1892, went a step further, and aimed to preserve natural areas from human interference. The education efforts of the Arbor Day, Audu- bon Society, and the Sierra Club were another sign of a growing conservation movement by 1900. The New South While the West was being "won" by settlers and the U.S. Army, the South was recovering from the devastation of the Civil War. Some southerners promoted a new vision for a self-sufficient southern economy built on modern capital- ist values, industrial growth, and improved transportation. Chief among them was Henry Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Grady spread the gospel of the New South with editorials that argued for economic diversity and laissez-faire capitalism. To attract businesses, local governments offered tax exemptions to investors and the promise of low-wage labor. Economic Progress The growth of cities, the textual industry, and improved railroads symbolized efforts to create a "New South" in the late 19th century." Birmingham, Ala- bama, developed into one of the nation's leading steel producers. Memphis, Tennessee, prospered as a center for the South's growing lumber industry. Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, became the capital of the nation's tobacco industry. Georgia, North Carolina, and South Caro- lina overtook the New England states as the chief producers of textiles. By 1900, the South had 400 cotton mills employing almost 100,000 white work- ers. Southern railroad companies rapidly converted to the standard-gauge rails used in the North and West, so the South was integrated into the national rail network. The South's rate of postwar growth from 1865 to 1900 equaled or surpassed that of the rest of the country in population, industry, and railroads. Continued Poverty Despite progress and growth, the South remained a largely agricultural sec- tion-and also the poorest region in the country. To a greater extent than before the war, northern financing dominated much of the southern economy. Northern investors controlled three-quarters of the southern railroads and by 1900 had control of the South's steel industry as well. A large share of the profits from the new industries went to northern banks and financiers. Industrial workers in THE LAST WEST AND THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 347 the South (94 percent of whom were white) earned half of the national aver- age and worked longer hours than elsewhere. Most southerners of both races remained in traditional roles and barely got by from year to year as sharecrop- pers and farmers. The poverty of the majority of southerners was not caused by northern capitalists. Two other factors were chiefly responsible: (1) the South's late start at industrialization and (2) a poorly educated workforce. Only a small number of southerners had the technological skills needed for industrial development. The South failed to invest in technical and engineering schools as did the North. Furthermore, in the late 1800s, political leadership in the South provided little support for the education of either poor whites or poor African Americans. Without adequate education, the southern workforce faced limited economic opportunities in the fast-changing world of the late 19th century. Agriculture The South's postwar economy remained tied mainly to growing cotton. Between 1870 and 1900, the number of acres planted in cotton more than doubled. Increased productivity, however, only added to the cotton farmer's problems, as a glut of cotton on world markets caused cotton prices to decline by more than 50 percent by the 1890s. Per capita income in the South actu- ally declined, and many farmers lost their farms. By 1900, more than half the region's white farmers and three-quarters of the black farmers were tenants (or sharecroppers), most of them straining to make a living from small plots of 15 to 20 acres. A shortage of credit forced farmers to borrow supplies from local merchants in the spring with a lien, or mortgage, on their crops to be paid at harvest. The combination of sharecropping and crop liens forced poor farmers to remain tenants, virtual serfs tied to the land by debt. Some southern farmers sought to diversify their farming to escape the trap of depending entirely on cotton. George Washington Carver, an African- American scientist at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, promoted the growing of such crops as peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans. His work played an important role in shifting southern agriculture toward a more diversified base. Even so, most small farmers in the South remained in the cycle of debt and poverty. As in the North and the West, hard times produced a harvest of discontent. By 1890, the Farmers' Southern Alliance claimed more than 1 mil- lion members. A separate organization for African Americans, the Colored Farmers' National Alliance, had about 250,000 members. Both organizations rallied behind political reforms to solve the farmers' economic problems. If poor black and poor white farmers in the South could have united, they would have been a potent political force, but the economic interests of the upper class and the powerful racial attitudes of whites stood in their way. Segregation With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the North withdrew its protection of the freedmen and left southerners to work out solutions to their own social and economic problems. The Democratic politicians who came to power in the 348 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM southern states after Reconstruction, known as redeemers, won support from two groups: the business community and the white supremacists. The latter group favored policies of separating, or segregating, public facilities for blacks and whites as a means of treating African Americans as social inferiors. The redeemers often used race as a rallying cry to deflect attention away from the real concerns of tenant farmers and the working poor. They discovered that they could exert political power by playing on the racial fears of whites. Discrimination and the Supreme Court During Reconstruction, federal laws protected southern blacks from discriminatory acts by local and state govern- ments. Starting in the late 1870s, however, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one Reconstruction act after another applying to civil rights. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Court ruled that Congress could not legislate against the racial discrimination practiced by private citizens, which included railroads, hotels, and other businesses used by the public. Then, in 1896, in the landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring "sepa- rate but equal accommodations" for white and black passengers on railroads. The Court ruled that the Louisiana law did not violate the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws." These federal court decisions supported a wave of segregation laws, com- monly known as Jim Crow laws, that southern states adopted beginning in the 1870s. These laws required segregated washrooms, drinking fountains, park benches, and other facilities in virtually all public places. Only the use of streets and most stores was not restricted according to a person's race. Loss of Civil Rights Other discriminatory laws resulted in the wholesale disfranchisement of black voters by 1900. In Louisiana, for example, 130,334 black voters were registered in 1896 but only 1,342 in 1904-a 99 percent decline. Various political and legal devices were invented to prevent southern blacks from voting. Among the most common obstacles were literacy tests, poll taxes, and political party primaries for whites only. Many southern states adopted so-called grandfather clauses, which allowed a man to vote only if his grandfather had cast ballots in elections before Reconstruction. The Supreme Court again gave its sanction to such laws in a case of 1898, in which it upheld a state's right to use literacy tests to determine citizens' qualifications for voting. Discrimination took many forms. In southern courts, African Americans were barred from serving on juries. If convicted of crimes, they were often given stiffer penalties than whites. In some cases, African Americans accused of crimes were not even given the formality of a court-ordered sentence. Lynch mobs killed more than 1,400 men during the 1890s. Economic discrimination was also widespread, keeping most southern African Americans out of skilled trades and even factory jobs. Thus, while poor whites and immigrants learned the industrial skills that would help them rise into the middle class, African Americans remained engaged in farming and low-paying domestic work. Responding to Segregation Segregation, disenfranchisement, and lynch- ing left African Americans in the South oppressed but not powerless. Some responded with confrontation. Ida B. Wells, editor of the Memphis Free Speech, THE LAST WEST AND THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 349 a black newspaper, campaigned against lynching and the Jim Crow laws. Death threats and the destruction of her printing press forced Wells to carry on her work from the North. Other black leaders advocated migration. Bishop Henry Turner formed the International Migration Society in 1894 to help blacks emigrate to Africa. Many African Americans moved to Kansas and Oklahoma. A third response to oppression, advocated by Booker T. Washington, was to accommodate it. Washington, a former slave, had graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia. In 1881, he established an industrial and agricultural school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama. There, African Americans learned skilled trades while Washington preached the virtues of hard work, moderation, and economic self-help. Earning money, he said, was like having "a little green ballot" that would empower African Americans more effectively than a political ballot. Speaking at an exposition in Atlanta in 1895, Washington argued that "the agitation of the questions of social equality is the extremist folly." In 1900, he organized the National Negro Business League, which established 320 chapters across the country to support businesses owned and operated by African Ameri- cans. Washington's emphasis on racial harmony and economic cooperation won praise from many whites, including industrialist Andrew Carnegie and President Theodore Roosevelt. Later civil rights leaders had mixed reactions to Washington's approach, especially his Atlanta speech. Some criticized him as too willing to accept discrimination. For example, after 1900, the younger African American leader W. E. B. Du Bois would demand an end to segregation and the granting of equal civil rights to all Americans. (See Chapter 21.) In contrast, other writers have praised Washington for paving the way for black self-reliance because of his emphasis on starting and supporting black-owned businesses. Farm Problems: North, South, and West By the end of the 1800s, farmers had become a minority within American soci- ety. While the number of U.S. farms more than doubled between 1865 and 1900, people working as farmers declined from 60 percent of the working population in 1860 to less than 37 percent in 1900. All farmers-white or black, westerner or southerner-faced similar problems. Changes in Agriculture With every passing decade in the late 1800s, farming became increasingly com- mercialized-and also more specialized. Northern and western farmers of the late 19th century concentrated on raising single cash crops, such as corn or wheat, for both national and international markets. As consumers, farmers began to procure their food from the stores in town and their manufactured goods from the mail-order catalogs sent to them by Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. As producers, farmers became more dependent on large and expensive machines, such as steam engines, seeders, and reaper-thresher combines. Ever larger farms were run like factories. Unable to afford the new equipment, small, marginal farms could not compete and, in many cases, were driven out of business. 350 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Falling Prices Increased American production as well as increased pro- duction in Argentina, Russia, and Canada drove prices down for wheat, cotton, and other crops. And since the money supply was not growing as fast as the economy, each dollar became worth more. This put more downward pressure on prices, or deflation. These figures tell the depressing story for farmers: Wheat and Corn Prices per Bushel, 1867 and 1889 Year Wheat Corn 1867 $2.01 $0.78 1889 $0.70 $0.28 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 As prices fell, farmers with mortgages faced both high interest rates and the need to grow more and more to pay off old debts. Of course, increased production only lowered prices. The predictable results of this vicious circle were more debts, foreclosures by banks, and more independent farmers forced to become tenants and sharecroppers. Rising Costs Farmers felt victimized by impersonal forces of the larger national economy. Industrial corporations were able to keep prices high on manufactured goods by forming monopolistic trusts. Wholesalers and retailers (known as "the middlemen") took their cut before selling to farmers. Railroads, warehouses, and elevators took what little profit remained by charging high or discriminatory rates for the shipment and storage of grain. Railroads would often charge more for short hauls on lines with no competition than for long hauls on lines with competition. Taxes too seemed unfair to farmers. Local and state governments taxed property and land heavily but did not tax income from stocks and bonds. The tariffs protecting various American industries were viewed as just another unfair tax paid by farmers and consumers for the benefit of the industrialists. Fighting Back A long tradition of independence and individualism restrained farmers from tak- ing collective action. Finally, however, they began to organize for their common interests and protection. National Grange Movement The National Grange of Patrons of Husbandry was organized in 1868 by Oliver H. Kelley primarily as a social and educational organization for farmers and their families. Within five years, Granges existed in almost every state, with the most in the Midwest. As the Grange expanded, it became active in economics and politics to defend members against middlemen, trusts, and railroads. For example, Grangers established cooperatives-busi- nesses owned and run by the farmers to save the costs charged by middlemen. In Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, the Grangers, with help from local THE LAST WEST AND THE NEW SOUTH, 1865-1900 351 businesses, successfully lobbied their state legislatures to pass laws regulating the rates charged by railroads and elevators. Other Granger laws made it illegal for railroads to fix prices by means of pools and to give rebates to privileged customers. In the landmark case of Munn v. Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court upheld the right of a state to regulate businesses of a public nature, such as railroads. Interstate Commerce Act (1886) The state laws regulating railroad rates ran into numerous legal problems, especially with railroads that crossed state lines. States could regulate only local or short-haul rates. Interstate commerce, on the other hand, was a federal matter, and railroad companies adapted to the Granger laws by simply raising their long-haul (interstate) rates. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Wabash v. Illinois (1886) that individual states could not regulate interstate commerce. In effect, the Court's decision nullified many of the state regulations achieved by the Grangers. Congress responded to the outcry of farmers and shippers by passing the first federal effort to regulate the railroads. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1886 required railroad rates to be "reasonable and just." It also set up the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which had the power to investigate and prosecute pools, rebates, and other discriminatory practices. Ironically, the first U.S. regulatory commission helped the railroads more than the farmers. The new commission lost most of its cases in the federal courts in the 1890s. On the other hand, the ICC helped railroads by stabilizing rates and curtailing destructive competition. Farmers' Alliances Farmers also expressed their discontent by forming state and regional groups known as farmers' alliances. Like the Grange, the alliances taught about scientific farming methods. Unlike the Grange, alli- ances always had the goal of economic and political action. Hence, the alliance movement had serious potential for creating an independent national political party. By 1890, about 1 million farmers had joined farmers' alliances. In the South, both poor white and black farmers joined the movement. Ocala Platform Potential nearly became reality in 1890 when a national organization of farmers-the National Alliance-met in Ocala, Florida, to address the problems of rural America. The alliance attacked both major par- ties as subservient to Wall Street bankers and big business. Ocala delegates created a platform that would significantly impact politics. They supported (1) direct election of U.S. senators (in the original U.S. Constitution, senators were selected by state legislatures), (2) lower tariff rates, (3) a graduated income tax (people with higher incomes would pay higher rates of tax), and ( 4) a new banking system regulated by the federal government. In addition, the alliance platform demanded that Treasury notes and silver be used to increase the amount of money in circulation, which farmers hoped would create inflation and raise crop prices. The platform also proposed fed- eral storage for farmers' crops and federal loans, which would free farmers from dependency on middlemen and creditors. 352 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The alliances stopped short of forming a political party. Even so, their backing of local and state candidates who pledged support for alliance goals often proved decisive in the elections of 1890. Many of the reform ideas of the Grange and the farmers' alliances would become part of the Populist movement, which would shake the foundations of the two-party system in the elections of 1892 and 1896. (See Chapter 19.) HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: HOW DID THE

Chapter 15 'Reconstruction, 1863 - 1877'

The silencing of the cannons of war left the victorious United States with immense challenges. How would the South rebuild its shattered society and economy after the damage inflicted by four years of war? What would be the place in that society of 4 million freed African Americans? To what extent, if any, was the federal government responsible for helping ex-slaves adjust to freedom? Should the former states of the Confederacy be treated as states that had never really left the Union (Lincoln's position) or as conquered territory subject to continued military occupation? Under what conditions would the Confederate states be fully accepted as coequal partners in the restored Union? Finally, who had the authority to decide these questions of Reconstruction: the president or the Congress? The conflicts that existed before and during the Civil War-between regions, political parties, and economic interests-continued after the war. Republicans in the North wanted to continue the economic progress begun during the war. The Southern aristocracy still desired a cheap labor force to work its plantations. The freedmen and women hoped to achieve independence and equal rights. However, traditional beliefs limited the actions of the federal government. Constitutional concepts of limited government and states' rights discouraged national leaders from taking bold action. Little economic help was given to either whites or blacks in the South, because most Americans believed that free people in a free society had both an opportunity and a responsibility to provide for themselves. The physical rebuilding of the South was largely left up to the states and individuals, while the federal government concentrated on political issues. RECONSTRUCTION, 1863-1877 291 Reconstruction Plans of Lincoln and Johnson Throughout his presidency, Abraham Lincoln held firmly to the belief that the Southern states could not constitutionally leave the Union and therefore never did leave. He viewed the Confederates as only a disloyal minority. After Lin- coln's assassination, Andrew Johnson attempted to carry out Lincoln's plan for the political Reconstruction of the 11 former states of the Confederacy. Lincoln's Policies Because Lincoln thought the Southern states had never left the Union, he hoped they could be reestablished by meeting a minimum test of political loyalty. Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (1863) As early as December 1863, Lincoln set up an apparently simple process for political reconstruction-that is, for reconstructing the state governments in the South so that Unionists were in charge rather than secessionists. The president's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction provided for the following: • Full presidential pardons would be granted to most Confederates who (1) took an oath of allegiance to the Union and the U.S. Constitution, and (2) accepted the emancipation of slaves. • A state government could be reestablished and accepted as legitimate by the U.S. president as soon as at least 10 percent of the voters in that state took the loyalty oath. In practice, Lincoln's proclamation meant that each Southern state would be required to rewrite its state constitution to eliminate the existence of slav- ery. Lincoln's seemingly lenient policy was designed both to shorten the war and to give added weight to his Emancipation Proclamation. (When Lincoln made this proposal in late 1863, he feared that if the Democrats won the 1864 election, they would overturn the proclamation.) Wade-Davis Bill (1864) Many Republicans in Congress objected to Lin- coln's 10 percent plan, arguing that it would allow a supposedly reconstructed state government to fall under the domination of disloyal secessionists. In 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, which proposed far more demanding and stringent terms for Reconstruction. The bill required 50 percent of the voters of a state to take a loyalty oath and permitted only non-Confederates to vote for a new state constitution. Lincoln refused to sign the bill, pocket- vetoing it after Congress adjourned. How serious was the conflict between President Lincoln and the Republican Congress over Reconstruction policy? Historians still debate this question. In any case, Congress was no doubt ready to reassert its powers in 1865, as Congresses traditionally do after a war. Freedmen's Bureau In March 1865, Congress created an important new agency: the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, known simply as the Freedmen's Bureau. The bureau acted as an early welfare agency, providing food, shelter, and medical aid for those made destitute by 292 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM the war-both blacks (chiefly freed slaves) and homeless whites. At first, the Freedmen's Bureau had authority to resettle freed blacks on confiscated farm- lands in the South. Its efforts at resettlement, however, were later frustrated when President Johnson pardoned Confederate owners of the confiscated lands, and courts then restored most of the lands to their original owners. The bureau's greatest success was in education. Under the able leadership of General Oliver 0. Howard, it established nearly 3,000 schools for freed blacks, including several colleges. Before federal funding was stopped in 1870, the bureau's schools taught an estimated 200,000 African Americans how to read. Lincoln's Last Speech In his last public address (April 11, 1865), Lincoln encouraged Northerners to accept Louisiana as a reconstructed state. (Louisi- ana had already drawn up a new constitution that abolished slavery in the state and provided for African Americans' education.) The president also addressed the question-highly controversial at the time-of whether freedmen should be granted the right to vote. Lincoln said: "I myself prefer that it were now con- ferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers." Three days later, Lincoln's evolving plans for Reconstruction were ended with his assassination. His last speech suggested that, had he lived, he probably would have moved closer to the position taken by the progressive, or Radical, Republicans. In any event, hope for lasting reform was dealt a devastating blow by the sudden removal of Lincoln's skillful leadership. Johnson and Reconstruction Andrew Johnson's origins were as humble as Lincoln's. A self-taught tailor, he rose in Tennessee politics by championing the interests of poor whites in their economic conflict with rich planters. Johnson was the only senator from a Confederate state who remained loyal to the Union. After Tennessee was occupied by Union troops, he was appointed that state's war governor. Johnson was a Southern Democrat, but Republicans picked him to be Lincoln's running mate in 1864 in order to encourage pro-Union Democrats to vote for the Union (Republican) party. In one of the accidents of history, Johnson became the wrong man for the job. As a white supremacist, the new president was bound to clash with Republicans in Congress who believed that the war was fought not just to preserve the Union but also to liberate blacks from slavery. Johnson's Reconstruction Policy At first, many Republicans in Congress welcomed Johnson's presidency because of his animosity for the Southern aristocrats who had led the Confederacy. In May 1865, Johnson issued his own Reconstruction proclamation that was very similar to Lincoln's 10 percent plan. In addition to Lincoln's terms, it provided for the disfranchisement (loss of the right to vote and hold office) of ( 1) all former leaders and officeholders of the Confederacy and (2) Confederates with more than $20,000 in taxable prop- erty. However, the president retained the power to grant individual pardons to "disloyal" Southerners. This was an escape clause for the wealthy planters, and Johnson made frequent use of it. As a result of the president's pardons, many former Confederate leaders were back in office by the fall of 1865. RECONSTRUCTION, 1863-1877 293 Southern Governments of 1865 Just eight months after Johnson took office, all 11 of the ex-Confederate states qualified under the president's Reconstruction plan to become functioning parts of the Union. The Southern states drew up constitutions that repudiated secession, negated the debts of the Confederate government, and ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. On the other hand, none of the new constitutions extended voting rights to blacks. Furthermore, to the dismay of Republicans, former leaders of the Con- federacy won seats in Congress. For example, Alexander Stephens, the former Confederate vice president, was elected U.S. senator from Georgia. Black Codes The Republicans became further disillusioned with Johnson as Southern state legislatures adopted Black Codes that restricted the rights and movements of the former slaves. The codes (1) prohibited blacks from either renting land or borrowing money to buy land; (2) placed freedmen into a form of semi bondage by forcing them, as "vagrants" and "apprentices," to sign work contracts; and (3) prohibited blacks from testifying against whites in court. The contract-labor system, in which blacks worked cotton fields under white super- vision for deferred wages, seemed little different from slavery. Appalled by reports of developments in the South, Republicans began to ask, "Who won the war?" In early 1866, unhappiness with Johnson developed into an open rift when the Northern Republicans in Congress challenged the results of elections in the South. They refused to seat Alexander Stephens and other duly elected representatives and senators from ex-Confederate states. Johnson's Vetoes Johnson alienated even moderate Republicans in early 1866 when he vetoed a bill increasing the services and protection offered by the Freedmen's Bureau and a civil rights bill that nullified the Black Codes and guaranteed full citizenship and equal rights to African Americans. The vetoes marked the end of the first round of Reconstruction. During this round, Presi- dents Lincoln and Johnson had restored the 11 ex-Confederate states to their former position in the Union, ex-Confederates had returned to high offices, and Southern states began passing Black Codes. Presidential Vetoes, 1853 to 1880 President Vetoes Franklin Pierce 9 James Buchanan 7 Abraham Lincoln 7 Andrew Johnson 29 Ulysses S. Grant 93 Rutherford B. Hayes 13 Source: "Summary of Bills Vetoed, 1789-Present." United States Senate, www.senate.gov 294 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Congressional Reconstruction By the spring of 1866, the angry response of many members of Congress to Johnson's policies led to the second round of Reconstruction. This one was dominated by Congress and featured policies that were harsher on Southern whites and more protective of freed African Americans. Radical Republicans Republicans had long been divided between (1) moderates, who were chiefly concerned with economic gains for the white middle class, and (2) radicals, who championed civil rights for blacks. Although most Republicans were mod- erates, several became more radical in 1866 partly out of fear that a reunified Democratic party might again become dominant. After all, now that the federal census counted all people equally (no longer applying the old three-fifths rule for enslaved persons), the South would have more representatives in Congress than before the war and more strength in the electoral college in future presi- dential elections. The leading Radical Republican in the Senate was Charles Sumner of Massa- chusetts (who returned to the Senate three years after his caning by Brooks). In the House, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania hoped to revolutionize Southern soci- ety through an extended period of military rule in which African Americans would be free to exercise their civil rights, would be educated in schools operated by the federal government, and would receive lands confiscated from the planter class. Many Radical Republicans, such as Benjamin Wade of Ohio, endorsed several lib- eral causes: women's suffrage, rights for labor unions, and civil rights for Northern African Americans. Although their program was never fully implemented, the Radical Republicans struggled to extend equal rights to all Americans. Civil Rights Act of 1866 Among the first actions in congressional Recon- struction were votes to override, with some modifications, Johnson's vetoes of both the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the first Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act pronounced all African Americans to be U.S. citizens (thereby repudiating the decision in the Dred Scott case) and also attempted to provide a legal shield against the operation of the Southern states' Black Codes. Republicans feared, however, that the law could be repealed if the Democrats ever won control of Congress. They therefore looked for a more permanent solution in the form of a constitutional amendment. Fourteenth Amendment In June 1866, Congress passed and sent to the states an amendment that, when ratified in 1868, had both immediate and long- term significance for American society. The 14th Amendment • declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens • obligated the states to respect the rights of U.S. citizens and provide them with "equal protection of the laws" and "due process of law" ( clauses full of meaning for future generations) RECONSTRUCTION, 1863-1877 295 For the first time, the Constitution required states as well as the federal gov- ernment to uphold the rights of citizens. The amendment's key clauses about citizenship and rights produced mixed results in 19th-century courtrooms. However, in the 1950s and later, the Supreme Court would make "equal protec- tion of the laws" and the "due process" clause the keystone of civil rights for minorities, women, children, disabled persons, and those accused of crimes. Other parts of the 14th Amendment applied specifically to Congress' plan of Reconstruction. These clauses • disqualified former Confederate political leaders from holding either state or federal offices • repudiated the debts of the defeated governments of the Confederacy • penalized a state if it kept any eligible person from voting by reducing that state's proportional representation in Congress and the electoral college Report of the Joint Committee In June 1866, a joint committee of the House and the Senate issued a report recommending that the reorganized for- mer states of the Confederacy were not entitled to representation in Congress. Therefore, those elected from the South as senators and representatives should not be permitted to take their seats. The report further asserted that Congress, not the president, had the authority to determine the conditions for allowing reconstructed states to rejoin the Union. By this report, Congress officially rejected the presidential plan of Reconstruction and promised to substitute its own plan, part of which was embodied in the 14th Amendment. The Election of 1866 Unable to work with Congress, Johnson took to the road in the fall of 1866 in his infamous "swing around the circle" to attack his opponents. His speeches appealed to the racial prejudices of whites by arguing that equal rights for blacks would result in an "Africanized" society. Repub- licans counterattacked by accusing Johnson of being a drunkard and a traitor. They appealed to anti-Southern prejudices by employing a campaign tactic known as "waving the bloody shirt"-inflaming the anger of Northern voters by reminding them of the hardships of war. Republican propaganda emphasized that Southerners were Democrats and, by a gross jump in logic, branded the entire Democratic party as a party of rebellion and treason. Election results gave the Republicans an overwhelming victory. After 1866, Johnson's political adversaries-both moderate and Radical Republicans-had more than a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate. Reconstruction Acts of 1867 Over Johnson's vetoes, Congress passed three Reconstruction acts in early 1867, which took the drastic step of placing the South under military occupation. The acts divided the former Confederate states into five military districts, each under the control of the Union army. In addition, the Reconstruction acts increased the requirements for gaining read- mission to the Union. To win such readmission, an ex-Confederate state had to ratify the 14th Amendment and place guarantees in its constitution for granting the franchise (right to vote) to all adult males, regardless of race. 296 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Impeachment of Andrew Johnson Also in 1867, over Johnson's veto, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act. This law, which may have been an unconstitutional violation of executive authority, prohibited the president from removing a federal official or military commander without the approval of the Senate. The purpose of the law was strictly political. Congress wanted to protect the Radical Republicans in John- son's cabinet, such as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was in charge of the military governments in the South. Believing the new law to be unconstitutional, Johnson challenged it by dismissing Stanton on his own authority. The House responded by impeach- ing Johnson, charging him with 11 "high crimes and misdemeanors." Johnson thus became the first president to be impeached. (Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998.) In 1868, after a three-month trial in the Senate, Johnson's political enemies fell one vote short of the necessary two-thirds vote required to remove a president from office. Seven moderate Republicans joined the Democrats in voting against conviction because they thought it was a bad precedent to remove a president for political reasons. Reforms After Grant's Election The impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson occurred in 1868, a presidential election year. At their convention, the Democrats nominated another candidate, Horatio Seymour, so that Johnson's presidency would have ended soon in any case, with or without impeachment by the Republicans. The Election of 1868 At their convention, the Republicans turned to a war hero, giving their presidential nomination to General Ulysses S. Grant, even though Grant had no political experience. Despite Grant's popularity in the North, he managed to win only 300,000 more popular votes than his Demo- cratic opponent. The votes of 500,000 blacks gave the Republican ticket its margin of victory. Even the most moderate Republicans began to realize that the voting rights of the freedmen needed federal protection if their party hoped to keep control of the White House in future elections. Fifteenth Amendment Republican majorities in Congress acted quickly in 1869 to secure the vote for African Americans. Adding one more Reconstruc- tion amendment to those already adopted (the 13th Amendment in 1865 and the 14th Amendment in 1868), Congress passed the 15th Amendment, which prohibited any state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified in 1870. Civil Rights Act of 1875 The last civil rights reform enacted by Con- gress in Reconstruction was the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This law guaranteed equal accommodations in public places (hotels, railroads, and theaters) and prohibited courts from excluding African Americans from juries. However, the law was poorly enforced because moderate and conservative Republicans felt frustrated trying to reform an unwilling South-and feared losing white votes in the North. By 1877, Congress would abandon Reconstruction completely. RECONSTRUCTION, 1863-1877 297 Reconstruction in the South During the second round of Reconstruction, dictated by Congress, the Repub- lican party in the South dominated the governments of the ex-Confederate states. Beginning in 1867, each Republican-controlled government was under the military protection of the U.S. Army until such time as Congress was satisfied that a state had met its Reconstruction requirements. Then the troops were withdrawn. The period of Republican rule in a Southern state lasted from as little as one year (Tennessee) to as much as nine years (Florida), depending on how long it took conservative Democrats to regain control. Composition of the Reconstruction Governments In every Radical, or Republican, state government in the South except one, whites were in the majority in both houses of the legislature. The exception was South Carolina, where the freedmen controlled the lower house in 1873. Republican legislators included native-born white Southerners, freedmen, and recently arrived Northerners. "Scalawags" and "Carpetbaggers" Democratic opponents gave nick- names to their hated Republican rivals. They called Southern Republicans "scalawags" and Northern newcomers "carpetbaggers." Southern whites who supported the Republican governments were usually former Whigs who were interested in economic development for their state and peace between the sec- tions. Northerners went South after the war for various reasons. Some were investors interested in setting up new businesses, while others were ministers and teachers with humanitarian goals. Some went simply to plunder. African American Legislators Most of the African Americans who held elective office in the reconstructed state governments were educated property holders who took moderate positions on most issues. During the Reconstruc- tion era, Republicans in the South sent two African Americans (Blanche K. Bruce and Hiram Revels) to the Senate and more than a dozen African Ameri- cans to the House of Representatives. Revels was elected in 1870 to take the Senate seat from Mississippi once held by Jefferson Davis. Seeing African Americans and former slaves in positions of power caused bitter resentment among disfranchised ex-Confederates. Evaluating the Republican Record Much controversy still surrounds the legislative record of the Republicans dur- ing their brief control of Southern state politics. Did they abuse their power for selfish ends (plunder and corruption), or did they govern responsibly in the public interest? They did some of each. Accomplishments On the positive side, Republican legislators liberal- ized state constitutions in the South by providing for universal male suffrage, property rights for women, debt relief, and modern penal codes. They also promoted the building of roads, bridges, railroads, and other internal improve- ments. They established such needed state institutions as hospitals, asylums, and homes for the disabled. The reformers established state-supported public 298 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM school systems in the South, which benefited whites and African Americans alike. They paid for these improvements by overhauling the tax system and selling bonds. Failures Long after Reconstruction ended, many Southerners and some Northern historians continued to depict Republican rule as utterly waste- ful and corrupt. Some instances of graft and wasteful spending did occur, as Republican politicians took advantage of their power to take kickbacks and bribes from contractors who did business with the state. However, corruption occurred throughout the country, Northern states and cities as well. No geo- graphic section, political party, or ethnic group was immune to the general decline in ethics in government that marked the postwar era. African Americans Adjusting to Freedom Undoubtedly, the Southerners who had the greatest adjustment to make dur- ing the Reconstruction era were the freedmen and freedwomen. Having been so recently emancipated from slavery, they were faced with the challenges of securing their economic survival as well as their political rights as citizens. Building Black Communities Freedom meant many things to Southern blacks: reuniting families, learning to read and write, migrating to cities where "freedom was free-er." Most of all, ex-slaves viewed emancipation as an oppor- tunity for achieving independence from white control. This drive for autonomy was most evident in the founding of hundreds of independent African Ameri- can churches after the war. By the hundreds of thousands, African Americans left white-dominated churches for the Negro Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches. During Reconstruction, black ministers emerged as lead- ers in the African American community. Percentage of School Age Children Enrolled, 1850 to 1880 Year White African American 1850 56 2 1860 60 2 1870 54 10 1880 62 34 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 The desire for education induced large numbers of African Americans to use their scarce resources to establish independent schools for their children and to pay educated African Americans to become their teachers. Black col- leges such as Howard, Atlanta, Fisk, and Morehouse were established during Reconstruction to prepare African American black ministers and teachers. RECONSTRUCTION, 1863-1877 299 Another aspect of blacks' search for independence and self-sufficiency was the decision of many freedmen to migrate away from the South and establish new black communities in frontier states such as Kansas. Sharecropping The South's agricultural economy was in turmoil after the war, in part because landowners had lost their compulsory labor force. At first, white landowners attempted to force freed African Americans into sign- ing contracts to work the fields. These contracts set terms that nearly bound the signer to permanent and unrestricted labor-in effect, slavery by a different name. African Americans' insistence on autonomy, however, combined with changes in the postwar economy, led white landowners to adopt a system based on tenancy and sharecropping. Under sharecropping, the landlord provided the seed and other needed farm supplies in return for a share (usually half) of the harvest. While this system gave poor people of the rural South (whites as well as African Americans) the opportunity to work a piece of land for them- selves, sharecroppers usually remained either dependent on the landowners or in debt to local merchants. By 1880, no more than 5 percent of Southern African Americans had become independent landowners. Sharecropping had evolved into a new form of servitude. The North During Reconstruction The North's economy in the postwar years continued to be driven by the Indus- trial Revolution and the pro-business policies of the Republicans. As the South struggled to reorganize its labor system, Northerners focused on railroads, steel, labor problems, and money. Greed and Corruption During the Grant administration, as the material interests of the age took cen- ter stage, the idealism of Lincoln's generation and the Radical Republicans' crusade for civil rights were pushed aside. Rise of the Spoilsmen In the early 1870s, leadership of the Republican party passed from reformers (Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Benja- min Wade) to political manipulators such as Senators Roscoe Conkling of New York and James Blaine of Maine. These politicians were masters of the game of patronage-giving jobs and government favors (spoils) to their supporters. Corruption in Business and Government The postwar years were notorious for the corrupt schemes devised by business bosses and political bosses to enrich themselves at the public's expense. For example, in 1869, Wall Street financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk obtained the help of President Grant's brother-in-law in a scheme to corner the gold market. The Treasury Department broke the scheme, but not before Gould had made a huge profit. In the Credit Mobilier affair, insiders gave stock to influential members of Congress to avoid investigation of the profits they were making-as high as 348 percent-from government subsidies for building the transconti- nental railroad. In the case of the Whiskey Ring, federal revenue agents conspired with the liquor industry to defraud the government of millions in 300 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM taxes. While Grant himself did not personally profit from the corruption, his loyalty to dishonest men around him badly tarnished his presidency. Local politics in the Grant years were equally scandalous. In New York City, William Tweed, the boss of the local Democratic party, master- minded dozens of schemes for helping himself and cronies to large chunks of graft. The Tweed Ring virtually stole about $200 million from New York's taxpayers before The New York Times and the cartoonist Thomas Nast exposed "Boss" Tweed and brought about his arrest and imprisonment in 1871. CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 1865-1877 Dates refer to year when a state was readmitted to the Union and () to reestablishment of conservative government. 100 200 300 Miles O 100 200 300 Kilometers Texas 1870 (1873) The Election of 1872 GULF OF MEXICO N • The scandals of the Grant administration drove reform-minded Republicans to break with the party in 1872 and select Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, as their presidential candidate. The Liberal Republicans advo- cated civil service reform, an end to railroad subsidies, withdrawal of troops from the South, reduced tariffs, and free trade. Surprisingly, the Democrats joined them and also nominated Greeley. The regular Republicans countered by merely "waving the bloody shirt" again-and it worked. Grant was reelected in a landslide. Just days before the counting of the electoral vote, the luckless Horace Greeley died. RECONSTRUCTION, 1863-1877 301 The Panic of 1873 Grant's second term began with an economic disaster that rendered thousands of Northern laborers both jobless and homeless. Overs peculation by financiers and overbuilding by industry and railroads led to widespread business failures and depression. Debtors on the farms and in the cities, suffering from the tight money policies, demanded the creation of greenback paper money that was not supported by gold. In 1874, Grant finally decided to side with the hard-money bankers and creditors who wanted a money supply backed by gold and vetoed a bill calling for the release of additional greenbacks. The End of Reconstruction During Grant's second term, it was apparent that Reconstruction had entered another phase, which proved to be its third and final round. With Radical Republicanism on the wane, Southern conservatives-known as redeemers- took control of one state government after another. This process was completed by 1877. The redeemers had different social and economic backgrounds, but they agreed on their political program: states' rights, reduced taxes, reduced spending on social programs, and white supremacy. White Supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan During the period that Republicans controlled state governments in the South, groups of Southern whites organized secret societies to intimidate blacks and white reformers. The most prominent of these was the Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1867 by an ex-Confederate general, Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. The "invisi- ble empire" burned black-owned buildings and flogged and murdered freedmen to keep them from exercising their voting rights. To give federal authorities the power to stop Ku Klux Klan violence and to protect the civil rights of citizens in the South, Congress passed the Force Acts of 1870 and 1871. The Amnesty Act of 1872 Seven years after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, many Northerners were ready to put hatred of the Confederacy behind them. As a sign of the changing times, Congress in 1872 passed a general amnesty act that removed the last of the restrictions on ex-Confederates, except for the top leaders. The chief political consequence of the Amnesty Act was that it allowed Southern conservatives to vote for Democrats to retake control of state governments. The Election of 1876 By 1876, federal troops had been withdrawn from all but three Southern states-South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. The Democrats had returned to power in all ex-Confederate states except these. This fact was to play a criti- cal role in the presidential election. At their convention, the Republicans looked for someone untouched by the corruption of the Grant administration and nominated the governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes. The Democrats chose New York's reform governor, 302 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Samuel J. Tilden, who had made a name for himself fighting the corrupt Tweed Ring. In the popular votes, the Democrats had won a clear majority and expected to put Tilden in the White House. However, in three Southern states, the returns were contested. To win the election, Tilden needed only one elec- toral vote from the contested returns of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. A special electoral commission was created to determine who was enti- tled to the disputed votes of the three states. In a straight party vote of 8-7, the commission gave all the electoral votes to Hayes, the Republican. Out- raged Democrats threatened to filibuster the results and send the election to the House of Representatives, which they controlled. The Compromise of 1877 Leaders of the two parties worked out an informal deal. The Democrats would allow Hayes to become president. In return, he would (1) immediately end fed- eral support for the Republicans in the South, and (2) support the building of a Southern transcontinental railroad. Shortly after his inauguration, President Hayes fulfilled his part in the Compromise of 1877 and promptly withdrew the last of the federal troops protecting African Americans and other Republicans. The end of a federal military presence in the South was not the only thing that brought Reconstruction to an end. In a series of decisions in the 1880s and 1890s, the Supreme Court struck down one Reconstruction law after another that protected blacks from discrimination. Supporters of the New South prom- ised a future of industrial development, but most Southern African Americans and whites in the decades after the Civil War remained poor farmers, and they fell further behind the rest of the nation.

Chapter 6 'The Constitution and the New Republic, 1787 - 1800'

Wth these words, Benjamin Franklin, the oldest delegate at the Constitu- tional Convention in Philadelphia, attempted to overcome the skepticism of other delegates about the document that they had created. Would the new docu- ment, the Constitution, establish a central government strong enough to hold 13 states together in a union that could prosper and endure? In September 1787, when Franklin, Washington, and other delegates signed the Constitution that they had drafted, their young country was in a troubled condition. This chapter will summarize the problems leading to the Consti- tutional Convention, the debates in the various states on whether to ratify the new plan of government, and the struggles of two presidents, Washington and Adams, to meet the domestic and international challenges of the 1790s. The United States Under the Articles, 1781-1787 Four years separated the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1783 and the meeting of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. During that time, the gov- ernment operated under the Articles of Confederation, which consisted of a one-house congress, no separate executive, and no separate judiciary (court sys- tem). The country faced several major problems. Foreign Problems Relations between the United States and the major powers of Europe were trou- bled from the start. States failed to adhere to the Treaty of Paris, which required that they restore property to Loyalists and repay debts to foreigners. In addition, the U.S. government under the Articles was too weak to stop Britain from main- taining military outposts on the western frontier and restricting trade. THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 103 Economic Weakness and Interstate Quarrels Reduced foreign trade and limited credit because states had not fully repaid war debts contributed to widespread economic depression. The inability to levy national taxes and the printing of worthless paper money by many states added to the problems. In addition, the 13 states treated one another with suspicion and competed for economic advantage. They placed tariffs and other restric- tions on the movement of goods across state lines. A number of states faced boundary disputes with neighbors that increased interstate rivalry and tension. The Annapolis Convention To review what could be done about the country's inability to overcome critical problems, George Washington hosted a conference at his home in Mt. Ver- non, Virginia (1785). Representatives from Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania agreed that the problems were serious enough to hold further discussions at a later meeting at Annapolis, Maryland, at which all the states might be represented. However, only five states sent delegates to the Annapolis Convention in 1786. After discussing ways to improve commercial relations among the states, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton persuaded the oth- ers that another convention should be held in Philadelphia for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. Drafting the Constitution at Philadelphia After a number of states elected delegates to the proposed Philadelphia con- vention, congress consented to give its approval to the meeting. It called upon all 13 states to send delegates to Philadelphia "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation." Only Rhode Island, not trusting the other states, refused to send delegates. The Delegates Of the 55 delegates who went to Philadelphia for the convention in the summer of 1787, all were white, all were male, and most were college-educated. As a group, they were relatively young (averaging in their early forties). With few exceptions, they were far wealthier than the average American of their day. They were well acquainted with issues of law and politics. A number of them were practicing lawyers, and many had helped to write their state constitutions. The first order of business was to elect a presiding officer and decide whether or not to communicate with the public at large. The delegates voted to conduct their meetings in secret and say nothing to the public about their discussions until their work was completed. George Washington was unani- mously elected chairperson. Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman at age 81, provided a calming and unifying influence. The work in fashioning specific articles of the Constitution was directed by James Madison (who came to be known as the Father of the Constitution), Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur 104 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Morris, and John Dickinson. While they represented different states, these con- vention leaders shared the common goal of wanting to strengthen the young nation. Several major leaders of the American Revolution were not at the con- vention. John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Thomas Paine were on diplomatic business abroad. Samuel Adams and John Hancock were not chosen as delegates. Patrick Henry, who opposed any growth in federal power, refused to take part in the convention. Key Issues The convention opened with the delegates disagreeing sharply on its funda- mental purpose. Some wanted to simply revise the Articles. Strong nationalists, such as Madison and Hamilton, wanted to draft an entirely new document. The nationalists quickly took control of the convention. Americans in the 1780s generally distrusted government and feared that officials would seize every opportunity to abuse their powers, even if they were popularly elected. Therefore, Madison and other delegates wanted the new constitution to be based on a system of checks and balances so that the power of each branch would be limited by the powers of the others. Representation Especially divisive was the issue of whether the larger states such as Virginia and Pennsylvania should have proportionally more representatives in Congress than the smaller states such as New Jersey and Del- aware. Madison's proposal-the Virginia Plan-favored the large states; it was countered by the New Jersey Plan, which favored the small states. The issue was finally resolved by a compromise solution. Roger Sherman of Connecticut proposed what was called the Connecticut Plan or the Great Compromise. It provided for a two-house Congress. In the Senate, states would have equal representation, but in the House of Representatives, each state would be repre- sented according to the size of its population. Slavery Two of the most contentious issues grew out of slavery. Should enslaved people be counted in the state populations? The delegates agreed to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted each enslaved individual as three- fifths of a person for the purposes of determining a state's level of taxation and representation. Should the slave trade be allowed? The delegates decided to guarantee that slaves could be imported for at least 20 years longer, until 1808. Congress could vote to abolish the practice after that date if it wished. Trade The northern states wanted the central government to regulate interstate commerce and foreign trade. The South was afraid that export taxes would be placed on its agricultural products such as tobacco and rice. The Commercial Compromise allowed Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, including placing tariffs (taxes) on foreign imports, but it prohib- ited placing taxes on any exports. THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 105 The Presidency The delegates debated over the president's term of office-some argued that the chief executive should hold office for life. The delegates limited the president's term to four years but with no limit on the number of terms. They also debated the method for electing a president. Rather than having voters elect a president directly, the delegates decided to assign to each state a number of electors equal to the total of that state's representatives and senators. This electoral college system was instituted because the delegates feared that too much democracy might lead to mob rule. Finally, the delegates debated what powers to give the president. They finally decided to grant the president considerable power, including the power to veto acts of Congress. Ratification On September 17, 1787, after 17 weeks of debate, the Phila- delphia convention approved a draft of the Constitution to submit to the states for ratification. Anticipating opposition to the document, the Framers ( dele- gates) specified that a favorable vote of only nine states out of 13 would be required for ratification. Each state would hold popularly elected conventions to debate and vote on the proposed Constitution. Federalists and Anti-Federalists Ratification was fiercely debated for almost a year, from September 1787 until June 1788. Supporters of the Constitution and its strong federal government were known as Federalists. Opponents were known as Anti-Federalists. Feder- alists were most common along the Atlantic Coast and in the large cities while Anti-Federalists tended to be small farmers and settlers on the western frontier. (See table on the next page for more on the two groups.) The Federalist Papers A key element in the Federalist campaign for the Constitution was a series of highly persuasive essays written for a New York newspaper by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The 85 essays, later published in book form as The Federalist Papers, presented cogent reasons for believing in the practi- cality of each major provision of the Constitution. Outcome The Federalists won early victories in the state conventions in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania-the first three states to ratify. By promising to add a bill of rights to the Constitution, they successfully addressed the Anti-Federal- ists' most telling objection. With New Hampshire voting yes in June 1788, the Federalists won the necessary nine states to achieve ratification of the Consti- tution. Even so, the larger states of Virginia and New York had not yet acted. If they failed to ratify, any chance for national unity and strength would be in dire jeopardy. 106 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Debating the Constitution Federalists Anti-Federalists Leaders George Washington, From Virginia: George Benjamin Franklin, James Mason and Patrick Henry; Madison, Alexander From Massachusetts: Hamilton James Winthrop and John Hancock; From New York: George Clinton Arguments Stronger central government Stronger central govern- was needed to maintain ment would destroy the order and preserve the Union work of the Revolution, limit democracy, and restrict states' rights Strategy Emphasized the weaknesses Argued that the proposed of the Articles of Confedera- Constitution contained no tion; showed their oppo- protection of individual nents as merely negative rights, that it gave the opponents with no solutions central government more power than the British ever had Advantages Strong leaders; well organ- Appealed to popular dis- ized trust of government based on colonial experiences Disadvantages Constitution was new and Poorly organized; slow to untried; as originally written, respond to Federalist it lacked a bill of rights challenge Virginia In 1788, Virginia was by far the most populous of the origi- nal 13 states. There, the Anti-Federalists rallied behind two strong leaders, George Mason and Patrick Henry, who viewed the Constitution and a strong central government as threats to Americans' hard-won liberty. Virginia's Fed- eralists, led by Washington, Madison, and John Marshall, managed to prevail by a close vote only after promising a bill of rights. Final States News of Virginia's vote had enough influence on New York's ratifying convention (combined with Alexander Hamilton's efforts) to win the day for the Constitution in that state. North Carolina in November 1789 and Rhode Island in May 1790 reversed their earlier rejections and thus became the last two states to ratify the Constitution as the new "supreme law of the land." THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 107 Adding the Bill of Rights Did the Constitution need to list the rights of individuals? Anti-Federalists argued vehemently that it did, while Federalists argued that it was unnecessary. Arguments for a Bill of Rights Anti-Federalists argued that Americans had fought the Revolutionary War to escape a tyrannical government in Britain. What was to stop a strong central government under the Constitution from acting similarly? Only by adding a bill of rights could Americans be protected against such a possibility. Arguments Against a Bill of Rights Federalists argued that since members of Congress would be elected by the peo- ple, they did not need to be protected against themselves. Furthermore, people should assume that all rights were protected rather than create a limited list of rights that might allow unscrupulous officials to assert that unlisted rights could be violated at will. In order to win adoption of the Constitution in the ratifying conventions, the Federalists finally backed off their position and promised to add a bill of rights to the Constitution as the first order of business for a newly elected Congress. The First Ten Amendments In 1789, the first Congress elected under the Constitution acted quickly to adopt a number of amendments listing people's rights. Drafted largely by James Mad- ison, the amendments were submitted to the states for ratification. The ten that were adopted in 1791 have been known ever since as the U.S. Bill of Rights. Originally, they provided protection against abuses of power by the central ( or federal) government. Since the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, most of the protections have been extended to apply to abuses by state govern- ments as well. Below is the text of the Bill of Rights. First Amendment "Congress shall make no law respecting an estab- lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assem- ble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Second Amendment "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Third Amendment "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law." Fourth Amendment "The right of the people to be secure in their per- sons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." 108 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Fifth Amendment "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be sub- ject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private prop- erty be taken for public use without just compensation." Sixth Amendment "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall en- joy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed; which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assis- tance of counsel for his defense." Seventh Amendment "In suits of common law, where the value in contro- versy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law." Eighth Amendment "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Ninth Amendment "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Tenth Amendment "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Washington's Presidency Members of the first Congress under the Constitution were elected in 1788 and began their first session in March 1789 in New York City (then the nation's temporary capital). People assumed that George Washington would be the electoral college's unanimous choice for president, and indeed he was. Organizing the Federal Government Washington took the oath of office as the first U.S. president on April 30, 1789. From then on, what the Constitution and its system of checks and balances actually meant in practice would be determined from day to day by the deci- sions of Congress as the legislative branch, the president as the head of the executive branch, and the Supreme Court as the top federal court in the judicial branch. THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 109 Executive Departments As chief executive, Washington's first task was to organize new departments of the executive (law-enforcing) branch. The Con- stitution authorizes the president to appoint chiefs of departments, although they must be confirmed, or approved, by the Senate. Washington appointed four heads of departments: Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state, Alexan- der Hamilton as secretary of the treasury, Henry Knox as secretary of war, and Edmund Randolph as attorney general. These four men formed a cabinet of advisers with whom President Washington met regularly to discuss major policy issues. Today, presidents still meet with their cabinets to obtain advice and information. Federal Court System The only federal court mentioned in the Constitu- tion is the Supreme Court. Congress, however, was given the power to create other federal courts with lesser powers and to determine the number of justices making up the Supreme Court. One of Congress' first laws was the Judiciary Act of 1789, which established a Supreme Court with one chief justice and five associate justices. This highest court was empowered to rule on the constitu- tionality of decisions made by state courts. The act also provided for a system of 13 district courts and three circuit courts of appeals. Hamilton's Financial Program One of the most pressing problems faced by Congress under the Articles had been the government's financial difficulties. Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, presented to Congress a plan for putting U.S. finances on a stable foundation. Hamilton's plan included three main actions. (1) Pay off the national debt at face value and have the federal government assume the war debts of the states. (2) Protect the young nation's "infant" (new and develop- ing) industries and collect adequate revenues at the same time by imposing high tariffs on imported goods. (3) Create a national bank for depositing gov- ernment funds and printing banknotes that would provide the basis for a stable U.S. currency. Support for this program came chiefly from northern merchants, who would gain directly from high tariffs and a stabilized currency. Opponents of Hamilton's financial plan included the Anti-Federalists, who feared that the states would lose power to the extent that the central govern- ment gained it. Thomas Jefferson led a faction of southern Anti-Federalists who viewed Hamilton's program as benefiting only the rich at the expense of indebted farmers. After much political wrangling and bargaining, Congress finally adopted Hamilton's plan in slightly modified form. For example, the tariffs were not as high as Hamilton wanted. Debt Jefferson and his supporters agreed to Hamilton's urgent insis- tence that the U.S. government pay off the national debt at face value and also assume payment of the war debts of the states. In return for Jefferson's support on this vital aspect of his plan, Hamilton agreed to Jefferson's idea to establish the nation's capital in the South along the Potomac River (an area that, after Washington's death, would be named Washington, D.C.). 110 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM National Bank Jefferson argued that the Constitution did not give Con- gress the power to create a bank. But Hamilton took a broader view of the Constitution, arguing that the document's "necessary and proper" clause authorized Congress to do whatever was necessary to carry out its enumerated powers. Washington supported Hamilton on the issue, and the proposed bank was voted into law. Although chartered by the federal government, the Bank of the United States was privately owned. As a major shareholder of the bank, the federal government could print paper currency and use federal deposits to stimulate business. Foreign Affairs Washington's first term as president (1789-1793) coincided with the outbreak of revolution in France, a cataclysmic event that was to touch off a series of wars between the new French Republic and the monarchies of Europe. Wash- ington's entire eight years as president, as well as the four years of his successor, John Adams, were taken up with the question of whether to give U.S. support to France, France's enemies, or neither side. The French Revolution Americans generally supported the French people's aspiration to establish a republic, but many were also horrified by reports of mob hysteria and mass executions. To complicate matters, the U.S. French alliance remained in effect, although it was an alliance with the French monarchy, not with the revolutionary republic. Jefferson and his supporters sympathized with the revolutionary cause. They also argued that, because Brit- ain was seizing American merchant ships bound for French ports, the United States should join France in its defensive war against Britain. Proclamation of Neutrality (1793) Washington, however, believed that the young nation was not strong enough to engage in a European war. Resist- ing popular clamor, in 1793 he issued a proclamation of U.S. neutrality in the conflict. Jefferson resigned from the cabinet in disagreement with Washing- ton's policy. "Citizen" Genet Objecting to Washington's policy, "Citizen" Edmond Genet, the French minister to the United States, broke all the normal rules of diplomacy by appealing directly to the American people to support the French cause. So outrageous was his conduct that even Jefferson approved of Wash- ington's request to the French government that they remove the offending diplomat. Recalled by his government, Genet chose to remain in the United States, where he married and became a U.S. citizen. The Jay Treaty (1794) Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay on a special mission to Britain to talk that country out of its offensive practice of searching and seizing American ships and impressing seamen into the British navy. After a year of negotiations, Jay brought back a treaty in which Britain agreed to evacuate its posts on the U.S. western frontier. But the treaty said nothing about British seizures of American merchant ships. Narrowly ratified THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 111 by the Senate, the unpopular Jay Treaty angered American supporters of France, but it did maintain Washington's policy of neutrality, which kept the United States at peace. The Pinckney Treaty (1795) Totally unexpected was the effect that the Jay Treaty had on Spain's policy toward its territories in the Americas. Seeing the treaty as a sign that the United States might be drawing closer to Spain's longtime foe Britain, Spain decided to consolidate its holdings in North Amer- ica. The Spanish influence in the Far West had been strengthened by a series of Catholic missions along the California coast but they were concerned about their colonies in the Southeast. Thomas Pinckney, the U.S. minister to Spain, negotiated a treaty in which Spain agreed to open the lower Mississippi River and New Orleans to American trade. The right of deposit was granted to Ameri- cans so that they could transfer cargoes in New Orleans without paying duties to the Spanish government. Spain further agreed to accept the U.S. claim that Florida's northern boundary should be at the 31st parallel (not north of that line, as Spain had formerly insisted). Domestic Concerns In addition to coping with foreign challenges, stabilizing the nation's credit, and organizing the new government, Washington faced a number of domestic problems and crises. PINCKNEY'S TREATY, 1795 0 100 200 Miles 0 Va. GULF OF MEXICO 112 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM American Indians Through the final decades of the 18th century, set- tlers crossed the Alleghenies and moved the frontier steadily westward into the Ohio Valley and beyond. In an effort to resist the settlers' encroachment on their lands, a number of the tribes formed the Northwest ( or Western) Con- federacy. Initially the tribes, including the Shawnee, Delaware, Iroquois, and others under the Miami war chief Little Turtle, won a series of bloody victories over the local militia. Americans on the frontier were incensed by evidence that the British were supplying the American Indians with arms and encouraging them to attack the "intruding" Americans. In 1794 the U.S. army led by General Anthony Wayne defeated the Confederacy tribes at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in northwestern Ohio. The next year, the chiefs of the defeated peoples agreed to the Treaty of Greenville, in which they surrendered claims to the Ohio Territory and promised to open it up to settlement. The Whiskey Rebellion (1794) Hamilton, to make up the revenue lost because the tariffs were lower than he wanted, persuaded Congress to pass excise taxes, particularly on the sale of whiskey. In western Pennsylvania, the refusal of a group of farmers to pay the federal excise tax on whiskey seemed to pose a major challenge to the viability of the U.S. government under the Con- stitution. The rebelling farmers could ill afford to pay a tax on the whiskey that they distilled from surplus com. Rather than pay the tax, they defended their "liberties" by attacking the revenue collectors. Washington responded to this crisis by federalizing 15,000 state militiamen and placing them under the command of Alexander Hamilton. The show of force had its intended effect, causing the Whiskey Rebellion to collapse with almost no bloodshed. Some Americans applauded Washington's action, contrasting it with the previous government's helplessness to do anything about Shays's Rebellion. Among westerners, however, the military action was widely resented and condemned as an unwarranted use of force against the common people. The government's chief critic, Thomas Jefferson, gained in popularity as a champion of the western farmer. Western Lands In the 1790s, the Jay Treaty and the victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers gave the federal government control of vast tracts of land. Congress encouraged the rapid settlement of these lands by passing the Public Land Act in 1796, which established orderly procedures for dividing and sell- ing federal lands at reasonable prices. The process for adding new states to the Union, as set forth in the Constitution, went smoothly. In 1791 Vermont became the first new state, followed by Kentucky in 1792 and Tennessee in 1796. Political Parties Washington's election by unanimous vote of the Electoral College in 1789 underscored the popular belief that political parties were not needed. The Con- stitution itself did not mention political parties, and the Framers assumed none would arise. They were soon proven wrong. The debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists in 1787 and 1788 were the first indication that a two-party system would emerge as a core feature of American politics. THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 113 Origins In colonial times, groups of legislators commonly formed temporary fac- tions and voted together either for or against a specific policy. When an issue was settled, the factions would dissolve. The dispute between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the ratification of the Constitution closely resembled the factional disputes of an earlier period. What was unusual about this conflict was that it was organized-at least by the Federalists-across state lines and in that sense prefigured the national parties that emerged soon afterward. In the 1790s, sometimes called the Federalist era because it was dominated largely by Federalist policies, political parties began to form around two leading figures, Hamilton and Jefferson. The Federalist party supported Hamilton and his financial program. An opposition party known as the Democratic-Repub- lican party supported Jefferson and tried to elect candidates in different states who opposed Hamilton's program. The French Revolution further solidified the formation of national political parties. Americans divided sharply over whether to support France. A large number of them followed Jefferson's lead in openly challenging President Washington's neutrality policy. NEW STATES IN THE UNION, 1791-1796 100 200 Miles O 100 200 300 Kilometers 114 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Differences Between the Parties The Federalists were strongest in the northeastern states and advocated the growth of federal power. The Democratic-Republicans were strongest in the southern states and on the western frontier and argued for states' rights. (See the table on the next page for additional differences between the parties.) By 1796, the two major political parties were already taking shape and becom- ing better organized. In that year, President Washington announced that he intended to retire to private life at the end of his second term. Washington's Farewell Address Assisted by Alexander Hamilton, the retlnng president wrote a farewell address for publication in the newspapers in late 1796. In this message, which had enormous influence because of Washington's prestige, the president spoke about policies and practices that he considered unwise. He warned Americans • not to get involved in European affairs • not to make "permanent alliances" in foreign affairs • not to form political parties • not to fall into sectionalism For the next century, future presidents would heed as gospel Washington's warning against "permanent alliances." However, in the case of political par- ties, Washington was already behind the times, since political parties were well on their way to becoming a vital part of the American political system. One long-range consequence of Washington's decision to leave office after two terms was that later presidents followed his example. Presidents elected to two terms (including Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson) would volun- tarily retire even though the Constitution placed no limit on a president's tenure in office. The two-term tradition continued unbroken until 1940 when Franklin Roosevelt won election to a third term. Then, the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, made the two-term limit a part of the Constitution. John Adams' Presidency Even as Washington was writing his Farewell Address, political parties were working to gain majorities in the two houses of Congress and to line up enough electors from the various states to elect the next president. The vice president, John Adams, was the Federalists' candidate, while former secretary of state Thomas Jefferson was the choice of the Democratic-Republicans. Adams won by three electoral votes. Jefferson became vice-president, since the original Constitution gave that office to the candidate receiving the second highest number of electoral votes. (Since the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804, the president and vice-president have run as a team.) THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 115 Comparison of Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties Federalists Democratic-Republicans Leaders John Adams Thomas Jefferson Alexander Hamilton James Madison View of the Con- Interpret loosely Interpret strictly stitution Create strong central Create weak central government government Foreign Policy Pro-British Pro-French Military Policy Develop large peacetime Develop small peacetime army and navy army and navy Economic Policy Aid business Favor agriculture Create a national bank Oppose a national bank Support high tariffs Oppose tariffs Chief Supporters Northern business owners Skilled workers Large landowners Small farmers Plantation owners The XYZ Affair Troubles abroad related to the French Revolution presented Adams with the first major challenge of his presidency. Americans were angered by reports that U.S. merchant ships were being seized by French warships and privateers. Seek- ing a peaceful settlement, Adams sent a delegation to Paris to negotiate with the French government. Certain French ministers, known only as X, Y, and Z because their names were never revealed, requested bribes as the basis for enter- ing into negotiations. The American delegates indignantly refused. Newspaper reports of the demands made by X, Y, and Z infuriated many Americans, who now clamored for war against France. "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute" became the slogan of the hour. One faction of the Federalist party, led by Alexander Hamilton, hoped that by going to war the United States could gain French and Spanish lands in North America. President Adams, on the other hand, resisted the popular sentiment for war. Recognizing that the U.S. Army and Navy were not yet strong enough to fight a major power, the president avoided war and sent new ministers to Paris. 116 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Alien and Sedition Acts Anger against France strengthened the Federalists in the congressional elec- tions of 1798 enough to win a majority in both houses. The Federalists took advantage of their victory by enacting laws to restrict their political opponents, the Democratic-Republicans. For example, since most immigrants voted Democratic-Republican, the Federalists passed the Naturalization Act, which increased from 5 to 14 the years required for immigrants to qualify for U.S. citizenship. They also passed the Alien Acts, which authorized the president to deport aliens considered dangerous and to detain enemy aliens in time of war. Most seriously, they passed the Sedition Act, which made it illegal for news- paper editors to criticize either the president or Congress and imposed fines or imprisonment for editors who violated the law. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions Democratic-Republicans argued that the Alien and Sedition Acts violated rights guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution. In 1799, however, the Supreme Court had not yet established the principle of judicial review (see Chapter 7). Democratic-Republican leaders challenged the legislation of the Federalist Congress by enacting nullifying laws of their own in the state legis- latures. The Kentucky legislature adopted a resolution that had been written by Thomas Jefferson, and the Virginia legislature adopted a resolution introduced by James Madison. Both resolutions declared that the states had entered into a "compact" in forming the national government, and, therefore, if any act of the federal government broke the compact, a state could nullify the federal law. Although only Kentucky and Virginia adopted nullifying resolutions in 1799, they set forth an argument and rationale that would be widely used in the nul- lification controversy of the 1830s (see Chapter 10). The immediate crisis over the Alien and Sedition Acts faded when the Federalists lost their majority in Congress after the election of 1800, and the new Democratic-Republican majority allowed the acts to expire or repealed them. In addition, the Supreme Court under John Marshall asserted its power in deciding whether a certain federal law was constitutional. The Election of 1800 During Adams' presidency, the Federalists rapidly lost popularity. People dis- liked the Alien and Sedition Acts and complained about the new taxes imposed by the Federalists to pay the costs of preparing for a war against France. Though Adams avoided war, he had persuaded Congress that building up the U.S. Navy was necessary for the nation's defense. THE CONSTITUTION AND THE NEW REPUBLIC, 1787-1800 117 Election Results The election of 1800 swept the Federalists from power in both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. A majority of the presidential electors cast their ballots for two Democratic-Republicans: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Because both these candidates received the same number of electoral ballots, it was necessary (according to the rules in the original Consti- tution) to hold a special election in the House of Representatives to break the tie. In December 1800 the Federalists still controlled the House. They debated and voted for days before they finally gave a majority to Jefferson. (Alexander Hamilton had urged his followers to vote for Jefferson, whom he considered less dangerous and of higher character than Burr.) Democratic-Republican lawmakers elected in 1800 took control of both the House and the Senate when a new Congress met in March 1801. A Peaceful Revolution The passing of power in 1801 from one political party to another was accom- plished without violence. This was a rare event for the times and a major indication that the U.S. constitutional system would endure the various strains that were placed upon it. The Federalists quietly accepted their defeat in the election of 1800 and peacefully relinquished control of the federal government to Jefferson's party, the Democratic-Republicans. The change from Federalist to Democratic-Republican control is known as the Revolution of 1800.

Chapter 19 'The Politics of the Gilded Age, 1877 - 1900'

Congress had enacted an ambitious reform program during the 1860s and l 870s-the era of Civil War and Reconstruction. After the election of President Rutherford B. Hayes and the Compromise of 1877, the national government settled into an era of stalemate and comparative inactivity. However, the causes of limited achievements and failure of politicians to address the growing prob- lems related to industrialization and urbanization are often as instructive as periods of political achievements. Politics in the Gilded Age The expression "Gilded Age," first used by Mark Twain in 1873 as the title of a book, referred to the superficial glitter of the new wealth so prominently dis- played in the late 19th century. Historians often criticize the politics of the era as more show than substance. It was the era of "forgettable" presidents, none of whom served two consecutive terms, and of politicians who largely ignored problems arising from the growth of industry and cities. The two major parties in these years often avoided taking stands on controversial issues. Causes of Stalemate Factors accounting for the complacency and conservatism of the era included (1) the prevailing political ideology of the time, (2) campaign tactics of the two parties, and (3) party patronage. Belief in Limited Government The idea of "do-little" government was in tune with two other popular ideas of the time: laissez-faire economics and Social Darwinism. Furthermore, the federal courts narrowly interpreted the government's powers to regulate business, and this limited the impact of the few regulatory laws that Congress did pass. 380 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Campaign Strategy The closeness of elections between 1876 and 1892 was one reason that Republicans and Democrats alike avoided taking strong positions on the issues. The Democrats won only two presidential contests in the electoral college (but four in the popular vote). They nevertheless con- trolled the House of Representatives after eight of the ten general elections. The result was divided government in Washington ( except for two years of the Harrison administration, 1889-1891, when the Republicans were in control of both the presidency and the two houses of Congress). With elections so evenly matched, the objective was to get out the vote and not alienate voters on the issues. Election campaigns of the time were characterized by brass bands, flags, campaign buttons, picnics, free beer, and crowd-pleasing oratory. Both parties had strong organizations, the Republicans usually on the state level and the Democrats in the cities. The irony is that the issue-free campaigns brought out nearly 80 percent of the eligible voters for presidential elections, much higher than elections in later periods. The high turnout was a function of strong party identification and loyalty, often connected with the regional, religious, and ethnic ties of voters. Republicans In the North, Republican politicians kept memories of the Civil War alive during the Gilded Age by figuratively waving the "bloody shirt" in every campaign and reminding the millions of veterans of the Union army that their wounds had been caused by (southern) Democrats and that Abraham Lincoln had been murdered by a Democrat. The party of Lincoln, because of its antislavery past, kept the votes of reformers and African Ameri- cans. The core of Republican strength came from men in business and from middle-class, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, many of whom supported temperance or prohibition. Republicans followed the tradition of Hamilton and the Whigs, supporting a pro-business economic program of high protective tariffs. Democrats After 1877, Democrats could count upon winning every elec- tion in the former states of the Confederacy. The solid South was indeed solidly Democratic until the mid-20th century. In the North, Democratic strength came from big-city political machines and the immigrant vote. Democrats were often Catholics, Lutherans, and Jews who objected to temperance and prohibition crusades conducted by Protestant (and largely Republican) groups. Democrats of the Gilded Age argued for states' rights and limiting powers for the federal government, following in the Jeffersonian tradition. Party Patronage Since neither party had an active legislative agenda, politics in this era was chiefly a game of winning elections, holding office, and providing government jobs to the party faithful. In New York, for example, Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling became a powerful leader of his party by dictating who in the Republican ranks would be appointed to lucrative jobs in the New York Customs House. Conkling and his supporters were known as the Stalwarts, while their rivals for patronage were the Halfbreeds, led by James G. Blaine. Who got the patronage jobs within the party became a more important issue than any policy. Republicans who did not play the patronage THE POLITICS OF THE GILDED AGE, 1877-1900 381 game were ridiculed as the Mugwumps for sitting on the fence-their "mugs" on one side of the fence and "wumps" on the other. Historians generally con- sider this era a low point in American politics. Political Party Affiliations in Congress, 1881-1901 House Senate Year Major Minor Major Minor Parties Parties Parties Parties 1881-1883 R-147, D-135 11 R-37, D-37 1 1883-1885 D-197, R-118 10 R-38, D-36 2 1885-1887 D-183, R-140 2 R-43, D-34 0 1887-1889 D-169, R-152 4 R-39, D-37 0 1889-1891 R-166, D-159 0 R-39, D-37 0 1891-1893 D-235, R-88 9 R-47, D-39 2 1893-1895 D-218, R-127 11 D-44, R-38 3 1895-1897 R-244, D-105 7 R-43, D-39 6 1897-1899 R-204, D-113 40 R-47, D-34 7 1899-1901 R-185, D-163 9 R-53, D-26 8 R: Republican D: Democrat Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 Presidential Politics The administrations of presidents Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur reflected the political stalemate and patronage problems of the Gilded Age. Rutherford B. Hayes After being declared the winner of the disputed election of 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes's most significant act was to end Recon- struction by withdrawing the last federal troops from the South. President Hayes also attempted to re-establish honest government after the corrupt Grant administration. As temperance reformers, Hayes and his wife, "Lemonade Lucy," cut off the flow of liquor in the White House. Hayes vetoed efforts to restrict Chinese immigration. James Garfield Republican politicians, more interested in spoils and patronage than reform, were happy to honor President Hayes's pledge in 1877 to serve only one term. In the election of 1880, the Republicans compromised on the nomination of "Halfbreed" James A. Garfield of Ohio (a key swing state of the times), and "Stalwart" Chester A. Arthur of New York as vice presi- dent. The Democrats nominated Winfield S. Hancock, a former Union general who had been wounded at Gettysburg. The Garfield-Arthur ticket defeated the Democratic war hero in a very close popular vote. 382 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM In his first weeks in office, Garfield was besieged in the White House by hordes of Republicans seeking some 100,000 federal jobs. Garfield's choice of Halfbreeds for most offices provoked a bitter contest with Senator Conk- ling and his Stalwarts. While the president was preparing to board a train for a summer vacation in 1881, a deranged office seeker who identified with the Stalwarts shot Garfield in the back. After an 11-week struggle, the gunshot wound proved fatal. Chester A. Arthur then became president. Chester A. Arthur Arthur proved a much better president than people expected. He distanced himself from the Stalwarts, supported a bill reform- ing the civil service. This bill expanded the number of government employees hired based on their qualifications rather than their political connections. In addition, he approved the development of a modern American navy and began to question the high protective tariff. His reward was denial of renomination by the Republican party in 1884. Congressional leaders Weak presidents do not necessarily mean strong Congresses. Lawmakers of the Gilded Age typically had long but undistinguished careers. John Sherman, brother of the famous Civil War general, was in Congress from 1855 to 1898 but did little other than allow his name to be attached to a number of bills, includ- ing the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Thomas "Czar" Reed from Maine, a sharp-tongued bully, became Speaker of the House in 1890 and instituted an autocratic rule over the House that took years to break. Senator James G. Blaine, also from Maine, had the potential of being a great political leader and largely succeeded in reshaping the Republicans from an antislavery party into a well-organized, business-oriented party. However, Blaine's reputation was tarnished by links with railroad scandals and other corrupt dealings. The Election of 1884 In 1884 the Republicans nominated Blaine for president, but suspicions about Blaine's honesty were enough for the reform-minded Mugwumps to switch alle- giance and campaign for the Democratic nominee, Grover Cleveland. Unlike most Gilded Age politicians, Cleveland was honest, frugal, conscientious, and uncompromising. He had been an honest mayor of Buffalo and incorruptible governor of New York State. Republicans raised questions, however, about the New Yorker's private life, making much of the fact that Cleveland had fathered the child of a woman not his wife. In a notably dirty campaign, the Democrats were labeled the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." Catholic voters were offended by the phrase, and their votes in key states such as New York may have been enough to ensure Cleveland's victory as the first Democrat to be elected president since Buchanan in 1856. Cleveland's First Term The Democratic president believed in frugal and limited government in the tra- dition of Jefferson. He implemented the new civil service system (see below) and vetoed hundreds of private pension bills for those falsely claiming to have THE POLITICS OF THE GILDED AGE, 1877-1900 383 served or been injured in the Civil War. He signed into law both (1) the Inter- state Commerce Act of 1887, the federal government's first effort to regulate business, and (2) the Dawes Act, which reformers hoped would benefit Ameri- can Indians. Cleveland's administration also retrieved some 81 million acres of government land from cattle ranchers and the railroads. Issues: Civil Service, Currency, and Tariffs During the 1870s and 1880s, the Congresses in Washington were chiefly con- cerned with such issues as patronage, the money supply, and the tariff issue. They left the states and local governments to deal with the growing problems of the cities and industrialization. Civil Service Reform Public outrage over the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 pushed Congress to remove certain government jobs from the control of party patronage. The Pendleton Act of 1881 set up the Civil Service Commission and created a system by which applicants for classified federal jobs would be selected on the basis of their scores on a competitive examina- tion. The law also prohibited civil servants from making political contributions. At first, the law applied to only 10 percent of federal employees, but in later decades, the system was expanded until most federal jobs were classified (that is, taken out of the hands of politicians). Politicians adapted to the reform by depending less on their armies of party workers and more on the rich to fund their campaigns. People still debate which approach is more harmful to democratic government. Money Question The most hotly debated issues of the Gilded Age was how much to expand the money supply. For the economy to grow soundly, it needed more money in circulation. However, the money question reflected the growing tension in the era between the "haves" and the "have-nots." Debtors, farmers, and start-up businesses wanted more "easy" or "soft" money in circulation, since this would enable them to (1) borrow money at lower interest rates and (2) pay off their loans more easily with inflated dollars. After the Panic of 1873, many Americans blamed the gold standard for restrict- ing the money supply and causing the depression. To expand the supply of U.S. currency, easy-money advocates campaigned first for more paper money (greenbacks) and then for the unlimited minting of silver coins. On the opposite side of the question, bankers, creditors, investors, and established businesses stood firm for "sound" or "hard" money-meaning cur- rency backed by gold stored in government vaults. Supporters of hard money argued that dollars backed by gold would hold their value against inflation. Holders of money understood that as the U.S. economy and population grew faster than the number of gold-backed dollars, each dollar would gain in value. As predicted, the dollar did increase in value by as much as 300 percent between 1865 and 1895. Greenback Party Paper money not backed by specie (gold or silver) had been issued by the federal government in the 1860s as an emergency measure for financing the Civil War. Northern farmers, who received high 384 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM prices during the war, prospered from the use of "greenbacks." On the other hand, creditors and investors attacked the use of unbacked paper money as a violation of natural law. In 1875, Congress sided with the creditors, and passed the Specie Resumption Act, which withdrew all greenbacks from circulation. Supporters of paper money formed a new political party, the Greenback party. In the congressional election of 1878, Greenback candidates received nearly 1 million votes, and 14 members were elected to Congress, including James B. Weaver of Iowa (a future leader of the Populist party). When the hard times of the 1870s ended, the Greenback party died out, but the goal of increas- ing the amount of money in circulation did not. Demands for Silver Money In addition to removing greenbacks, Con- gress in the 1870s also stopped the coining of silver. Critics call this action "the Crime of 1873." Then silver discoveries in Nevada revived demands for the use of silver to expand the money supply. A compromise law, the Bland-Allison Act, was passed over Hayes's veto in 1878. It allowed only a limited coinage of between $2 million and $4 million in silver each month at the standard silver- to-gold ratio of 16 to 1. Not satisfied, farmers, debtors, and western miners continued to press for the unlimited coinage of silver. Tariff Issue In the 1890s, tariffs provided more than half of federal rev- enue. Western farmers and eastern capitalists disagreed on the question of whether tariff rates on foreign imports should be high or low. During the Civil War, the Republican Congress had raised tariffs to protect U.S. industry and also fund the Union government. After the war, southern Democrats as well as some northern Democrats objected to high tariffs because these taxes raised the prices on consumer goods. Another result of the protective tariff was that other nations retaliated by placing taxes of their own on U.S. farm products. American farmers lost some overseas sales, contributing to surpluses of corn and wheat and resulting in lower farm prices and profits. From a farmer's point of view, industry seemed to be growing rich at the expense of rural America. The Growth of Discontent, 1888-1896 The politics of stalemate and complacency would begin to lose their hold on the voters by the late 1880s. Discontent over government corruption, the money issue, tariffs, railroads, and trusts was growing. In response, politicians began to take small steps to respond to public concerns, but it would take a third party (the Populists) and a major depression in 1893 to shake the Democrats and the Republicans from their lethargy. Harrison and the Billion-Dollar Congress Toward the end of his first term, President Cleveland created a political storm by challenging the high protective tariff. He proposed that Congress set lower tariff rates, since there was a growing surplus in the federal treasury and the government did not need the added tax revenue. The Election of 1888 With the tariff question, Cleveland introduced a real issue, the first in years that truly divided Democrats and Republicans. In THE POLITICS OF THE GILDED AGE, 1877-1900 385 the election of 1888, Democrats campaigned for Cleveland and a lower tar- iff; Republicans campaigned for Benjamin Harrison (grandson of the former president, William Henry Harrison) and a high tariff. The Republicans argued that a lower tariff would wreck business prosperity. They played upon this fear to raise campaign funds from big business and to rally workers in the North, whose jobs depended on the success of U.S. industry. The Republicans also attacked Cleveland's vetoes of pension bills to bring out the veteran vote. The election was extremely close. Cleveland received more popular votes than Har- rison, but ended up losing the election because Harrison's sweep of the North gained the Republican ticket a majority of votes in the electoral college. Billion-dollar Congress For the next two years, Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress-unusual for this era of close elections. The new Congress was the most active in years, passing the first billion-dollar budget in U.S. history. It enacted the following: • The McKinley Tariff of 1890, which raised the tax on foreign prod- ucts to a peacetime high of more than 48 percent • Increases in the monthly pensions to Civil War veterans, widows, and children • The Sherman Antitrust Act, outlawing "combinations in restraint of trade" (see Chapter 16) • The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which increased the coin- age of silver, but too little to satisfy farmers and miners • A bill to protect the voting rights of African Americans, passed by the House but defeated in the Senate Return of the Democrats In the congressional elections of 1890, the vot- ers, especially in the Midwest, replaced many Republicans with Democrats. They were reacting in part to unpopular measures passed by Republican state legislatures: prohibition of alcohol and laws requiring business to close on Sundays. Voters who were neither Anglo-Saxon nor Protestant rushed back to the Democrats, who had not tried to legislate public morality. Rise of the Populists Another factor in the Republican setbacks of 1890 was growing agrarian dis- content in the South and West. Members of the Farmers' Alliances elected U.S. senators and representatives, the governors of several states, and majorities in four state legislatures in the West. Omaha Platform The Alliance movement provided the foundation of a new political party-the People's, or Populist, party. Delegates from different states met in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1892 to draft a political platform and nomi- nate candidates for president and vice president for the new party. Populists 386 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM were determined to do something about the concentration of economic power in the hands of trusts and bankers. Their Omaha platform called for both political and economic reforms. Politically, it demanded an increase in the power of com- mon voters through (1) direct popular election of U.S. senators (instead of indirect election by state legislatures) and (2) the use of initiatives and referendums, pro- cedures that allowed citizens to vote directly on proposed laws. Economically, the Populist platform was even more ambitious. Populists advocated: (1) unlim- ited coinage of silver to increase the money supply, (2) a graduated income tax (the greater a person's income, the higher the percentage of the tax on his or her income), (3) public ownership of railroads by the U.S. government, ( 4) telegraph and telephone systems owned and operated by the government, (5) loans and federal warehouses for farmers to enable them to stabilize prices for their crops, and (6) an eight-hour day for industrial workers. At the time, the Populist movement seemed revolutionary not only for its attack on laissez-faire capitalism but also for its attempt to form a political alli- ance between poor whites and poor blacks. In the South, Thomas Watson of Georgia appealed to poor farmers of both races to unite on their common eco- nomic grievances by joining the People's party. The Election of 1892 In 1892, James Weaver of Iowa, the Populist can- didate for president, won more than 1 million votes and 22 electoral votes, making him one of the few third-party candidates in U.S. history to win votes in the electoral college. Nevertheless, the Populist ticket lost badly in the South and failed to attract urban workers in the North. The fear of Populists uniting poor blacks and whites drove conservative southern Democrats to use every technique to disfranchise African Americans (see Chapter 17). The two major parties provided a rematch between President Harrison and former president Cleveland. This time, Cleveland won a solid victory in both the popular and electoral vote. He won in part because of the unpopularity of the high-tax McKinley Tariff. Cleveland became the first and only former president thus far to return to the White House after having left it. Depression Politics No sooner did Cleveland take office than the country entered into one of its worst and longest depressions. Panic of 1893 In the spring and summer of 1893, the stock market crashed as a result of overspeculation, and dozens of railroads went into bankruptcy as a result of overbuilding. The depression continued for almost four years. Farm foreclosures reached new highs, and the unemployed reached 20 percent of the workforce. Many people ended up relying on soup kitchens and riding the rails as hoboes. President Cleveland, more conservative than he had been in the 1880s, dealt with the crisis by championing the gold standard and otherwise adopting a hands-off policy toward the economy. Gold Reserve and Tariff A decline in silver prices encouraged investors to trade their silver dollars for gold dollars. The gold reserve (bars of gold bul- lion stored by the U.S. Treasury) fell to a dangerously low level, and President THE POLITICS OF THE GILDED AGE, 1877-1900 387 Cleveland saw no alternative but to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. This action, however, failed to stop the gold drain. The president then turned to the Wall Street banker J. P. Morgan to borrow $65 million in gold to support the dollar and the gold standard. This deal convinced many Americans that the government in Washington was only a tool of rich eastern bankers. Work- ers became further disenchanted with Cleveland when he used court injunctions and federal troops to crush the Pullman strike in 1894 (see Chapter 16). The Democrats did enact one measure that was somewhat more popular. Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff in 1894, which (1) provided a moderate reduction in tariff rates and (2) included a 2 percent income tax on incomes of more than $2,000. Since the average American income at this time was less than $1,000, only those with higher incomes would be subject to the income tax. Within a year after the passage of the law, however, the conserva- tive Supreme Court declared an income tax unconstitutional. Jobless on the March As the depression worsened and the numbers of jobless people grew, conservatives feared class war between capital and labor. They were especially alarmed by a march to Washington in 1894 by thousands of the unemployed led by Populist Jacob A. Coxey of Ohio. "Coxey's Army" demanded that the federal government spend $500 million on public works programs to create jobs. Coxey and other protest leaders were arrested for tres- passing, and the dejected marchers returned home. Also in 1894, a little book by William H. Harvey presenting lessons in economics seemed to offer easy answers for ending the depression. Illustrated with cartoons, Coin's Financial School taught millions of discontented Ameri- cans that their troubles were caused by a conspiracy of rich bankers, and that prosperity would return if the government coined silver in unlimited quantities. Turning Point in American Politics: 1896 National politics was in transition. The repeal of the Silver Purchase Act and Cleveland's handling of the depression thoroughly discredited the conservative leadership of the Democratic party. The Democrats were buried in the congres- sional elections of 1894 by the Republicans. At the same time, the Populists continued to gain both votes and legislative seats. The stage was set for a major reshaping of party politics in 1896. The Election of 1896 The election of 1896 was one of the most emotional in U.S. history. It also would mark of the beginning of a new era in American politics. Bryan, Democrats, and Populists Democrats were divided in 1896 be- tween "gold" Democrats loyal to Cleveland and prosilver Democrats looking for a leader. Their national convention in Chicago in the summer of 1896 was dominated by the prosilver forces. Addressing the convention, William Jen- nings Bryan of Nebraska captured the hearts of the delegates with a speech that ended with these words: "We will answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them: 'You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown 388 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.' " So powerful was Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech that it made him instantly the Democratic nominee for president. Bryan was only 36 years old. The Democratic platform favored the unlimited coinage of silver at the traditional, but inflationary, ratio of 16 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold. (The market price then was about 32 to 1.) Thus, the Democrats had taken over the leading issue of the Populist platform. Given little choice, the Populist convention in 1896 also nominated Bryan and conducted a "fused" campaign for "free silver." Unhappy with Bryan and free silver, the conservative faction of "Gold Bug" Democrats, including Cleveland, either formed the separate National Democratic party or voted Republican. McKinley, Hanna, and Republicans For their presidential nominee, the Republicans nominated William McKinley of Ohio, best known for his support of a high protective tariff but also considered a friend of labor. Marcus (Mark) Hanna, who had made a fortune in business, was the financial power behind McKinley's nomination as well as the subsequent campaign for president. After blaming the Democrats for the Panic of 1893, the Republicans offered the American people the promise of a strong and prosperous industrial nation. The Republican platform proposed a high tariff to protect industry and upheld the gold standard against unlimited coinage of silver. The Campaign The defection of "Gold Bug" Democrats over the silver issue gave the Republicans an early advantage. Bryan countered by turning the Democratic-Populist campaign into a nationwide crusade. Traveling by train from one end of the country to the other, the young candidate covered 18,000 miles and gave more than 600 speeches. His energy, positive attitude, and rousing oratory convinced millions of farmers and debtors that the unlimited coinage of silver was their salvation. Mark Hanna meanwhile did most of the work of campaigning for McKin- ley. He raised millions of dollars for the Republican ticket from business leaders who feared that "silver lunacy" would lead to runaway inflation. Hanna used the money to sell McKinley through the mass media (newspapers, magazines), while the Republican candidate stayed home and conducted a safe, front-porch campaign, greeting delegations of supporters. In the last weeks of the campaign, Bryan was hurt by (1) a rise in wheat prices, which made farmers less desperate, and (2) employers telling their workers that factories would shut down if Bryan was elected. On election day, McKinley carried all of the Northeast and the upper Midwest in a decisive vic- tory over Bryan in both the popular vote (7 .1 million to 6.5 million) and the electoral vote (271 to 176). McKinley's Presidency McKinley was lucky to take office just as the economy began to revive. Gold discoveries in Alaska in 1897 increased the money supply under the gold standard, which resulted in the inflation that the silverites had wanted. Farm THE POLITICS OF THE GILDED AGE, 1877-1900 389 prices rose, factory production increased, and the stock market climbed. The Republicans honored their platform by enacting the Dingley Tariff of 1897 that increased the tariff to more than 46 percent, and, in 1900, making gold the official standard of the U.S. currency. McKinley was a well-liked, well- traveled president who tried to bring conflicting interests together. As leader during the war with Spain in 1898, he helped to make the United States a world power. Significance of the Election of 1896 The election of 1896 had significant short-term and long-term consequences on American politics. It marked the end of the stalemate and stagnation that had characterized politics in the Gilded Age. In addition, the defeat of Bryan and the Populist free-silver movement initiated an era of Republican domi- nance of the presidency (seven of the next nine elections) and of both houses of Congress (17 of the next 20 sessions). Once the party of "free soil, free labor, and free men," the Republicans had become the party of business and industry, though it continued to advocate for a strong national government. The Democrats carried on in defeat as the sectional party of the South and host of whatever Populist sentiment remained. Populist Demise The Populist party declined after 1896 and soon ceased to be a national party. In the South, Thomas Watson and other Populist lead- ers gave up trying to unite poor whites and blacks, having discovered the hard lesson that racism was stronger than common economic interests. Ironically, in defeat, much of the Populist reform agenda, such as the graduated income tax and popular election of senators, was adopted by both the Democrats and Republicans during the reform-minded Progressive era (1900-1917). Urban Dominance The election of 1896 was a clear victory for big business, urban centers, conservative economics, and moderate, middle-class values. It proved to be the last hope of rural America to reclaim its former dominance in American politics. Some historians see the election marking the triumph of the values of modem industrial and urban America over the rural ideals of the America of Jefferson and Jackson. Beginning of Modern Politics McKinley emerged as the first modem president, an active leader who took the United States from being relatively isolated to becoming a major player in international affairs. Mark Hanna, the master of high-finance politics, created a model for organizing and financing a successful campaign. McKinley's model focused on winning favorable public- ity in the dominant mass media of his day: newspapers.

Chapter 7 'The Age of Jefferson, 1800 - 1816'

In the election of 1800, there had been much animosity and bitter partisan feeling between the two national political parties. Following this Revolution of 1800, Thomas Jefferson, the new president, recognized the need for a smooth and peaceful transition of power from the Federalists to the Democratic- Republicans. That is why, in his inaugural address of 1801, Jefferson stressed the popular acceptance of the basic principles of constitutional government when he stated: "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." By 1816, Jefferson's call for unity seems to have been realized. The Fed- eralists had nearly disappeared, but the Democratic-Republicans had adopted many of their positions. Under Jefferson and his close friend James Madi- son, the nation experienced peaceful political change, expanded territorially, survived another war, and strengthened its democratic and nationalistic spirit. It was thriving, even as it faced significant problems-including slavery, the treatment of American Indians, and loyalty to local interests. Jefferson's Presidency During his first term, Jefferson attempted to win the allegiance and trust of Fed- eralist opponents by maintaining the national bank and debt-repayment plan of Hamilton. In foreign policy, he carried on the neutrality policies of Washington and Adams. At the same time, Jefferson retained the loyalty of Democratic- Republican supporters by adhering to his party's guiding principle of limited central government. He reduced the size of the military, eliminated a number of federal jobs, repealed the excise taxes-including those on whiskey- and lowered the national debt. Only Republicans were named to his cabinet, as he sought to avoid the internal divisions that distracted Washington. THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, 1800-1816 131 Compared to Adams' troubled administration, Jefferson's first four years in office were relatively free of discord. The single most important achievement of these years was the acquisition by purchase of vast western lands known as the Louisiana Territory. The Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Territory encompassed a large and largely unexplored tract of western land through which the Mississippi and Missouri rivers flowed. At the mouth of the Mississippi lay the territory's most valuable property in terms of commerce-the port of New Orleans. For many years, Louisiana and New Orleans had been claimed by Spain. But in 1800, the French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte secretly forced Spain to give the Louisi- ana Territory back to its former owner, France. Napoleon hoped to restore the French empire in the Americas. By 1803, however, Napoleon had lost interest in this plan for two reasons: (1) he needed to concentrate French resources on fighting England and (2) a rebellion led by Toussaint l'Ouverture against French rule on the island of Santo Domingo had resulted in heavy French losses. U.S. Interest in the Mississippi River During Jefferson's presidency, the western frontier extended beyond Ohio and Kentucky into the Indiana Territory. Settlers in this region depended for their economic existence on transporting goods on rivers that flowed westward into the Mississippi and southward as far as New Orleans. They were greatly alarmed therefore when in 1802 Spanish officials, who were still in charge of New Orleans, closed the port to Ameri- cans. They revoked the right of deposit granted in the Pinckney Treaty of 1795, which had allowed American farmers tax-free use of the port. People on the frontier clamored for government action. In addition to being concerned about the economic impact of the closing of New Orleans, President Jefferson was troubled by its consequences on foreign policy. He feared that, so long as a foreign power controlled the river at New Orleans, the United States risked entanglement in European affairs. Negotiations Jefferson sent ministers to France with instructions to offer up to $10 million for both New Orleans and a strip of land extending from that port eastward to Florida. If the American ministers failed in their negotiations with the French, they were instructed to begin discussions with Britain for a U.S.-British alliance. Napoleon's ministers, seeking funds for a war against Britain, offered to sell not only New Orleans but also the entire Louisiana Ter- ritory for $15 million. The surprised American ministers quickly went beyond their instructions and accepted. Constitutional Predicament Jefferson and most Americans strongly approved of the Louisiana Purchase. Nevertheless, a constitutional problem troubled the president. Jefferson was committed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution and rejected Hamilton's argument that certain powers were 132 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM implied. No clause in the Constitution explicitly stated that a president could purchase foreign land. In this case, Jefferson determined to set aside his ideal- ism for the country's good. He submitted the purchase agreement to the Senate, arguing that lands could be added to the United States as an application of the president's power to make treaties. Casting aside the criticisms of Federalist senators, the Republican majority in the Senate quickly ratified the purchase. Consequences The Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the size of the United States, removed a European presence from the nation's borders, and extended the western frontier to lands beyond the Mississippi. Furthermore, the acquisition of millions of acres of land strengthened Jefferson's hopes that his country's future would be based on an agrarian society of independent farmers rather than Hamilton's vision of an urban and industrial society. In political terms, the Louisiana Purchase increased Jefferson's popularity and showed the Federalists to be a weak, sectionalist (New England-based) party that could do little more than complain about Democratic-Republican policies. THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE, 1803 LJ Louisiana Purchase DClaimed by U.S. (1803-1819) 0 250 500 MIies 0 250 500 Kilometers - Lewis Explorers: and Clark -c---- (Return Routes) •----- Pike .MEXICO N GULF OF THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, 1800-1816 133 Lewis and Clark Expedition Even before Louisiana was purchased, Jefferson had persuaded Congress to fund a scientific exploration of the trans-Mississippi West to be led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieuten- ant William Clark. The Louisiana Purchase greatly increased the importance of the expedition. Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis in 1804, crossed the Rockies, reached the Oregon coast on the Pacific Ocean, then turned back and completed the return journey in 1806. The benefits of the expedition were many: greater geographic and scientific knowledge of the region, stronger U.S. claims to the Oregon Territory, better relations with American Indians, and more accurate maps and land routes for fur trappers and future settlers. John Marshall and the Supreme Court After the sweeping Democratic-Republican victory of 1800, the only power remaining to the Federalists was their control of the federal courts. The Feder- alist appointments to the courts, previously made by Washington and Adams, were not subject to recall or removal except by impeachment. Federalist judges therefore continued in office, much to the annoyance of the Democratic- Republican president, Jefferson. John Marshall Ironically, the Federalist judge who caused Jefferson the most grief was one of his own cousins from Virginia, John Marshall. Mar- shall had been appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the final months of John Adams' presidency. He held his post for 34 years, in which time he exerted as strong an influence on the Supreme Court as Washington had exerted on the presidency. Marshall's decisions in many landmark cases generally strengthened the central government, often at the expense of states' rights. Case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) The first major case decided by Mar- shall put him in direct conflict with President Jefferson. Upon taking office, Jefferson wanted to block the Federalist judges appointed by his predeces- sor, President John Adams. He ordered Secretary of State James Madison not to deliver the commissions to those Federalists judges. One of Adams' "mid- night appointments," William Marbury, sued for his commission. The case of Marbury v. Madison went to the Supreme Court in 1803. Marshall ruled that Marbury had a right to his commission according to the Judiciary Act passed by Congress in 1789. However, Marshall said the Judiciary Act of 1789 had given to the Court greater power than the Constitution allowed. Therefore, the law was unconstitutional, and Marbury would not receive his commission. In effect, Marshall sacrificed what would have been a small Federalist gain (the appointment of Marbury) for a much larger, long-term judicial victory. By ruling a law of Congress to be unconstitutional, Marshall established the doc- trine of judicial review. From this point on, the Supreme Court would exercise the power to decide whether an act of Congress or of the president was allowed by the Constitution. The Supreme Court could now overrule actions of the other two branches of the federal government. 134 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Judicial Impeachments Jefferson tried other methods for overturning past Federalist measures and appointments. Soon after entering office, he suspended the Alien and Sedition Acts and released those jailed under them. Hoping to remove partisan Federalist judges, Jefferson supported a campaign of impeachment. The judge of one federal district was found to be mentally unbalanced. The House voted his impeachment and the Senate then voted to remove him. The House also impeached a Supreme Court justice, Samuel Chase, but the Senate acquitted him after finding no evidence of "high crimes." Except for these two cases, the impeachment campaign was largely a failure, as almost all the Federalist judges remained in office. Even so, the threat of impeachment caused the judges to be more cautious and less partisan in their decisions. Jefferson's Reelection In 1804 Jefferson won reelection by an overwhelming margin, receiving all but 14 of the 176 electoral votes. His second term was marked by growing dif- ficulties. There were plots by his former vice president, Aaron Burr; opposition by a faction of his own party (the "Quids"), who accused him of abandoning Democratic-Republican principles; and foreign troubles from the Napoleonic wars in Europe. Aaron Burr A Democratic-Republican caucus ( closed meeting) in 1804 decided not to nominate Aaron Burr for a second term as vice president. Burr then embarked on a series of ventures, one of which threatened to break up the Union and another of which resulted in the death of Alexander Hamilton. Federalist Conspiracy Secretly forming a political pact with some radi- cal New England Federalists, Burr planned to win the governorship of New York in 1804, unite that state with the New England states, and then lead this group of states to secede from the nation. Most Federalists followed Alexander Hamilton in opposing Burr, who was defeated in the New York election. The conspiracy then disintegrated. Duel with Hamilton Angered by an insulting remark attributed to Ham- ilton, Burr challenged the Federalist leader to a duel and fatally shot him. Hamilton's death in 1804 deprived the Federalists of their last great leader and earned Burr the enmity of many. Trial for Treason By 1806, Burr's intrigues had turned westward with a plan to take Mexico from Spain and possibly unite it with Louisiana under his rule. Learning of the conspiracy, Jefferson ordered Burr's arrest and trial for treason. Presiding at the trial was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall, a long-time adversary of Jefferson. A jury acquitted Burr, basing its decision on Marshall's narrow definition of treason and the lack of witnesses to any "overt act" by Burr. THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, 1800-1816 135 Difficulties Abroad As a matter of policy and principle, Jefferson tried to avoid war. Rejecting permanent alliances, he sought to maintain U.S. neutrality despite increasing provocations from both France and Britain during the Napoleonic wars. Barbary Pirates The first major challenge to Jefferson's foreign policy came not from a major European power, but from the piracy practiced by the Barbary states on the North African coast. To protect U.S. merchant ships from being seized by Barbary pirates, Presidents Washington and Adams had reluc- tantly agreed to pay tribute to the Barbary governments. The ruler of Tripoli demanded a higher sum in tribute from Jefferson. Refusing to pay, Jefferson sent a small fleet of the U.S. Navy to the Mediterranean. Sporadic fighting with Tripoli lasted for four years (1801-1805). Although the American navy did not achieve a decisive victory, it did gain some respect and also offered a measure of protection to U.S. vessels trading in Mediterranean waters. Challenges to U.S. Neutrality Meanwhile, the Napoleonic wars contin- ued to dominate the politics of Europe-and to shape the commercial economy of the United States. The two principal belligerents, France and Britain, attempted naval blockades of enemy ports. They regularly seized the ships of neutral nations and confiscated their cargoes. The chief offender from the U.S. point of view was Britain, since its navy dominated the Atlantic. Most infu- riating was the British practice of capturing U.S. sailors who it claimed were British citizens and impressing (forcing) them to serve in the British navy. Chesapeake-Leopard Affair One incident at sea especially aroused American anger and almost led to war. In 1807, only a few miles off the coast of Virginia, the British warship Leopard fired on the U.S. warship Chesapeake. Three Americans were killed and four others were taken captive and impressed into the British navy. Anti-British feeling ran high, and many Americans demanded war. Jefferson, however, resorted to diplomacy and economic pres- sure as his response to the crisis. Embargo Act (1807) As an alternative to war, Jefferson persuaded the Democratic-Republican majority in Congress to pass the Embargo Act in 1807. This measure prohibited American merchant ships from sailing to any foreign port. Since the United States was Britain's largest trading partner, Jefferson hoped that the British would stop violating the rights of neutral nations rather than lose U.S. trade. The embargo, however, backfired and brought greater economic hardship to the United States than to Britain. The British were deter- mined to control the seas at all costs, and they had little difficulty substituting supplies from South America for U.S. goods. The embargo's effect on the U.S. economy, however, was devastating, especially for the merchant marine and shipbuilders of New England. So bad was the depression that a movement developed in the New England states to secede from the Union. Recognizing that the Embargo Act had failed, Jefferson called for its repeal in 1809 during the final days of his presidency. Even after repeal, however, U.S. ships could trade legally with all nations except Britain and France. 136 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM 200 !!! 175 .!!! 0 150 'O 0 125 C: 0 100 E 75 C: Q) 50 ::::, J 25 0 FOREIGN TRADE, 1805 to 1817 Imports 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 Year Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 Madison's Presidency Jefferson believed strongly in the precedent set by Washington of voluntarily retiring from the presidency after a second term. For his party's nomination for president, he supported his close friend, Secretary of State James Madison. The Election of 1808 Ever since leading the effort to write and ratify the Constitution, Madison was widely viewed as a brilliant thinker. He had worked tirelessly with Jefferson in developing the Democratic-Republican party. On the other hand, he was a weak public speaker, possessed a stubborn temperament, and lacked Jeffer- son's political skills. With Jefferson's backing, Madison was nominated for president by a caucus of congressional Democratic-Republicans. Other factions of the Democratic-Republican party nominated two other candidates. Even so, Madison was able to win a majority of electoral votes and to defeat both his Democratic-Republican opponents and the Federalist candidate, Charles Pinckney. Nevertheless, the Federalists managed to gain seats in Congress as a result of the widespread unhappiness with the effects of the embargo. Commercial Warfare Madison's presidency was dominated by the same European problems that had plagued Jefferson's second term. Like Jefferson, he attempted a combination of diplomacy and economic pressure to deal with the Napoleonic wars. Unlike Jefferson, he finally consented to take the United States to war. Nonintercourse Act of 1809 After the repeal of Jefferson's disastrous embargo act, Madison hoped to end economic hardship while maintaining his country's rights as a neutral nation. The Nonintercourse Act of 1809 provided that Americans could now trade with all nations except Britain and France. THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, 1800-1816 137 Macon's Bill No. 2 (1810) Economic hardships continued into 1810. Nathaniel Macon, a member of Congress, introduced a bill that restored U.S. trade with Britain and France. Macon's Bill No. 2 provided, however, that if either Britain or France formally agreed to respect U.S. neutral rights at sea, then the United States would prohibit trade with that nation's foe. Napoleon's Deception Upon hearing of Congress' action, Napoleon announced his intention of revoking the decrees that had violated U.S. neutral rights. Taking Napoleon at his word, Madison carried out the terms of Macon's Bill No. 2 by embargoing U.S. trade with Britain in 1811. However, he soon realized that Napoleon had no intention of fulfilling his promise. The French continued to seize American merchant ships. The War of 1812 Neither Britain nor the United States wanted their dispute to end in war. And yet war between them did break out in 1812. Causes of the War From the U.S. point of view, the pressures leading to war came from two direc- tions: the continued violation of U.S. neutral rights at sea and troubles with the British on the western frontier. Free Seas and Trade As a trading nation, the United States depended upon the free flow of shipping across the Atlantic. Yet the chief belligerents in Europe, Britain, and France, had no interest in respecting neutral rights so long as they were locked in a life-and-death struggle with each other. They well remembered that Britain had seemed a cruel enemy during the American Revolution, and the French had supported the colonists. In addition, Jeffer- sonian Democratic-Republicans applauded the French for having overthrown their monarchy in their own revolution. Moreover, even though both the French and the British violated U.S. neutral rights, the British violations were worse because of the British navy's practice of impressing American sailors. Frontier Pressures Added to long-standing grievances over British actions at sea were the ambitions of western Americans for more open land. Americans on the frontier longed for the lands of British Canada and Spanish Florida. Standing in the way were the British and their Indian and Spanish allies. Conflict with the American Indians was a perennial problem for the rest- less westerners. For decades, settlers had been gradually pushing the American Indians farther and farther westward. In an effort to defend their lands from further encroachment, Shawnee brothers-Tecumseh, a warrior, and Prophet, a religious leader-attempted to unite all of the tribes east of the Missis- sippi River. White settlers became suspicious of Tecumseh and persuaded the governor of the Indiana Territory, General William Henry Harrison, to take aggressive action. In the Battle of Tippecanoe, in 1811, Harrison destroyed the Shawnee headquarters and put an end to Tecumseh's efforts to form an Indian 138 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM confederacy. The British had provided only limited aid to Tecumseh. Neverthe- less, Americans on the frontier blamed the British for instigating the rebellion. War Hawks A congressional election in 1810 had brought a group of new, young Democratic-Republicans to Congress, many of them from frontier states (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio). Known as war hawks because of their eagerness for war with Britain, they quickly gained significant influence in the House of Representatives. Led by Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Cal- houn of South Carolina, the war-hawk members of Congress argued that war with Britain would be the only way to defend American honor, gain Canada, and destroy American Indian resistance on the frontier. Declaration of War British delays in meeting U.S. demands over neutral rights combined with political pressures from the war hawks finally persuaded Madison to seek a declaration of war against Britain. Ironically, the British government had by this time (June 1812) agreed to suspend its naval blockade. News of its decision reached the White House after Congress had declared war. A Divided Nation Neither Congress nor the American people were united in support of the war. In Congress, Pennsylvania and Vermont joined the southern and western states to provide a slight majority for the war declaration. Voting against the war were most representatives from New York, New Jersey, and the rest of the states in New England. VOTE ON DECLARING WAR IN 1812 -Yes LJNo D Not voting or unsettled THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, 1800-1816 139 Election of 1812 A similar division of opinion was seen in the presidential election of 1812, in which Democratic-Republican strength in the South and West overcame Federalist and antiwar Democratic-Republican opposition to war in the North. Madison won reelection, defeating De Witt Clinton of New York, the candidate of the Federalists and antiwar Democratic-Republicans. Opposition to the War Americans who opposed the war viewed it as "Mr. Madison's War" and the work of the war hawks in Congress. Most outspoken in their criticism of the war were New England merchants, Federalist politicians, and "Quids," or "Old" Democratic-Republicans. New England merchants were opposed because, after the repeal of the Embargo Act, they were making siz- able profits from the European war and viewed impressment as merely a minor inconvenience. Both commercial interests and religious ties to Protestantism made them more sympathetic to the Protestant British than to the Catholic French. Federalist politicians viewed the war as a Democratic-Republican scheme to conquer Canada and Florida, with the ultimate aim of increasing Democratic-Republican voting strength. For their part, the "Quids" criticized the war because it violated the classic Democratic-Republican commitment to limited federal power and to the maintenance of peace. Military Defeats and Naval Victories Facing Britain's overwhelming naval power, Madison's military strategists based their hope for victory on (1) Napoleon's continued success in Europe and (2) a U.S. land campaign against Canada. Invasion of Canada A poorly equipped American army initiated military action in 1812 by launching a three-part invasion of Canada, one force start- ing out from Detroit, another from Niagara, and a third from Lake Champlain. These and later forays into Canada were easily repulsed by the British defend- ers. An American raid and burning of government buildings in York (Toronto) in 1813 only served to encourage retaliation by the British. Naval Battles The U.S. navy achieved some notable victories, due largely to superior shipbuilding and the valorous deeds of American sailors, includ- ing many free African Americans. In late 1812, the U.S. warship Constitution (nicknamed "Old Ironsides") raised American morale by defeating and sinking a British ship off the coast of Nova Scotia. American privateers, motivated by both patriotism and profit, captured numerous British merchant ships. Offset- ting these gains was the success of the British navy in establishing a blockade of the U.S. coast, which crippled trading and fishing. Probably the most important naval battle of the war was in 1813 on Lake Erie with American Captain Oliver Hazard Perry, declaring victory with, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." This led the way for General William Henry Harrison's victory at the Battle of Thames River (near Detroit), in which Tecumseh was killed. The next year, 1814, ships commanded by Thomas Mac- donough defeated a British fleet on Lake Champlain. As a result, the British had to retreat and abandon their plan to invade New York and New England. 140 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Chesapeake Campaign By the spring of 1814, the defeat of Napoleon in Europe enabled the British to increase their forces in North America. In the summer of that year, a British army marched through the nation's capi- tal, Washington, D.C., and set fire to the White House, the Capitol, and other government buildings. The British also attempted to take Baltimore, but Fort McHenry held out after a night's bombardment-an event immortalized by Francis Scott Key in the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Southern Campaign Meanwhile, U.S. troops in the South were ably commanded by General Andrew Jackson. In March 1814, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in present-day Alabama, Jackson ended the power of an important British ally, the Creek nation. The victory eliminated the Indians and opened new lands to white settlers. A British effort to control the Mississippi River was halted at New Orleans by Jackson leading a force of frontier sol- diers, free African Americans, and Creoles. The victory was impressive-but also meaningless. The Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815, two weeks after a treaty ending the war had been signed in Ghent, Belgium. The Treaty of Ghent By 1814, the British were weary of war. Having fought Napoleon for more than a decade, they now faced the prospect of maintaining the peace in Europe. At the same time, Madison's government recognized that the Americans would be unable to win a decisive victory. American peace commissioners traveled to Ghent, Belgium, to discuss terms of peace with British diplomats. On Christmas Eve 1814, an agreement was reached. The terms halted fighting, returned all conquered territory to the prewar claimant, and recognized the prewar boundary between Canada and the United States. The Treaty of Ghent, promptly ratified by the Senate in 1815, said nothing at all about the grievances that led to war. Britain made no concessions con- cerning impressment, blockades, or other maritime differences. Thus, the war ended in stalemate with no gain for either side. The Hartford Convention Just before the war ended, the New England states threatened to secede from the Union. Bitterly opposed to both the war and the Democratic-Republican government in Washington, radical Federalists in New England urged that the Constitution be amended and that, as a last resort, secession be voted upon. To consider these matters, a special convention was held at Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1814. Delegates from the New England states rejected the radical calls for secession. But to limit the growing power of the Democratic-Republi- cans in the South and West, they adopted a number of proposals. One of them called for a two-thirds vote of both houses for any future declaration of war. Shortly after the convention dissolved, news came of both Jackson's vic- tory at New Orleans and the Treaty of Ghent. These events ended criticism of the war and further weakened the Federalists by stamping them as unpatriotic. THE AGE OF JEFFERSON, 1800-1816 141 The War's Legacy From Madison's point of view, the war achieved none of its original aims. Nevertheless, it had a number of important consequences for the future devel- opment of the American republic, including the following: 1. Having survived two wars with Britain, the United States gained the respect of other nations. 2. The United States accepted Canada as a part of the British Empire. 3. Denounced for its talk of secession, the Federalist party came to an end as a national force and declined even in New England. 4. Talk of nullification and secession in New England set a precedent that would later be used by the South. 5. Abandoned by the British, American Indians were forced to surrender land to white settlement. 6. With the British naval blockade limiting European goods, U.S. facto- ries were built and Americans moved toward industrial self-sufficiency. 7. War heroes such as Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison would soon be in the forefront of a new generation of political leaders. 8. The feeling of nationalism grew stronger as did a belief that the future for the United States lay in the West and away from Europe.

Chapter 20 'Becoming a World Power, 1865 - 1917'

Since the 1790s, U.S. foreign policy had centered on expanding westward, protecting U.S. interests abroad, and limiting foreign influences in the Ameri- cas. The period after the Civil War saw the development of a booming industrial economy, which created the basis for a major shift in U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Instead of a nation that-at least since the War of 1812- had been relatively isolated from European politics, the United States became a world power controlling territories in the Caribbean and extending across the Pacific to the Philippines. How and why did the United States acquire an overseas empire and intervene in the affairs of Cuba, Mexico, and other Latin American nations? The origins of these developments appear in the years just after the Civil War. Seward, Alaska, and the French in Mexico A leading Republican of the 1850s and 1860s, William H. Seward of New York served as secretary of state (1861-1869) under both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Seward was the most influential secretary of state since John Quincy Adams (who formulated the Monroe Doctrine in 1823). During the Civil War, Seward helped prevent Great Britain and France from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy. He led the drive to annex Midway Island in the Pacific, gained rights to build a canal in Nicaragua, and purchased the vast terriory of Alaska. BECOMING A WORLD POWER, 1865-1917 409 Though a powerful advocate for expansion, Seward did not get all he wanted. For example, he failed to convince Congress to annex Hawaii and to purchase the Danish West Indies. The French in Mexico Napoleon III (nephew of the famous emperor Napoleon Bonaparte) had taken advantage of U.S. involvement in the Civil War by sending French troops to occupy Mexico. As soon as the Civil War ended in 1865, Seward invoked the Monroe Doctrine and threatened U.S. military action unless the French with- drew. Napoleon III backed down, and the French troops left Mexico. The Purchase of Alaska For decades, Russia and Great Britain both claimed the vast territory of Alaska. Russia finally assumed control and established a small colony for seal hunt- ing, but the territory soon became an economic burden because of the threat of a British takeover. Seeking buyers, Russia found Seward to be an enthusi- astic champion of the idea of the United States purchasing Alaska. As result of Seward's lobbying, and also in appreciation of Russian support during the Civil War, Congress in 1867 agreed to buy Alaska for $7.2 million. However, for many years, Americans saw no value in Alaska and referred to it derisively as "Seward's Folly" or "Seward's Icebox." The "New Imperialism" As the United States industrialized in the late 19th century, it also intensified its foreign involvement, partly because it wanted both sources of raw materials for manufacturing and worldwide markets for its growing quantity of industrial and agricultural products. In addition, many conservatives hoped that overseas territories and adventures might offer a safety valve for unhappiness at home after the Panic of 1893. They were concerned about the growing violence of labor-management disputes and the unrest of farmers. For the most part, advo- cates of an expansionist policy hoped to achieve their ends by economic and diplomatic means, not by military action. International Darwinism Darwin's concept of the survival of the fittest was applied not only to competi- tion in business but also to competition among nations and races for military advantage, colonies, and spheres of influence. Therefore, to demonstrate strength in the international arena, expansionists wanted to acquire territories overseas. They saw this expansion as an extension of the idea of manifest des- tiny into the Caribbean, Central America, and the Pacific Ocean. Imperialism Americans were not alone in pursuing imperialism, which meant either acquiring territory or gaining control over the political or economic 410 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM life of other countries. Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and other nations struggled to influence or possess weaker countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean. Some in the United States believed that the nation needed to compete with the imperialistic nations for new territory or it would be reduced to a second-class power. In the United States, advocates of American expan- sion included missionaries, politicians, naval strategists, and journalists. Missionaries In his book Our Country: Its Possible Future and Present Crisis (1885), the Reverend Josiah Strong wrote that people of Anglo-Saxon stock were "the fittest to survive." He believed that Protestant Americans had a religious duty to colonize other lands in order to spread Christianity and the benefits of their "superior" civilization (medicine, science, and technol- ogy) to less fortunate peoples of the world. Many missionaries who traveled to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific islands believed in the racial superiority and natu- ral supremacy of whites. Mission activities of their churches encouraged many Americans to support active U.S. government involvement in foreign affairs. Politicians Many in the Republican party were closely allied with busi- ness leaders. Republican politicians therefore generally endorsed the use of foreign affairs to search for new markets. Congressional leaders such as Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and the Republican governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt, were eager to build U.S. power through global expansion. Naval Power U.S. Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote an im- portant book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1890), in which he argued that a strong navy was crucial to a country's ambitions of securing foreign markets and becoming a world power. Mahan's book was widely read by prominent American citizens-as well as by political leaders in Europe and Japan. Using arguments in Mahan's book, U.S. naval strategists persuaded Congress to finance the construction of modern steel ships and encouraged the acquisition of overseas islands, such as Samoa, that were desired as coaling and supply stations so that the new fleet could project its sea power around the world. By 1900, the United States had the third largest navy in the world. Popular Press Newspaper and magazine editors found that they could increase circulation by printing adventure stories about distant and exotic places. Stories in the popular press increased public interest and stimulated demands for a larger U.S. role in world affairs. Latin America Beginning with the Monroe Doctrine in the 1820s, the United States had taken a special interest in problems of the Western Hemisphere and had assumed the role of protector of Latin America from European ambitions. Benjamin Har- rison's Secretary of State James G. Blaine of Maine played a principal role in extending this tradition. BECOMING A WORLD POWER, 1865-1917 411 Blaine and the Pan-American Conference (1889) Blaine's repeated efforts to establish closer ties between the United States and its southern neigh- bors bore fruit in 1889 with the meeting of the first Pan-American Conference in Washington. Representatives from various nations of the Western Hemi- sphere decided to create a permanent organization for international cooperation on trade and other issues. Blaine had hoped to bring about reductions in tar- iff rates. Although this goal was not achieved, the foundation was established for the larger goal of hemispheric cooperation on both economic and political issues. The Pan-American Union continues today as part of the Organization of American States, which was established in 1948. Cleveland, Olney, and the Monroe Doctrine One of the most important uses of the Monroe Doctrine in the 19th century concerned a boundary dispute between Venezuela and its neighbor-the British colony of Guiana. In 1895 and 1896, President Cleveland and Secretary of State Richard Olney insisted that Great Britain agree to arbitrate the dispute. The British initially said the matter was not the business of the United States. However, the United States argued that the Monroe Doctrine applied to the situation. If the British did not arbitrate, the United States would back up its argument with military force. Deciding that U.S. friendship was more important to its long-term interests than a boundary dispute in South America, the British agreed to U.S. demands. As it turned out, the arbitrators ruled mainly in favor of Britain, not Venezu- ela. Even so, Latin American nations appreciated U.S. efforts to protect them from European domination. Most important, the Venezuela boundary dispute marked a turning point in U.S.-British relations. From 1895 on, the two coun- tries cultivated a friendship rather than continuing their former rivalry. The friendship would prove vital for both nations in the 20th century. The Spanish-American War A principal target of American imperialism was the nearby Caribbean area. Expansionists from the South had coveted Cuba as early as the 1850s. Now, in the 1890s, large American investments in Cuban sugar, Spanish misrule of Cuba, and the Monroe Doctrine all provided justification for U.S. intervention in the Caribbean's largest island. Causes of War In the 1890s, American public opm10n was being swept by a growing wave of jingoism-an intense form of nationalism calling for an aggres- sive foreign policy. Expansionists demanded that the United States take its place with the imperialist nations of Europe as a world power. Not everyone favored such a policy. Presidents Cleveland and McKinley were among many who thought military action abroad was both morally wrong and economically unsound. Nevertheless, specific events combined with background pressures led to overwhelming popular demand for war against Spain. 412 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Cuban Revolt Cuban nationalists, after fighting but failing to overthrow Spanish colonial rule between 1868 and 1878, renewed the struggle in 1895. Through sabotage and laying waste to Cuban plantations, they hoped to either force Spain's withdrawal or pull in the United States as an ally. In response, Spain sent autocratic General Valeriano Weyler and over 100,000 troops to crush the revolt. Weyler forced civilians into armed camps, where tens of thou- sands died of starvation and disease, and gained him the title of "The Butcher" in the American press. Yellow Press Actively promoting war fever in the United States was yellow journalism, sensationalistic reporting that featured bold and lurid head- lines of crime, disaster, and scandal. Among the most sensationalistic were two New York newspapers, Joseph Pulitzer's World and William Randolph Hearst's Journal, which printed exaggerated and false accounts of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. Believing what they read daily in their newspapers, many Americans urged Congress and the president to intervene in Cuba for humanitarian rea- sons and put a stop to the atrocities and suffering. De Lome Letter (1898) One story that caused a storm of outrage was a Spanish diplomat's letter that was leaked to the press and printed on the front page of Hearst's Journal. Written by the Spanish minister to the United States, Dupuy de Lome, the letter was highly critical of President McKinley. Many considered it an official Spanish insult against the U.S. national honor. Sinking of the Maine Less than one week after the de Lome letter made headlines, a far more shocking event occurred. On February 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine was at anchor in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, when it sud- denly exploded, killing 260 Americans on board. The yellow press accused Spain of deliberately blowing up the ship, even though experts later concluded that the explosion was probably an accident. McKinley's War Message Following the sinking of the Maine, President McKinley issued an ultimatum to Spain demanding that it agree to a ceasefire in Cuba. Spain agreed to this demand, but U.S. newspapers and a majority in Congress kept clamoring for war. McKinley yielded to the public pressure in April by sending a war message to Congress. He offered four reasons for the United States to intervene in the Cuban revolution on behalf of the rebels: 1. "Put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries" in Cuba 2. Protect the lives and property of U.S. citizens living in Cuba 3. End "the very serious injury to the commerce, trade, and business of our people" 4. End "the constant menace to our peace" arising from disorder in Cuba BECOMING A WORLD POWER, 1865-1917 413 Teller Amendment Responding to the president's message, Congress passed a joint resolution on April 20 authorizing war. Part of the resolution, the Teller Amendment, declared that the United States had no intention of taking political control of Cuba and that, once peace was restored to the island, the Cuban people would control their own government. Fighting the War The first shots of the Spanish-American War were fired in Manila Bay in the Philippines, thousands of miles from Cuba. The last shots were fired only a few months later in August. So swift was the U.S. victory that Secretary of State John Hay called it "a splendid little war." The Philippines Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley's assistant secretary of the navy, was an expansionist who was eager to show off the power of his coun- try's new, all-steel navy. Anticipating war and recognizing the strategic value of Spain's territories in the Pacific, Roosevelt had ordered a fleet commanded by Commodore George Dewey to the Philippines. This large group of islands had been under Spanish control ever since the 1500s. On May 1, shortly after war was declared, Commodore Dewey's fleet fired on Spanish ships in Manila Bay. The Spanish fleet was soon pounded into sub- mission by U.S. naval guns. The fight on land took longer. Allied with Filipino rebels, U.S. troops captured the city of Manila on August 13. Invasion of Cuba More troublesome than the Philippines was the U.S. effort in Cuba. An ill-prepared, largely volunteer force landed in Cuba by the end of June. Here the most lethal enemy proved to be not Spanish bullets but tropical diseases. More than 5,000 American soldiers died of malaria, typhoid, and dysentery, while fewer than 500 died in battle. Attacks by both American and Cuban forces succeeded in defeating the much larger but poorly led Spanish army. Next to Dewey's victory in Manila Bay, the most celebrated event of the war was a cavalry charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba by the Rough Riders, a regiment of volunteers led by Theodore Roosevelt, who had resigned his navy post to take part in the war. Roosevelt's volunteers were aided in victory by veteran regiments of African Americans. Less heroic but more important than the taking of San Juan Hill was the success of the U.S. Navy in destroying the Spanish fleet at Santiago Bay on July 3. Without a navy, Spain realized that it could not continue fighting, and in early August 1898 asked for U.S. terms of peace. Annexation of Hawaii Since the mid-1800s, American missionaries and entrepreneurs had settled in the Pacific islands of Hawaii. Expansionists coveted the islands and, in 1893, American settlers aided in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarch, Queen Liliuokalani. However, President Cleveland opposed imperialism and blocked Republican efforts to annex Hawaii. Then the outbreak of war in 414 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM the Philippines gave Congress and President McKinley the pretext to complete annexation in July 1898. The Hawaiian islands became a territory of the United States in 1900 and the fiftieth state in the Union in August 1959. Controversy Over the Treaty of Peace Far more controversial than the war itself were the terms of the treaty of peace signed in Paris on December 10, 1898. It provided for (1) recognition of Cuban independence, (2) U.S. acquisition of two Spanish islands Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and Guam in the Pacific, and (3) U.S. acquisition of the Philippines in return for payment to Spain of $20 million. Since the avowed purpose of the U.S. war effort was to liberate Cuba, Americans accepted this provision of the treaty. However, many were not prepared for taking over a large Pacific island nation, the Philippines, as a colony. The Philippine Question Controversy over the Philippine question took many months longer to resolve than the brief war with Spain. Opinion both in Congress and the public at large became sharply divided between imperial- ists who favored annexing the Philippines and anti-imperialists who opposed it. In the Senate, where a two-thirds vote was required to ratify the Treaty of Paris, anti-imperialists were determined to defeat the treaty because of its pro- vision for acquiring the Philippines. Anti-imperialists argued that, for the first time, the United States would be taking possession of a heavily populated area whose people were of a different race and culture. Such action, they thought, violated the principles of the Declaration of Independence by depriving Filipi- nos of the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and also would entangle the United States in the political conflicts of Asia. On February 6, 1899, the the Treaty of Paris (including Philippine annexa- tion) came to a vote in Congress. The treaty was approved 57 to 27, just one vote more than the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution for rati- fication. The anti-imperialists fell just two votes short of defeating the treaty. The people of the Philippines were outraged that their hopes for national independence from Spain were now being denied by the United States. Fil- ipino nationalist leader Emilio Aguinaldo had fought alongside U.S. troops during the Spanish-American War. Now he led bands of guerrilla fighters in a war against U.S. control. It took U.S. troops three years and cost thousands of lives on both sides before the insurrection finally ended in 1902. Other Results of the War Imperialism remained a major issue in the United States even after ratification of the Treaty of Paris. An Anti-Imperialist League, led by William Jennings Bryan, rallied opposition to further acts of expansion in the Pacific. Insular Cases. One question concerned the constitutional rights of the Philippine people: Did the Constitution follow the flag? In other words, did the provisions of the U.S. Constitution apply to whatever territories fell under BECOMING A WORLD POWER, 1865-1917 415 U.S. control, including the Philippines and Puerto Rico? Bryan and other anti- imperialists argued in the affirmative, while leading imperialists argued in the negative. The issue was resolved in favor of the imperialists in a series of Supreme Court cases (1901-1903) known as the insular (island) cases. The Court ruled that constitutional rights were not automatically extended to ter- ritorial possessions and that the power to decide whether or not to grant such rights belonged to Congress. Cuba and the Platt Amendment (1901) Previously, the Teller Amend- ment to the war resolution of 1898 had guaranteed U.S. respect for Cuba's sovereignty as an independent nation. Nevertheless, U.S. troops remained in Cuba from 1898 until 1901. In the latter year, Congress made withdrawal of troops conditional upon Cuba's acceptance of terms included in an amend- ment to an army appropriations bill-the Platt Amendment of 1901. Bitterly resented by Cuban nationalists, the Platt Amendment required Cuba to agree ( 1) to never sign a treaty with a foreign power that impaired its independence, (2) to permit the United States to intervene in Cuba's affairs to preserve its independence and maintain law and order, and (3) to allow the U.S. to maintain naval bases in Cuba, including one permanent base at Guantanamo Bay. A Cuban convention reluctantly accepted these terms, adding them to its country's new constitution. In effect, the Platt Amendment made Cuba a U.S. protectorate. As a result, Cuba's foreign policy would, for many years, be sub- ject to U.S. oversight and control. Election of 1900 The Republicans renominated President McKinley, along with war hero and New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt for vice president. The Democrats, as they had in 1896, nominated William Jennings Bryan. He again argued for free silver and vigorously attacked the growth of American imperialism. However, most Americans accepted the recently enacted gold standard and saw the new territory, including the Philippines, acquired during the war as an accomplished fact. With growing national economic prosperity, the electorate gave McKinley a larger margin of victory than in 1896. Recognition of U.S. Power One consequence of the Spanish-American War was its effect on the way both Americans and Europeans thought about U.S. power. The decisive U.S. victory in the war filled Americans with national pride. Southerners shared in this pride and became more attached to the Union after their bitter experience in the 1860s. At the same time, France, Great Britain, and other European nations recognized that the United States was a first-class power with a strong navy and a new willingness to take an active role in international affairs. Open Door Policy in China Europeans were further impressed by U.S. involvement in global politics as a result of John Hay's policies toward China. As McKinley's secretary of state, Hay was alarmed that the Chinese empire, weakened by political corruption 416 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM and failure to modernize, was falling under the control of various outside pow- ers. In the 1890s, Russia, Japan, Great Britain, France, and Germany had all established spheres of influence in China, meaning that they could dominate trade and investment within their sphere (a particular port or region of China) and shut out competitors. To prevent the United States from losing access to the lucrative China trade, Hay dispatched a diplomatic note in 1899 to nations controlling spheres of influence. He asked them to accept the concept of an Open Door, by which all nations would have equal trading privileges in China. The replies to Hay's note were evasive. However, because no nation rejected the concept, Hay declared that all had accepted the Open Door policy. The press hailed Hay's initiative as a diplomatic triumph. Boxer Rebellion (1900) As the 19th century ended, nationalism and xenophobia (hatred and fear of foreigners) were on the rise in China. In 1900, a secret society of Chinese nationalists-the Society of Harmonious Fists, or Boxers-attacked foreign settlements and murdered dozens of Christian mis- sionaries. To protect American lives and property, U.S. troops participated in an international force that marched into Peking (Beijing) and quickly crushed the rebellion of the Boxers. The countries forced China to pay a huge sum in indemnities, which further weakened the imperial regime. Hay's Second Round of Notes Hay feared that the expeditionary force in China might attempt to occupy the country and destroy its independence. In 1900, therefore, he wrote a second note to the imperialistic powers stating U.S. commitment to (1) preserve China's territorial integrity as well as (2) safeguard "equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese empire." Hay's first and second notes set U.S. policy on China not only for the administra- tions of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt but also for future presidents. In the 1930s, this Open Door policy for China would strongly influence U.S. relations with Japan. Hay's notes in themselves did not deter other nations from exploiting the situation in China. For the moment, European powers were kept from grabbing larger pieces of China by the political rivalries among themselves. Theodore Roosevelt's Big-Stick Policy In 1901, only a few months after being inaugurated president for a second time, McKinley was fatally shot by an anarchist (person who opposed all gov- ernment). Succeeding him in office was the Republican vice president-the young expansionist and hero of the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roos- evelt. Describing his foreign policy, the new president had once said that it was his motto to "speak softly and carry a big stick." The press therefore applied the label "big stick" to Roosevelt's aggressive foreign policy. By acting boldly and decisively in a number of situations, Roosevelt attempted to build the reputa- tion of the U.S. as a world power. Imperialists applauded his every move, but critics disliked breaking the tradition of noninvolvement in global politics. BECOMING A WORLD POWER, 1865-1917 417 The Panama Canal As a result of the Spanish-American War, the new American empire stretched from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean to the Philippines in the Pacific. As a strate- gic necessity for holding on to these far-flung islands, the United States desired a canal through Central America to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, building a canal would be difficult. The French had already failed to complete a canal through the tropic jungles. And before the United States could even try, it needed to negotiate an agreement with the British to abrogate ( cancel) an earlier treaty of 1850 in which any canal in Central America was to be under joint British-U.S. control. This agreement, called the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, was signed in 1901. With the British agreement to let United States build a canal alone, the young and activist President Roosevelt took charge. Revolution in Panama Roosevelt was eager to begin the construction of a canal through the narrow but rugged terrain of the isthmus of Panama. He was frustrated, however, by Colombia's control of this isthmus and its refusal to agree to U.S. terms for digging the canal through its territory. Los- ing patience with Colombia's demands of more money and sovereignty over the canal, Roosevelt orchestrated a revolt for Panama's independence in 1903. With the support of the U.S. Navy, the rebellion succeeded immediately and almost without bloodshed. However, the new government of an independent Panama had to sign the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903 granting the United States all rights over the 51-mile-long and IO-mile-wide Canal Zone as "if it were sovereign ... in perpetuity " to keep U.S. protection. Years later, Roos- evelt boasted, "I took Canal Zone and let Congress debate." Building the Canal Started in 1904, the Panama Canal was completed in 1914. Hundreds of laborers lost their lives in the effort. The work was com- pleted thanks in great measure to the skills of two Army colonels-George Goethals, the chief engineer of the canal, and Dr. William Gorgas, whose efforts eliminated the mosquitoes that spread deadly yellow fever. Most Americans approved of Roosevelt's determination to build the canal, but many were unhappy with his high-handed tactics to secure the Canal Zone. Latin Americans were especially resentful. To compensate, Congress finally voted in 1921 to pay Colombia an indemnity of $25 million for its loss of Panama. In 1999, United States returned the Canal Zone to the Republic of Panama to end the growing bitterness over the original treaty ( See Chapter 29). The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine Another application of Roosevelt's big-stick diplomacy involved Latin Ameri- can nations that were in deep financial trouble and could not pay their debts to European creditors. For example, in 1902, the British dispatched warships to Venezuela to force that country to pay its debts. In 1904, it appeared that European powers stood ready to intervene in Santo Domingo (the Dominican 418 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Republic) for the same reason. Rather than let Europeans intervene in Latin America-a blatant violation of the Monroe Doctrine-Roosevelt declared in December 1904 that the United States would intervene instead, whenever necessary. This policy became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Mon- roe Doctrine. It meant that the United States would send gunboats to a Latin American country that was delinquent in paying its debts. U.S. sailors and marines would then occupy the country's major ports to manage the collection of customs taxes until European debts were satisfied. Over the next 20 years, U.S. presidents used the Roosevelt Corollary to justify sending U.S. forces into Haiti, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. One long-term result of such interventions was poor U.S. relations with the entire region of Latin America. East Asia As the 20th century began, Japan and the United States were both relatively new imperialist powers in East Asia. Their relationship during Theodore Roose- velt's presidency, though at first friendly, grew increasingly competitive. Russo-Japanese War Imperialist rivalry between Russia and Japan led to war in 1904, a war Japan was winning. To end the conflict, Roosevelt arranged a diplomatic conference between the two foes at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1905. Although both Japan and Russia agreed to the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japanese nationalists blamed the United States for not giving their country all that they believed they deserved from Russia. "Gentlemen's Agreement" A major cause of friction between Japan and the United States concerned the laws of California, which discriminated against Japanese Americans. San Francisco's practice of requiring Japanese American children to attend segregated schools was considered a national insult in Japan. In 1908, President Roosevelt arranged a compromise by means of an informal understanding, or "gentlemen's agreement." The Japanese government secretly agreed to restrict the emigration of Japanese workers to the United States in return for Roosevelt persuading California to repeal its discriminatory laws. Great White Fleet To demonstrate U.S. naval power to Japan and other nations, Roosevelt sent a fleet of battleships on an around-the-world cruise (1907-1909). The great white ships made an impressive sight, and the Japa- nese government warmly welcomed their arrival in Tokyo Bay. Root-Takahira Agreement (1908) An important executive agreement was concluded between the United States and Japan in 1908. Secretary of State Elihu Root and Japanese Ambassador Takahira exchanged notes pledging mutual respect for each nation's Pacific possessions and support for the Open Door policy in China. BECOMING A WORLD POWER, 1865-1917 419 Peace Efforts Roosevelt saw his big-stick policies as a way to promote peaceful solutions to international disputes. For his work in settling the Russo-Japanese War, Roos- evelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. In the same year, he helped arrange and direct the Algeciras Conference in Spain, which succeeded in set- tling a conflict between France and Germany over claims to Morocco. The president also directed U.S. participation at the Second International Peace Conference at the Hague in 1907, which discussed rules for limiting warfare. As an expansionist, interventionist, and finally as an internationalist, Theodore Roosevelt embodied the vigor of a youthful nation arriving on world stage. William Howard Taft and Dollar Diplomacy Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft (1909-1913), did not carry a big stick. He adopted a foreign policy that was mildly expansionist but depended more on investors' dollars than on the navy's battleships. His policy of promot- ing U.S. trade by supporting American enterprises abroad was known as dollar diplomacy. Dollar Diplomacy in East Asia and Latin America Taft believed that private American financial investment in China and Central America would lead to greater stability there, while at the same time promot- ing U.S. business interests. His policy, however, was thwarted by one major obstacle: growing anti-imperialism both in the United States and overseas. Railroads in China Taft first tested his policy in China. Wanting U.S. bankers to be included in a British, French, and German plan to invest in railroads in China, Taft succeeded in securing American participation in an agreement signed in 1911. In the northern province of Manchuria, however, the United States was excluded from an agreement between Russia and Japan to build railroads there. In direct defiance of the U.S. Open Door policy, Russia and Japan agreed to treat Manchuria as a jointly held sphere of influence. Intervention in Nicaragua To protect American investments, the United States intervened in Nicaragua's financial affairs in 1911, and sent in marines when a civil war broke out in 1912. The marines remained, except for a short period, until 1933. The lodge Corollary Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, was respon- sible for another action that alienated both Latin America and Japan. A group of Japanese investors wanted to buy a large part of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, extending south of California. Fearing that Japan's government might be secretly scheming to acquire the land, Lodge introduced and the Senate in 1912 passed a resolution known as the Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The resolution stated that non-European powers (such as Japan) would be excluded from owning territory in the Western Hemisphere. President Taft opposed the corollary, which also offended Japan and angered Latin American countries. 420 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Woodrow Wilson and Foreign Affairs In his campaign for president in 1912, the Democratic candidate Wood- row Wilson called for a New Freedom in government and promised a moral approach to foreign affairs. Wilson said he opposed imperialism and the big- stick and dollar-diplomacy policies of his Republican predecessors. Wilson's Moral Diplomacy In his first term as president (1913-1917), Wilson had limited success apply- ing a high moral standard to foreign relations. He and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan hoped to demonstrate that the United States respected other nations' rights and would support the spread of democracy. Hoping to demonstrate that his presidency was opposed to self-interested imperial- ism, Wilson took steps to correct what he viewed as wrongful policies of the past. U.S. TERRITORIES AND PROTECTORATES, 1917 -Protectorates - Intervention 1000 Miles 1000 Kilometers N D� MIDWAY annexed 186 7 ALASKA'. purchased 1867; territory 912 WAKEI. annexed 1899 '·· .... , HAWAIIAN IS. :·: \··. Q annexed 1898 territory 1900 . . � ... : . .. . • , . ....- AMERICAN SAMOA 9�' territory 1899 PACIFIC OCEAN BECOMING A WORLD POWER, 1865-1917 421 The Philippines Wilson won passage of the Jones Act of 1916, which (1) granted full territorial status to that country, (2) guaranteed a bill of rights and universal male suffrage to Filipino citizens, and (3) promised independence for the Philippines as soon as a stable government was established. Puerto Rico An act of Congress in 1917 granted U.S. citizenship to all the inhabitants and also provided for limited self-government. The Panama Canal Wilson persuaded Congress in 1914 to repeal an act that had granted U.S. ships an exemption from paying the standard canal tolls charged other nations. Wilson's policy on Panama Canal tolls angered Ameri- can nationalists such as Roosevelt and Lodge but pleased the British, who had strongly objected to the U.S. exemption. Conciliation Treaties Wilson's commitment to the ideals of democracy and peace was fully shared by his famous secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan's pet project was to negotiate treaties in which nations pledged to (1) submit disputes to international commissions and (2) observe a one-year cooling-off period before taking military action. Bryan arranged, with Wil- son's approval, 30 such conciliation treaties. U.S. INTERVENTION IN THE CARIBBEAN, 1898 TO 1917 ' I UNITED ST A TES 0 500 Miles 0 500 Kilometers • I) �<, GULF OF ;"l..f_ � ATLANTIC MEXICO · 4l0 � �"' � OCEAN ··:�;;;DOMINICAN v�trN � c03� • REPUBLIC ISLANDS N • PACIFIC OCEAN .. � / a---.... � �� ... ·. ,.. . ..__., HAITI PUERTO :�.: JAMAICA RICO @; (BR.) o;i C,,qRIBBEAN SEA (;) 0 I l l\ ? VENEZUELA ,/ '--, rJ ---, I I 'y \ ,-/ COLOMBIA \ c-'- 1 ' \ J /,,,,-,1.._l'.J/ 422 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Military Intervention under Wilson Wilson's commitement to democracy and anticolonialm had a blind spot with respect to the Mexico and countries of Central America and the Caribbean. He went far beyond both Roosevelt and Taft in his use of U.S. marines to straighten out financial and political troubles in the region. He kept marines in Nicaragua and ordered U.S. troops into Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916. He argued that such intervention was necessary to maintain stability in the region and protect the Panama Canal. Wilson's moral approach to foreign affairs was severely tested by a revo- lution and civil war in Mexico. As a supporter of democracy, Wilson refused to recognize the military dictatorship of General Victoriano Huerta, who had seized power in 1913 by having the democratically elected president killed. Tampico Incident To aid revolutionaries fighting Huerta, Wilson called for an arms embargo against the Mexican government and sent a fleet to block- ade the port of Vera Cruz. In 1914, several U.S. sailors went ashore at Tampico where they were arrested by Mexican authorities. They were soon released. However, Huerta refused to apologize, as demanded by a U.S. naval officer. Wilson retaliated by ordering the U.S. Navy to occupy Veracruz. War seemed imminent. It was averted, however, when South America's ABC powers- Argentina, Brazil, and Chile-offered to mediate the dispute. This was the first dispute in the Americas to be settled through joint mediation. Pancho Villa and the U.S. Expeditionary Force Huerta fell from power in late 1914. Replacing him was a more democratic regime led by Venustiano Carranza. Almost immediately, the new government was challenged by a band of rebels loyal to Pancho Villa. Hoping to destabilize his opponent's govern- ment, Villa led raids across the U.S.-Mexican border and murdered several people in Texas and New Mexico. In March 1916, President Wilson ordered General John J. Pershing and an "expeditionary force" to pursue Villa into northern Mexico. They failed to capture Villa. President Carranza protested the American presence in Mexico. In January 1917, the growing possibility of U.S. entry into World War I caused Wilson to withdraw Pershing's troops.

Chapter 14 'The Civil War, 1861 - 1865'

The Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy (1861-1865) was the most costly of all American wars in terms of the loss of human life-and also the most destructive war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere. The deaths of 750,000 people, a true national tragedy, constituted only part of the impact of the war on American society. Most important, the Civil War freed 4 million people from slavery, giving the nation what President Lincoln called a "new birth of freedom." The war also transformed American society by accelerating industrialization and modernization in the North and destroying much of the South. These changes were so fundamental and profound that some historians refer to the Civil War as the Second American Revolution. While this chapter summarizes the major military aspects of the Civil War, it, like the AP exam, emphasizes the social, economic, and political changes that took place during the war. The War Begins When Lincoln took office as the first Republican president in March 1861, peo- ple wondered if he would challenge the secession of South Carolina and other states militarily. In his inaugural address, Lincoln assured Southerners that he would not interfere with slavery. At the same time, he warned, no state had the right to break up the Union. He concluded by appealing for restraint: In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 268 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Fort Sumter Despite the president's message of both conciliation and warning, the danger of a war breaking out was acute. Most critical was the status of two federal forts in states that had seceded. One of these, Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was cut off from vital supplies and reinforcements by Southern control of the harbor. Rather than either giving up Fort Sumter or attempting to defend it, Lincoln announced that he was sending provisions of food to the small federal garrison. He thus gave South Carolina the choice of either permitting the fort to hold out or opening fire with its shore batter- ies. Carolina's guns thundered their reply and thus, on April 12, 1861, the war began. The attack on Fort Sumter and its capture after two days of incessant pounding united most Northerners behind a patriotic fight to save the Union. Use of Executive Power More than any previous president, Lincoln acted in unprecedented ways, drawing upon his powers as both chief executive and commander in chief, often without the authorization or approval of Con- gress. For example, right after the Fort Sumter crisis he (1) called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the "insurrection" in the Confederacy, (2) authorized spending for a war, and (3) suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas cor- pus. Since Congress was not in session, the president acted completely on his own authority. Lincoln later explained that he had to take strong measures without congressional approval "as indispensable to the public safety." Secession of the Upper South Before the attack on Fort Sumter, only seven states of the Deep South had seceded. After it became clear that Lincoln would use troops in the crisis, four states of the Upper South-Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkan- sas-also seceded and joined the Confederacy. The Confederates then moved their capital to Richmond, Virginia. The people of western Virginia remained loyal to the Union, and the region became a separate state in 1863. Keeping the Border States in the Union Four other slaveholding states might have seceded, but instead remained in the Union. The decisions of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky not to join the Confederacy was partly due to Union sentiment in those states and partly the result of shrewd federal policies. In Maryland, pro-secessionists attacked Union troops and threatened the railroad to Washington. The Union army resorted to martial law to keep the state under federal control. In Mis- souri, the presence of U.S. troops prevented the pro-South elements in the state from gaining control, although guerrilla forces sympathetic to the Confeder- acy were active throughout the war. In Kentucky, the state legislature voted to remain neutral in the conflict. Lincoln initially respected its neutrality and waited for the South to violate it before moving in federal troops. Keeping the border states in the Union was a primary military and political goal for Lincoln. Their loss would have increased the Confederate popula- tion by more than 50 percent and would have severely weakened the North's THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 269 strategic position for conducting the war. Partly to avoid alienating Unionists in the border states, Lincoln rejected initial calls for the emancipation of slaves. Wartime Advantages The Union and the Confederacy each started the war with some strengths and some weaknesses. Military The Confederacy entered the war with the advantage of having to fight only a defensive war to win, while the Union had to conquer an area as large as Western Europe. The Confederates had to move troops and sup- plies shorter distances than the Union. It had a long, indented coastline that was difficult to blockade and, most important, experienced military leaders and high troop morale. The Union hoped that its population of 22 million against the Confederate's population of only 5.5 million free whites would work to its favor in a war of attrition. The North's population advantage was enhanced dur- ing the war by 800,000 immigrants. Emancipation also brought 180,000 African Americans into the Union army in the critical final years of the war. The Union could also count on a loyal U.S. Navy, which ultimately gave it command of the rivers and territorial waters. Economic The Union dominated the nation's economy, controlling most of the banking and capital of the country, more than 85 percent of the factories, more than 70 percent of the railroads, and even 65 percent of the farmland. The skills of Northern clerks and bookkeepers proved valuable in the logistical sup- port of large military operations. Confederates hoped that European demand for its cotton would bring recognition and financial aid. Like other rebel move- ments in history, the Confederates counted on outside help to be successful. Political The two sides had distinct goals. The Confederates were strug- gling for independence while the Union was fighting to preserve the Union. However, the ideology of states' rights proved a serious liability for the new Confederate government. The irony was that in order to win the war, the Con- federates needed a strong central government with strong public support. The Confederates had neither, while the Union had a well-established central gov- ernment, and in Abraham Lincoln and in the Republican and Democratic parties it had experienced politicians with a strong popular base. The ultimate hope of the Confederates was that the people of the Union would tum against Lincoln and the Republicans and quit the war because it was too costly. The Confederate States of America The Confederate constitution was modeled after the U.S. Constitution, except that it provided a single six-year term for the president and gave the president an item veto (the power to veto only part of a bill). Its constitution denied the Confederate congress the powers to levy a protective tariff and to appropri- ate funds for internal improvements, but it did prohibit the foreign slave trade. President Jefferson Davis tried to increase his executive powers during the war, but Southern governors resisted attempts at centralization, some holding back troops and resources to protect their own states. At one point, Vice President 270 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Alexander H. Stephens, in defense of states' rights, even urged the secession of Georgia in response to the "despotic" actions of the Confederate government. The Confederacy was chronically short of money. It tried loans, income taxes (including a 10 percent tax in-kind on farm produce), and even impress- ment of private property, but these revenues paid for only a small part of war costs. The government issued more than $1 billion in paper money, so much that it caused severe inflation. By the end of the war, the value of a Confeder- ate dollar was less than two cents. The Confederate congress nationalized the railroads and encouraged industrial development. The Confederacy sustained nearly 1 million troops at its peak, but a war of attrition doomed its efforts. First Years of a Long War: 1861-1862 People at first expected the war to last no more than a few weeks. Lincoln called up the first volunteers for an enlistment period of only 90 days. "On to Richmond!" was the optimistic cry, but as Americans soon learned, it would take almost four years of ferocious fighting before Union troops finally did march into the Confederate capital. First Battle of Bull Run In the first major battle of the war (July 1861), 30,000 federal troops marched from Washington, D.C., to attack Confeder- ate forces positioned near Bull Run Creek at Manassas Junction, Virginia. Just as the Union forces seemed close to victory, Confederate reinforcements under General Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson counterattacked and sent the inex- perienced Union troops in disorderly and panicky flight back to Washington (together with civilian curiosity-seekers and picnickers). The battle ended the illusion of a short war and also promoted the myth that the Rebels were invin- cible in battle. Union Strategy General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, veteran of the 1812 and Mexican wars, devised a three-part strategy for winning a long war: • Use the U.S. Navy to blockade Southern ports (called the Anaconda Plan), cutting off essential supplies from reaching the Confederacy • Take control of the Mississippi River, dividing the Confederacy in two • Raise and train an army 500,000 strong to conquer Richmond The first two parts of the strategy proved easier to achieve than the third, but ultimately all three were important in achieving Northern victory. After the Union's defeat at Bull Run, federal armies experienced a succes- sion of crushing defeats as they attempted various campaigns in Virginia. Each was less successful than the one before. Peninsula Campaign General George B. McClellan, the new commander of the Union army in the East, insisted that his troops be given a long period of training before going into battle. Finally, after many delays that sorely tested Lincoln's patience, McClellan's army invaded Virginia in March 1862. The THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 271 Union army was stopped as a result of brilliant tactical moves by Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who emerged as the commander of the South's eastern forces. After five months, McClellan was forced to retreat and was ordered back to the Potomac, where he was replaced by General John Pope. THE CIVIL WAR: THE UNION VS. THE CONFEDERACY I �- - D Confederacy D Border states __ /,") --- , ..... ,-, \ I I X Major battle J - 1 Pennsylvania \ 0 0 100 200 Miles \ Philadelphia)N J 1 ·\ Gettysburg X -1t 1 · · 100 200 300Kilometers I \ 1 1863 ------o\"- ---------, j Indiana L Ohlo ,--;'.��f�i:11;�4 ie� t ' ��l:� \ ', .,.j �, __ 1,_! 1f63 V irginia 1 ,, t' W.Va. tRichmond0 I I I I I I I I Missouri , .... rv' ,_ ) X �,,.....,;-- ,,_,...-Appomattox• Monitorvs. 1'::, Kentucky ( ��§------ Merrimac -,1 -----�--,,....--- 1862 ° '------------"'\ \ I T;;;:s;:e- /:-1 North Carolina I �- Shiloh Chattanooga ( ,... \ ,...----�, ___ _ I I l Arkansas I I I X 1862 !, __ ..!:'.- -r -' ', -----1 ------ -, 1 South Carolina-- I \ -\ • 1 1 ' C I b' I I XAtlanta ', o um ,a l \ 1864 ,,,_ 1 Charleston (J I I . I Ft. Sumter ' Mississippi l Alabama \ Georgi a -1 '1 1861 f.., 1 ) Savannah :::; :::: Vicksburg l 1 1864 � � 1863 l ) 1 ,<,,,Y G � \ -----\--------,5' � 0 I Second Battle of Bull Run Lee took advantage of the change in Union generals to strike quickly at Pope's army in Northern Virginia. He drew Pope into a trap, then struck the enemy's flank, and sent the Union army backward to Bull Run. Pope withdrew to the defenses of Washington. Antietam Following up his victory at Bull Run, Lee led his army across the Potomac into enemy territory in Maryland. In doing so, he hoped that a major Confederate victory in a Union state would convince Britain to give official recognition and support to the Confederacy. By this time (September 1862), Lincoln had restored McClellan to command of the Union army. McClellan had the advantage of knowing Lee's battle plan, because a copy of it had been dropped accidentally by a Confederate officer. The Union army intercepted the invading Confederates at Antietam Creek in the Maryland town of Sharpsburg. 272 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Here the bloodiest single day of combat in the entire war took place, a day in which more than 22,000 soldiers were killed or wounded. Unable to break through Union lines, Lee's army retreated to Virginia. Dis- appointed with McClellan for failing to pursue Lee's weakened and retreating army, Lincoln removed him for a final time as the Union commander. The presi- dent complained that his general had a "bad case of the slows." While a draw on the battlefield, Antietam proved to be a decisive battle because the Confederates failed to get what they so urgently needed-open recognition and aid from a foreign power. On the other side, Lincoln found enough encouragement in the results of Antietam to claim a Union victory. As explained later in this chapter, Lincoln used the partial triumph of Union arms to announce plans for a direct assault on the institution of slavery. Fredericksburg Replacing McClellan with the more aggressive General Ambrose Burnside, Lincoln discovered that a strategy of reckless attack could have even worse consequences than McClellan's strategy of caution and inac- tion. In December 1862, a large Union army under Burnside attacked Lee's army at Fredericksburg, Virginia, and suffered immense losses: 12,000 dead or wounded compared to 5,000 Confederate casualties. Both Union and Confed- erate generals were slow to learn that improved weaponry, especially the deadly fire from enemy artillery, took the romance out of heroic charges against entrenched positions. By the end of 1862, the awful magnitude of the war was all too clear-with no prospect of military victory for either side. The second year of war, 1862, was a disastrous one for the Union except for two engagements, one at sea and the other on the rivers of the West. Monitor vs. Merrimac The Union's hopes for winning the war depended upon its ability to maximize its economic and naval advantages by an effec- tive blockade of Confederate ports (the Anaconda plan). During McClellan's Peninsula campaign, the Union's blockade strategy was placed in jeopardy by the Confederate ironclad ship the Merrimac (a former Union ship, rebuilt and renamed the Virginia) that attacked and sunk several Union wooden ships on March 8, 1862, near Hampton Roads, Virginia. The ironclad ship seemed unstoppable. However, on March 9, the Union's own ironclad, the Monitor, engaged the Merrimac in a five-hour duel. Although the battle ended in a draw, the Monitor prevented the Confederate's formidable new weapon from chal- lenging the U.S. naval blockade. More broadly, the Monitor and the Merrimac marked a turning point in naval warfare, with vulnerable wooden ships being replaced by far more formidable ironclad ones. Grant in the West The battle of the ironclads occurred at about the same time as a far bloodier encounter in western Tennessee, a Confederate state. The Union's campaign for control of the Mississippi River was partly under the command of a West Point graduate, Ulysses S. Grant, who had joined up for the war after an unsuccessful civilian career. Striking south from Illinois in early 1862, Grant used a combination of gunboats and army maneuvers to capture Fort Henry and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River (a branch of the Mis- sissippi). These stunning victories, in which 14,000 Confederates were taken THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 273 prisoner, opened up the state of Mississippi to Union attack. A few weeks later, a Confederate army under Albert Johnston surprised Grant at Shiloh, Tennes- see, but the Union army held its ground and finally forced the Confederates to retreat after terrible losses on both sides (more than 23,000 dead and wounded). Grant's drive down the Mississippi was complemented in April 1862 by the capture of New Orleans by the Union navy under David Farragut. Foreign Affairs and Diplomacy The Confederate's hopes for securing independence hinged as much on its diplo- mats as on soldiers. Confederate leaders fully expected that cotton would indeed prove to be "king" and induce Britain or France, or both, to give direct aid to the war effort. Besides depending on cotton for their textile mills, wealthy British industrialists and members of the British aristocracy looked forward with plea- sure to the breakup of the American democratic experiment. From the Union's point of view, it was critically important to prevent the Confederacy from gain- ing the foreign support and recognition that it desperately needed. Trent Affair Britain came close to siding with the Confederacy in late 1861 over an incident at sea. Confederate diplomats James Mason and John Slidell were traveling to England on a British steamer, the Trent, on a mission to gain recognition for their government. A Union warship stopped the British ship, removed Mason and Slidell, and brought them to the United States as prisoners of war. Brit- ain threatened war over the incident unless the two diplomats were released. Despite intense public criticism, Lincoln gave in to British demands. Mason and Slidell were duly set free, but after again sailing for Europe, they failed to obtain full recognition of the Confederacy from either Britain or France. Confederate Raiders The Confederates were able to gain enough recogmt10n as a belligerent to purchase warships from British shipyards. Confederate commerce-raiders did serious harm to U.S. merchant ships. One of them, the Alabama, captured more than 60 vessels before being sunk off the coast of France by a Union warship. After the war, Great Britain eventually agreed to pay the United States $15.5 million for damages caused by the South's commerce-raiders. The U.S. minister to Britain, Charles Francis Adams, prevented a poten- tially much more serious threat. Learning that the Confederacy had arranged to purchase Laird rams (ships with iron rams) from Britain for use against the Union's naval blockade, Adams persuaded the British government to cancel the sale rather than risk war with the United States. Failure of Cotton Diplomacy In the end, the South's hopes for European intervention were disappointed. "King Cotton" did not have the power to dictate another nation's foreign policy, since Europe quickly found ways of obtaining cotton from other sources. By the time shortages of Southern cotton hit the British textile industry, adequate 274 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM shipments of cotton began arriving from Egypt and India. Also, materials other than cotton could be used for textiles, and the woolen and linen industries were not slow to take advantage of their opportunity. Two other factors went into Britain's decision not to recognize the Confed- eracy. First, as mentioned, General Lee's setback at Antietam played a role; without seeing a decisive Confederate military victory, the British government would not risk recognition. Second, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (January 1863) made the end of slavery an objective of the Union, a position that appealed strongly to Britain's working class. While conservative leaders of Britain were sympathetic to the Confederates, they could not defy the pro- Northern, antislavery feelings of the British majority. The End of Slavery Even though Lincoln in the 1850s spoke out against slavery as "an unquali- fied evil," as president he seemed hesitant to take action against slavery as advocated by many of his Republican supporters. Lincoln's concerns included (1) keeping the support of the border states, (2) the constitutional protections of slavery, (3) the racial prejudice of many Northerners, and (4) the fear that premature action could be overturned in the next election. All these concerns made the timing and method of ending slavery fateful decisions. Enslaved individuals were freed during the Civil War as a result of military events, gov- ernmental policy, and their own actions. Confiscation Acts Early in the war (May 1861), Union General Benjamin Butler refused to return captured slaves to their Confederate owners, arguing that they were "contra- band of war." The power to seize enemy property used to wage war against the United States was the legal basis for the first Confiscation Act passed by Congress in August 1861. Soon after the passage of this act, thousands of "contrabands" were using their feet to escape slavery by finding their way into Union camps. In July 1862, Congress passed a second Confiscation Act that freed persons enslaved by anyone engaged in rebellion against the United States. The law also empowered the president to use freed slaves in the Union army in any capacity, including battle. Emancipation Proclamation By July 1862, Lincoln had already decided to use his powers as commander in chief of the armed forces to free all enslaved persons in the states then at war with the United States. He justified his policy as a "military necessity." Lincoln delayed announcement of the policy, however, until he could win the support of conservative Northerners. At the same time, he encouraged the border states to come up with plans for emancipation, with compensation to the owners. After the Battle of Antietam, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a warning that enslaved people in all states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be "then, thenceforward, and forever free." As promised, on the first THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 275 day of the new year, 1863, the president issued his Emancipation Proclama- tion. After listing states from Arkansas to Virginia that were in rebellion, the proclamation stated: I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, shall recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. Consequences Since the president's proclamation applied only to enslaved people residing in Confederate states outside Union control, it immediately freed only about 1 percent of slaves. Slavery in the border states was allowed to continue. Even so, the proclamation was of major importance because it enlarged the purpose of the war. For the first time, Union armies were fighting against slavery, not merely against secession. The proclamation added weight to the Confiscation acts, increasing the number of slaves who sought freedom by fleeing to Union lines. Thus, with each advance of Northern troops into the South, abolition advanced as well. As an added blow to the Confederacy, the proclamation also authorized the use of freed slaves as Union soldiers. Sud- denly, the Union army had thousands of dedicated new recruits. Thirteenth Amendment Standing in the way of full emancipation were phrases in the U.S. Constitu- tion that had long legitimized slavery. To free all enslaved people in the border states, the country needed to ratify a constitutional amendment. Even the abo- litionists gave Lincoln credit for playing an active role in the political struggle to secure enough votes in Congress to pass the 13th Amendment. By Decem- ber 1865 (months after Lincoln's death), this amendment abolishing slavery was ratified by the required number of states. The language of the amendment could not be simpler or clearer: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Freedmen in the War After the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1863), hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks-approximately one-quarter of the slave population-walked away from slavery to seek the protection of the approaching Union armies. Almost 200,000 African Americans, most of whom were newly freed slaves, served in the Union army and navy. Segregated into all-black units, such as the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, black troops performed courageously under fire and won the respect of Union white soldiers. More than 37,000 African Ameri- can soldiers died in what became known as the Army of Freedom. 276 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Union Triumphs, 1863-1865 By early 1863, the fortunes of war were turning against the Confederates. Although General Lee started the year with another major victory at Chancel- lorsville, Virginia, the Confederate economy was in desperate shape, as planters and farmers lost control of their slave labor force, and an increasing number of poorly provisioned soldiers were deserting from the Confederate army. Turning Point The decisive turning point in the war came in the first week of July when the Confederacy suffered two crushing defeats in the West and the East. Vicksburg In the West, by the spring of 1863, Union forces controlled New Orleans as well as most of the Mississippi River and surrounding val- ley. Thus, the Union objective of securing complete control of the Mississippi River was close to an accomplished fact when General Grant began his siege of the heavily fortified city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Union artillery bombarded Vicksburg for seven weeks before the Confederates finally surrendered the city (and nearly 29,000 soldiers) on July 4. Federal warships now controlled the full length of the Mississippi and cut off Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas from the rest of the Confederacy. Gettysburg Meanwhile, in the East, Lee again took the offensive by leading an army into enemy territory: the Union states of Maryland and Pennsyl- vania. If he could either destroy the Union army or capture a major Northern city, Lee hoped to force the Union to call for peace-or at least to gain foreign intervention on behalf of the Confederacy. On July 1, 1863, the invading Con- federate army surprised Union units at Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania. What followed was the most crucial battle of the war and the bloodiest, with more than 50,000 casualties. Lee's assault on Union lines on the second and third days, including a famous but unsuccessful charge led by George Pickett, proved futile, and destroyed a key part of the Confederate army. What was left of Lee's forces retreated to Virginia, never to regain the offensive. Grant in Command Lincoln finally found a general who could fight and win. In early 1864, he brought Grant east to Virginia and made him commander of all the Union armies. Grant settled on a strategy of war by attrition. He aimed to wear down the Confederate's armies and systematically destroy their vital lines of supply. Fighting doggedly for months, Grant's Army of the Potomac suffered heavier casualties than Lee's forces in the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. But by never letting up, Grant succeeded in reducing Lee's army in each battle and forcing it into a defensive line around Richmond. In this final stage of the Civil War, the fighting foreshadowed the trench warfare that would later characterize World War I. No longer was this a war "between gentlemen" but a modern "total" war against civilians as well as soldiers. Sherman's March The chief instrument of Grant's aggressive tactics for subduing the South was a hardened veteran, General William Tecumseh THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 277 Sherman. Leading a force of 100,000 men, Sherman set out from Chattanooga, Tennessee, on a campaign of deliberate destruction that went clear across the state of Georgia and then swept north into South Carolina. Sherman was a pioneer of the tactics of total war. Marching relentlessly through Georgia, his troops destroyed everything in their path, burning cotton fields, barns, and houses-everything the enemy might use to survive. Sherman took Atlanta in September 1864 in time to help Lincoln's prospects for reelection. He marched into Savannah in December and completed his campaign in February 1865 by setting fire to Columbia, the capital of South Carolina and cradle of secession. Sherman's march had its intended effects: helping to break the spirit of the Confederacy and destroying its will to fight on. The Election of 1864 The Democrats' nominee for president was the pop- ular General George McClellan, whose platform calling for peace had wide appeal among millions of war-weary voters. The Republicans renamed their party the Unionist party as a way of attracting the votes of "War Democrats" (those who disagreed with the Democratic platform). A brief "ditch-Lincoln" movement fizzled out, and the Republican (Unionist) convention again chose Lincoln as its presidential candidate and a loyal War Democrat from Tennes- see, Senator Andrew Johnson, as his running mate. The Lincoln-Johnson ticket won 212 electoral votes to the Democrats' 21. The popular vote, however, was much closer, for McClellan took 45 percent of the total votes cast. The End of the War The effects of the Union blockade, combined with Sherman's march of destruc- tion, spread hunger through much of the South in the winter of 1864-1865. On the battlefront in Virginia, Grant continued to outflank Lee's lines until they collapsed around Petersburg, resulting in the fall of Richmond on April 3, 1865. Everyone knew that the end was near. Surrender at Appomattox The Confederate government tried to negoti- ate for peace, but Lincoln would accept nothing short of restoration of the Union, and Jefferson Davis still demanded nothing less than independence. Lee retreated from Richmond with an army of less than 30,000 men. He tried to escape to the mountains, only to be cut off and forced to surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The Union general treated his longtime enemy with respect and allowed Lee's men to return to their homes with their horses. Assassination of Lincoln Only a month before Lee's surrender, Lincoln delivered one of his greatest speeches-the second inaugural address. He urged that the defeated South be treated benevolently, "with malice toward none; with charity for all." On April 14, John Wilkes Booth, an embittered actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot and killed the president while he was attending a perfor- mance in Ford's Theater in Washington. On the same night, a co-conspirator attacked but only wounded Secretary of State William Seward. These shocking events aroused the fury of Northerners at the very time that the Confederates 278 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM most needed a sympathetic hearing. The loss of Lincoln's leadership was widely mourned, but the extent of the loss was not fully appreciated until the two sections of a reunited country had to cope with the overwhelming prob- lems of postwar Reconstruction. Effects of the War on Civilian Life Both during the war and in the years that followed, American society under- went deep and sometimes wrenching changes. Political Change The electoral process continued during the war with surprisingly few restric- tions. Secession of the Southern states had created Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Within Republican ranks, however, there were sharp differences between the radical faction (those who championed the cause of immediate abolition of slavery) and the moderate faction (Free-Soilers who were chiefly concerned about economic opportunities for whites). Most Demo- crats supported the war but criticized Lincoln's conduct of it. Peace Democrats and Copperheads opposed the war and wanted a negotiated peace. The most notorious Copperhead, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, was briefly banished from the United States to the Confederacy for his "treason- able," pro-Confederacy speeches against the war. He then went to Canada. Civil Liberties Like many leaders in wartime governments, Lincoln focused more on prosecuting the war than with protecting citizens' constitu- tional rights. Early in the war, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland and other states with strong pro-Confederate sentiment. Suspension of this constitutional right meant that persons could be arrested without being informed of the charges against them. During the war, an estimated 13,000 people were arrested on suspicion of aiding the enemy. Without a right to habeas corpus, many of them were held without trial. Democrats charged that Lincoln acted no better than a tyrant. However, most historians have been less critical. Especially in the border states, people had difficulty distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants. More- over, the Constitution does state that the writ of habeas corpus "shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." After the war, in the case of Ex Parte Milligan (1866), the Supreme Court ruled that the government had acted improperly in Indiana where, dur- ing the war, certain civilians had been subject to a military trial. The Court declared that such procedures could be used only when regular civilian courts were unavailable. The Draft When the war begin in 1861, those who fought were volun- teers. However, as the need for replacements became acute, both the Union and the Confederacy resorted to laws for conscripting, or drafting, men into service. The Union's first Conscription Act, adopted in March 1863, made all men between the ages of 20 and 45 liable for military service but allowed a draftee to avoid service by either finding a substitute to serve or paying a $300 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 279 exemption fee. The law provoked fierce opposition among poorer laborers, who feared that-if and when they returned to civilian life-their jobs would be taken by freed African Americans. In July 1863, riots against the draft erupted in New York City, in which a mostly Irish American mob attacked blacks and wealthy whites. Some 117 people were killed before federal troops and a temporary suspension of the draft restored order. Political Dominance of the North The suspension of habeas corpus and the operation of the draft were only temporary. Far more important were the long-term effects of the war on the balance of power between two sectional rivals, the North and the South. With the military triumph of the Union came a new definition of the nature of the federal union. Old arguments for nullification and secession ceased to be issues. After the Civil War, the supremacy of the federal government over the states was accepted as an established fact. Furthermore, the abolition of slavery in addition to its importance to freed African Americans-gave new meaning and legitimacy to the concept of American democracy. In his famous Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863, Lincoln rallied Americans to the idea that their nation was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Lincoln was probably allud- ing to the Emancipation Proclamation when he spoke of the war bringing "a new birth of freedom." His words-and even more, the abolition of slavery- advanced the cause of democratic government in the United States and inspired champions of democracy around the world. Economic Change The costs of the war in both money and men were staggering and called for extraordinary measures by both the Union and Confederate legislatures. Financing the War The Union financed the war chiefly by borrowing $2.6 billion, obtained through the sale of government bonds. Even this amount was not enough, so Congress raised tariffs (Morrill Tariff of 1861), added excise taxes, and instituted the first income tax. The U.S. Treasury also issued more than $430 million in a paper currency known as Greenbacks. This paper money could not be redeemed in gold, which contributed to creeping inflation. Prices in the North rose by about 80 percent during the war. To manage the added revenue moving in and out of the Treasury, Congress created a national bank- ing system in 1863. This was the first unified banking network since Andrew Jackson vetoed the recharter of the Bank of the United States in the 1830s. Modernizing Northern Society The war's impact on the Northern econ- omy was dramatic. Economic historians differ on the question of whether, in the short run, the war promoted or retarded the growth of the Northern econ- omy. On the negative side, workers' wages did not keep pace with inflation. On the other hand, there is little doubt that many aspects of a modern industrial economy were accelerated by the war. Because the war placed a premium on mass production and complex organization, it sped up the consolidation of the North's manufacturing businesses. War profiteers took advantage of the government's urgent needs for military supplies to sell shoddy goods at high 280 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM prices-a problem that decreased after the federal government took control of the contract process away from the states. Fortunes made during the war produced a concentration of capital in the hands of a new class of millionaires, who would finance the North's industrialization in the postwar years. Civilians Employed by the Federal Government Year Post Office Defense Other Total 1841 14,290 598 3,150 18,038 1851 21,391 403 4,480 26,274 1861 30,269 946 5,457 36,672 1871 36,696 1,183 13,741 51,020 1881 56,421 16,297 27,302 100,020 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 Republican politics also played a major role in stimulating the economic growth of the North and the West. Taking advantage of their wartime major- ity in Congress, the Republicans passed an ambitious economic program that included not only a national banking system, but also the following: • The Morrill Tariff Act (1861) raised tariff rates to increase revenue and protect American manufacturers. Its passage initiated a Republican program of high protective tariffs to help industrialists. • The Homestead Act (1862) promoted settlement of the Great Plains by offering parcels of 160 acres of public land free to any person or family that farmed that land for at least five years. • The Morrill Land Grant Act (1862) encouraged states to use the sale of federal land grants to maintain agricultural and technical colleges. • The Paci.fie Railway Act (1862) authorized the building of a transcontinental railroad over a northern route in order to link the economies of California and the western territories with the eastern states. Social Change Although every part of American society away from the battlefield was touched by the war, those most directly affected were women, whose labors became more burdensome, and African Americans, who won emancipation. Women at Work The absence of millions of men from their normal occupations in fields and factories added to the responsibilities of women in all regions. They stepped into the labor vacuum created by the war, operating THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 281 farms and plantations and taking factory jobs customarily held by men. In addition, women played a critical role as military nurses and as volunteers in soldiers' aid societies. When the war ended and the war veterans returned home, most urban women vacated their jobs in government and industry, while rural women gladly accepted male assistance on the farm. Of course, for the women whose men never returned-or returned disabled-the economic struggle continued for a lifetime. The Civil War had at least two permanent effects on American women. First, the field of nursing was now open to women for the first time; previously, hospitals employed only men as doctors and nurses. Second, the enormous responsibilities undertaken by women during the war gave impetus to the movement to obtain equal voting rights for women. (The suffragists' goal would not be achieved until women's efforts in another war-World War I- finally convinced enough male conservatives to adopt the 19th Amendment.) End of Slavery Both in the short run and the long run, the group in Amer- ican society whose lives were most profoundly changed by the Civil War were those African Americans who had been born into slavery. After the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865, 4 million people (3.5 million in the Confed- erate states and 500,000 in the border states) were "freed men" and "freed women." For these people and their descendants, economic hardship and political oppression would continue for generations. Even so, the end of slavery represented a momentous step. Suddenly, slaves with no rights were protected by the U.S. Constitution, with open-ended possibilities of freedom. While four years of nearly total war, the tragic human loss of 750,000 lives, and an estimated $15 billion in war costs and property losses had enormous effects on the nation, far greater changes were set in motion. The Civil War destroyed slavery and devastated the Southern economy, and it also acted as a catalyst to transform America into a complex modern industrial society of capital, technology, national organizations, and large corporations. During the war, the Republicans were able to enact the pro-business Whig program that was designed to stimulate the industrial and commercial growth of the United States. The characteristics of American democracy and its capitalist economy were strengthened by this Second American Revolution.

Chapter 21 'The Progressive Era, 1901 - 1917'

Large-scale industrialization, immigration, and urban expansion changed the United States dramatically during the last quarter of the 19th century. (See Chapters 16, 18, and 19.) By the turn of the century, a reform movement had developed that included a wide range of groups and individuals with a com- mon desire to improve life in the industrial age. Their ideas and work became known as progressivism, because they wanted to build on the existing society, making moderate political changes and social improvements through govern- ment action. Most Progressives were not revolutionaries but shared the goals of limiting the power of big business, improving democracy for the people, and strengthening social justice. Achieving these goals often included a more active role for the federal government. This chapter will examine the origins, efforts, and accomplishments of the Progressive era. While Progressives did not cure all of America's problems, they improved the quality of life, provided a larger role for the people in their democracy, and established a precedent for a more active role for the federal government. Origins of Progressivism Although the Progressive movement had its origins in the state reforms of the early 1890s, it acquired national momentum only with the dawn of a new century and the unexpected swearing into office of a young president, Theo- dore Roosevelt, in 1901. The Progressive era lasted through the Republican presidencies of Roosevelt (1901-1909) and William Howard Taft (1909-1913), and the first term of the Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1913-1917). U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 diverted public attention away from domestic issues and brought the era to an end-but not before major regulatory laws had been enacted by Congress and various state legislatures. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 431 Attitudes and Motives As they entered a new century, most Americans were well aware of rapid changes in their country. The relatively homogeneous, rural society of indepen- dent farmers of the past was transforming into an industrialized nation of mixed ethnicity centered in the growing cities. For decades, middle-class Americans had been alarmed by the rising power of big business, the uncertainties of business cycles, the increasing gap between rich and poor, the violent conflict between labor and capital, and the dominance of corrupt political machines in the cities. Most disturbing to minorities were the racist Jim Crow laws in the South that relegated African Americans to the status of second-class citi- zens. Crusaders for women's suffrage added their voices to the call for greater democracy. Who Were the Progressives? The groups participating in the Progressive movement were extremely diverse. Protestant church leaders championed one set of reforms, African Americans proposed other reforms, union leaders sought public support for their goals, and feminists lobbied their state legislatures for votes for women. Loosely linking these reform efforts under a single label, Progressive, was a belief that society badly needed changes and that government was the proper agency for correcting social and economic ills. Urban Middle Class Unlike the Populists of the 1890s, whose strength came from rural America, most Progressives were middle-class men and women who lived in cities. The urban middle class had steadily grown in the final decades of the 19th century. In addition to doctors, lawyers, ministers, and storekeepers (the heart of the middle class in an earlier era), thousands of white- collar office workers and middle managers employed in banks, manufacturing firms, and other businesses formed a key segment of the economy. Professional Class Members of this business and professional middle class took their civic responsibilities seriously. Some were versed in scien- tific and statistical methods and the findings of the new social sciences. They belonged to the hundreds of national business and professional associations that provided platforms to address corrupt business and government practices and urban social and economic problems. Religion A missionary spirit inspired some middle-class reformers. Prot- estant churches preached against vice and taught a code of social responsibility, which included caring for the less fortunate and insisting on honesty in public life. The Social Gospel popularized by Walter Rauschenbusch (see Chapter 18) was an important element in Protestant Christians' response to the prob- lem of urban poverty. Most of these Protestants were native-born and older stock Americans, often from families of older elites who felt that their central role in society had been replaced by wealthy industrialists and urban political machines. 432 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Leadership Without strong leadership, the diverse forces of reform could not have overcome conservatives' resistance to change. Fortunately for the Pro- gressives, a number of dedicated and able leaders entered politics at the tum of the century to challenge the status quo. Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette in the Republican party and William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson in the Democratic party demonstrated a vigorous style of political lead- ership that had been lacking from national politics during the Gilded Age. The Progressives' Philosophy The reform impulse was hardly new. In fact, many historians see progressivism as just one more phase in a reform tra- dition going back to the Jeffersonians in the early 1800s, the Jacksonians in the 1830s, and the Populists in the 1890s. Without doubt, the Progressives-like American reformers before them-were committed to democratic values and shared in the belief that honest government and just laws could improve the human condition. Pragmatism A revolution in thinking occurred at the same time as the Industrial Revolution. Charles Darwin, in his Origin of Species, presented the concept of evolution, which had an impact well beyond simply justifying the accumulation of wealth (see Chapter 16). The way people thought and reasoned was challenged, and the prevailing philosophy of romantic transcen- dentalism in America gave way to a balanced pragmatism. In the early 20th century, William James and John Dewey were two leading American advocates of this new philosophy. They defined "truth" in a way that many Progressives found appealing. James and Dewey argued that the "good" and the "true" could not be known in the abstract as fixed and changeless ideals. Rather, they said, people should take a pragmatic, or practical, approach to morals, ideals, and knowledge. They should experiment with ideas and laws and test them in action until they found something that would produce a well-functioning democratic society. Progressive thinkers adopted the new philosophy of pragmatism because it enabled them to challenge fixed notions that stood in the way of reform. For example, they rejected laissez-faire theory as impractical. The old standard of rugged individualism no longer seemed viable in a modern society dominated by impersonal corporations. Scientific Management Another idea that gained widespread acceptance among Progressives came from the practical studies of Frederick W. Taylor. By using a stopwatch to time the output of factory workers, Taylor discovered ways of organizing people in the most efficient manner-the scientific man- agement system. Many Progressives believed that government too could be made more efficient if placed in the hands of experts and scientific managers. They objected to the corruption of political bosses partly because it was anti- democratic and partly because it was an inefficient way to run things. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 433 The Muckrakers Before the public could be roused to action, it first had to be well-informed about the scandalous realities of politics, factories, and slums. Newspaper and magazine publishers found that their middle-class readers loved to read about underhanded schemes in politics. Therefore, many publications featured in- depth, investigative stories. Writers specializing in such stories were referred to as "muckrakers" by President Theodore Roosevelt. Origins One of the earliest muckrakers was Chicago reporter Henry Demarest Lloyd, who in 1881 wrote a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly attacking the practices of the Standard Oil Company and the railroads. Pub- lished in book form in 1894, Lloyd's Wealth Against Commonwealth fully exposed the corruption and greed of the oil monopoly but failed to suggest how to control it. Magazines An Irish immigrant, Samuel Sidney McClure, founded Mc- Clure's Magazine in 1893, which became a major success by running a series of muckraking articles by Lincoln Steffens (Tweed Days in St. Louis, 1902) and another series by Ida Tarbell (The History of the Standard Oil Company, also in 1902). Combining careful research with sensationalism, these articles set a standard for the deluge of muckraking that followed. Popular 10- and 15-cent magazines such as McClure's, Collier's, and Cosmopolitan competed fiercely to outdo their rivals with shocking exposes of political and eco- nomic corruption. Books The most popular series of muckraking articles were usually col- lected and published as best-selling books. Articles on tenement life by Jacob Riis, one of the first photojournalists, were published as How the Other Half Lives (1890). Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of the Cities (1904) also caused a sensation by describing in detail the corrupt deals that characterized big-city politics from Philadelphia to Minneapolis. Many of the muckraking books were novels. Two of Theodore Dreiser's novels, The Financier and The Titan, portrayed the avarice and ruthlessness of an industrialist. Fictional accounts such as Frank Norris' The Octopus (on the tyrannical power of railroad companies) and The Pit (grain speculation) were more effective than many journalistic accounts in stirring up public demands for government regulations. Decline of Muckraking The popularity of muckraking books and mag- azine articles began to decline after 1910 for several reasons. First, writers found it more and more difficult to top the sensationalism of the last story. Second, publishers were expanding and faced economic pressures from banks and advertisers to tone down their treatment of business. Third, by 1910 corpo- rations were becoming more aware of their public image and developing a new specialty: the field of public relations. Nevertheless, muckraking had a lasting effect on the Progressive era. It exposed inequities, educated the public about corruption in high places, and prepared the way for corrective action. 434 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Political Reforms in Cities and States The cornerstone of Progressive ideology was faith in democracy. Progressives believed that, given a chance, the majority of voters would elect honest offi- cials instead of the corrupt ones backed by boss-dominated political machines. Voter Participation Progressives advocated a number of reforms for increasing the participation of the average citizen in political decision-making. Australian, or Secret, Ballot Political parties could manipulate and intim- idate voters by printing lists ( or "tickets") of party candidates and watching voters drop them into the ballot box on election day. In 1888, Massachusetts was the first state to adopt a system successfully tried in Australia of issuing ballots printed by the state and requiring voters to mark their choices secretly within a private booth. By 1910, all states had adopted the secret ballot. Direct Primaries In the late 19th century, Republicans and Demo- crats commonly nominated candidates for state and federal offices in state conventions dominated by party bosses. In 1903, the Progressive governor of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette, introduced a new system for bypassing politicians and placing the nominating process directly in the hands of the voters the direct primary. By 1915, some form of the direct primary was used in every state. The system's effectiveness in overthrowing boss rule was limited, as politicians devised ways of confusing the voters and splitting the antimachine vote. Some southern states even used white-only primaries to exclude African Americans from voting. Direct Election of U.S. Senators Traditionally, U.S. senators had been chosen by the state legislatures rather than by direct vote of the people. Pro- gressives believed this was a principal reason that the Senate had become a millionaires' club dominated by big business. Nevada in 1899 was the first state to give the voters the opportunity to elect U.S. senators directly. By 1912, a total of 30 states had adopted this reform, and in 1913, adoption of the 17th Amendment required that all U.S. senators be elected by popular vote. Initiative, Referendum, and Recall If politicians in the state legislatures balked at obeying the "will of the people," then Progressives proposed two methods for forcing them to act. Amendments to state constitutions offered voters (1) the initiative-a method by which voters could compel the legisla- ture to consider a bill and (2) the referendum-a method that allowed citizens to vote on proposed laws printed on their ballots. A third Progressive measure, the recall, enabled voters to remove a corrupt or unsatisfactory politician from office by majority vote before that official's term had expired. Between 1898, when South Dakota adopted the initiative and referendum, and 1918 (the end of World War I), a total of 20 states-most of them west of the Mississippi-offered voters the initiative and the referendum, while 11 states offered the recall. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 435 Municipal Reform City bosses and their corrupt alliance with local businesses (trolley lines and utility companies, for example) were the first target of Progressive leaders. In Toledo, Ohio, in 1897, a self-made millionaire with strong memories of his ori- gins as a workingman became the Republican mayor. Adopting "golden rule" as both his policy and his middle name, Mayor Samuel M. "Golden Rule" Jones delighted Toledo's citizens by introducing a comprehensive program of munici- pal reform, including free kindergartens, night schools, and public playgrounds. Another Ohioan, Tom L. Johnson, devoted himself to tax reform and three-cent trolley fares for the people of Cleveland. As Cleveland's mayor from 1901-1909, Johnson fought hard-but without success-for public ownership and operation of the city's public utilities and services (water, electricity, and trolleys). Controlling Public Utilities Reform leaders arose in other cities through- out the nation seeking to break the power of the city bosses and take utilities out of the hands of private companies. By 1915 fully two-thirds of the nation's cities owned their own water systems. As a result of the Progressives' efforts, many cities also came to own and operate gas lines, electric power plants, and urban transportation systems. Commissions and City Managers New types of municipal government were another Progressive innovation. In 1900, Galveston, Texas, was the first city to adopt a commission plan of government, in which voters elected the heads of city departments (fire, police, and sanitation), not just the mayor. Ulti- mately proving itself more effective than the commission plan was a system first tried in Dayton, Ohio, in 1913, in which an expert manager was hired by an elected city council to direct the work of the various departments of city government. By 1923, more than 300 cities had adopted the manager-council plan of municipal government. State Reform At the state level, reform governors battled corporate interests and championed such measures as the initiative, the referendum, and the direct primary to give common people control of their own government. In New York, Charles Evans Hughes battled fraudulent insurance companies. In California, Hiram Johnson successfully fought against the economic and political power of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In Wisconsin, Robert La Follette established a strong personal following as the governor (1900-1904) who won passage of the "Wisconsin Idea"-a series of Progressive measures that included a direct primary law, tax reform, and state regulatory commissions to monitor railroads, utilities, and business such as insurance. Temperance and Prohibition Whether or not to shut down saloons and prohibit the drinking of alcohol was one issue over which the champions of reform were sharply divided. While urban Progressives recognized that saloons were often the neighborhood headquarters of political machines, they gener- ally had little sympathy for the temperance movement. Rural reformers, on the 436 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM other hand, thought they could clean up morals and politics in one stroke by abolishing liquor. The drys (prohibitionists) were determined and well orga- nized. By 1915, they had persuaded the legislatures of two-thirds of the states to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages. Social Welfare Urban life in the Progressive era was improved not only by political reformers but also by the efforts of settlement house workers (see Chapter 18) and other civic-minded volunteers. Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and other leaders of the social justice movement found that they needed politi- cal support in the state legislatures for meeting the needs of immigrants and the working class. They lobbied vigorously and with considerable success for better schools, juvenile courts, liberalized divorce laws, and safety regulations for tenements and factories. Believing that criminals could learn to become effective citizens, reformers fought for such measures as a system of parole, separate reformatories for juveniles, and limits on the death penalty. Child and Women Labor Progressives were most outraged by the treat- ment of children by industry. The National Child Labor Committee proposed model state child labor laws that were passed by two-thirds of the states by 1907. Ultimately state compulsory school attendance laws proved most effec- tive in keeping children out of the mines and factories. Florence Kelley and the National Consumers' League promoted the passage of state laws to protect women from long working hours. While in Lochner v. New York (1905) the Supreme Court ruled against a state law limiting workers to a ten-hour workday, later in Muller v. Oregon (1908) the high court ruled that health of women needed special protection from long hours. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire (1911) in a New York City high-rise garment factory took 146 lives, mostly women. The tragedy sparked greater women's activism and moti- vated states to pass laws to improve safety and working conditions in factories. One unforeseen consequence of efforts to protect women in the workplace was that the legislation kept women out of physically demanding but higher paying jobs in industry and mining. Later, many in the women's movement wanted these restrictions lifted so that women could compete as equals with men. Political Reform in the Nation While Progressive governors and mayors were battling conservative forces in the state houses and city halls, three presidents-Roosevelt, Taft, and Wil- son-sought broad reforms and regulations at the national level. Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal Following President McKinley's assassination in September 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became, at the age of 42, the youngest president in U.S. history. He was also one of the most athletic. He was unusual not simply because of his age and vigor but also because he believed that the president should do much more than lead the executive departments. He thought it was the president's job to set the legislative agenda for Congress as well. Thus, by the accident THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 437 of McKinley's death, the Progressive movement suddenly shot into high gear under the dynamic leadership of an activist, reform-minded president. "Square Deal" for Labor Presidents in the 19th century had consistently taken the side of owners in conflicts with labor (most notably Hayes in the rail- road strike of 1877 and Cleveland in the Pullman strike of 1894). However, in the first economic crisis in his presidency, Roosevelt quickly demonstrated that he favored neither business nor labor but insisted on a Square Deal for both. The crisis involved a strike of anthracite coal miners through much of 1902. If the strike continued, many Americans feared that without coal-they would freeze to death when winter came. Roosevelt took the unusual step of trying to mediate the labor dispute by calling a union leader and coal mine owners to the White House. The mine owners' stubborn refusal to compromise angered the president. To ensure the delivery of coal to consumers, he threatened to take over the mines with federal troops. The owners finally agreed to accept the findings of a special commission, which granted a 10 percent wage increase and a nine-hour workday to the miners. However, the owners did not have to recognize the union. Voters seemed to approve of Roosevelt and his Square Deal. They elected him by a landslide in 1904. Trust-Busting Roosevelt further increased his popularity by being the first president since the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 to enforce that poorly written law. The trust that he most wanted to bust was a combination of railroads known as the Northern Securities Company. Revers- ing its position in earlier cases, the Supreme Court in 1904 upheld Roosevelt's action in breaking up the railroad monopoly. Roosevelt later directed his attor- ney general to take antitrust action against Standard Oil and more than 40 other large corporations. Roosevelt did make a distinction between breaking up "bad trusts," which harmed the public and stifled competition, and regulating "good trusts," which through efficiency and low prices dominated a market. Railroad Regulation President Roosevelt also took the initiative in per- suading a Republican majority in Congress to pass two laws that significantly strengthened the regulatory powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Under the Elkins Act (1903), the ICC had greater authority to stop railroads from granting rebates to favored customers. Under the Hepburn Act ( 1906), the commission could fix "just and reasonable" rates for railroads. Consumer Protection The Jungle, a muckraking book by Upton Sinclair, described in horrifying detail the conditions in the Chicago stockyards and meatpacking industry. The public outcry following the publication of Sin- clair's novel caused Congress to enact two regulatory laws in 1906: 1. The Pure Food and Drug Act forbade the manufacture, sale, and trans- portation of adulterated or mislabeled foods and drugs. 438 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM 2. The Meat Inspection Act provided that federal inspectors visit meatpacking plants to ensure that they met minimum standards of sanitation. Conservation As a lover of the wilderness and the outdoor life, Roosevelt enthusiastically championed the cause of conservation. In fact, Roosevelt's most original and lasting contribution in domestic policy may have been his efforts to protect the nation's natural resources. Three actions were particularly important. 1. Roosevelt made repeated use of the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 to set aside 150 million acres of federal land as a national reserve that could not be sold to private interests. 2. In 1902, Roosevelt won passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act, a law providing money from the sale of public land for irrigation proj- ects in western states. 3. In 1908, the president publicized the need for conservation by host- ing a White House Conference of Governors to promoted coordinated conservation planning by federal and state governments. Following this conference, a National Conservation Commission was estab- lished under Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania, whom Roosevelt had earlier appointed to be the first director of the U.S. Forest Service. Taft's Presidency The good-natured William Howard Taft had served in Roosevelt's cabinet as secretary of war. Honoring the two-term tradition, Roosevelt refused to seek reelection and picked Taft to be his successor. The Republican party readily endorsed Taft as its nominee for president in 1908 and, as expected, defeated for a third time the Democrats' campaigner, William Jennings Bryan. More Trust-Busting and Conservation Taft continued Roosevelt's Pro- gressive policies. As a trustbuster, Taft ordered the prosecution of almost twice the number of antitrust cases as his predecessor. Among these cases was one against U.S. Steel, which included a merger approved by then President Theo- dore Roosevelt. An angry Roosevelt viewed Taft's action as a personal attack on his integrity. As a conservationist, Taft established the Bureau of Mines, added large tracts in the Appalachians to the national forest reserves, and set aside federal oil lands (the first president to do so). Two other Progressive measures were at least equal in importance to legisla- tion enacted under Roosevelt. The Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to suspend new railroad rates and oversee telephone, telegraph, and cable companies. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified by the states in 1913, authorized the U.S government to collect an income tax. (This reform was originally proposed by the Populists in their 1892 platform.) Progressives heartily approved the new tax because, at first, it applied only to the very wealthy. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 439 Split in the Republican Party Progressives in the Republican party were unimpressed with Taft's achievements. In fact, they became so disenchanted with his leadership that they accused him of betraying their cause and joining the conservative wing of the party. These were their reasons: 1. Payne-Aldrich Tariff During his 1908 campaign, Taft had promised to lower the tariff. Instead, conservative Republicans in Congress passed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff in 1909, which raised the tariff on most imports. Taft angered Progressives in his party not only by signing the tariff bill but by mak- ing a public statement in its defense. 2. Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy The Progressives respected the chief of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, as a dedicated conservationist. On the other hand, they distrusted Taft's secretary of the interior, Richard Ballinger, especially after he opened public lands in Alaska for private development. In 1910, when Pinchot criticized Ballinger, Taft stood by his cabinet member and fired Pinchot for insubordination. Conservatives applauded; Progressives protested. 3. House Speaker Joe Cannon Taft angered Progressive Republicans when he failed to support their effort to reduce the dictatorial powers of Con- gress' leading conservative, Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon. 4. Midterm Elections Fighting back against his Progressive critics, Taft openly supported conservative candidates for Congress in the midterm elec- tions of 1910. It was a serious political mistake. Progressive Republicans from the Midwest easily defeated the candidates endorsed by Taft. After this elec- tion, the Republican party was split wide open between two opposing groups: a conservative faction loyal to Taft and a Progressive faction. The latter group of Republicans fervently hoped that their ex-president and hero, Theodore Roos- evelt, would agree to become their candidate again in 1912. Rise of the Socialist Party A third party developed in the first decade of the 1900s that was dedicated to the welfare of the working class. Originally called the Socialist Labor party in 1897, it changed its name in 1901 to the Socialist Party of America. The Social- ist platform called for more radical reforms than the Progressives favored: public ownership of the railroads, utilities, and even of major industries such as oil and steel. Eugene V. Debs One of the Socialist party's founders, Eugene Debs, was the party's candidate for president in five elections from 1900 to 1920. A for- mer railway union leader, Debs adopted socialism while jailed for the Pullman strike. He was an outspoken critic of business and a champion of labor. Influence On such issues as workers' compensation and minimum wage laws, Progressives and some Socialists joined forces. For the most part, how- ever, Progressives wanted to distance themselves from the ideas of Socialists, since the majority of voters favored only mild reforms, not radical causes. Eventually, however, some Socialist ideas were accepted: public ownership of utilities, the eight-hour workday, and pensions for employees. 440 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Election of 1912 Reform efforts dominated a campaign that involved four notable presidential candidates. Candidates President Taft was renominated by the Republicans after his supporters excluded Theodore Roosevelt's delegates from the party's conven- tion. Progressive Republicans then formed a new party and nominated Theodore Roosevelt. (Roosevelt's claim that he was as strong as a bull moose gave the new Progressive party its nickname: the Bull Moose party.) After lengthy bal- loting, Democrats united behind Woodrow Wilson, a newcomer who had first been elected to office in 1910 as governor of New Jersey. The Socialist party, at the peak of its strength, again nominated Eugene V. Debs. Campaign With Taft enjoying little popularity and Debs considered too radical, the election came down to a battle between Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt called for a New Nationalism, with more govern- ment regulation of business and unions, women's suffrage, and more social welfare programs. Wilson pledged a New Freedom, which would limit both big business and big government, bring about reform by ending corruption, and revive competition by supporting small business. Results Wilson won less than a majority of the popular vote, but with the Republicans split, he won a landslide in the electoral college and the Demo- crats gained control of Congress. The overwhelming support for the Progressive presidential candidates ensured that reform efforts would continue under Wil- son, while the failure of the Progressive party to elect local candidates suggested that the new party would not last. But the idea contained in Roosevelt's New Nationalism-of strong federal government regulations helping the people- did have a lasting influence for much of the century (see, in Chapter 24, the New Deal, and, in Chapter 28, the Great Society). PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 1912 Debs 6% Taft 8 Taft 23%-. Wilson 42% Roosevelt 27% Popular Vote Electoral Vote Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 441 Woodrow Wilson's Progressive Program Wilson, who grew up in Virginia during the Civil War, was only the second Democrat elected president since the war (Cleveland was the other), and the first southerner to occupy the White House since Zachary Taylor (1849 1850). Wilson was idealistic, intellectual, righteous, and inflexible. Like Roosevelt, he believed that a president should actively lead Congress and, as necessary, appeal directly to the people to rally support for his legislative program. In his inaugural address in 1913, the Democratic president pledged again his commitment to a New Freedom. To bring back conditions of free and fair competition in the economy, Wilson attacked "the triple wall of privilege": tariffs, banking, and trusts. Tariff Reduction Wasting no time to fulfill a campaign pledge, Wilson on the first day of his presidency called a special session of Congress to lower the tariff. Past presidents had always sent written messages to Congress, but Wil- son broke this longstanding tradition by addressing Congress in person about the need for lower tariff rates to bring consumer prices down. Passage of the Underwood Tariff in 1913 substantially lowered tariffs for the first time in over 50 years. To compensate for the reduced tariff revenues, the Underwood bill included a graduated income tax with rates from 1 to 6 percent. Banking Reform Wilson's next major initiative concerned the bank- ing system and the money supply. He was persuaded that the gold standard was inflexible and that banks, rather than serving the public interest, were too much influenced by stock speculators on Wall Street. The president again went directly to Congress in 1913 to propose a plan for building both stability and :flexibility into the U.S. financial system. Rejecting the Republican proposal for a private national bank, he proposed a national banking system with 12 district banks supervised by a Federal Reserve Board. After months of debate, Con- gress finally passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1914. Ever since, Americans have purchased goods and services using the Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) issued by the federally regulated banking system. Business Regulation Two major pieces of legislation in 1914 completed Wilson's New Freedom program: 1. Clayton Antitrust Act This act strengthened the provisions in the Sher- man Antitrust Act for breaking up monopolies. Most important for organized labor, the new law contained a clause exempting unions from being prosecuted as trusts. 2. Federal Trade Commission The new regulatory agency was empow- ered to investigate and take action against any "unfair trade practice" in every industry except banking and transportation. Other Reforms Wilson was at first opposed to any legislation that seemed to favor special interests, such as farmers' groups and labor unions. He was finally persuaded, however, to extend his reform program to include the fol- lowing Progressive measures: 442 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM 1. Federal Farm Loan Act In 1916, 12 regional federal farm loan banks were established to provide farm loans at low interest rates. 2. Child Labor Act This measure, long favored by settlement house work- ers and labor unions alike, was enacted in 1916. It prohibited the shipment in interstate commerce of products manufactured by children under 14 years old. However, the Supreme Court found this act to be unconstitutional in the 1918 case of Hammer v. Dagenhart. African Americans in the Progressive Era In championing greater democracy for the American people, most leaders of the Progressive movement thought only in terms of the white race. African Americans were, for the most part, ignored by Progressive presidents and governors. President Wilson, with a strong southern heritage and many of the racist attitudes of the times, acquiesced to the demands of southern Democrats and permitted the segregation of federal workers and buildings. The status of African Americans had declined steadily since Reconstruc- tion. With the Supreme Court's "separate but equal" decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), racial segregation had been the rule in the South and, unof- ficially, in much of the North. Ironically and tragically, the Progressive era coincided with years when thousands of blacks were lynched by racist mobs. Few Progressives did anything about segregation and lynching. Most shared in the general prejudice of their times. In addition, many considered other reforms (such as lower tariffs) to be more important than antilynching laws because such reforms benefited everyone, not just one group. Two Approaches: Washington and Du Bois Though lacking widespread white support, African-Americans took action to alleviate poverty and discrimination. Economic deprivation and exploitation was one problem; denial of civil rights was another. Which problem was primary was a difficult question that became the focus of a debate between two African American leaders: Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Washington's Stress on Economics The most influential African Ameri- can at the turn of the century was the head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Booker T. Washington. In his Atlanta Exposition speech in 1895, Washington argued that blacks' needs for education and economic progress were of fore- most importance, and that they should concentrate on learning industrial skills for better wages. Only after establishing a secure economic base, said Wash- ington, could African Americans hope to realize their other goal of political and social equality. (See Chapter 17.) Du Bois' Stress on Civil Rights Unlike Washington, who had been born into slavery on a southern plantation, W. E. B. Du Bois was a northerner with a college education, who became a distinguished scholar and writer. In his book THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 443 The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois criticized Booker T. Washington's approach and demanded equal rights for African Americans. He argued that political and social rights were a prerequisite for economic independence. Washington's pragmatic approach to economic advancement and Du Bois' militant demands for equal rights framed a debate in the African American community that continued throughout much of the 20th century. The Great 11Migration11 At the close of the 19th century, about nine out of ten African Americans lived in the South. In the next century, this ratio steadily shifted toward the North. This internal migration began in earnest between 1910 and 1930 when about a million people traveled north to seek jobs in the cities. Motivating their deci- sion to leave the South were: (1) deteriorating race relations, (2) destruction of their cotton crops by the boll weevil, and (3) job opportunities in northern factories that opened up when white workers were drafted in World War I. The Great Depression in the 1930s slowed migration, but World War II renewed it. Between 1940 and 1970, over 4 million African Americans moved north. Although many succeeded in improving their economic conditions, the new- comers to northern cities also faced racial tension and discrimination. Civil Rights Organizations Racial discrimination during the Progressive era prompted black leaders to found three powerful civil rights organizations in a span of just six years. 1. In 1905, W. E. B. Du Bois met with a group of black intellectuals in Niagara Falls, Canada, to discuss a program of protest and action aimed at securing equal rights for blacks. They and others who later joined the group became known as the Niagara Movement. 2. On Lincoln's birthday in 1908, Du Bois, other members of the Niagara Movement, and a group of white Progressives founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Their mission was no less than to abolish all forms of segregation and to increase educational opportunities for African American children. By 1920, the NAACP was the nation's largest civil rights organization, with over 100,000 members. 3. Another organization, the National Urban League, was formed in 1911 to help people migrating from the South to northern cities. The league's motto, "Not Alms But Opportunity," reflected its emphasis on self-reliance and economic advancement. 444 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Women, Suffrage, and the Progressive Movement The Progressive era was a time of increased activism and optimism for a new generation of feminists. By 1900, the older generation of suffrage crusaders led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had passed the torch to younger women. They sought allies among male Progressives, but not always with success. For example, President Wilson refused to support the suffragists' call for a national amendment until late in his presidency. The Campaign for Women's Suffrage Carrie Chapman Catt, an energetic reformer from Iowa, became the new presi- dent of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1900. Catt argued for the vote as a broadening of democracy which would empower women, thus enabling them to more actively care for their families in an industrial society. At first, Catt continued NAWSA's drive to win votes for women at the state level before changing strategies and seeking a suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Militant Suffragists A more militant approach to gaining the vote was adopted by some women, who took to the streets with mass pickets, parades, and hunger strikes. Their leader, Alice Paul of New Jersey, broke from NAWSA in 1916 to form the National Woman's party. From the beginning, Paul focused on winning the support of Congress and the president for an amendment to the Constitution. Nineteenth Amendment (1920) The dedicated efforts of women on the home front in World War I finally persuaded a two-thirds majority in Congress to support a women's suffrage amendment. Its ratification as the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 guaranteed women's right to vote in all elections at the local, state, and national levels. Following the victory of her cause, Carrie Chapman Catt organized the League of Women Voters, a civic organization dedicated to keeping voters informed about candidates and issues. Other Issues In addition to winning the right to vote, Progressive women worked on other issues as well. Margaret Sanger advocated birth-control education, especially among the poor. Over time, the movement developed into the Planned Par- enthood organization. Women made progress in securing educational equality, liberalizing marriage and divorce laws, reducing discrimination in business and the professions, and recognizing women's rights to own property. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1901-1917 445 Growth of Industries CAUSES Growth of Cities THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT EFFECTS Political ' Social Economic • Party primaries • Laws protecting • Conservation of • Split in workers I land and water Republican party, • Settlement houses • Regulation of 1912 and social work business • Decline of • Birth control for • Lower tariffs machine politics women • Reformed • Votes for women • Beginning of civil banking system rights movement • Federal income for African tax

Chapter 10 'The Age of Jackson, 1824 - 1844'

The era marked by the emergence of popular politics in the 1820s and the pres- idency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) is often called the Age of the Common Man, or the Era of Jacksonian Democracy. Historians debate whether Jackson was a major molder of events, a political opportunist exploiting the democratic ferment of the times, or merely a symbol of the era. Nevertheless, the era and Jackson's name seem permanently linked. Jacksonian Democracy The changing politics of the Jacksonian years paralleled complex social and economic changes. The Rise of a Democratic Society Visitors to the United States in the 1830s, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, were amazed by the informal manners and democratic attitudes of Americans. In hotels, under the American Plan, men and women from all classes ate together at common tables. On stagecoaches, steamboats, and later in railroad cars, there was also only one class for passengers, so that the rich and poor alike sat together in the same compartments. European visi- tors could not distinguish between classes in the United States. Men of all backgrounds wore simple dark trousers and jackets, while less well-to-do women emulated the fanciful and confining styles illustrated in wide-circu- lation women's magazines like Godey's Lady's Book. Equality was becoming the governing principle of American society. Among the white majority in American society, people shared a belief in the principle of equality-more precisely, equality of opportunity for white males. These beliefs ignored the oppression of enslaved African Americans THE AGE OF JACKSON, 1824-1844 191 and discrimination against free blacks. Equality of opportunity would, at least in theory, allow a young man of humble origins to rise as far as his natural tal- ent and industry would take him. The hero of the age was the "self-made man." There was no equivalent belief in the "self-made woman," but by the end of the 1840s, feminists would take up the theme of equal rights and insist that it should be applied to both women and men (see Chapter 11). Politics of the Common Man Between 1824 and 1840, politics moved out of the fine homes of rich south- ern planters and northern merchants who had dominated government in past eras and into middle- and lower-class homes. Several factors contributed to the spread of democracy, including new suffrage laws, changes in political parties and campaigns, improved education, and increases in newspaper circulation. Universal Male Suffrage Western states newly admitted to the Union-Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), and Missouri (1821)-adopted state constitutions that allowed all white males to vote and hold office. These newer constitutions omitted any religious or property qualifications for voting. Most eastern states soon followed suit, eliminating such restrictions. As a result, throughout the country, all white males could vote regardless of their social class or religion. Voting for president rose from about 350,000 in 1824 to more than 2.4 million in 1840, a nearly sevenfold increase in just 16 years, mostly as a result of changes in voting laws. In addition, political offices could be held by people in the lower and middle ranks of society. Party Nominating Conventions In the past, candidates for office had commonly been nominated either by state legislatures or by "King Caucus"-a closed-door meeting of a political party's leaders in Congress. Common citi- zens had no opportunity to participate. In the 1830s, however, caucuses were replaced by nominating conventions. Party politicians and voters would gather in a large meeting hall to nominate the party's candidates. The Anti-Masonic party was the first to hold such a nominating convention. This method was more open to popular participation, hence more democratic. Popular Election of the President In the presidential election of 1832, only South Carolina used the old system in which the state legislature chose the electors for president. All other states had adopted the more democratic method of allowing the voters to choose a state's slate of presidential electors. Two-party System The popular election of presidential electors-and, in effect, the president-had important consequences for the two-party system. Campaigns for president now had to be conducted on a national scale. To orga- nize these campaigns, candidates needed large political parties. Rise of Third Parties While only the large national parties (the Demo- crats and the Whigs in Jackson's day) could hope to win the presidency, other political parties also emerged. The Anti-Masonic party and the Workingmen's party, for example, reached out to groups of people who previously had shown little interest in politics. The Anti-Masons attacked the secret societies of Masons and accused them of belonging to a privileged, antidemocratic elite. 192 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM More Elected Offices During the Jacksonian era, a much larger number of state and local officials were elected to office, instead of being appointed, as in the past. This change gave the voters more voice in their government and also tended to increase their interest in participating in elections. Popular Campaigning Candidates for office directed their campaigns to the interests and prejudices of the common people. Politics also became a form of local entertainment. Campaigns of the 1830s and 1840s featured parades of floats and marching bands and large rallies in which voters were treated to free food and drink. The negative side to the new campaign techniques was that in appealing to the masses, candidates would often resort to personal attacks and ignore the issues. A politician, for example, might attack an opponent's "aris- tocratic airs" and make him seem unfriendly to "the common man." Spoils System and Rotation of Officeholders Winning government jobs became the lifeblood of party organizations. At the national level, President Jackson believed in appointing people to federal jobs (as postmasters, for example) strictly according to whether they had actively campaigned for the Democratic party. Any previous holder of the office who was not a Democrat was fired and replaced with a loyal Democrat. This practice of dispensing gov- ernment jobs in return for party loyalty was called the spoils system because of a comment that, in a war, victors seize the spoils, or wealth, of the defeated. In addition, Jackson believed in a system of rotation in office. By limit- ing a person to one term in office he could then appoint some other deserving Democrat in his place. Jackson defended the replacement and rotation of office- holders as a democratic reform. "No man," he said, "has any more intrinsic claim to office than another." Both the spoils system and the rotation of office- holders affirmed the democratic ideal that one man was as good as another and that ordinary Americans were capable of holding any government office. These beliefs also helped build a strong two-party system. Jackson Versus Adams Political change in the Jacksonian era began several years before Jackson moved into the White House as president. In the controversial election in 1824, Jackson won more popular and electoral votes than any other candidate, but he ended up losing the election. The Election of 1824 Recall the brief Era of Good Feelings that characterized U.S. politics during the two-term presidency of James Monroe. The era ended in political bad feelings in 1824, the year of a bitterly contested and divisive presidential election. By then, the old congressional caucus system for choosing presidential candidates had broken down. As a result, four candidates of the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson campaigned for the presidency: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William Crawford, and Andrew Jackson. THE AGE OF JACKSON, 1824-1844 193 Among voters in states that counted popular votes (six did not) Jackson won. But because the vote was split four ways, he lacked a majority in the electoral college as required by the Constitution. Therefore, the House of Rep- resentatives had to choose a president from among the top three candidates. Henry Clay used his influence in the House to provide John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts with enough votes to win the election. When President Adams appointed Clay his secretary of state, Jackson and his followers charged that the decision of the voters had been foiled by secret political maneuvers. Angry Jackson supporters accused Adams and Clay of making a "corrupt bargain." THE ELECTION OF 1824 Popular Vote Electoral Vote 152,933 37 House of Representatives 7 -Andrew Jackson LJ John Quincy Adams LJ Henry Clay -William Crawford Source: Jeffrey B. Morris and Richard B. Morris, editors. Encyclopedia of American History President John Quincy Adams Adams further alienated the followers of Jackson when he asked Congress for money for internal improvements, aid to manufacturing, and even a national university and an astronomical observatory. Jacksonians viewed all these measures as a waste of money and a violation of the Constitution. Most significantly, in 1828, Congress patched together a new tariff law, which generally satisfied northern manufacturers but alienated southern planters. Southerners denounced it as a "tariff of abominations." The Revolution of 1828 Adams sought reelection in 1828. But the Jacksonians were now ready to use the discontent of southerners and westerners and the new campaign tactics of party organization to sweep "Old Hickory" (Jackson) into office. Going beyond parades and barbecues, Jackson's party resorted to smearing the presi- dent and accusing Adams' wife of being born out of wedlock. Supporters of Adams retaliated in kind, accusing Jackson's wife of adultery. The mudsling- ing campaign attracted a lot of interest and voter turnout soared. Jackson won handily, carrying every state west of the Appalachians. His reputation as a war hero and man of the western frontier accounted for his vic- tory more than the positions he took on issues of the day. 194 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Presidency of Andrew Jackson Jackson was a different kind of president from any of his predecessors. A strong leader, he not only dominated politics for eight years but also became a symbol of the emerging working class and middle class (the so-called common man). Born in a frontier cabin, Jackson gained fame as an Indian fighter and as hero of the Battle of New Orleans, and came to live in a fine mansion in Tennessee as a wealthy planter and slaveowner. But he never lost the rough manners of the frontier. He chewed tobacco, fought several duels, and displayed a violent temper. Jackson was the first president since Washington to be without a col- lege education. In a phrase, he could be described as an extraordinary ordinary man. This self-made man and living legend drew support from every social group and every section of the country. Presidential Power Jackson presented himself as the representative of all the people and the protector of the common man against abuses of power by the rich and the privileged. He was a frugal Jeffersonian, who opposed increas- ing federal spending and the national debt. Jackson interpreted the powers of Congress narrowly and therefore vetoed more bills-12-than all six preced- ing presidents combined. For example, he vetoed the use of federal money to construct the Maysville Road, because it was wholly within one state, Ken- tucky, the home state of Jackson's rival, Henry Clay. Jackson's closest advisers were a group known as his "kitchen cabinet," who did not belong to his official cabinet. Because of them, the appointed cabinet had less influence on policy than under earlier presidents. Peggy Eaton Affair The champion of the common man also went to the aid of the common woman, at least in the case of Peggy O'Neale Eaton. The wife of Jackson's secretary of war, she was the target of malicious gossip by other cabinet wives, much as Jackson's recently deceased wife had been in the 1828 campaign. When Jackson tried to force the cabinet wives to accept Peggy Eaton socially, most of the cabinet resigned. This controversy contributed to the resignation of Jackson's vice president, John C. Calhoun, a year later. For remaining loyal during this crisis, Martin Van Buren of New York was chosen as vice president for Jackson's second term. Indian Removal Act (1830) Jackson's concept of democracy did not extend to American Indians. Jackson sympathized with land-hungry citizens who were impatient to take over lands held by American Indians. Jackson thought the most humane solution was to compel the American Indians to leave their traditional homelands and resettle west of the Mississippi. In 1830, he signed into law the Indian Removal Act, which forced the resettlement of many thousands of American Indians. By 1835 most eastern tribes had reluctantly complied and moved west. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1836 to assist the resettled tribes. Most politicians supported a policy of Indian removal. Georgia and other states passed laws requiring the Cherokees to migrate to the West. When the Cherokees challenged Georgia in the courts, the Supreme Court ruled in Cher- okee Nation v. Georgia (1831) that Cherokees were not a foreign nation with THE AGE OF JACKSON, 1824-1844 195 the right to sue in a federal court. But in a second case, Worcester v. Geor- gia (1832), the high court ruled that the laws of Georgia had no force within Cherokee territory. In this clash between a state's laws and the federal courts, Jackson sided with the states. The Court was powerless to enforce its decision without the President's support. INDIAN REMOVAL IN THE 1830s Nebraska Territory T, . Fox erntory 1832 L__J 11 Indian Tribes' Home Territories CJ Indian Territory O 100 200 300 MIies O 100 200 300 Kilometers GULF OF MEXICO --- Virginia ------ Trail of Tears Most Cherokees repudiated the settlement of 1835, which provided land in the Indian territory. In 1838, after Jackson had left office, the U.S. Army forced 15,000 Cherokees to leave Georgia. The hardships on the "trail of tears" westward caused the deaths of 4,000 Cherokees. Nullification Crisis Jackson favored states' rights-but not disunion. In 1828, the South Carolina legislature declared the increased tariff of 1828, the so-called Tariff of Abominations, to be unconstitutional. In doing so, it affirmed a theory advanced by Jackson's first vice president, John C. Calhoun. Accord- ing to this nullification theory, each state had the right to decide whether to obey a federal law or to declare it null and void (of no effect). In 1830, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts debated Robert Hayne of South Carolina on the nature of the federal Union under the Constitution. Webster attacked the idea that any state could defy or leave the Union. Following this famous Webster-Hayne debate, President Jackson declared his own position in a toast he presented at a political dinner. "Our federal Union," he declared, "it must be preserved." Calhoun responded immediately with another toast: "The Union, next to our liberties, most dear!" 196 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM In 1832, Calhoun's South Carolina increased tension by holding a special convention to nullify both the hated 1828 tariff and a new tariff of 1832. The convention passed a resolution forbidding the collection of tariffs within the state. Jackson reacted decisively. He told the secretary of war to prepare for military action. He persuaded Congress to pass a Force bill giving him author- ity to act against South Carolina. Jackson also issued a Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, stating that nullification and disunion were treason. But federal troops did not march in this crisis. Jackson opened the door for compromise by suggesting that Congress lower the tariff. South Carolina postponed nullification and later formally rescinded it after Congress enacted a new tariff along the lines suggested by the president. Jackson's strong defense of federal authority forced the militant advocates of states' rights to retreat. On another issue, however, militant southerners had Jackson's support. The president shared southerners' alarm about the growing antislavery movement in the North. He used his executive power to stop anti- slavery literature from being sent through the U.S. mail. Southern Jacksonians trusted that Jackson would not extend democracy to African Americans. Bank Veto Another major issue of Jackson's presidency concerned the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. This bank and its branches, although privately owned, received federal deposits and attempted to serve a public purpose by cushioning the ups and downs of the national economy. The bank's president, Nicholas Biddle, managed it effectively. Biddle's arro- gance, however, contributed to the suspicion that the bank abused its powers and served the interests of only the wealthy. Jackson shared this suspicion. He believed that the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional. Henry Clay, Jackson's chief political opponent, favored the bank. In 1832, an election year, Clay decided to challenge Jackson on the bank issue by per- suading a majority in Congress to pass a bank-recharter bill. Jackson promptly vetoed this bill, denouncing it as a private monopoly that enriched the wealthy and foreigners at the expense of the common people and the "hydra of corrup- tion." The voters agreed with Jackson. Jackson won reelection with more than three-fourths of the electoral vote. The Two-Party System The one-party system that had characterized Monroe's presidency (the Era of Good Feelings) had given way to a two-party system under Jackson. Support- ers of Jackson were now known as Democrats, while supporters of his leading rival, Henry Clay, were called Whigs. The Democratic party harked back to the old Republican party of Jefferson, and the Whig party resembled the defunct Federalist party of Hamilton. At the same time, the new parties reflected the changed conditions of the Jacksonian era. Democrats and Whigs alike were challenged to respond to the relentless westward expansion of the nation and the emergence of an industrial economy. THE AGE OF JACKSON, 1824-1844 197 Democrats and Whigs in the Age of Jackson Democrats Whigs Issues Supported • Local rule American System: • Limited government • A national bank • Free trade • Federal funds for inter- • Opportunity for white nal improvements males • A protective tariff Major Concerns • Monopolies • Crime associated with • National bank immigrants • High tariffs • High land prices Base of Voter Support • The South and West • New England and the • Urban workers Mid-Atlantic states • Protestants of English heritage • Urban professionals Jackson's Second Term After winning reelection in 1832, Jackson moved to destroy the Bank of the United States. Pet Banks Jackson attacked the bank by withdrawing all federal funds. Aided by Secretary of the Treasury Roger Taney, he transferred the funds to various state banks, which Jackson's critics called "pet banks." Species Circular As a result of both Jackson's financial policies and fever- ish speculation in western lands, prices for land and various goods became badly inflated. Jackson hoped to check the inflationary trend by issuing a presidential order known as the Specie Circular. It required that all future purchases of fed- eral lands be made in specie (gold and silver) rather than in paper banknotes. Soon afterward, banknotes lost their value and land sales plummeted. Right after Jackson left office, a financial crisis-the Panic of 1837-plunged the nation's economy into a depression. The Election of 1836 Following the two-term tradition set by his predecessors, Jackson did not seek a third term. To make sure his policies were carried out even in his retirement, Jackson persuaded the Democratic party to nominate his loyal vice president, Martin Van Buren, who was a master of practical politics. Fearing defeat, the Whig party adopted the unusual strategy of nominating three candidates from three different regions. In doing so, the Whigs hoped to throw the election into the House of Representatives, where each state had one vote in the selection of the president. The Whig strategy failed, however, as Van Buren took 58 percent of the electoral vote. 198 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM President Van Buren and the Panic of 1837 Just as Van Buren took office, the country suffered a financial panic as one bank after another closed its doors. Jackson's opposition to the rechartering of the Bank of the United States was only one of many causes of the panic and resulting economic depression. But the Whigs were quick to blame the Democrats for their laissez-faire economics, which advocated for little federal involvement in the economy. The "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" Campaign of 1840 In the election of 1840, the Whigs were in a strong position to defeat Van Buren and the Jacksonian Democrats. Voters were unhappy with the bad state of the economy. In addition, the Whigs were better organized than the Demo- crats, and had a popular war hero, William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison, as their presidential candidate. The Whigs took campaign hoopla to new heights. To symbolize Harrison's humble origins, they put log cabins on wheels and paraded them down the streets of cities and towns. They also passed out hard cider for voters to drink and buttons and hats to wear. Name-calling as a pro- paganda device also marked the 1840 campaign. The Whigs attacked "Martin Van Ruin" as an aristocrat with a taste for foreign wines. A remarkable 78 percent of eligible voters (white males) cast their ballots. Old "Tippecanoe" and John Tyler of Virginia, a former states' rights Demo- crat who joined the Whigs, took 53 percent of the popular vote and most of the electoral votes in all three sections: North, South, and West. This election established the Whigs as a national party. However, Harrison died of pneumonia less than a month after taking office, and "His Accidency," John Tyler, became the first vice-president to succeed to the presidency. President Tyler was not much of a Whig. He vetoed the Whigs' national bank bills and other legislation, and favored southern and expansion- ist Democrats during the balance of his term (1841-1845). The Jacksonian era was in its last stage, and came to an end with the Mexican War and the increased focus on the issue of slavery. (See Chapter 12.)

Chapter 12 'Territorial and Economic Expansion, 1830 - 1860'

After John O'Sullivan wrote about manifest destiny, supporters of territorial expansion spread the term across the land. In the 1840s and 1850s, expan- sionists wanted to see the United States extend westward to the Pacific and southward into Mexico, Cuba, and Central America. By the 1890s, expansion- ists fixed their sights on acquiring islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean. The phrase manifest destiny expressed the popular belief that the United States had a divine mission to extend its power and civilization across the breadth of North America. Enthusiasm for expansion reached a fever pitch in the 1840s. It was driven by a number of forces: nationalism, population increase, rapid economic development, technological advances, and reform ideals. But not all Americans united behind the idea of manifest destiny and expansionism. Northern critics argued vehemently that at the root of the expan- sionist drive was the Southern ambition to spread slavery into western lands. Conflicts Over Texas, Maine, and Oregon U.S. interest in pushing its borders south into Texas (a Mexican province) and west into the Oregon Territory ( claimed by Britain) largely resulted from American pioneers migrating into these lands during the 1820s and 1830s. Texas In 1823, after having won its national independence from Spain, Mexico hoped to attract settlers-including Anglo settlers-to farm its sparsely populated northern frontier province of Texas. Moses Austin, a Missouri banker, had obtained a large land grant in Texas but died before he could recruit American 230 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM settlers for the land. His son, Stephen Austin, succeeded in bringing 300 families into Texas and thereby beginning a steady migration of American settlers into the vast frontier territory. By 1830, Americans (both white farmers and enslaved blacks) outnumbered Mexicans in Texas by three to one. Friction developed between the Americans and the Mexicans when, in 1829, Mexico outlawed slavery and required all immigrants to convert to Roman Catholicism. When many settlers refused to obey these laws, Mexico closed Texas to additional American immigrants. Land-hungry Americans from the Southern states ignored the Mexican prohibition and streamed into Texas by the thousands. Revolt and Independence A change in Mexico's government intensified the conflict. In 1834, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna made himself dictator of Mexico and abolished that nation's federal system of government. When Santa Anna attempted to enforce Mexico's laws in Texas, a group of American settlers led by Sam Houston revolted and declared Texas to be an independent republic (March 1836). A Mexican army led by Santa Anna captured the town of Goliad and attacked the Alamo in San Antonio, killing every one of its American defend- ers. Shortly afterward, however, at the Battle of the San Jacinto River, an army under Sam Houston caught the Mexicans by surprise and captured their gen- eral, Santa Anna. Under the threat of death, the Mexican leader was forced to sign a treaty that recognized independence for Texas and granted the new republic all territory north of the Rio Grande. However, when the news of San Jacinto reached Mexico City, the Mexican legislature rejected the treaty and insisted that Texas was still part of Mexico. Annexation Denied As the first president of the Republic of Texas ( or Lone Star Republic), Houston applied to the U.S. government for his country to be annexed, or added to, the United States as a new state. However, presidents Jackson and Van Buren both put off the request for annexation primarily because of political opposition among Northerners to the expansion of slavery and the potential addition of up to five new slave states created out of the Texas territories. The threat of a costly war with Mexico also dampened expansionist zeal. The next president, John Tyler (1841-1845), was a Southern Whig who was worried about the growing influence of the British in Texas. He worked to annex Texas, but the U.S. Senate rejected his treaty of annexation in 1844. Boundary Dispute in Maine Another diplomatic issue arose in the 1840s over the ill-defined boundary between Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick. At this time, Canada was still under British rule, and many Americans regarded Britain as their country's worst enemy-an attitude carried over from two previous wars (the Revolution and the War of 1812). A conflict between rival groups of lumbermen on the Maine-Canadian border erupted into open fighting. Known as the Aroostook War, or "battle of the maps," the conflict was soon resolved in a treaty negotiated by U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster and the British TERRITORIAL AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION, 1830-1860 231 ambassador, Lord Alexander Ashburton. In the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the disputed territory was split between Maine and British Canada. The treaty also settled the boundary of the Minnesota territory, leaving what proved to be the iron-rich Mesabi range on the U.S. side of the border. Boundary Dispute in Oregon A far more serious British-American dispute involved Oregon, a vast territory on the Pacific Coast that originally stretched as far north as the Alaskan border. At one time, this territory was claimed by four different nations: Spain, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. Spain gave up its claim to Oregon in a treaty with the United States (the Adams-Onfs Treaty of 1819). Britain based its claim to Oregon on the Hudson Fur Company's profitable fur trade with the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. However, by 1846, fewer than a thousand British settlers lived north of the Columbia River. The United States based its claim on (1) the discovery of the Columbia River by Captain Robert Gray in 1792, (2) the overland expedition to the Pacific Coast by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805, and (3) the fur trading post and fort in Astoria, Oregon, established by John Jacob Astor in 1811. Protestant missionaries and farmers from the United States settled in the Willamette Valley in the 1840s. Their success in farming this fertile valley caused 5,000 Americans to catch "Oregon fever" and travel 2,000 miles over the Oregon Trail to settle in the area south of the Columbia River. By the 1844 election, many Americans believed it to be their country's manifest destiny to take undisputed possession of all of Oregon and to annex the Republic of Texas as well. In addition, expansionists hoped to persuade Mexico to give up its province on the West Coast-the huge land of Califor- nia. By 1845, Mexican California had a small Spanish-Mexican population of some 7,000 along with a much larger number of American Indians, but Ameri- can emigrants were arriving in sufficient numbers "to play the Texas game." The Election of 1844 Because slavery was allowed in Texas, many Northerners were opposed to its annexation. Leading the Northern wing of the Democratic party, former president Martin Van Buren opposed immediate annexation. Challenging him for the Democratic nomination in 1844 was the proslavery, pro-annexation Southerner, John C. Calhoun. The dispute between these candidates caused the Democratic convention to deadlock. After hours of wrangling, the Democrats finally nominated a dark horse (lesser known candidate). The man they chose, James K. Polk of Tennessee, had been a protege of Andrew Jackson. Firmly committed to expansion and manifest destiny, Polk favored the annexation of Texas, the "reoccupation" of all of Oregon, and the acquisition of Califor- nia. The Democratic slogan "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" appealed strongly to American westerners and Southerners who in 1844 were in an expansionist mood. ("Fifty-four forty" referred to the line of latitude, 54 ° 40', that marked the northern border between the Oregon Territory and Russian Alaska.) Henry Clay of Kentucky, the Whig nominee, attempted to straddle the controversial issue of Texas annexation, saying at first that he was against it and later that he was for it. This strategy alienated a group of voters in New York State, who abandoned the Whig party to support the antislavery Liberty party (see Chapter 11). In a close election, the Whigs' loss of New York's electoral votes proved decisive, and Polk, the Democratic dark horse, was the victor. The Democrats interpreted the election as a mandate to add Texas to the Union. Annexing Texas and Dividing Oregon Outgoing president John Tyler took the election of Polk as a signal to push the annexation of Texas through Congress. Instead of seeking Senate approval of a treaty that would have required a two-thirds vote, Tyler persuaded both houses of Congress to pass a joint resolution for annexation. This procedure required only a simple majority of each house. Tyler left Polk with the problem of dealing with Mexico's reaction to annexation. On the Oregon question, Polk decided to compromise with Britain and back down from his party's bellicose campaign slogan, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight!" Rather than fighting for all of Oregon, the president was willing to settle for just the southern half of it. British and American negotiators agreed to divide the Oregon territory at the 49th parallel (the parallel that had been established in 1818 for the Louisiana territory). Final settlement of the issue was delayed until the United States agreed to grant Vancouver Island to Britain and guarantee its right to navigate the Columbia River. In June 1846, the treaty was submitted to the Senate for ratification. Some Northerners viewed the treaty as a sellout to Southern interests because it removed British Columbia as a source of potential free states. Nevertheless, by this time war had broken out between the United States and Mexico. Not wanting to fight both Britain and Mexico, Senate opponents of the treaty reluctantly voted for the compromise settlement. War with Mexico The U.S. annexation of Texas quickly led to diplomatic trouble with Mexico. Upon taking office in 1845, President Polk dispatched John Slidell as his special envoy to the government in Mexico City. Polk wanted Slidell to (1) persuade Mexico to sell the California and New Mexico territories to the United States and (2) settle the disputed Mexico-Texas border. Slidell's mission failed on both counts. The Mexican government refused to sell California and insisted that Texas's southern border was on the Nueces River. Polk and Slidell asserted that the border lay farther to the south, along the Rio Grande. Immediate Causes of the War While Slidell waited for Mexico City's response to the U.S. offer, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to move his army toward the Rio Grande across territory claimed by Mexico. On April 24, 1846, a Mexican army crossed the Rio Grande and captured an American army patrol, killing 11. Polk used the TERRITORIAL AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION, 1830-1860 233 incident to justify sending his already prepared war message to Congress. Northern Whigs (among them a first-term Illinois representative named Abraham Lincoln) opposed going to war over the incident and doubted Polk's claim that American blood had been shed on American soil. Nevertheless, Whig protests were in vain; a large majority in both houses approved the war resolution. Military Campaigns Most of the war was fought in Mexican territory by relatively small armies of Americans. Leading a force that never exceeded 1,500, General Stephen Kearney succeeded in taking Santa Fe, the New Mexico territory, and southern California. Backed by only several dozen soldiers, a few navy officers, and American civilians who had recently settled in California, John C. Fremont quickly overthrew Mexican rule in northern California (June 1846) and pro- claimed California to be an independent republic with a bear on its flag-the so-called Bear Flag Republic. Meanwhile, Zachary Taylor's force of 6,000 men drove the Mexican army from Texas, crossed the Rio Grande into northern Mexico, and won a major victory at Buena Vista (February 1847). President Polk then selected General Winfield Scott to invade central Mexico. The army of 14,000 under Scott's command succeeded in taking the coastal city of Vera Cruz and then captured Mexico City in September 184 7. Consequences of the War For Mexico, the war was a military disaster from the start, but the Mexican government was unwilling to sue for peace and concede the loss of its northern lands. Finally, after the fall of Mexico City, the government had little choice but to agree to U.S. terms. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) The treaty negotiated in Mexico by American diplomat Nicholas Trist provided for the following: 1. Mexico recognized the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas. 2. The United States took possession of the former Mexican provinces of California and New Mexico-the Mexican Cession. For these territories, the United States paid $15 million and assumed responsibility for any claims of American citizens against Mexico. In the Senate, some Whigs opposed the treaty because they saw the war as an immoral effort to expand slavery. A few Southern Democrats disliked the treaty for opposite reasons; as expansionists, they wanted the United States to take all of Mexico. Nevertheless, the treaty was finally ratified in the Senate by the required two-thirds vote. Wilmot Proviso U.S. entry into a war with Mexico provoked controversy from start to finish. In 1846, the first year of war, Pennsylvania Congress- man David Wilmot proposed that an appropriations bill be amended to forbid slavery in any of the new territories acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Pro- viso, as it was called, passed the House twice but was defeated in the Senate. Prelude to Civil War? By increasing tensions between the North and the South, did the war to acquire territories from Mexico lead inevitably to the American Civil War? Without question, the acquisition of vast western lands did renew the sectional debate over the extension of slavery. Many Northern- ers viewed the war with Mexico as part of a Southern plot to extend the "slave power." Some historians see the Wilmot Proviso as the first round in an escalating political conflict that led ultimately to civil war. WESTWARD EXPANSION AND PIONEER TRAILS, 1840s Many Southerners were dissatisfied with the territorial gains from the Mexican War. In the early 1850s, they hoped to acquire new territories, especially in areas of Latin America where they thought plantations worked by slaves were economically feasible. The most tempting, eagerly sought possibility in the eyes of Southern expansionists was the acquisition of Cuba. Ostend Manifesto President Polk offered to purchase Cuba from Spain for $100 million, but Spain refused to sell the last major remnant of its once glorious empire. Several Southern adventurers led small expeditions to Cuba in TERRITORIAL AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION, 1830-1860 235 an effort to take the island by force of arms. These forays, however, were easily defeated, and those who participated were executed by Spanish firing squads. Elected to the presidency in 1852, Franklin Pierce adopted pro-Southern policies and dispatched three American diplomats to Ostend, Belgium, where they secretly negotiated to buy Cuba from Spain. The Ostend Manifesto that the diplomats drew up was leaked to the press in the United States and pro- voked an angry reaction from antislavery members of Congress. President Pierce was forced to drop the scheme. Walker Expedition Expansionists continued to seek new empires with or without the federal government's support. Southern adventurer William Walker had tried unsuccessfully to take Baja California from Mexico in 1853. Then, leading a force mostly of Southerners, he took over Nicaragua in 1855. Walker's regime even gained temporary recognition from the United States in 1856. However, his grandiose scheme to develop a proslavery Central Ameri- can empire collapsed, when a coalition of Central American countries invaded and defeated him. Walker was executed by Honduran authorities in 1860. Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) Another American ambition was to build a canal through Central America. Great Britain had the same ambition. To pre- vent each other from seizing this opportunity on its own, Great Britain and the United States agreed to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850. It provided that neither nation would attempt to take exclusive control of any future canal route in Central America. This treaty continued in force until the end of the cen- tury. A new treaty signed in 1901 (the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty) gave the United States a free hand to build a canal without British participation. Gadsden Purchase Although he failed to acquire Cuba, President Pierce succeeded in adding a strip of land to the American Southwest for a railroad. In 1853, Mexico agreed to sell thousands of acres of semidesert land to the United States for $10 million. Known as the Gadsden Purchase, the land forms the southern sections of present-day New Mexico and Arizona. Expansion After the Civil War From 1855 until 1870, the issues of union, slavery, civil war, and postwar reconstruction would overshadow the drive to acquire new territory. Even so, manifest destiny continued to be an important force for shaping U.S. policy. In 1867, for example, Secretary of State William Seward succeeded in purchasing Alaska at a time when the nation was just recovering from the Civil War. Settlement of the Western Territories Following the peaceful acquisition of Oregon and the more violent acquisition of California, the migration of Americans into these lands began in earnest. The arid area between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific Coast was popu- larly known in the 1850s and 1860s as the Great American Desert. Emigrants passed quickly over this vast, dry region to reach the more inviting lands on the West Coast. Therefore, California and Oregon were settled several decades before people attempted to farm the Great Plains. 236 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Fur Traders' Frontier Fur traders known as mountain men were the earliest nonnative individuals to open the Far West. In the 1820s, they held yearly rendezvous in the Rock- ies with American Indians to trade for animal skins. James Beckwourth, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith were among the hardy band of explor- ers and trappers who provided much of the early information about trails and frontier conditions to later settlers. Overland Trails After the mountain men, a much larger group of pioneers made the hazardous journey west in hopes of clearing the forests and farming the fertile valleys of California and Oregon. By 1860, hundreds of thousands had reached their westward goal by following the Oregon, California, Santa Fe, and Mormon trails. The long and arduous trek usually began in St. Joseph or Independence, Missouri, or in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and followed the river valleys through the Great Plains. Inching along at only 15 miles a day, a wagon train needed months to finally reach the foothills of the Rockies or face the hardships of the southwestern deserts. The final life-or-death challenge was to get through the mountain passes of the Sierras and Cascades before the first heavy snow. While pioneers feared attacks by American Indians, the most common and serious dangers were disease and depression from the harsh everyday conditions on the trail. Mining Frontier The discovery of gold in California in 1848 set off the first of many migrations to mineral-rich mountains of the West. Gold or silver rushes occurred in Colo- rado, Nevada, the Black Hills of the Dakotas, and other western territories. The mining boom brought tens of thousands of men ( and afterward women as well) into the western mountains. Mining camps and towns-many of them short-lived-sprang up wherever a strike (discovery) was reported. Largely as a result of the gold rush, California's population soared from a mere 14,000 in 1848 to 380,000 by 1860. Booms attracted miners from around the world. By the 1860s, almost one-third of the miners in the West were Chinese. Farming Frontier Most pioneer families moved west to start homesteads and begin farming. Congress' Preemption Acts of the 1830s and 1840s gave squatters the right to settle public lands and purchase them for low prices once the government put them up for sale. In addition, the government made it easier for settlers by offering parcels of land as small as 40 acres for sale. However, moving west was not for the penniless. A family needed at least $200 to $300 to make the overland trip, which eliminated many of the poor. The trek to California and Oregon was largely a middle-class movement. The isolation of the frontier made life for pioneers especially difficult dur- ing the first years, but rural communities soon developed. The institutions that the people established (schools, churches, clubs, and political parties) were TERRITORIAL AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION, 1830-1860 237 modeled after those that they had known in the East or, for immigrants from abroad, in their native lands. Urban Frontier Western cities that arose as a result of railroads, mineral wealth, and farming attracted a number of professionals and business owners. For example, San Fran- cisco and Denver became instant cities created by the gold and silver rushes. Salt Lake City grew because it offered fresh supplies to travelers on overland trails for the balance of their westward journey. The Expanding Economy The era of territorial expansion coincided with a period of remarkable economic growth from the 1840s to 1857. Industrial Technology Before 1840, factory production had been concentrated mainly in the textile mills of New England. After 1840, industrialization spread rapidly to the other states of the Northeast. The new factories produced shoes, sewing machines, ready-to- wear clothing, firearms, precision tools, and iron products for railroads and other new technologies. The invention of the sewing machine by Elias Howe took much of the production of clothing out of homes into factories. An electric telegraph successfully demonstrated in 1844 by its inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse, went hand in hand with the growth of railroads in enormously speeding up communication and transportation across the country. Railroads The canal-building era of the 1820s and 1830s was replaced in the next two decades with the rapid expansion of rail lines, especially across the Northeast and Midwest. The railroads soon emerged as America's largest industry. As such, they required immense amounts of capital and labor and gave rise to complex business organizations. Local merchants and farmers would often buy stocks in the new railroad companies in order to connect their area to the outside world. Local and state governments also helped the railroads grow by granting special loans and tax breaks. In 1850, the U.S. government granted 2.6 million acres of federal land to build the Illinois Central Railroad from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico, the first such federal land grant. Cheap and rapid transportation particularly promoted western agriculture. Farmers in Illinois and Iowa were now more closely linked to the Northeast by rail than by the river routes to the South. The railroads not only united the com- mon commercial interests of the Northeast and Midwest, but would also give the North strategic advantages in the Civil War. Foreign Commerce The growth in manufactured goods as well as in agricultural products (both West- ern grains and Southern cotton) caused a large growth of exports and imports. Other factors also played a role in the expansion of U.S. trade in the mid-1800s: 238 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM 1. Shipping firms encouraged trade and travel across the Atlantic by having their sailing packets depart on a regular schedule (instead of the unscheduled departures that had been customary in the 18th century). 2. The demand for whale oil to light the homes of middle-class Ameri- cans caused a whaling boom between 1830 and 1860, in which New England merchants took the lead. 3. Improvements in ship design came just in time to speed goldseekers on their journey to the California gold fields. The development of the American clipper ship cut the six-month trip from New York around the Hom of South America to San Francisco to as little as 89 days. 4. Steamships took the place of clipper ships in the mid-l 850s because they had greater storage capacity, could be maintained at lower cost, and could more easily follow a regular schedule. 5. The federal government expanded U.S. trade by sending Commodore Matthew C. Perry and a small fleet of naval ships to Japan, which had been closed to most foreigners for over two centuries. In 1854, Perry pressured Japan's government to sign the Kanagawa Treaty, which allowed U.S. vessels to enter two Japanese ports to take on coal. This treaty soon lead to a commerical agreement on trade. Panic of 1857 The midcentury economic boom ended in 1857 with a financial panic. Prices, especially for Midwestern farmers, dropped sharply, and unemployment in Northern cities increased. Since cotton prices remained high, the South was less affected. As a result, some Southerners believed that their plantation economy was superior and that continued union with the Northern economy was not needed.

Chapter 16 'The Rise of Industrial America, 1865 - 1900'

By 1900, the United States was the leading industrial power in the world, manufacturing more than its leading rivals, Great Britain, France, or Germany. Several factors contributed to the rapid growth (about 4 percent a year) of the U.S. economy: • The country was a treasure-house of raw materials essential to industri- alization-coal, iron ore, copper, lead, timber, and oil. • An abundant labor supply that was, between 1865 and 1900, supple- mented yearly by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. • A growing population and an advanced transportation network made the United States the largest market in the world for industrial goods. • Capital was plentiful, as Europeans with surplus wealth joined well-to- do Americans in investing in the economic expansion. • The development of labor-saving technologies and an efficient patent system increased productivity. The federal government granted more than 440,000 new patents from 1860 to 1890. • Businesses benefited from friendly government policies that protected private property, subsidized railroads with land grants and loans, sup- ported U.S. manufacturers with protective tariffs, refrained from regulating business operations, and limited taxes on corporate profits. • Talented entrepreneurs emerged during this era who were able to build and manage vast industrial and commercial enterprises. THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865-1900 319 The Business of Railroads The dynamic combination of business leadership, capital, technology, markets, labor, and government support was especially evident in the development of the nation's first big business-railroads. After the Civil War, railroad mileage increased more than fivefold in a 35-year period (from 35,000 miles in 1865 to 193,000 miles in 1900). Railroads created a market for goods that was national in scale, and by so doing encouraged mass production, mass consumption, and economic specialization. The resources used in railroad-building promoted the growth of other industries, especially coal and steel. Railroads also affected the routines of daily life. Soon after the American Railroad Association divided the country into four time zones in 1883, railroad time became standard time for all Americans. Maybe the most important innovations of the railroads was the creation of the modern stockholder corporation and the development of complex structures in finance, business management, and the regulation of competition. Eastern Trunk lines In the early decades of railroading (1830-1860), the building of dozens of sepa- rate local lines had resulted in different gauges ( distance between tracks) and incompatible equipment. These inefficiencies were reduced after the Civil War through the consolidation of competing railroads into integrated trunk lines. (A trunk line was the major route between large cities; smaller branch lines con- nected the trunk line with outlying towns.) "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt used his millions earned from a steamboat business to merge local railroads into the New York Central Railroad (1867), which ran from New York City to Chicago and operated more than 4,500 miles of track. Other trunk lines, such as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad, connected eastern seaports with Chicago and other midwestern cities and set standards of excellence and efficiency for the rest of the industry. Western Railroads The great age of railroad-building coincided with the settlement of the last fron- tier. Railroads not only promoted settlement on the Great Plains, but they linked the West with the East to create one great national market. Federal Land Grants Recognizing that western railroads would lead the way to settlement, the federal government provided railroad companies with huge subsidies in the form of loans and land grants. The government gave 80 railroad companies more than 170 million acres of public land, more than three times the acres given away under the Homestead Act. The land was given in alternate mile-square sections in a checkerboard pattern along the proposed route of the railroad. The government expected that the railroad would sell the land to new settlers to finance construction. Furthermore, the completed railroad might both increase the value of government lands and provide preferred rates for carrying the mail and transporting troops. 320 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The subsidies carried some negative consequences. The land grants and cash loans promoted hasty and poor construction and led to corruption in all levels of government. Insiders used construction companies, like the notorious Credit Mobilier (see Chapter 15), to bribe government officials and pocket huge profits. Protests against the land grants mounted in the 1880s when citizens discovered that the railroads controlled half of the land in some western states. Transcontinental Railroads During the Civil War, Congress authorized land grants and loans for the building of the first transcontinental railroad to tie California to the rest of the Union. Two newly incorporated railroad companies divided the task. The Union Pacific (UP) started from Omaha, Nebraska, and built westward across the Great Plains. The UP employed thousands of war veterans and Irish immigrants under the direction of General Grenville Dodge. The Central Pacific started from Sacramento, California, and built eastward. Led by Charles Crocker, the workers, including 6,000 Chinese immigrants, took on the great risks of laying track and blasting tunnels through the Sierra Nevada mountains. The two railroads came together on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, where a golden spike was ceremoniously driven into the rail tie to mark the linking of the Atlantic and the Pacific states. In 1883, three other transcontinental railroads were completed. The South- ern Pacific tied New Orleans to Los Angeles. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe linked Kansas City and Los Angeles. The Northern Pacific connected Duluth, Minnesota, with Seattle, Washington. In 1893, a fifth transcontinental railroad was finished, the Great Northern, which ran from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seat- tle. It was built by James Hill. The transcontinental railroads may have helped to settle the West, but many proved failures as businesses. They were built in areas with few customers and with little promise of returning a profit in the near term. Competition and Consolidation During speculative bubbles, investors often overbuild new technologies, as did railroads owners in the 1870s and 1880s. Railroads also suffered from misman- agement and outright fraud. Speculators such as Jay Gould entered the railroad business for quick profits and made their millions by selling off assets and watering stock (inflating the value of a corporation's assets and profits before selling its stock to the public). In a ruthless scramble to survive, railroads com- peted by offering rebates (discounts) and kickbacks to favored shippers while charging exorbitant freight rates to smaller customers such as farmers. They also attempted to increase profits by forming pools, in which competing com- panies agreed secretly and informally to fix rates and share traffic. A financial panic in 1893 forced a quarter of all railroads into bankruptcy. J. Pierpont Morgan and other bankers quickly moved in to take control of the bankrupt railroads and consolidate them. With competition eliminated, they could stabilize rates and reduce debts. By 1900, seven giant systems controlled nearly two-thirds of the nation's railroads. The consolidation made the rail sys- tem more efficient. However, the system was controlled by a few powerful men THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865-1900 321 TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROADS, 1865-1900 500 1000 MIies 500 1000 Kilometers CANAD A MEXICO GULF OF MEXICO (.) such as Morgan, who dominated the boards of competing railroad corporations through interlocking directorates (the same directors ran competing compa- nies). In effect, they created regional railroad monopolies. Railroads captured the imagination of late-19th century America, as the public, local communities, states, and the federal government invested in their development. At the same time, however, customers and small investors often felt that they were the victims of slick financial schemes and ruthless practices. Early attempts to regulate the railroads by law did little good. The Granger laws passed by midwestern states in the 1870s were overturned by the courts, and the federal Interstate Commerce Act of 1886 was at first ineffective (see Chapter 17). Not until the Progressive era in the early 20th century did Con- gress expand the powers of Interstate Commerce Commission to protect the public interest. Industrial Empires The late 19th century witnessed a major shift in the nature of industrial pro- duction. Early factories had concentrated on producing textiles, clothing, and 322 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM leather products. After the Civil War, a "second Industrial Revolution" resulted in the growth of large-scale industry and the production of steel, petroleum, electric power, and the industrial machinery to produce other goods. The Steel Industry The technological breakthrough that launched the rise of heavy industry was the discovery of a new process for making large quantities of steel ( a more durable metal than iron). In the 1850s, both Henry Bessemer in England and William Kelly in the United States discovered that blasting air through molten iron produced high-quality steel. The Great Lakes region, from Pennsylvania to Illinois, used its abundant coal reserves and access to the iron ore of Min- nesota's Mesabi Range to emerge as the center of steel production. Andrew Carnegie Leadership of the fast-growing steel industry passed to a shrewd business genius, Andrew Carnegie. Born in 1835 in Scotland, Carn- egie immigrated to the United States and worked his way up from poverty to become the superintendent of a Pennsylvania railroad. In the 1870s, he started manufacturing steel in Pittsburgh and soon outdistanced his competitors by a combination of salesmanship and the use of the latest technology. Carne- gie employed a business strategy known as vertical integration, by which a company would control every stage of the industrial process, from mining the raw materials to transporting the finished product. By 1900, Carnegie Steel employed 20,000 workers and produced more steel than all the mills in Britain. U.S. Steel Corporation Deciding to retire from business to devote himself to philanthropy, Carnegie sold his company in 1900 for more than $400 mil- lion to a new steel combination headed by J. P. Morgan. The new corporation, United States Steel, was the first billion-dollar company and also the largest enterprise in the world, employing 168,000 people and controlling more than three-fifths of the nation's steel business. Rockefeller and the Oil Industry The first U.S. oil well was drilled by Edwin Drake in 1859 in Pennsylvania. Only four years later, in 1863, a young John D. Rockefeller founded a company that would come to control most of the nation's oil refineries by eliminating its competition. Rockefeller took charge of the chaotic oil refinery business by applying the latest technologies and efficient practices. At the same time, as his company grew, he was able to extort rebates from railroad companies and temporarily cut prices for Standard Oil kerosene to force rival companies to sell out. By 1881 his company-by then known as the Standard Oil Trust- controlled 90 percent of the oil refinery business. The trust that Rockefeller put together consisted of the various companies that he had acquired, all man- aged by a board of trustees that Rockefeller and Standard Oil controlled. Such a combination represented a horizontal integration of an industry, in which former competitors were brought under a single corporate umbrella. By con- trolling the supply and prices of oil products, Standard Oil's profits soared and THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865-1900 323 so did Rockefeller's fortune, which at the time of his retirement amounted to $900 million. By eliminating waste in the production of kerosene, Standard Oil was also able to keep prices low for consumers. Emulating Rockefeller's suc- cess, dominant companies in other industries (sugar, tobacco, leather, meat) also organized trusts. Antitrust Movement The trusts came under widespread scrutiny and attack in the 1880s. Middle- class citizens feared the trusts' unchecked power, and urban elites ( old wealth) resented the increasing influence of the new rich. After failing to curb trusts on the state level, reformers finally moved Congress to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, which prohibited any "contract, combination, in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce." Although a federal law against monopolies was now on the books, it was too vaguely worded to stop the development of trusts in the 1890s. Furthermore, the Supreme Court in United States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895) ruled that the Sher- man Antitrust Act could be applied only to commerce, not to manufacturing. As a result, the U.S. Department of Justice secured few convictions until the law was strengthened during the Progressive era (see Chapter 21). Laissez-Faire Capitalism The idea of government regulation of business was alien to the prevailing eco- nomic, scientific, and religious beliefs of the late 19th century. The economic expression of these beliefs was summed up in the phrase "laissez-faire." Conservative Economic Theories As early as 1776, the economist Adam Smith had argued in The Wealth of Nations that business should be regulated, not by government, but by the "invisible hand" (impersonal economic forces) of the law of supply and demand. If government kept its hands off, so the theory went, businesses would be motivated by their own self-interest to offer improved goods and services at low prices. In the 19th century, American industrialists appealed to laissez-faire theory to justify their methods of doing business-even while they readily accepted the protection of high tariffs and federal subsidies. The rise of monopolistic trusts in the 1880s seemed to undercut the very competition needed for natural regulation. Even so, among conservatives and business leaders, laissez-faire theory was constantly invoked in legislative halls and lobbies to ward off any threat of government regulation. Social Darwinism Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection in biology offended the beliefs of many religious conservatives, but it bolstered the views of economic conservatives. Led by English social philosopher Herbert Spencer, some people argued for Social Darwinism, the belief that Darwin's ideas of natural selection and survival of the fittest should be applied to the marketplace. 324 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Spencer believed that concentrating wealth in the hands of the "fit" benefited everyone. An American Social Darwinist, Professor William Graham Sum- ner of Yale University, argued that helping the poor was misguided because it interfered with the laws of nature and would only weaken the evolution of the species by preserving the unfit. Social Darwinism gave some during this period a "scientific" sanction for their racial intolerance. Race theories about the superiority of one group over others would continue to produce in problems in the 20th century. Gospel of Wealth A number of Americans found religion more convinc- ing than social Darwinism in justifying the wealth of successful industrialists and bankers. Because he diligently applied the Protestant work ethic (that hard work and material success are signs of God's favor) to both his business and personal life, John D. Rockefeller concluded that "God gave me my riches." In a popular lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," the Reverend Russell Conwell preached that everyone had a duty to become rich. Andrew Carnegie's article "Wealth" argued that the wealthy had a God-given responsibility to carry out projects of civic philanthropy for the benefit of society. Practicing what he preached, Carnegie distributed more than $350 million of his fortune to support the building of libraries, universities, and various public institutions. Technology and Innovations Vital to industrial progress were new inventions. These led to greater pro- ductivity in the workplace and mass-produced goods in the home. Inventions The first radical change in the speed of communications was the invention of a workable telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse, initially demonstrated in 1844. By the time of the Civil War, electronic communication by telegraph and rapid transportation by railroad were already becoming standard parts of modern liv- ing, especially in the northern states. After the war, Cyrus W. Field's invention of an improved transatlantic cable in 1866 suddenly made it possible to send messages across the seas in minutes. By 1900, cables linked all continents of the world in an electronic network of nearly instantaneous, global communica- tion. This communication revolution soon internationalized markets and prices for basic commodities, such as grains, coal, and steel, often placing local and smaller producers at the mercy of international forces. Among the hundreds of noteworthy inventions of the late 19th century were the typewriter (1867), the telephone developed by Alexander Graham Bell (1876), the cash register (1879), the calculating machine (1887), and the adding machine (1888). These new products became essential tools for busi- ness. Products for the consumer that were in widespread use by the end of the century were George Eastman's Kodak camera (1888), Lewis E. Waterman's fountain pen (1884), and King Gillette's safety razor and blade (1895). THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865-1900 325 Edison and Westinghouse Possibly the greatest inventor of the 19th century, Thomas Edison was a young telegraph operator and patented his first invention, a machine for recording votes in 1869. Income from his early inventions enabled Edison to estab- lish a research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. This was the world's first modern research laboratory. It ranks among Edison's most impor- tant contribution to science and industry because it introduced the concept of mechanics and engineers working on a project as a team rather than as lone inventors. Out of Edison's lab came more than a thousand patented inventions, including the phonograph, the improvement of the incandescent lamp in 1879 ( the first practical electric lightbulb ), the dynamo for generating electric power, the mimeograph machine, and the motion picture camera. Another remarkable inventor, George Westinghouse, held more than 400 patents and was responsible for developing an air brake for railroads (1869) and a transformer for producing high-voltage alternating current (1885). The latter invention made possible the lighting of cities and the operation of electric streetcars, subways, and electrically powered machinery and appliances. Marketing Consumer Goods The increased output of U.S. factories as well as the invention of new consumer products prompted businesses to find ways of selling their merchandise to a large public. R.H. Macy in New York and Marshall Field in Chicago made the large department store the place to shop in urban centers, while Frank Wool- worth's Five and Ten Cent Store brought nationwide chain stores to the towns and urban neighborhoods. Two large mail-order companies, Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, used the improved rail system to ship to rural custom- ers everything from hats to houses ordered from their thick catalogs, which were known to millions of Americans as the "wish book." Packaged foods under such brand names as Kellogg and Post became com- mon items in American homes. Refrigerated railroad cars and canning enabled Gustavus Swift and other packers to change the eating habits of Americans with mass-produced meat and vegetable products. Advertising and new mar- keting techniques not only promoted a consumer economy but also created a consumer culture in which shopping became a favorite pastime. Impact of Industrialization The growth of American industry raised the standard of living for most people. However, growth also created sharper economic and class divisions among the rich, the middle class, and the poor. The Concentration of Wealth By the 1890s, the richest 10 percent of the U.S. population controlled 90 percent of the nation's wealth. Industrialization created a new class of million- aires, some of whom flaunted their wealth by living in ostentatious mansions, sailing enormous yachts, and throwing lavish parties. The Vanderbilts graced 326 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM the waterfront of Newport, Rhode Island, with summer homes that rivaled the villas of European royalty. Guests at one of their dinner parties were invited to hunt for their party favors by using small silver shovels to seek out the precious gems hidden in sand on long silver trays. Horatio Alger Myth Many Americans ignored the widening gap between the rich and the poor. They found hope in the examples of "self-made men" in business such as Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison and novels by Horatio Alger Jr. Every Alger novel portrayed a young man of modest means who becomes wealthy through honesty, hard work, and a little luck. In reality, opportunities for upward mobility (movement into a higher economic bracket) did exist, but the rags-to-riches career of an Andrew Carnegie was unusual. Statistical studies demonstrate that the typical wealthy businessperson of the day was a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male who came from an upper- or middle-class background and whose father was in business or banking. The Expanding Middle Class The growth of large corporations required thousands of white-collar workers (salaried workers whose jobs generally do not involve manual labor) to fill the highly organized administrative structures. Middle management was needed to coordinate the operations between the chief executives and the factories. In addition, industrialization helped expand the middle class by creating jobs for accountants, clerical workers, and salespersons. In tum, these middle-class employees increased the demand for services from other middle-class workers: professionals (doctors and lawyers), public employees, and storekeepers. The increase in the number of good-paying occupations after the Civil War signifi- cantly increased the size of the middle class. Wage Earners By 1900, two-thirds of all working Americans worked for wages, usually at jobs that required them to work ten hours a day, six days a week. Wages were determined by the laws of supply and demand, and because there was usually a large supply of immigrants competing for factory jobs, wages were barely above the level needed for bare subsistence. Low wages were justified by David Ricardo (1772-1823 ), whose famous "iron law of wages" argued that raising wages would only increase the working population, and the availability of more workers would in tum cause wages to fall, thus creating a cycle of mis- ery and starvation. Real wages (income adjusted for inflation) rose steadily in the late 19th century, but even so most wage earners could not support a family decently on one income. Therefore, working-class families depended on the income of women and children. In 1890, 11 million of the 12.5 million families in the United States averaged less than $380 a year in income. Working Women One adult woman out of every five in 1900 was in the labor force working for wages. Most were young and single-only 5 percent of married women worked outside the home. In 1900, men and women alike believed that, if a THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865-1900 327 family could afford it, a woman's proper role was in the home raising children. Factory work for women was usually in industries that people perceived as an extension of the home: the textile, garment, and food-processing industries, for example. As the demand for clerical workers increased, women moved into formerly male occupations as secretaries, bookkeepers, typists, and telephone operators. Occupations or professions that became feminized (women becom- ing the majority) usually lost status and received lower wages and salaries. Labor Discontent Before the Industrial Revolution, workers labored in small workplaces that valued an artisan's skills. They often felt a sense of accomplishment in creating a product from start to finish. Factory work was radically different. Industrial workers were often assigned just one step in the manufacturing of a product, performing semiskilled tasks monotonously. Both immigrants from abroad and migrants from rural America had to learn to work under the tyranny of the clock. In many industries, such as railroads and mining, working conditions were dangerous. Many workers were exposed to chemicals and pollutants that only later were discovered to cause chronic illness and early death. Industrial workers rebelled against intolerable working conditions by miss- ing work or quitting. They changed jobs on the average of every three years. About 20 percent of those who worked in factories eventually dropped out of the industrial workplace rather than continuing. This was a far higher percent- age than those who protested by joining labor unions. The American Workforce, 1900 -1960 Year Farm Nonfarm Total Percentage Total Percentage in millions in millions 1900 11,050 41 15,906 1910 11,260 32 23,299 1920 10,440 27 28,768 1930 10,340 22 33,843 1940 9,540 20 37,980 1950 7,160 12 51,760 1960 5,458 8 60,318 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 328 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM 59 68 73 78 80 88 92 The Struggle of Organized Labor The late 19th century witnessed the most deadly-and frequent-labor con- flicts in the nation's history. Many feared the country was heading toward open warfare between capital and labor. Industrial Warfare With a surplus of cheap labor, management held most of the power in its struggles with organized labor. Strikers could easily be replaced by bringing in strikebreakers, or scabs-unemployed persons desperate for jobs. Employ- ers also used all of the following tactics for defeating unions: • the lockout: closing the factory to break a labor movement before it could get organized • blacklists: names of pro-union workers circulated among employers • yellow-dog contracts: workers being told, as a condition for employ- ment, that they must sign an agreement not to join a union • calling in private guards and state militia to put down strikes • obtaining court injunctions against strikes Moreover, management fostered public fear of unions as anarchistic and un-American. Before 1900, management won most of its battles with orga- nized labor because, if violence developed, employers could almost always count on the support of the federal and state governments. Labor itself was often divided on the best methods for fighting manage- ment. Some union leaders advocated political action. Others favored direct confrontation: strikes, picketing, boycotts, and slowdowns to achieve union recognition and collective bargaining. Great Railroad Strike of 1877 One of the worst outbreaks of labor vio- lence in the century erupted in 1877, during an economic depression, when the railroad companies cut wages in order to reduce costs. A strike on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad quickly spread across 11 states and shut down two-thirds of the country's rail trackage. Railroad workers were joined by 500,000 workers from other industries in an escalating strike that quickly became national in scale. For the first time since the 1830s, a president (Rutherford B. Hayes) used federal troops to end labor violence. The strike and the violence finally ended, but not before more than 100 people had been killed. After the strike, some employers addressed the workers' grievances by improving wages and work- ing conditions, while others took a hard line by busting workers' organizations. Attempts to Organize National Unions Before the 1860s, unions had been organized as local associations in one city or region. They usually focused on one craft or type of work. THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865-1900 329 National Labor Union The first attempt to organize all workers in all states-both skilled and unskilled, both agricultural workers and industrial workers-was the National Labor Union. Founded in 1866, it had some 640,000 members by 1868. Besides championing the goals of higher wages and the eight-hour day, the first national union also had a broad social program: equal rights for women and blacks, monetary reform, and worker cooperatives. Its chief victory was winning the eight-hour day for workers employed by the federal government. It lost support, however, after a depression began in 1873 and after the unsuccessful strikes of 1877. Knights of Labor A second national labor union, the Knights of Labor, began in 1869 as a secret society in order to avoid detection by employers. Under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, the union went public in 1881, opening its membership to all workers, including African Americans and women. Powderly advocated a variety of reforms: (1) worker cooperatives "to make each man his own employer," (2) abolition of child labor, and (3) aboli- tion of trusts and monopolies. He favored settling labor disputes by means of arbitration rather than resorting to strikes. Because the Knights were loosely organized, however, he could not control local units that decided to strike. The Knights of Labor grew rapidly and attained a peak membership of 730,000 workers in 1886. It declined just as rapidly, however, after the violence of the Haymarket riot in Chicago in 1886 turned public opinion against the union. Haymarket Bombing Chicago, with about 80,000 Knights in 1886, was the site of the first May Day labor movement. Also living in Chicago were about 200 anarchists who advocated the violent overthrow of all government. In response to the May Day movement calling for a general strike to achieve an eight-hour day, labor violence broke out at Chicago's McCormick Harvester plant. On May 4, workers held a public meeting in Haymarket Square, and as police attempted to break up the meeting, someone threw a bomb, which killed seven police officers. The bomb thrower was never found. Even so, eight anarchist leaders were tried for the crime and seven were sentenced to death. Horrified by the bomb incident, many Americans concluded that the union movement was radical and violent. The Knights of Labor, as the most visible union at the time, lost popularity and membership. American Federation of Labor Unlike the reform-minded Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor (AF of L) concentrated on attain- ing narrower economic goals. Founded in 1886 as an association of 25 craft unions, and led by Samuel Gompers until 1924, the AF of L focused on just higher wages and improved working conditions. Gompers directed his local unions of skilled workers to walk out until the employer agreed to negotiate a new contract through collective bargaining. By 1901, the AF of L was by far the nation's largest union, with 1 million members. Even this union, however, would not achieve major successes until the early decades of the 20th century. 330 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Strikebreaking in the 1890s Two massive strikes in the last decade of the 19th century demonstrated both the growing discontent of labor and the continued power of management to prevail in industrial disputes. Homestead Strike Henry Clay Frick, the manager of Andrew Carnegie's Homestead Steel plant near Pittsburgh, precipitated a strike in 1892 by cutting wages by nearly 20 percent. Frick used the weapons of the lockout, private guards, and strikebreakers to defeat the steelworkers' walkout after five months. The failure of the Homestead strike set back the union movement in the steel industry until the New Deal in the 1930s. Pullman Strike Even more alarming to conservatives was a strike of workers living in George Pullman's company town near Chicago. Pullman man- ufactured the famous railroad sleeping cars known as Pullman cars. In 1894, he announced a general cut in wages and fired the leaders of the workers' delega- tion who came to bargain with him. The workers at Pullman laid down their tools and appealed for help from the American Railroad Union whose leader, Eugene V. Debs, directed railroad workers not to handle any trains with Pullman cars. The union's boycott tied up rail transportation across the country. Railroad owners supported Pullman by linking Pullman cars to mail trains. They then appealed to President Grover Cleveland, persuading him to use the army to keep the mail trains running. A federal court issued an injunction forbidding interference with the operation of the mail and ordering railroad workers to abandon the boycott and the strike. For failing to respond to this injunction, Debs and other union leaders were arrested and jailed. The jailing of Debs and others effectively ended the strike. In the case of In re Debs (1895), the Supreme Court approved the use of court injunctions against strikes, which gave employers a very powerful weapon to break unions. After serving a six- month jail sentence, Debs concluded that more radical solutions were needed to cure labor's problems. He turned to socialism and the American Socialist party, which he helped to found in 1900. By 1900, only 3 percent of American workers belonged to unions. Manage- ment held the upper hand in labor disputes, with government generally taking its side. However, people were beginning to recognize the need for a better bal- ance between the demands of employers and employees to avoid the numerous strikes and violence that characterized the late 19th century. Regional Differences During the Gilded Age, industrial growth was con- centrated in the Northeast and Midwest regions, the parts of the country with the largest populations, the most capital, and the best transportation. As industry grew, these regions developed more cities, attracted more immigrants and migrants from rural areas, and created more middle-class jobs. The next chapter will analyze the development of the West and South during this period.

Chapter 23 'The Modern Era of the 1920s'

The armistice ending World War I was two years in the past in November 1920 when the American people-women as well as men-went to the polls to cast their votes for president. Their choice was between two men from Ohio: Governor James Cox, a Democrat who urged the adoption of the League of Nations, and Senator Warren G. Harding, a Republican who was unclear about where he stood on every issue. The only memorable phrase in Harding's campaign was his assertion that the American people wanted a "return to nor- malcy." Harding apparently was right, because he was elected by a landslide. It was a sign that the idealism and activism that had characterized the prewar years of the Progressive era were over. Republican Control Through the 1920s, three Republican presidents would control the executive branch. Congress too was solidly Republican through a decade in which U.S. business boomed, while farmers and unions struggled. Business Doctrine The great leader of the progressive wing of the Republican party, Theodore Roosevelt, died in 1919. This loss, combined with public disillusionment over the war, allowed the return of the old-guard (conservative) Republicans. Unlike the Republicans of the Gilded Age, however, Republican leadership in the 1920s did not preach laissez-faire economics but rather accepted the idea of limited government regulation as an aid to stabilizing business. The regula- tory commissions established in the Progressive era were now administered by appointees who were more sympathetic to business than to the general public. The prevailing idea of the Republican party was that the nation would benefit if business and the pursuit of profits took the lead in developing the economy. THE MODERN ERA OF THE 19205 475 The Presidency of Warren Harding Harding had been a newspaper publisher in Ohio before entering politics. He was handsome and well-liked among the Republican political cronies with whom he regularly played poker. His abilities as a leader, however, were less than presi- dential. When the Republican national convention of 1920 deadlocked, the party bosses decided "in a smoke-filled room" to deliver the nomination to Harding as a compromise choice. A Few Good Choices Harding recognized his limitations and hoped to make up for them by appointing able men to his cabinet. He appointed the former presidential candidate and Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes to be secretary of state; the greatly admired former mining engineer and Food Admin- istration leader Herbert Hoover to be secretary of commerce; and the Pittsburgh industrialist and millionaire Andrew Mellon to be secretary of the treasury. When the Chief Justice's seat on the Supreme Court became vacant, Harding filled it by appointing former President William Howard Taft. Domestic Policy Harding did little more than sign into law the measures adopted by the Republican Congress. He approved (1) a reduction in the income tax, (2) an increase in tariff rates under the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922, and (3) establishment of the Bureau of the Budget, with procedures for all government expenditures to be placed in a single budget for Congress to review and vote on. Harding did surprise many people, particularly his conservative allies, by par- doning and releasing from federal prison Socialist leader Eugene Debs. Debs had been convicted of violating the Espionage Act during World War I. Though in prison, Debs received 920,000 votes in the 1920 presidential election. Harding's decision to pardon Deb's was prompted by the president's generous spirit. Scandals and Death Curiously, Harding's postwar presidency was marked by scandals and corruption similar to those that had occurred under an earlier postwar president, Ulysses S. Grant. Having appointed some excellent officials, Harding also selected a number of incompetent and dishonest men to fill important positions, including Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall and Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. In 1924, Congress discovered that Fall had accepted bribes for granting oil leases near Teapot Dome, Wyoming. Daugherty also took bribes for agreeing not to prosecute certain criminal suspects. However, in August 1923, shortly before these scandals were uncovered pub- licly, Harding died suddenly while traveling in the West. He was never implicated in any of the scandals. The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge Harding's vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge, had won popularity in 1919 as the Massachusetts governor who broke the Boston police strike. He was a man of few words who richly deserved the nickname "Silent Cal." Coolidge once explained why silence was good politics. "If you don't say anything," he said, "you won't be called on to repeat it." Also unanswerable was the president's sage comment: "When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment 476 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM results." Coolidge summarized both his presidency and his era in the phrase: "The business of America is business." The Election of 1924 After less than a year in office, Coolidge was the overwhelming choice of the Republican party as their presidential nominee in 1924. The Democrats nominated a conservative lawyer from West Virginia, John W. Davis, and tried to make an issue of the Teapot Dome scandal. Unhappy with conservative dominance of both parties, liberals formed a new Progressive party led by its presidential candidate, Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. Coolidge won the election easily, but the Progressive ticket did extremely well for a third party in a conservative era. La Follette received nearly 5 million votes, chiefly from discontented farmers and laborers. Vetoes and Inaction Coolidge believed in limited government that stood aside while business conducted its own affairs. Little was accomplished in the White House except keeping a close watch on the budget. Cutting spending to the bone, Coolidge vetoed even the acts of the Republican majority in Congress. He would not allow bonuses for World War I veterans and vetoed a bill (the McNary-Haugen Bill of 1928) to help farmers as crop prices fell. Hoover, Smith, and the Election of 1928 Coolidge declined to run for the presidency a second time. The Republicans therefore turned to an able leader with a spotless reputation, self-made millionaire and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Hoover had served three presidents (Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge) in administrative roles but had never before campaigned for elective office. Nevertheless, in 1928, he was made the Republi- can nominee for president. Hoover's Democratic opponent was the governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith. As a Roman Catholic and an opponent of Prohibition, Smith appealed to many immigrant voters in the cities. Many Protestants, however, were openly prejudiced against Smith. Republicans boasted of "Coolidge Prosperity," which Hoover promised to extend. He even suggested (ironically, as it proved) that poverty would soon be ended altogether. Hoover won in a landslide and even took a large number of the electoral votes in the South. In several southern states-including Texas, Florida, and Virginia-the taste of prosperity and general dislike for Smith's religion outweighed the voters' usual allegiance to the Democratic party. Mixed Economic Development Politics took a backseat in the 1920s, as Americans adapted to economic growth and social change. The decade began with a brief postwar recession (1921), included a lengthy period of business prosperity (1922-1928), and ended in economic disaster (October 1929) with the nation's worst stock market crash. During the boom years, unemployment was usually below 4 percent. The stan- dard of living for most Americans improved significantly. Indoor plumbing and central heating became commonplace. By 1930, two-thirds of all homes had electricity. Real income for both the middle class and the working class increased substantially. THE MODERN ERA OF THE 19205 477 The prosperity, however, was far from universal. In fact, during the 1920s as many as 40 percent of U.S. families in both rural and urban areas had incomes in the poverty range-they struggled to live on less than $1,500 a year. Farmers in particular did not share in the booming economy. Causes of Business Prosperity The business boom-led by a spectacular rise of 64 percent in manufacturing output between 1919 and 1929 resulted from several factors. Increased Productivity Companies made greater use of research, expand- ing their use of Frederick W. Taylor's time-and-motion studies and principles of scientific management. The manufacturing process was made more efficient by the adoption of improved methods of mass production. In 1914, Henry Ford had perfected a system for manufacturing automobiles by means of an assembly line. Instead oflosing time moving around a factory as in the past, Ford's work- ers remained at one place all day and performed the same simple operation over and over again at rapid speed. In the 1920s, most major industries adopted the assembly line and realized major gains in worker productivity. Energy Technologies Another cause of economic growth was the in- creased use of oil and electricity, although coal was still used for the railroads and to heat most homes. Increasingly, oil was used to power factories and to provide gasoline for the rapidly increasing numbers of automobiles. By 1930, oil would account for 23 percent of U.S. energy (up from a mere 3 percent in 1900). Electric motors in factories and new appliances at home increased elec- trical generation over 300 percent during the decade. Government Policy Government at all levels in the 1920s favored the growth of big business by offering corporate tax cuts and doing almost nothing to enforce the antitrust laws of the Progressive era. Large tax cuts for higher- income Americans also contributed to the imbalance in incomes and increased speculation in markets. The Federal Reserve contributed to the overheated eco- nomic boom first through low interest rates and relaxed regulation of banks and then by tightening the money supply at the wrong time. Consumer Economy Electricity in their homes enabled millions of Americans to purchase the new consumer appliances of the decade-refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and wash- ing machines. Automobiles became more affordable and sold by the millions, making the horse-and-buggy era a thing of the past. Advertising expanded as businesses found that consumers' demand for new products could be manipu- lated by appealing to their desires for status and popularity. Stores increased sales of the new appliances and automobiles by allowing customers to buy on credit. Later, as consumers faced more "easy monthly payments" than they could aff ord, they curtailed buying, contributing to the collapse of the economic boom. Chain stores, such as Woolworth's and the A & P, proliferated. Their greater variety of products were attractively displayed and often priced lower than the neighborhood stores, which they threatened to displace. 478 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Impact of the Automobile More than anything else, the automobile changed society. By 1929, a total of 26.5 million automobiles were registered, compared to 1.2 million in 1913. The enormous increase in automobile sales meant that, by the end of the decade, there was an average of nearly one car per American family. In economic terms, the production of automobiles replaced the railroad industry as the key promoter of economic growth. Other industries-steel, glass, rubber, gasoline, and highway construction-now depended on automobile sales. In social terms, the automobile affected all that Americans did: shopping, traveling for pleasure, commuting to work, even dating. Of course, there were new problems as well: traffic jams in the cities, injuries and deaths on roads and highways. Farm Problems Farmers did not share in the Coolidge prosperity. Their best years had been 1916-1918, when crop prices had been kept artificially high by (1) wartime demand in Europe and (2) the U.S. government's wartime policy of guaranteeing a minimum price for wheat and corn. When the war ended, so did farm prosper- ity. Farmers who had borrowed heavily to expand during the war were now left with a heavy burden of debt. New technologies (chemical fertilizers, gasoline tractors) helped farmers increase their production in the 1920s, but did not solve their problems. In fact, productivity only served to increase their debts, as grow- ing surpluses produced falling prices. labor Problems Wages rose during the 1920s, but the union movement went backward. Member- ship in unions declined 20 percent, partly because most companies insisted on an open shop (keeping jobs open to nonunion workers). Some companies also began to practice welfare capitalism-voluntarily offering their employees improved benefits and higher wages in order to reduce their interest in organizing unions. In the South, companies used police, state militia, and local mobs to violently resist efforts to unionize the textile industry. In an era that so strongly favored business, union efforts at strikes usually failed. The United Mine Workers, led by John L. Lewis, suffered setbacks in a series of violent and ultimately unsuccessful strikes in Pennsylvania, West Vir- ginia, and Kentucky. Conservative courts routinely issued injunctions against strikes and nullified labor laws aimed at protecting workers' welfare. A New Culture The Census of 1920 reported that, for the first time, more than half of the Ameri- can population lived in urban areas. The culture of the cities was based on popular tastes, morals, and habits of mass consumption that were increasingly at odds with the strict religious and moral codes of rural America. Moralists of the 1920s blamed the automobile, "a bordello on wheels," for the breakdown of morals, especially among the young, but soon the music, dances, movies and fashions were added to the list. THE MODERN ERA OF THE 19205 479 The Jazz Age High school and college youth expressed their rebellion against their elders' cul- ture by dancing to jazz music. Brought north by African American musicians, jazz became a symbol of the "new" and "modem" culture of the cities. The prolifera- tion of phonographs and radios made this new style of music available to a huge (and chiefly youthful) public. Entertainment Newspapers had once been the only medium of mass com- munication and entertainment. In the 1920s, a new medium-the radio-suddenly appeared. The first commercial radio station went on the air in 1920 and broadcast music to just a few thousand listeners. By 1930 there were over 800 stations broad- casting to 10 million radios-about a third of all U.S. homes. The organization of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in 1924 and the Columbia Broad- casting System (CBS) in 1927 provided networks of radio stations that enabled people from coast to coast to listen to the same programs: news broadcasts, sport- ing events, soap operas, quiz shows, and comedies. The movie industry centered in Hollywood, California, became big business in the 1920s. Going to the movies became a national habit in cities, suburbs, and small towns. Sexy and glamorous movie stars such as Greta Garbo and Rudolf Valentino were idolized by millions. Elaborate movie theater "palaces" were built for the general public. With the introduction of talking (sound) pictures in 1927, the movie industry reached new heights. By 1929, over 80 million tickets to the latest Hollywood movies were sold each week. Popular Heroes In an earlier era, politicians such as William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson had been popularly viewed as heroic figures. In the new age of radio and movies, Americans radically shifted their viewpoint and adopted as role models the larger-than-life personalities celebrated on the sports page and the movie screen. Every sport had its superstars who were nationally known. In the 1920s, people followed the knockouts of heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey, the swimming records of Gertrude Ederle, the touchdowns scored by Jim Thorpe, the home runs hit by Babe Ruth, and the golf tournaments won by Bobby Jones. Of all the popular heroes of the decade, the most celebrated was a young avia- tor who, in 1927, thrilled the nation and the entire world by flying nonstop across the Atlantic from Long Island to Paris. Americans listened to the radio for news of Charles Lindbergh's flight and welcomed his return to the United States with ticker tape parades larger than the welcome given to the returning soldiers of World War I. Gender Roles, Family, and Education The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment did not change either women's lives or U.S. politics as much as had been anticipated. Voting patterns in the election of 1920 showed that women did not vote as a bloc, but adopted the party preferences of their husbands or fathers. Women at Home The traditional separation of labor between men and women continued into the 1920s. Most middle-class women expected to spend 480 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM their lives as homemakers and mothers. The introduction into the home of such laborsaving devices as the washing machine and vacuum cleaner eased but did not substantially change the daily routines of the homemaker. Women in the Labor Force Participation of women in the workforce remained about the same as before the war. Employed women usually lived in the cities, were limited to certain categories of jobs as clerks, nurses, teachers, and domestics, and received lower wages than men. Revolution in Morals Probably the most significant change in the lives of young men and women of the 1920s was their revolt against sexual taboos. Some were influenced by the writings of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who stressed the role of sexual repression in mental illness. Others, who perhaps had never heard of Freud, took to premarital sex as if it were-like radio and jazz music-one of the inventions of the modern age. Movies, novels, auto- mobiles, and new dance steps (the fox-trot and the Charleston) also encouraged greater promiscuity. The use of contraceptives for birth control was still against the law in almost every state. Even so, the work of Margaret Sanger and other advocates of birth control achieved growing acceptance in the twenties. A special fashion that set young people apart from older generations was the flapper look. Influenced by movie actresses as well as their own desires for independence, young women shocked their elders by wearing dresses hemmed at the knee (instead of the ankle), "bobbing" (cutting short) their hair, smoking cigarettes, and driving cars. High school and college graduates also took office jobs until they married. Then, as married women, they were expected to aban- don the flapper look, quit their jobs, and settle down as wives and mothers. Divorce As a result of women's suffrage, state lawmakers were now forced to listen to feminists, who demanded changes in the divorce laws to permit women to escape abusive and incompatible husbands. Liberalized divorce laws were one reason that one in six marriages ended in divorce by 1930-a dramatic increase over the one-in-eight ratio of 1920. Education Widespread belief in the value of education, together with economic prosperity, stimulated more state governments to enact compulsory school laws. Universal high school education became the new American goal. By the end of the 1920s, the number of high school graduates had doubled to over 25 percent of the school-age young adults. The Literature of Alienation Scorning religion as hypocritical and bitterly condemning the sacrifices of war- time as a fraud perpetrated by money interests were two dominant themes of the leading writers of the postwar decade. This disillusionment caused the writer Gertrude Stein to call these writers a "lost generation." The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis, the poems of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, and the plays of Eugene O'Neill expressed disillusionment with the ideals of an earlier time and with the materialism of a business- oriented culture. Fitzgerald and O'Neill took to a life of drinking, while Eliot and Hemingway expressed their unhappiness by moving into exile in Europe. THE MODERN ERA OF THE 19205 481 Art and Architecture The fusion of art and tech- nology during the 1920s and 1930s created a new profession of industrial designers. Influenced by Art Deco and streamlin- ing styles, they created functional products from toasters to locomotives that had aesthetic appeal. Many skyscrapers, such as the Chrysler and Empire State buildings in New York, were also built in the Art Deco style that captured modernist sim- plification of forms, while using the machine age materials. Painters, such as Edward Hopper, were inspired by the architec- ture of American cities to explore loneliness and isolation of urban life. Regional artists, such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, celebrated the rural people and scenes of the heartland of America. On the stage, Jewish immigrants played a major The Chrysler Building, New York City Source: Carol M. Highsmith / Library of Congress role in the development of the American musical theatre during this era. For example, composer George Gershwin, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, blended jazz and classical music in his symphonic Rhapsody in Blue and the folk opera Porgy and Bess. Harlem Renaissance By 1930, almost 20 percent of African Americans lived in the North, as migra- tion from the South continued. In the North, African Americans still faced discrimination in housing and jobs, but they found at least some improvement in their earnings and material standard of living. The largest African American community developed in the Harlem section of New York City. With a popula- tion of almost 200,000 by 1930, Harlem became famous in the 1920s for its 482 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM concentration of talented actors, artists, musicians, and writers. Because of their artistic achievements this period is known as the Harlem Renaissance. Poets and Musicians The leading Harlem poets included Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Claude McKay. Commenting on the African American heritage, their poems expressed a range of emotions, from bitterness and resentment to joy and hope. African American jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington and Louis Arm- strong were so popular among people of all races that the 1920s is often called the Jazz Age. Other great performers included blues singer Bessie Smith and the multitalented singer and actor Paul Robeson. While these artists sometimes per- formed before integrated audiences in Harlem, they often found themselves and their audiences segregated in much of the rest of the nation. Marcus Garvey In 1916, the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was brought to Harlem from Jamaica by a charismatic immigrant, Mar- cus Garvey. Garvey advocated individual and racial pride for African Americans and developed political ideas of black nationalism. Going beyond the efforts of W. E. B. Du Bois, Garvey established an organization for black separatism, eco- nomic self-sufficiency, and a back-to-Africa movement. Garvey's sale of stock in the Black Star Steamship line led to federal charges of fraud. In 1925, he was tried, convicted, and jailed. Later, he was deported to Jamaica and his movement collapsed. W. E. B. Du Bois and other African American leaders disagreed with Garvey's back-to-Africa idea but endorsed his emphasis on racial pride and self-respect. In the 1960s, Garvey's thinking helped to inspire a later generation to embrace the cause of black pride and nationalism. Values in Conflict The dominant social and political issues of the 1920s expressed sharp divi- sions in U.S. society between the young and the old, between urban modernists and rural fundamentalists, between prohibitionists and antiprohibitionists, and between nativists and the foreign-born. Religion Divisions among Protestants reflected the tensions in society between the tradi- tional values of rural areas and the modernizing forces of the cities. Modernism A range of influences, including the changing role of women, the Social Gospel movement, and scientific knowledge, caused large numbers of Protestants to define their faith in new ways. Modernists took a historical and critical view of certain passages in the Bible and believed they could accept Dar- win's theory of evolution without abandoning their religious faith. Fundamentalism Protestant preachers in rural areas condemned the mod- ernists and taught that every word in the Bible must be accepted as literally true. A key point in fundamentalist doctrine was that creationism (the idea that God had created the universe in seven days, as stated in the Book of Genesis) explained the origin of all life. Fundamentalists blamed the liberal views of modernists for causing a decline in morals. THE MODERN ERA OF THE 19205 483 Revivalists on the Radio Ever since the Great Awakening of the early 1700s, religious revivals swept through America periodically. Revivalists of the 1920s preached a fundamentalist message but did so for the first time making full use of the new tool of mass communication, the radio. The leading radio evangelists were Billy Sunday, who drew large crowds as he attacked drinking, gambling, and dancing; and Aimee Semple McPherson, who condemned the twin evils of communism and jazz music from her pulpit in Los Angeles. Fundamentalism and the Scopes Trial More than any other single event, a much-publicized trial in Tennessee focused the debate between religious fundamentalists in the rural South and modernists of the northern cities. Tennessee, like several other southern states, outlawed the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools. To challenge the constitutionality of these laws, the American Civil Liberties Union persuaded a Tennessee biology teacher, John Scopes, to teach the theory of evolution to his high school class. For doing so, Scopes was arrested and tried in 1925. The Trial The entire nation followed the Scopes trial both in newspa- pers and by radio. Defending Scopes was the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow. Representing the fundamentalists was three-time Democratic candidate for president William Jennings Bryan, who testified as an expert on the Bible. Aftermath As expected, Scopes was convicted, but the conviction was later overturned on a technicality. Laws banning the teaching of evolution remained on the books for years, although they were rarely enforced. The northern press asserted that Darrow and the modernists had thoroughly dis- credited fundamentalism. However, to this day, questions about the relationship between religion and the public schools remain controversial and unresolved. Prohibition Another controversy that helped define the 1920s concerned people's conflict- ing attitudes toward the 18th Amendment. Wartime concerns to conserve grain and maintain a sober workforce moved Congress to pass this amendment, which strictly prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, including liquors, wines, and beers. It was ratified in 1919. The adoption of the Prohibition amendment and a federal law enforcing it (the Volstead Act, 1919) were the culmination of many decades of crusading by temperance forces. Defying the Law Prohibition did not stop people from drinking alcohol either in public places or at home. Especially in the cities, it became fashion- able to defy the law by going to clubs or bars known as speakeasies, where bootleg (smuggled) liquor was sold. City police and judges were paid to look the other way. Even elected officials such as President Harding served alco- holic drinks to guests. Liquors, beers, and wines were readily available from bootleggers who smuggled them from Canada or made them in their garages or basements. Rival groups of gangsters, including a Chicago gang headed by Al Capone, fought for control of the lucrative bootlegging trade. Organized crime became 484 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM big business. The millions made from the sale of illegal booze allowed the gangs to expand other illegal activities: prostitution, gambling, and narcotics. Political Discord and Repeal Most Republicans publicly supported the "noble experiment" of Prohibition (although in private, many politicians drank). Democrats were divided on the issue, with southerners supporting it and northern city politicians calling for repeal. Supporters of the 18th Amend- ment pointed to declines in alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths, but as the years passed, they gradually weakened in the face of growing public resent- ment and clear evidence of increased criminal activity. With the coming of the Great Depression, economic arguments for repeal were added to the others. In 1933, the 21st Amendment repealing the Eighteenth was ratified, and millions celebrated the new year by toasting the end of Prohibition. Nativism The world war had interrupted the flow of immigrants to the United States, but as soon as the war ended, immigration shot upward. Over a million foreign- ers entered the country between 1919 and 1921. Like the immigrants of the prewar period, the new arrivals were mainly Catholics and Jews from eastern and southern Europe. Once again, nativist prejudices of native-born Protestants were aroused. Workers feared competition for jobs. Isolationists wanted mini- mal contact with Europe and feared that immigrants might foment revolution. In response to public demands for restrictive legislation, Congress acted quickly. Quota Laws Congress passed two laws that severely limited immi- gration by setting quotas based on nationality. The first quota act of 1921 limited immigration to 3 percent of the number of foreign-born persons from a given nation counted in the 1910 Census (a maximum of 357,000). To reduce the number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Con- gress passed a second quota act in 1924 that set quotas of 2 percent based on the Census of 1890 (before the arrival of most of the "new" immigrants). Although there were quotas for all European and Asian nationalities, the law chiefly restricted those groups considered "undesirable" by the nativists. By 1927, the quota for all Asians and eastern and southern Europeans had been limited to 150,000, with all Japanese immigrants barred. With these acts, the traditional United States policy of unlimited immigration ended. Canadians and Latin Americans were exempt from restrictions. Almost 500,000 Mexicans migrated legally to the Southwest during the 1920s. Case of Sacco and Vanzetti Although liberal American artists and intel- lectuals were few in number, they loudly protested against racist and nativist prejudices. They rallied to the support of two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who in 1921 had been convicted in a Massachusetts court of committing robbery and murder. Liberals protested that the two men were innocent, and that they had been accused, convicted, and sentenced to die simply because they were poor Italians and anarchists (who were against all government). After six years of appeals and national and international debates over the fairness of their trial, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927. THE MODERN ERA OF THE 19205 485 Ku Klux Klan The most extreme expression of nativism in the 1920s was the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. Unlike the original Klan of the 1860s and 1870s, the new Klan founded in 1915 was as strong in the Midwest as in the South. The Klan attracted new members because of the popular silent film, Birth of a Nation, which portrayed the KKK during Reconstruction as the heroes, and from the white backlash to the race riots of 1919. The new Klan used modem adver- tising techniques to grow to 5 million members by 1925. It drew most of its support from lower-middle-class white Protestants in small cities and towns. Northern branches of the KKK directed their hostility not only against blacks but also against Catholics, Jews, foreigners, and suspected Communists. Tactics The Klan employed various methods for terrorizing and intimi- dating anyone targeted as "un-American." Dressed in white hoods to disguise their identity, Klan members would bum crosses and apply vigilante justice, punishing their victims with whips, tar and feathers, and even the hangman's noose. In its heyday in the early 1920s, the Klan developed strong political influence. In Indiana and Texas, its support became crucial for candidates hop- ing to win election to state and local offices. Decline At first, the majority of native-born white Americans appeared to tolerate the Klan because it vowed to uphold high standards of Christian moral- ity and drive out bootleggers, gamblers, and adulterers. Beginning in 1923, however, investigative reports in the northern press revealed that fraud and corruption in the KKK were rife. In 1925, the leader of Indiana's Klan, Grand Dragon David Stephenson, was convicted of murder. After that, the Klan's influence and membership declined rapidly. Nevertheless, it continued to exist and advocate for white supremacy into the 1960s. Foreign Policy: The Fiction of Isolation During the 1920s, widespread disillusionment with World War I, Europe's post- war problems, and communism in the Soviet Union (as Russia was renamed) made Americans fearful of being pulled into another foreign war. But despite the U.S. refusal to join the League of Nations, the makers of U.S. foreign pol- icy did not retreat to the isolationism of the Gilded Age. Instead, they actively pursued arrangements in foreign affairs that would advance American inter- ests while also maintaining world peace. Disarmament and Peace The Republican presidents of the 1920s tried to promote peace and also scale back expenditures on defense by arranging treaties of disarmament. The most successful disarmament conference-and the greatest achievement of Hard- ing's presidency-was held in Washington, D.C., in 1921. Washington Conference (1921) Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes initiated talks on naval disarmament, hoping to stabilize the size of the U.S. Navy relative to that of other powers and to resolve conflicts in the Pacific. 486 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Representatives to the Washington Conference came from Belgium, China, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal. Three agree- ments to relieve tensions resulted from the discussions: 1. Five-Power Treaty Nations with the five largest navies agreed to main- tain the following ratio with respect to their largest warships, or battleships: the United States, 5; Great Britain, 5; Japan, 3; France, 1.67; Italy, 1.67. Britain and the United States also agreed not to fortify their possessions in the Pacific, while no limit was placed on the Japanese. 2. Four-Power Treaty The United States, France, Great Britain, and Japan agreed to respect one another's territory in the Pacific. 3. Nine-Power Treaty All nine nations represented at the conference agreed to respect the Open Door policy by guaranteeing the territorial integrity of China. Kellogg-Briand Pact American women took the lead in a peace move- ment committed to outlawing future wars. (For her efforts on behalf of peace, Jane Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.) The movement achieved its greatest success in 1928 with the signing of a treaty arranged by U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and the French foreign minister Aristide Briand. Almost all the nations of the world signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced the aggressive use of force to achieve national ends. This international agree- ment would prove ineffective, however, since it (1) permitted defensive wars and (2) failed to provide for taking action against violators of the agreement. Business and Diplomacy Republican presidents believed that probusiness policies brought prosperity at home and at the same time strengthened U.S. dealings with other nations. Thus, they found it natural to use diplomacy to advance American business interests in Latin America and other regions. Latin America Mexico's constitution of 1917 mandated government ownership of all that nation's mineral and oil resources. U.S. investors in Mex- ico feared that the government might confiscate their properties. A peaceful resolution protecting their interests was negotiated by Coolidge's ambassador to Mexico, Dwight Morrow, in 1927. Elsewhere in Latin America, Coolidge kept U.S. troops in Nicaragua and Haiti but withdrew them from the Dominican Republic in 1924. While Ameri- can military influence declined, American economic impact increased. U.S. investments in Latin America doubled between 1919 and 1929. Middle East The oil reserves in the Middle East were becoming recog- nized as a major source of potential wealth. British oil companies had a large head start in the region, but Secretary of State Hughes succeeded in winning oil-drilling rights for U.S. companies. THE MODERN ERA OF THE 19205 487 Tariffs Passed by Congress in 1922, the Fordney-McCumber Tariff increased the duties on foreign manufactured goods by 25 percent. It was pro- tective of U.S. business interests in the short run but destructive in the long run. Because of it, European nations were slow to recover from the war and had difficulty repaying their war debts to the United States. They responded to the high U.S. tariffs by imposing tariffs of their own on American imports. Ultimately, these obstacles to international trade weakened the world economy and were one reason for the Great Depression of the 1930s. War Debts and Reparations Before World War I, the United States had been a debtor nation, importing more than it exported. It emerged from the war as a creditor nation, having lent more than $10 billion to the Allies. Harding and Coolidge insisted that Britain and France pay back every penny of their war debts. The British and French objected. They pointed out that they suffered much worse losses than the Americans during the war, that the borrowed money had been spent in the United States, and that high U.S. tariffs made it more difficult to pay the debts. To be sure, the Treaty of Versailles required Germany to pay $30 billion in reparations to the Allies. But how were Britain and France to collect this money? Germany was bankrupt, had soaring inflation, and was near anarchy. Dawes Plan Charles Dawes, an American banker who would become Coolidge's vice president, negotiated a compromise that was accepted by all sides in 1924. The Dawes Plan established a cycle of payments flowing from the United States to Germany and from Germany to the Allies. U.S. banks would lend Germany huge sums to rebuild its economy and pay reparations to Britain and France. In turn, Britain and France would use the reparations money to pay their war debts to the United States. This cycle helped to ease financial problems on both sides of the Atlantic. After the stock market crash of 1929, however, U.S. bank loans stopped and the prosperity propped up by the Dawes Plan collapsed. Legacy Ultimately, Finland was the only nation to repay its war debts in full. The unpaid debts of the other nations left bad feelings on all sides. Many Europeans resented what they saw as American greed, while Americans saw new reasons to follow an isolationist path in the 1930s.

Chapter 11 'Society, Culture, and Reform, 1820 - 1860'

Several historic reform movements began during the Jacksonian era and in the following decades. This period before the Civil War started in 1861 is known as the antebellum period. During this time, a diverse mix of reformers dedicated themselves to such causes as establishing free (tax-supported) public schools, improving the treatment of the mentally ill, controlling or abolishing the sale of alcohol, winning equal rights for women, and abolishing slavery. The enthusiasm for reform had many historic sources: the Puritan sense of mis- sion, the Enlightenment belief in human goodness, the politics of Jacksonian democracy, and changing relationships among men and women, among social classes, and among ethnic groups. The most important source may have been religious beliefs. Religion: The Second Great Awakening Religious revivals swept through the United States during the early decades of the 19th century. They were partly a reaction against the rationalism (belief in human reason) that had been the fashion during the Enlightenment and the American Revolution. Calvinist (Puritan) teachings of original sin and predes- tination had been rejected by believers in more liberal and forgiving doctrines, such as those of the Unitarian Church. Calvinism began a counterattack against these liberal views in the 1790s. The Second Great Awakening began among educated people such as Reverend Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College in Connecticut. Dwight's campus revivals motivated a generation of young men to become evangelical preachers. In the revivals of the early 1800s, successful preachers were audience-centered and easily understood by the uneducated; they spoke about the opportunity for salvation to all. These populist movements seemed attuned to the democratiza- tion of American society. SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND REFORM, 1820-1860 207 Revivalism in New York In 1823, Presbyterian mm1ster Charles G. Finney started a series of revivals in upstate New York, where many New Eng- landers had settled. Instead of delivering sermons based on rational argument, Finney appealed to people's emotions and fear of damnation. He prompted thousands to publicly declare their revived faith. He preached that every individual could be saved through faith and hard work-ideas that strongly appealed to the rising middle class. Because of Finney's influence, western New York became known as the "burned-over district" for its frequent "hell- and-brimstone" revivals. Baptists and Methodists In the South and on the advancing western fron- tier, Baptist and Methodist circuit preachers, such as Peter Cartwright, would travel from one location to another and attract thousands to hear their dramatic preaching at outdoor revivals, or camp meetings. These preachers activated the faith of many people who had never belonged to a church. By 1850, the Baptists and the Methodists were the largest Protestant denominations in the country. Millennialism Much of the religious enthusiasm of the time was based on the widespread belief that the world was about to end with the second coming of Jesus. One preacher, William Miller, gained tens of thousands of follow- ers by predicting a specific date (October 21, 1844) for the second coming. Nothing happened on the appointed day, but the Millerites continued as a new Christian denomination, the Seventh-Day Adventists. Mormons Another religious group, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints, or Mormons, was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. Smith based his religious thinking on a book of Scripture-the Book of Mormon-which traced a connection between the American Indians and the lost tribes of Israel. Smith gathered a following in New York and moved to Ohio, then Missouri, and finally, Illinois. There, the Mormon founder was murdered by a local mob. To escape persecution, the Mormons under the leadership of Brigham Young migrated to the far western frontier, where they established the New Zion (as they called their religious community) on the banks of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Their cooperative social organization helped the Mormons to prosper in the wilderness. Their practice of polygamy (allowing a man to have more than one wife), however, aroused the hostility of the U.S. government. The Second Great Awakening, like the first, caused new divisions in society between the newer, evangelical sects and the older Protestant churches. It affected all sections of the country. But in the northern states from Mas- sachusetts to Ohio the Great Awakening also touched off social reform. Activist religious groups provided both the leadership and the well-organized voluntary societies that drove the reform movements of the antebellum era. Culture: Ideas, the Arts, and Literature In Europe, during the early years of the 19th century, artists and writers shifted away from the Enlightenment emphasis on balance, order, and reason and 208 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM toward intuition, feelings, individual acts of heroism, and the study of nature. This new movement, known as romanticism, was expressed in the United States by the transcendentalists, a small group of New England thinkers. The Transcendentalists Writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau questioned the doctrines of established churches and the business practices of the merchant class. They argued for a mystical and intuitive way of thinking as a means for discovering one's inner self and looking for the essence of God in nature. Their views challenged the materialism of American society by suggesting that artistic expression was more important than the pursuit of wealth. Although the transcendentalists valued individualism highly and viewed organized insti- tutions as unimportant, they supported a variety of reforms, especially the antislavery movement. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) The best-known transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was a very popular American speaker. His essays and lectures expressed the individualistic and nationalistic spirit of Americans by urging them not to imitate European culture but to create a distinctive Ameri- can culture. He argued for self-reliance, independent thinking, and the primacy of spiritual matters over material ones. A northerner who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, Emerson became a leading critic of slavery in the 1850s and then an ardent supporter of the Union during the Civil War. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Also living in Concord and a close friend of Emerson was Henry David Thoreau. To test his transcendentalist philosophy, Thoreau conducted a two-year experiment of living simply in a cabin in the woods outside town. He used observations of nature to discover essential truths about life and the universe. Thoreau's writings from these years were published in the book for which he is best known, Walden (1854). Because of this book, Thoreau is remembered today as a pioneer ecologist and conservationist. Through his essay "On Civil Disobedience," Thoreau established himself as an early advocate of nonviolent protest. The essay presented Thoreau's argu- ment for disobeying unjust laws and accepting the penalty. The philosopher's own act of civil disobedience was to refuse to pay a tax that would support an action he considered immoral-the U.S. war with Mexico (1846-1848). For breaking the tax law, Thoreau spent one night in the Concord jail. In the next century, Thoreau's essay and actions would inspire the nonviolent movements of both Mohandas Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. Brook Farm Could a community of people live out the transcendentalist ideal? In 1841, George Ripley, a Protestant minister, launched a communal experiment at Brook Farm in Massachusetts. His goal was to achieve "a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor." Living at Brook Farm at times were some of the leading intellectuals of the period. Emerson went, as SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND REFORM, 1820-1860 209 did Margaret Fuller, a feminist (advocate of women's rights) writer and editor; Theodore Parker, a theologian and radical reformer; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, a novelist. A bad fire and heavy debts forced the end of the experiment in 1849. But Brook Farm was remembered for its atmosphere of artistic creativity, its innovative school, and its appeal to New England's intellectual elite and their children. Communal Experiments The idea of withdrawing from conventional society to create an ideal community, or utopia, in a fresh setting was not a new idea. But never before were social experiments so numerous as during the antebellum years. The open lands of the United States proved fertile ground for more than a hundred experimental communities. The early Mormons were an example of a religious communal effort and Brook Farm was an example of a humanistic or secular experiment. Although many of the communities were short-lived, these "backwoods uto- pias" reflect the diversity of the reform ideas of the time. Shakers One of the earliest religious communal movements, the Shak- ers had about 6,000 members in various communities by the 1840s. Shakers held property in common and kept women and men strictly separate (for- bidding marriage and sexual relations). For lack of new recruits, the Shaker communities virtually died out by the mid-1900s. The Amana Colonies The settlers of the Amana colonies in Iowa were Germans who belonged to the religious reform movement known as Pietism. Like the Shakers, they emphasized simple, communal living. However, they allowed for marriage, and their communities continue to prosper, although they no longer practice their communal ways of living. New Harmony The secular (nonreligious) experiment in New Harmony, Indiana, was the work of the Welsh industrialist and reformer Robert Owen. Owen hoped his utopian socialist community would provide an answer to the problems of inequity and alienation caused by the Industrial Revolution. The experiment failed, however, as a result of both financial problems and disagree- ments among members of the community. Oneida Community After undergoing a religious conversion, John Hum- phrey Noyes in 1848 started a cooperative community in Oneida, New York. Dedicated to an ideal of perfect social and economic equality, community members shared property and, later, marriage partners. Critics attacked the Oneida system of planned reproduction and communal child-rearing as a sinful experiment in "free love." Despite the controversy, the community managed to prosper economically by producing and selling silverware of excellent quality. Fourier Phalanxes In the 1840s, the theories of the French socialist Charles Fourier attracted the interest of many Americans. In response to the problems of a fiercely competitive society, Fourier advocated that people share work and housing in communities known as Fourier Phalanxes. This movement died out quickly as Americans proved too individualistic to live communally. 210 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Arts and literature The democratic and reforming impulses of the Age of Jackson expressed them- selves in painting, architecture, and literature. Painting Genre painting-portraying the everyday life of ordinary peo- ple such as riding riverboats and voting on election day-became the vogue of artists in the 1830s. For example, George Caleb Bingham depicted common people in various settings and carrying out domestic chores. William S. Mount won popularity for his lively rural compositions. Thomas Cole and Frederick Church emphasized the heroic beauty of American landscapes, especially in dramatic scenes along the Hudson River in New York State and the western frontier wilderness. The Hudson River school, as it was called, expressed the romantic age's fascination with the natural world. Architecture Inspired by the democracy of classical Athens, American architects adapted Greek styles to glorify the democratic spirit of the republic. Columned facades like those of ancient Greek temples graced the entryways to public buildings, banks, hotels, and even some private homes. Literature In addition to the transcendentalist authors (notably Emerson and Thoreau), other writers helped to create a literature that was distinctively American. Partly as a result of the War of 1812, the American people became more nationalistic and eager to read the works of American writers about Ameri- can themes. Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, for example, wrote fiction using American settings. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales were a series of novels written from 1824 to 1841 that glorified the frontiersman as nature's nobleman. The Scarlet Letter (1850) and other novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne questioned the intolerance and conformity in American life. Herman Melville's innovative novel Moby-Dick (1855) reflected the theological and cultural con- flicts of the era as it told the story of Captain Ahab's pursuit of a white whale. Source: Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, by George Caleb Bingham, 1845. Wikimedia Commons/The Yorck Project/ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND REFORM, 1820-1860 211 Reforming Society Reform movements evolved during the antebellum era. At first, the leaders of reform hoped to improve people's behavior through moral persuasion. How- ever, after they tried sermons and pamphlets, reformers often moved on to political action and to ideas for creating new institutions to replace the old. Temperance The high rate of alcohol consumption (five gallons of hard liquor per person in 1820) prompted reformers to target alcohol as the cause of social ills, and explains why temperance became the most popular of the reform movements. The temperance movement began by using moral exhortation. In 1826, Protestant ministers and others concerned with drinking and its effects founded the American Temperance Society. The society tried to persuade drinkers to take a pledge of total abstinence. In 1840, a group of recovering alcoholics formed the Washingtonians and argued that alcoholism was a disease that needed practical, helpful treatment. By the 1840s, various temperance societ- ies together had more than a million members. German and Irish immigrants were largely opposed to the temperance campaign. But they lacked the political power to prevent state and city gov- ernments from passing reforms. Factory owners and politicians joined with the reformers when it became clear that temperance measures could reduce crime and poverty and increase workers' output on the job. In 1851, the state of Maine went beyond simply placing taxes on the sale of liquor and became the first state to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. Twelve states followed before the Civil War. In the 1850s, the issue of slavery came to overshadow the temperance movement. However, the movement would gain strength again in the late 1870s (with strong support from the Women's Chris- tian Temperance Union) and achieve national success with the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919. Movement for Public Asylums Humanitarian reformers of the 1820s and 1830s called attention to the in- creasing numbers of criminals, emotionally disturbed persons, and paupers. Often these people were forced to live in wretched conditions and were regu- larly either abused or neglected by their caretakers. To alleviate the suffering of these individuals, reformers proposed setting up new public institutions- state-supported prisons, mental hospitals, and poorhouses. Reformers hoped that inmates would be cured as a result of being withdrawn from squalid sur- roundings and treated to a disciplined pattern of life in some rural setting. Mental Hospitals Dorothea Dix, a former schoolteacher from Massa- chusetts, was horrified to find mentally ill persons locked up with convicted criminals in unsanitary cells. She launched a cross-country crusade, publiciz- ing the awful treatment she had witnessed. In the 1840s one state legislature after another built new mental hospitals or improved existing institutions and mental patients began receiving professional treatment. 212 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Schools for Blind and Deaf Persons Two other reformers founded spe- cial institutions to help people with physical disabilities. Thomas Gallaudet opened a school for the deaf, and Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe started a school for the blind. By the 1850s, special schools modeled after the work of these reformers had been established in many states of the Union. Prisons Pennsylvania took the lead in prison reform, building new prisons called penitentiaries to take the place of crude jails. Reformers placed prison- ers in solitary confinement to force them to reflect on their sins and repent. The experiment was dropped because of the high rate of prisoner suicides. These prison reforms reflected a major doctrine of the asylum movement: structure and discipline would bring about moral reform. A similar penal experiment, the Auburn system in New York, enforced rigid rules of discipline while also providing moral instruction and work programs. Public Education Another reform movement started in the Jacksonian era focused on the need for establishing free public schools for children of all classes. Middle-class reformers were motivated in part by their fears for the future of the repub- lic posed by growing numbers of the uneducated poor-both immigrant and native-born. Workers' groups in the cities generally supported the reformers' campaign for free (tax-supported) schools. Free Common Schools Horace Mann was the leading advocate of the common (public) school movement. As secretary of the newly founded Massa- chusetts Board of Education, Mann worked for compulsory attendance for all children, a longer school year, and increased teacher preparation. In the 1840s, the movement for public schools spread rapidly to other states. Moral Education Mann and other educational reformers wanted children to learn not only basic literacy, but also moral principles. Toward this end, William Holmes McGuffey, a Pennsylvania teacher, created a series of elemen- tary textbooks that became widely used to teach reading and morality. The McGuffey readers extolled the virtues of hard work, punctuality, and sobri- ety-the kind of behaviors needed in an emerging industrial society. Objecting to the Protestant tone of the public schools, Roman Catholics founded private schools for the instruction of Catholic children. Higher Education The religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awak- ening helped fuel the growth of private colleges. Beginning in the 1830s, various Protestant denominations founded small denominational colleges, especially in the newer western states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa). At the same time, several new colleges, including Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts (founded by Mary Lyon in 1837) and Oberlin College in Ohio, began to admit women. Adult education was furthered by lyceum lecture soci- eties, which brought speakers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson to small-town audiences. SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND REFORM, 1820-1860 213 Changes in Families and Roles for Women American society was still overwhelmingly rural in the mid-19th century. But in the growing cities, the impact of the Industrial Revolution was redefin- ing the family. Industrialization reduced the economic value of children. In middle-class families, birth control was used to reduce average family size, which declined from 7.04 family members in 1800 to 5.42 in 1830. More afflu- ent women now had the leisure time to devote to religious and moral uplift organizations. The New York Female Moral Reform Society, for example, worked to prevent impoverished young women from being forced into lives of prostitution. Cult of Domesticity Industrialization also changed roles within families. In traditional farm families, men were the moral leaders. However, when men took jobs outside the home to work for salaries or wages in an office or a factory, they were absent most of the time. As a result, the women in these households who remained at home took charge of the household and children. The idealized view of women as moral leaders in the home is called the cult of domesticity. Women's Rights Women reformers, especially those involved in the anti- slavery movement, resented the way men relegated them to secondary roles in the movement and prevented them from taking part fully in policy discussions. Two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grirnke, objected to male opposition to their antislavery activities. In protest, Sarah Grirnke wrote her Letter on the Condi- tion of Women and the Equality of the Sexes (1837). Another pair of reformers, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, began campaigning for women's rights after they had been barred from speaking at an antislavery convention. Seneca Falls Convention (1848) The leading feminists met at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. At the conclusion of their convention-the first women's rights convention in American history-they issued a document closely modeled after the Declaration of Independence. Their "Declaration of Sentiments" declared that "all men and women are created equal" and listed women's grievances against laws and customs that discriminated against them. Following the Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony led the campaign for equal voting, legal, and property rights for women. In the 1850s, however, the issue of women's rights was overshadowed by the crisis over slavery. Antislavery Movement Opponents of slavery ranged from moderates who proposed gradual abolition to radicals who demanded immediate abolition without compensating their owners. The Second Great Awakening led many Christians to view slavery as a sin. This moral view made compromise with defenders of slavery difficult. 214 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM American Colonization Society The idea of transporting freed slaves to an African colony was first tried in 1817 with the founding of the American Colonization Society. This appealed to moderate antislavery reformers and politicians, in part because whites with racist attitudes hoped to remove free blacks from U.S. society. In 1822, the American Colonization Society estab- lished an African-American settlement in Monrovia, Liberia. Colonization never proved a practical course. Between 1820 and 1860, only about 12,000 African Americans were settled in Africa, while the slave population grew by 2.5 million. American Antislavery Society In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began publication of an abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, an event that marks the beginning of the radical abolitionist movement. The uncompromising Gar- rison advocated immediate abolition of slavery in every state and territory without compensating the slaveowners. In 1833, Garrison and other abolition- ists founded the American Antislavery Society. Garrison stepped up his attacks by condemning and burning the Constitution as a proslavery document. He argued for "no Union with slaveholders" until they repented for their sins by freeing their slaves. Liberty Party Garrison's radicalism soon led to a split in the abolitionist movement. Believing that political action was a more practical route to reform than Garrison's moral crusade, a group of northerners formed the Liberty party in 1840. They ran James Birney as their candidate for president in 1840 and 1844. The party's one campaign pledge was to bring about the end of slavery by political and legal means. Black Abolitionists Escaped slaves and free African Americans were among the most outspoken and convincing critics of slavery. A former slave such as Frederick Douglass could speak about the brutality and degradation of slavery from firsthand experience. An early follower of Garrison, Douglass later advocated both political and direct action to end slavery and racial preju- dice. In 1847, he started the antislavery journal The North Star. Other African American leaders, such as Harriet Tubman, David Ruggles, Sojourner Truth, and William Still, helped organize the effort to assist fugitive slaves escape to free territory in the North or to Canada, where slavery was prohibited. Violent Abolitionism David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet were two northern African Americans who advocated the most radical solution to the slavery question. They argued that slaves should take action themselves by rising up in revolt against their owners. In 1831, a Virginia slave named Nat Turner led a revolt in which 55 whites were killed. In retaliation, whites killed hundreds of African Americans in brutal fashion and put down the revolt. Before this event, there had been some antislavery sentiment and discussion in the South. After the revolt, fear of future uprisings as well as Garrison's inflamed rhetoric put an end to antislavery talk in the South. SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND REFORM, 1820-1860 215 Other Reforms Efforts to reform individuals and society during the antebellum era also included smaller movements such as: • the American Peace Society, founded in 1828 with the objective of abolishing war, which actively protested the war with Mexico in 1846 • laws to protect sailors from being flogged • dietary reforms, such as eating whole wheat bread or Sylvester Graham's crackers, to promote good digestion • dress reform for women, particularly Amelia Bloomer's efforts to get women to wear pantalettes instead of long skirts • phrenology, a pseudoscience that studied the bumps on an individual's skull to assess the person's character and ability Southern Reaction to Reform The antebellum reform movement was largely found in the northern and western states, with little impact in the South. While "modernizers" worked to perfect society in the North, southerners were more committed to tradition and slow to support public education and humanitarian reforms. They were alarmed to see northern reformers join forces to support the antislavery movement. Increasingly, they viewed social reform as a northern threat against the southern way of life.

Chapter 9 'Sectionalism, 1820 - 1860'

In 1826, Americans took great pride in celebrating 50 years of independence. A unique political system based on a written Constitution had proven prac- tical and flexible enough to permit territorial growth and industrial change. The United States had both a central government and a collection of self- governing states. However, many citizens resisted giving up powers to a national government and the first two political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, had expressed strong regional differences. In short, although the United States was young and vibrant in the 1820s, it was still a fragile union. The previous chapter treated the nation as a whole in the early 1800s; this chapter looks at the differences among the three sections-North, South, and West. Daniel Webster, in the opening quotation of this chapter, rhetorically refers to these three sections in terms of the four main points of the compass as he attempts to portray the dangers these divisions hold for the nation. By exam- ining sectional differences, we can better understand the sectionalism (loyalty to a particular region) that ultimately led to the Union's worst crisis: civil war between the North and the South in the early 1860s. The North The northern portion of the country in the early 19th century contained two parts: (1) the Northeast, which included New England and the Middle Atlantic states, and (2) the Old Northwest, which stretched from Ohio to Minnesota. The northern states were bound together by transportation routes and rapid economic growth based on commercial farming and industrial innovation. While manufacturing was expanding, the vast majority of northerners were still involved in agriculture. The North was the most populous section in the country as a result of both a high birthrate and increased immigration. SECTIONALISM, 1820-1860 17 3 The Industrial Northeast Originally, the Industrial Revolution centered in the textile industry, but by the 1830s, northern factories were producing a wide range of goods-everything from farm implements to clocks and shoes. Organized Labor Industrial development meant that large numbers of people who had once earned their living as independent farmers and artisans became dependent on wages earned in a factory. With the common problems of low pay, long hours, and unsafe working conditions, urban workers in different cities organized both unions and local political parties to protect their inter- ests. The first U.S. labor party, founded in Philadelphia in 1828, succeeded in electing a few members of the city council. For a brief period in the 1830s, an increasing number of urban workers joined unions and participated in strikes. Organized labor achieved one notable victory in 1842 when the Massachu- setts Supreme Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Hunt that "peaceful unions" had the right to negotiate labor contracts with employers. During the 1840s and 1850s, most state legislatures in the North passed laws establishing a ten-hour workday for industrial workers. Improvement for workers, however, continued to be limited by (1) periodic depressions, (2) employers and courts that were hostile to unions, and (3) an abundant supply of cheap immigrant labor. Urban Life The North's urban population grew from approximately 5 percent of the population in 1800 to 15 percent by 1850. As a result of such rapid growth in cities from Boston to Baltimore, slums also expanded. Crowded housing, poor sanitation, infectious diseases, and high rates of crime soon became characteristic of large working-class neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the new opportunities in cities offered by the Industrial Revolution continued to attract both native-born Americans from farms and immigrants from Europe. U.S. Manufacturing by Region, 1860 Region Number of Number of Value of Product Establishments Employees North Atlantic 69,831 900,107 $1,213,897,518 Old Northwest 33,335 188,651 $346,675,290 South 27,779 166,803 $248,090,580 West 8,777 50,204 $71,229,989 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Manufactures of the United States in 1860 174 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM African Americans The 250,000 African Americans who lived in the North in 1860 constituted only 1 percent of northerners. However, they repre- sented 50 percent of all free African Americans. Freedom may have meant they could maintain a family and in some instances own land, but it did not mean economic or political equality, since strong racial prejudices kept them from voting and holding jobs in most skilled professions and crafts. In the mid-l 800s, immigrants displaced them from occupations and jobs that they had held since the time of the Revolution. Denied membership in unions, African Americans were often hired as strikebreakers-and often dismissed after the strike ended. The Agricultural Northwest The Old Northwest consisted of six states west of the Alleghenies that were admitted to the Union before 1860: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Wisconsin (1848), and Minnesota (1858). These states came from territories formed out of land ceded to the national government in the 1780s by one of the original 13 states. The procedure for turning these territories into states was part of the Northwest Ordinance, passed by Congress in 1787. In the early years of the 19th century, much of the Old Northwest was unset- tled frontier, and the part of it that was settled relied upon the Mississippi to transport grain to southern markets via New Orleans. By mid-century, however, this region became closely tied to the other northern states by two factors: (1) military campaigns by federal troops that drove American Indians from the land and (2) the building of canals and railroads that established common markets between the Great Lakes and the East Coast. Agriculture In the states of the Old Northwest, crops of corn and wheat were very profitable. Using the newly invented steel plow (by John Deere) and mechanical reaper (by Cyrus McCormick), a farm family was more efficient and could plant more acres, needing to supplement its labor only with a few hired workers at harvest time. Part of the crop was used to feed cattle and hogs and also to supply distillers and brewers with grain for making whiskey and beer. Farmers shipped grain quickly to cities to avoid spoilage. New Cities At key transportation points, small villages and towns grew into thriving cities after 1820: Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago on the Great Lakes, Cincinnati on the Ohio River, and St. Louis on the Mississippi River. The cities served as transfer points, processing farm products for shipment to the East, and distributing manufactured goods from the East to their region. Immigration In 1820, about 8,000 immigrants arrived from Europe, but beginning in 1832, there was a sudden increase. After that year, the number of new arrivals never fell below 50,000 a year and in one year, 1854, climbed as high as 428,000. From the 1830s through the 1850s, nearly 4 million people from northern Europe crossed the Atlantic to seek a new life in the United States. Arriving by ship in the northern seacoast cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, many immi- grants remained where they landed, while others traveled to farms and cities of SECTIONALISM, 1820-1860 175 the Old Northwest. Few journeyed to the South, where the plantation economy and slavery limited the opportunities for free labor. The surge in immigration between 1830 and 1860 was chiefly the result of: (1) the development of inexpensive and relatively rapid ocean transportation, (2) famines and revolutions in Europe that drove people from their homelands, and (3) the growing reputation of the United States as a country offering eco- nomic opportunities and political freedom. The immigrants strengthened the U.S. economy by providing both a steady stream of inexpensive labor and an increased demand for mass-produced consumer goods. Irish During this period, half of all the immigrants-almost 2 million- came from Ireland. These Irish immigrants were mostly tenant farmers driven from their homeland by potato crop failures and a devastating famine in the 1840s. They arrived with limited interest in farming, few special skills, and little money. They faced strong discrimination because of their Roman Catho- lic religion. The Irish worked hard at whatever employment they could find, usually competing with African Americans for domestic work and unskilled laborer jobs. Faced with limited opportunities, they congregated for mutual sup- port in the northern cities (Boston, Philadelphia, and New York) where they had first landed. Many Irish entered local politics. They organized their fellow immigrants and joined the Democratic party, which had long traditions of anti- British feelings and support for workers. Their progress was difficult but steady. For example, the Irish were initially excluded from joining New York City's Democratic organization, Tammany Hall. But by the 1850s they had secured jobs and influence, and by the 1880s they controlled this party organization. Germans Both economic hardships and the failure of democratic revolu- tions in 1848 caused more than 1 million Germans to seek refuge in the United States in the late 1840s and the 1850s. Most German immigrants had at least modest means as well as considerable skills as farmers and artisans. Moving westward in search of cheap, fertile farmland, they established homesteads throughout the Old Northwest and generally prospered. At first their political influence was limited. As they became more active in public life, many strongly supported public education and staunchly opposed slavery. Nativists Many native-born Americans were alarmed by the influx of immigrants, fearing that the newcomers would take their jobs and also subvert (weaken) the culture of the Anglo majority. The nativists (those reacting most strongly against the foreigners) were Protestants who distrusted the Roman Catholicism practiced by the Irish and many of the Germans. In the 1840s, opposition to immigrants led to sporadic rioting in the big cities and the organi- zation of a secret antiforeign society, the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner. This society turned to politics in the early 1850s, nominating candi- dates for office as the American party, or Know-Nothing party (see Chapter 13). Antiforeign feeling faded in importance as North and South divided over slavery prior to the Civil War. However, nativism would periodically return when enough native-born citizens felt threatened by a sudden increase in immigration. 176 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The South The states that permitted slavery formed a distinctive region, the South. By 1861, the region included 15 states, all but four of which (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) seceded and joined the Confederacy. Agriculture and King Cotton Agriculture was the foundation of the South's economy, even though by the 1850s small factories in the region were producing approximately 15 percent of the nation's manufactured goods. Tobacco, rice, and sugarcane were important cash crops, but these were far exceeded by the South's chief eco- nomic activity: the production and sale of cotton. AGRICULTURE, MINING, AND MANUFACTURING BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR LJcotton � Mining 0 Fl ourand meal 11 1____1 Dairy cattle ! Lumber l Textiles LJ Rice and sugarcane Y Range and ranch cattle a Iron and steelworks O 300 Miles O 300 K llometers O 300 Miles O 300 Kilometers SECTIONALISM, 1820-1860 177 The development of mechanized textile mills in England, coupled with Eli Whitney's cotton gin, made cotton cloth affordable, not just in Europe and the United States, but throughout the world. Before 1860, the world depended chiefly on Britain's mills for its supply of cloth, and Britain in turn depended chiefly on the American South for its supply of cotton fiber. Originally, the cotton was grown almost entirely in two states, South Carolina and Georgia, but as demand and profits increased, planters moved westward into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. New land was constantly needed, for the high cotton yields required for profits quickly depleted the soil. By the 1850s, cotton provided two-thirds of all U.S. exports and linked the South and Great Britain. "Cotton is king," said one southerner of his region's greatest asset. Slavery, the 11 Peculiar lnstitution 11 Wealth in the South was measured in terms of land and slaves. The latter were treated as a form of property, subject to being bought and sold. However, some whites were sensitive about how they treated the other humans that they referred to slavery as "that peculiar institution." In colonial times, people justi- fied slavery as an economic necessity, but in the 19th century, apologists for slavery mustered historical and religious arguments to support their claim that it was good for both slave and master. Population The cotton boom was largely responsible for a fourfold increase in the number of slaves, from 1 million in 1800 to nearly 4 million in 1860. Most of the increase came from natural growth, although thousands of Africans were also smuggled into the South in violation of the 1808 law against importing slaves. In parts of the Deep South, slaves made up as much as 75 per- cent of the total population. Fearing slave revolts, southern legislatures added increased restrictions on movement and education to their slave codes. Economics Slaves were employed doing whatever their owners demanded of them. Most slaves labored in the fields, but many learned skilled crafts or worked as house servants, in factories, and on construction gangs. Because of the greater profits to be made on the new cotton plantations in the West, many slaves were sold from the Upper South to the cotton-rich Deep South of the lower Mississippi Valley. By 1860, the value of a field slave had risen to almost $2,000. One result of the heavy capital investment in slaves was that the South had much less capital than the North to undertake industrialization. Slave Life Conditions of slavery varied from one plantation to the next. Some slaves were humanely treated, while others were routinely beaten. All suffered from being deprived of their freedom. Families could be separated at any time by an owner's decision to sell a wife, a husband, or a child. Women were vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Despite the hard, nearly hopeless cir- cumstances of their lives, enslaved African Americans maintained a strong sense of family and of religious faith. 178 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM United States Labor Force, 1800-1860 (in millions) Year Free Slave Total 1800 1.4 0.5 1.9 1810 1.6 0.7 2.3 1820 2.1 1.0 3.1 1830 3.0 1.2 4.2 1840 4.2 1.5 5.7 1850 6.3 2.0 8.3 1860 8.8 2.3 11 . 1 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 Resistance Slaves contested their status through a range of actions, pri- marily work slowdowns, sabotage, and escape. In addition, there were a few major slave uprisings. One was led by Denmark Vesey in 1822 and another by Nat Turner in 1831. The revolts were quickly and violently suppressed, but even so, they had a lasting impact. They gave hope to enslaved African Americans, drove southern states to tighten already strict slave codes, and demonstrated to many the evils of slavery. Revolts polarized the country by making slaveholders more defensive about slavery and nonslaveholders more critical of the institution. Free African Americans By 1860, as many as 250,000 African Americans in the South were not slaves. They were free citizens (even though, as in the North, racial prejudice restricted their liberties). A number of slaves had been emancipated during the American Revolution. Some were mulatto children whose white fathers had decided to liberate them. Others achieved freedom on their own, when permitted, through self-purchase-if they were fortunate enough to have been paid wages for extra work, usually as skilled craftspeople. Most of the free southern blacks lived in cities where they could own property. By state law, they were not equal with whites, were not permitted to vote, and were barred from entering certain occupations. Constantly in danger of being kidnapped by slave traders, they had to show legal papers prov- ing their free status. They remained in the South for various reasons. Some wanted to be near family members who were still in bondage; others believed the South to be home and the North to offer no greater opportunities. White Society Southern whites observed a rigid hierarchy among themselves. Aristocratic planters lived comfortably at the top of society while poor farmers and mountain people struggled at the bottom. SECTIONALISM, 1820-1860 179 Aristocracy Members of the South's small elite of wealthy planters owned at least 100 slaves and at least 1,000 acres. The planter aristocracy maintained its power by dominating the state legislatures of the South and enacting laws that favored the large landholders' economic interests. Farmers The vast majority of slaveholders owned fewer than 20 slaves and worked only several hundred acres. Southern white farmers produced the bulk of the cotton crop, worked in the fields with their slaves, and lived as mod- estly as farmers of the North. Poor Whites Three-fourths of the South's white population owned no slaves. They could not afford the rich river-bottom farmland controlled by the planters, and many lived in the hills as subsistence farmers. These "hillbillies" or "poor white trash," as they were derisively called by the planters, defended the slave system, thinking that some day they too could own slaves and that at least they were superior on the social scale to someone (slaves). Mountain People A number of small farmers lived in frontier conditions in isolation from the rest of the South, along the slopes and valleys of the Appa- lachian and Ozark mountains. The mountain people disliked the planters and their slaves. During the Civil War, many (including a future president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee) would remain loyal to the Union. Cities Because the South was primarily an agricultural region, there was only a limited need for major cities. New Orleans was the only southern city among the nation's 15 largest in 1860 (it was fifth, after New York, Philadel- phia, Baltimore, and Boston). Cities such as Atlanta, Charleston, Chattanooga, and Richmond were important trading centers, but had relatively small popula- tions in comparison to those of the North. Southern Thought The South developed a unique culture and outlook on life. As cotton became the basis of its economy, slavery became the focus of its political thought. White southerners felt increasingly isolated and defensive about slavery, as northerners grew hostile toward it, and as Great Britain, France, and other European nations outlawed it altogether. Code of Chivalry Dominated by the aristocratic planter class, the agri- cultural South was largely a feudal society. Southern gentlemen ascribed to a code of chivalrous conduct, which included a strong sense of personal honor, the defense of womanhood, and paternalistic attitudes toward all who were deemed inferior, especially slaves. Education The upper class valued a college education for their chil- dren. Acceptable professions for gentlemen were limited to farming, law, the ministry, and the military. For the lower classes, schooling beyond the early elementary grades was generally not available. To reduce the risk of slave revolts, slaves were strictly prohibited by law from receiving any instruction in reading and writing. 180 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Religion The slavery question affected church membership. Partly because they preached biblical support for slavery, both Methodist and Baptist churches gained in membership in the South while splitting in the 1840s with their northern brethren. The Unitarians, who challenged slavery, faced declin- ing membership and hostility. Catholics and Episcopalians took a neutral stand on slavery, and their numbers declined in the South. The West As the United States expanded westward, the definition of the "West" kept changing. In the 1600s, the West referred to all the lands not along the Atlantic Coast. In the 1700s, the West meant lands on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains. By the mid-I800s, the West lay beyond the Mississippi River and reached to California and the Oregon Territory on the Pacific Coast. American Indians The original settlers of the West-and the entire North American continent- were various groups of American Indians. However, from the time of Columbus, American Indians were cajoled, pushed, or driven westward as white settlers encroached on their original homelands. Exodus By 1850, the vast majority of American Indians were living west of the Mississippi River. Those to the east had either been killed by disease, died in battles, emigrated reluctantly, or been forced to leave their land by treaty or military action. The Great Plains, however, would provide only a tem- porary respite from conflict with white settlers. Life on the Plains Horses, brought to America by the Spanish in the 1500s, revolutionized life for American Indians on the Great Plains. Some tribes continued to live in villages and farm, but the horse allowed tribes such as the Cheyenne and the Sioux to become nomadic hunters following the buf- falo. Those living a nomadic way of life could more easily move away from advancing settlers or oppose their encroachments by force. The Frontier Although the location of the western frontier constantly shifted, the concept of the frontier remained the same from generation to generation. The same forces that had brought the original colonists to the Americas motivated their descen- dants and new immigrants to move westward. In the public imagination, the West represented the possibility of a fresh start for those willing to venture there. If not in fact, at least in theory and myth, the West beckoned as a place promis- ing greater freedom for all ethnic groups: American Indians, African Americans, European Americans, and eventually Asian Americans as well. Mountain Men From the point of view of white Americans, the Rocky Mountains in the 1820s were a far-distant frontier-a total wilderness except for American Indian villages. The earliest whites in the area had followed Lewis and Clark and explored American Indian trails as they trapped for furs. SECTIONALISM, 1820-1860 181 These mountain men, as they were called, served as the guides and pathfinders for settlers crossing the mountains into California and Oregon in the 1840s. (See Chapter 12.) White Settlers on the Western Frontier Whether the frontier lay in Minnesota or Oregon or California in the 1840s and 1850s, daily life for white settlers was similar to that of the early colonists. They worked hard from sunrise to sunset and lived in log cabins, sod huts, or other improvised shelters. Disease and malnutrition were far greater dangers than attacks by American Indians. Women Often living many miles from the nearest neighbor, pioneer women performed myriad daily tasks, including those of doctor, teacher, seamstress, and cook-as well as chief assistant in the fields to their farmer- husbands. The isolation, endless work, and rigors of childbirth resulted in a short lifespan for frontier women. Environmental Damage Settlers had little understanding of the fragile nature of land and wildlife. As settlers moved into an area, they would clear entire forests and after only two generations exhaust the soil with poor farming methods. At the same time, trappers and hunters brought the beaver and the buffalo to the brink of extinction. Population by Region, 1820 to 1860 Region 1820 1840 1860 Northeast: Maine, New Hampshire, 4,360,000 6,761,000 10,594,000 Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania North Central: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 859,000 3,352,000 9,097,000 Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas South: Delaware, Maryland, Wash- 4,419,000 6,951,000 11,133,000 ington DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas West: Colorado, New Mexico, ----- ----- 619,000 Nevada, Utah, Washington, Oregon, California All States 9,618,000 17,120,000 31,513,000 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. All figures rounded to the nearest thousand.

Chapter 18 'The Growth of Cities and American Culture, 1865 - 1900'

In 1893, Chicago hosted a world's fair known as the World's Columbian Exposition. More than 12 million people traveled to the White City, as Chicago's fairgrounds and gleaming white buildings were known. Visitors saw the progress of American civilization as represented by new industrial technologies and by the architects' grand visions of an ideal urban environment. In just six decades, Chicago's population had grown to more than one million. Its central business district was a marvel of modern urban structures: steel- framed skyscrapers, department stores, and theaters. Around this central hub lay a sprawling gridiron of workers' housing near the city's factories and warehouses, and a few miles beyond were tree-lined suburban retreats for the wealthy. The entire urban complex was connected by hundreds of miles of streetcars and railroads. Visitors to Chicago also experienced a "gray city" of pollution, poverty, crime, and vice. Some complained of the confusion of tongues, "worse than the tower of Babel," for in 1893 Chicago was a city of immigrants. More than three-fourths of its population were either foreign-born or the children of the foreign-born. Both the real Chicago and the idealized "White City" represented the complex ways in which three great forces of change-industrialization, immigration, and urbanization-were transforming the nature of American society in the late 19th century. A previous chapter covered industrialization. This chapter focuses on immigration and urbanization. 360 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM A Nation of Immigrants In the last half of the 19th century, the U.S. population more than tripled, from about 23.2 million in 1850 to 76.2 million in 1900. The arrival of 16.2 million immigrants fueled the growth. An additional 8.8 million more arrived during the peak years of immigration, 1901-1910. Growth of Immigration The growing connections between the United States and the world are evident during this period, especially in the area of immigration. A increased combina- tion of "pushes" (negative factors from which people are fleeing) and "pulls" (positive attractions of the adopted country) increased migrations around the world. The negative forces driving Europeans to emigrate included (1) the pov- erty of displaced farmworkers driven from the land by political turmoil and the mechanization of farmwork, (2) overcrowding and joblessness in cities as a result of a population boom, and (3) religious persecution, particularly of Jews in eastern Europe. Positive reasons for moving to the United States included this country's reputation for political and religious freedom and the economic opportunities afforded by the settling of the West and the abundance of indus- trial jobs in U.S. cities. Furthermore, the introduction of large steamships and the relatively inexpensive one-way passage in the ships' "steerage" made it possible for millions of poor people to emigrate. 110ld11 Immigrants and 11New11 Immigrants Through the 1880s, the vast majority of immigrants came from northern and western Europe: the British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia. Most of these "old" immigrants were Protestants, although many were Irish or German Cath- olics. Their language (mostly English-speaking) and high level of literacy and occupational skills made it relatively easy for these immigrants to blend into a mostly rural American society in the early decades of the 19th century. New Immigrants Beginning in the 1890s and continuing to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the national origins of most immigrants changed. The "new" immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe. They were Italians, Greeks, Croats, Slovaks, Poles, and Russians. Many were poor and illiterate peasants who had left autocratic countries and therefore were unaccustomed to democratic traditions. Unlike the earlier groups of Protestant immigrants, the newcomers were largely Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Jewish. On arrival, most new immigrants crowded into poor ethnic neigh- borhoods in New York, Chicago, and other major U.S. cities. An estimated 25 percent of them were "birds of passage," young men contracted for unskilled factory, mining, and construction jobs, who would return to their native lands once they had saved a fair sum of money to bring back to their families. THE GROWTH OF CITIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 1865-1900 361 Restricting Immigration In the 1870s, when the French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi began work on the Statue of Liberty, there were few legal restrictions on immigration to the United States. By 1886, however-the year that the great welcoming- statue was placed on its pedestal in New York Harbor-Congress had passed a number of new laws restricting immigration. First came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, placing a ban on all new immigrants from China. As already noted in the last chapter, this hostility to the Chinese mainly came from the western states. Restrictions also came in 1882 on the immigration of "undesirable" persons, such as paupers, criminals, convicts, and those diagnosed as mentally incompetent. The Contract Labor Law of 1885 restricted temporary workers to protect American workers. A literacy test for immigrants was vetoed by Presi- dent Cleveland, but passed in 1917. Soon after the opening of Ellis Island as an immigration center in 1892, new arrivals had to pass more rigorous medical examinations and pay a tax before entering the United States. Efforts to restrict immigration were supported by diverse groups such as (1) labor unions, which feared that employers would use immigrants to depress wages and break strikes, (2) a nativist society, the American Protective Asso- ciation, which was openly prejudiced against Roman Catholics, and (3) social Darwinists, who viewed the new immigrants as biologically inferior to Eng- lish and Germanic stocks. During a severe depression in the 1890s, foreigners became a convenient scapegoat for jobless workers as well as for employers who blamed strikes and the labor movement on foreign agitators. However, anti-immigrant feelings and early restrictions did not stop the flow of newcomers. At the turn of the century, almost 15 percent of the U.S. population were immigrants. The Statue of Liberty remained a beacon of hope for the poor and the oppressed of southern and eastern Europe until the 1920s, when the Quota Acts almost closed Liberty's golden door (see Chapter 23). Urbanization Urbanization and industrialization developed simultaneously. Cities provided both laborers for factories and a market for factory-made goods. The shift in population from rural to urban became more obvious with each passing decade. By 1900 almost 40 percent of Americans lived in towns or cities. By 1920, for the first time, more Americans lived in urban areas than in rural areas. Those moving into the cities were both immigrants and internal migrants born in the rural United States. In the late 19th century, millions of young Americans from rural areas decided to seek new economic opportunities in the cities. They left the farms for industrial and commercial jobs, and few of them returned. Among those who joined the movement from farms to cities were African Americans from the South. Between 1897 and 1930, nearly 1 million southern blacks settled in northern and western cities. 362 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Changes in the Nature of Cities Cities of the late 19th century underwent significant changes not only in their size but also in their internal structure and design. Streetcar Cities Improvements in urban transportation made the growth of cities possible. In the walking cities of the pre-Civil War era, people had little choice but to live within walking distance of their shops or jobs. Such cities gave way to streetcar cities, in which people lived in residences many miles from their jobs and commuted to work on horse-drawn streetcars. By the 1890s, both horse-drawn cars and cable cars were being replaced by electric trolleys, elevated railroads, and subways, which could transport people to urban residences even farther from the city's commercial center. The building of mas- sive steel suspension bridges such as New York's Brooklyn Bridge (completed in 1883) also made possible longer commutes between residential areas and the center city. Mass transportation had the effect of segregating urban workers by income. The upper and middle classes moved to streetcar suburbs to escape the pollution, poverty, and crime of the city. The exodus of higher-income residents left older sections of the city to the working poor, many of whom were immigrants. The residential areas of the cities and suburbs both reflected and contributed to the class, race, ethnic, and cultural divisions in American society. Skyscrapers As cities expanded outward, they also soared upward, since increasing land values in the central business district dictated the construction of taller and taller buildings. In 1885, William Le Baron Jenny built the ten-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago-the first true skyscraper with a steel skeleton. Structures of this size were made possible by such innovations as the Otis elevator and the central steam-heating system with radiators in every room. By 1900 steel-framed skyscrapers for offices of industry had replaced church spires as the dominant feature of American urban skylines. Ethnic Neighborhoods As affluent citizens moved out of residences near the business district, the poor moved into them. To increase their profits, land- lords divided up inner-city housing into small, windowless rooms. The resulting slums and tenement apartments could cram more than 4,000 people into one city block. In an attempt to correct unlivable conditions, New York City passed a law in 1879 that required each bedroom to have a window. The cheapest way for landlords to respond to the law was to build the so-called dumbbell tenements, with ventilation shafts in the center of the building to provide windows for each room. However, overcrowding and filth in new tenements continued to promote the spread of deadly diseases, such as cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis. In their crowded tenement quarters, different immigrant groups created distinct ethnic neighborhoods where each group could maintain its own lan- guage, culture, church or temple, and social club. Many groups even supported their own newspapers and schools. While often crowded, unhealthy, and crime- ridden, these neighborhoods (sometimes called "ghettos") often served as springboards for ambitious and hardworking immigrants and their children to achieve their version of the American dream. THE GROWTH OF CITIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 1865-1900 363 Residential Suburbs The residential pattern in the United States contrasted with that of Europe, where wealthy people remained near the business districts of modern cities and lower-income people live in the outlying areas. Five factors prompted Americans who could afford to move to the suburbs: (1) abundant land available at low cost, (2) inexpensive transportation by rail, (3) low-cost construction methods such as the wooden, balloon-frame house, (4) ethnic and racial prejudice, and (5) an American fondness for grass, privacy, and detached individual houses. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York's Central Park in the 1860s, went on to design suburban communities with graceful curved roads and open spaces-"a village in the park." By 1900, suburbs had grown up around every major U.S. city, and a single-family dwelling surrounded by an ornamental lawn soon became the American ideal of comfortable living. Thus began the world's first suburban nation. Private City Versus Public City At first, city residents tried to carry on life in large cities much as they had in small villages. Private enterprise shaped the development of American cities, and provided services such as streetcars and utilities for a profit. In time, increasing disease, crime, waste, water pol- lution, and air pollution slowly convinced reform-minded citizens and city governments of the need for municipal water purification, sewerage systems, waste disposal, street lighting, police departments, and zoning laws to regulate urban development. In the 1890s, the "City Beautiful" movement advanced grand plans to remake American cities with tree-lined boulevards, public parks and public cultural attractions. The debate between the private good and the public good in urban growth and development has continued as an open issue. Boss and Machine Politics The consolidation of power in business had its parallel in urban politics. Politi- cal parties in major cities came under the control of tightly organized groups of politicians, known as political machines. Each machine had its boss, the top politician who gave orders to the rank and file and doled out government jobs to loyal supporters. Several political machines, such as Tammany Hall in New York City, started as social clubs and later developed into power centers to coordinate the needs of businesses, immigrants, and the underprivileged. In return, machines asked for people's votes on election day. Successful party bosses knew how to manage the competing social, ethnic, and economic groups in the city. Political machines often brought modem services to the city, including a crude form of welfare for urban newcomers. The political organization would find jobs and apartments for recently arrived immigrants and show up at a poor family's door with baskets of food during hard times. But the political machine could be greedy as well as generous and often stole millions from the taxpayers in the form of graft and fraud. In New York City in the 1860s, for example, an estimated 65 percent of public building funds ended up in the pockets of Boss Tweed and his cronies. 364 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Awakening of Reform Urban problems, including the desperate poverty of working-class families, inspired a new social consciousness among the middle class. Reform move- ments begun in earlier decades increased strength in the 1880s and 1890s. Books of Social Criticism A San Francisco journalist, Henry George, published a provocative book in 1879 that became an instant best-seller and jolted readers to look more critically at the effects of laissez-faire econom- ics. George called attention to the alarming inequalities in wealth caused by industrialization. In his book Progress and Poverty, George proposed one inno- vative solution to poverty: replacing all taxes with a single tax on land. Another popular book of social criticism, Looking Backward, 2000-1887, was written by Edward Bellamy in 1888. It envisioned a future era in which a cooperative society had eliminated poverty, greed, and crime. So enthusiastic were many of the readers of George's and Bellamy's books that they joined various reform movements and organizations to try to implement the authors' ideas. Both books encouraged a shift in American public opinion away from pure laissez- faire and toward greater government regulation. Settlement Houses Concerned about the lives of the poor, a number of young, well-educated women and men of the middle class settled into immigrant neighborhoods to learn about the problems of immigrant families first-hand. Living and working in places called settlement houses, the young reformers hoped to relieve the effects of poverty by providing social services for people in the neighborhood. The most famous such experiment was Hull House in Chicago, which was started by Jane Addams and a college classmate in 1889. Settlement houses taught English to immigrants, pioneered early- childhood education, taught industrial arts, and established neighborhood theaters and music schools. By 1910 there were more than 400 settlement houses in America's largest cities. Settlement workers were civic-minded volunteers who created the foundation for the later job of social worker. They were also political activists who crusaded for child-labor laws, housing reform, and women's rights. Two settlement workers, Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins, went on to leadership roles in President Franklin Roosevelt's reform program, the New Deal, in the 1930s. Social Gospel In the 1880s and 1890s, a number of Protestant clergy espoused the cause of social justice for the poor-especially the urban poor. They preached what they called the Social Gospel, or the importance of applying Christian principles to social problems. Leading the Social Gospel movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a Baptist minister from New York, Walter Rauschenbusch, who worked in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of New York City called Hell's Kitchen, wrote several books urging organized religions to take up the cause of social justice. His Social Gospel preaching linked Christianity with the Progressive reform movement (see Chapter 21) and encouraged many middle-class Protestants to attack urban problems. THE GROWTH OF CITIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 1865-1900 365 Religion and Society All religions adapted to the stresses and challenges of modern urban living. Roman Catholicism grew rapidly from the influx of new immigrants. Catholic leaders such as Cardinal James Gibbons of Balti- more inspired the devoted support of old and new immigrants by defending the Knights of Labor and the cause of organized labor. Among Protestants, Dwight Moody, who founded the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1889, would help generations of urban evangelists to adapt traditional Christianity to city life. The Salvation Army, imported from England in 1879, provided basic necessities to the homeless and the poor while preaching the Christian gospel. Members of the urban middle class were attracted to the religious message of Mary Baker Eddy, who taught that good health was the result of correct thinking about "Father Mother God." By the time of her death in 1910, hundreds of thousands had joined the church she had founded, the Church of Christ, Scientist-popularly known as Christian Science. Families in Urban Society Urban life placed severe strains on parents and their children by isolating them from the extended family (relatives beyond the family nucleus of parents and children) and village support. Divorce rates increased to one in 12 marriages by 1900, partly because a number of state leg- islatures had expanded the grounds for divorce to include cruelty and desertion. Another consequence of the shift from rural to urban living was a reduction in family size. Children were an economic asset on the farm, where their labor was needed at an early age. In the city, however, they were more of an eco- nomic liability. Therefore, in the last decades of the 19th century, the national average for birthrates and family size continued to drop. THE BIRTH RATE, 1820 to 1920 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 Voting Rights for Women The cause of women's suffrage, launched at Seneca Falls in 1848, was vigorously carried forward by a number of middle- class women. In 1890, two of the pioneer feminists of the 1840s, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony of New York, helped found the National Ameri- can Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to secure the vote for women. 366 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM A western state, Wyoming, was the first to grant full suffrage to women, in 1869. By 1900, some states allowed women to vote in local elections, and most allowed women to own and control property after marriage. Temperance Movement Another cause that attracted the attention of urban reformers was temperance. Excessive drinking of alcohol by male factory workers was one cause of poverty for immigrant and working-class families. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed in 1874. Advocating total abstinence from alcohol, the WCTU, under the lead- ership of Frances E. Willard of Evanston, Illinois, had 500,000 members by 1898. The Antisaloon League, founded in 1893, became a powerful political force and by 1916 had persuaded 21 states to close down all saloons and bars. Unwilling to wait for the laws to change, Carry A. Nation of Kansas created a sensation by raiding saloons and smashing barrels of beer with a hatchet. Urban Reforms Across the country, grassroots efforts arose to combat corruption in city governments. In New York, a reformer named Theodore Roo- sevelt tried to clean up the New York City Police Department. As a result of his efforts, he became a vice-presidential nominee in 1896, and later the president. However, many of the reformers of the Gilded Age would not see their efforts reach fruition or have a national impact until the early 20th century. Intellectual and Cultural Movements The change from an agricultural to an industrial economy and from rural to urban living profoundly affected all areas of American life, including educa- tion, sciences, literature, arts, and popular entertainment. Changes in Education The growing complexity of life, along with reactions to Darwin's theory of evolution, raised challenging questions about what schools should teach. Public Schools Elementary schools after 1865 continued to teach the 3 R's (reading, writing, arithmetic) and the traditional values promoted in the standard texts, McGuffey's readers. New compulsory education laws that required children to attend school, however, dramatically increased the number students enrolled. As a result, the literacy rate rose to 90 percent of the popu- lation by 1900. The practice of sending children to kindergarten (a concept borrowed from Germany) became popular and reflected the growing interest in early-childhood education in the United States. Perhaps even more significant than lower-grade schools was the growing support for tax-supported public high schools. At first these schools followed the college preparatory curriculum of private academies, but soon the public high schools became more comprehensive. They began to provide vocational and citizenship education for a changing urban society. Higher Education The number of U.S. colleges increased in the late 1800s largely as a result of: (1) land-grant colleges established under the federal Morrill acts of 1862 and 1890, (2) universities founded by wealthy philanthropists-the University of Chicago by John D. Rockefeller, for THE GROWTH OF CITIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 1865-1900 367 example, and (3) the founding of new colleges for women, such as Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Mount Holyoke. By 1900, 71 percent of the colleges admitted women, who represented more than one-third of the attending students. The college curriculum also changed greatly in the late 19th century. Soon after becoming president of Harvard in 1869, Charles W. Eliot reduced the num- ber of required courses and introduced electives (courses chosen by students) to accommodate the teaching of modern languages and the sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. Johns Hopkins University was founded in Baltimore in 1876 as the first American institution to specialize in advanced graduate studies. Following the model of German universities, Johns Hopkins emphasized research and free inquiry. As a result of such innovations in cur- riculum, the United States produced its first generation of scholars who could compete with the intellectual achievements of Europeans. As the curriculum was changing, colleges added social activities, fraternities, and intercollegiate sports, additions that soon dominated the college experience for many students. Social Sciences The application of the scientific method and the theory of evolution to human affairs revolutionized the study of human society in the late 19th century. New fields, known as the social sciences, emerged, such as psy- chology, sociology, anthropology, and political science. Richard T. Ely of Johns Hopkins attacked laissez-faire economic thought as dogmatic and outdated and used economics to study labor unions, trusts, and other existing economic institutions not only to understand them but also to suggest remedies for economic problems of the day. Evolutionary theory influenced leading sociologists (Lester F. Ward), political scientists (Woodrow Wilson), and historians (Frederick Jack- son Turner) to study the dynamic process of actual human behavior instead of logical abstractions. One social scientist who used new statistical methods to study crime in urban neighborhoods was W. E. B. Du Bois. The first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard, Du Bois was the leading black intellectual of the era. He advocated for equality for blacks, integrated schools, and equal access to higher education for the "talented tenth" of African Americans. The Professions Scientific theory and methodology also influenced the work of doctors, educators, social workers, and lawyers. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. argued that the law should evolve with the times in response to changing needs and not remain restricted by legal precedents and judicial decisions of the past. Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer, argued that criminal behavior could be caused by a person's environment of poverty, neglect, and abuse. These changes in the professions, along with changes in the universities, would provide a boost to progressive legislation and liberal reform in the 20th century. literature and the Arts American writers and artists responded in diverse ways to industrialization and urban problems. In general, the work of the best-known innovators of the era reflected a new realism and an attempt to express an authentic American style. Realism and Naturalism Many of the popular works of literature of the post-Civil War years were romantic novels that depicted ideal heroes and hero- ines. Breaking with this genteel literary tradition were regionalist writers such as Bret Harte, who depicted life in the rough mining camps of the West. Mark Twain (the pen name for Samuel L. Clemens) became the first great realist author. His classic work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), revealed the greed, violence, and racism in American society. A younger generation of authors who emerged in the 1890s became known for their naturalism, which focused on how emotions and experience shaped human experience. In his naturalistic novel Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), Stephen Crane told how a brutal urban environment could destroy the lives of young people. Crane also wrote the popular Red Badge of Courage about fear and human nature on the Civil War battlefield before dying himself of tuberculosis at only 29. Jack London, a young California writer and adventurer, portrayed the conflict between nature and civilization in novels such as The Call of the Wild (1903). A naturalistic book that caused a sensation and shocked the moral sensibilities of the time was Theodore Dreiser's novel about a poor working girl in Chicago, Sister Carrie (1900). Painting Some American painters responded to the new emphasis on realism, while others continued to cater to the popular taste for romantic subjects. Winslow Homer, the foremost American painter of seascapes and watercolors, often rendered scenes of nature in a matter-of-fact way. Thomas Eakins's realism included paintings of surgical scenes and the everyday lives of working-class men and women. He also used the new technology of serial- action photographs to study human anatomy and paint it more realistically. Source: George Bellows, Cliff Dwellers, 1913. Oil on Canvas. Los Angeles County Museum of Art THE GROWTH OF CITIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 1865-1900 369 James McN eill Whistler was born in Massachusetts but spent most of his life in Paris and London. His most famous painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black (popularly known as "Whistler's Mother"), hangs in the Louvre. This study of color, rather than subject matter, influenced the development of modern art. A distinguished portrait painter, Mary Cassatt, also spent much of her life in France where she learned the techniques of impressionism, especially in her use of pastel colors. As the 19th century ended, a group of social realists, such as George Bellows, of the "Ashcan School" painted scenes of everyday life in poor urban neighborhoods. Upsetting to realists and romanticists alike were the abstract, nonrepresentational paintings exhibited in the Armory Show in New York City in 1913. Art of this kind would be rejected by most Americans until the 1950s when it finally achieved respect among collectors of fine art. Architecture In the 1870s, Henry Hobson Richardson changed the direction of American architecture. While earlier architects found inspiration in classical Greek and Roman styles, his designs were often based on the medieval Romanesque style of massive stone walls and rounded arches. Richardson gave a gravity and stateliness to functional commercial buildings. Louis Sullivan of Chicago went a step further by rejecting historical styles in his quest for a suitable style for the tall, steel-framed office buildings of the 1880s and 1890s. Sullivan's buildings achieved a much-admired aesthetic unity, in which the form of a building flowed from its function-a hallmark of the Chicago School of architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright, an employee of Sullivan's in the 1890s, developed an "organic" style of architecture that was in harmony with its natural surroundings. Wright's vision is exemplified in the long, horizontal lines of his prairie-style houses. Wright became the most famous American architect of the 20th century. Some architects, such as Daniel H. Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, Chicago, 1909. Library of Congress 370 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM who revived classical Greek and Roman architecture in his designs for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, continued to explore historical styles. One of the most influential urbanists, Frederick Law Olmsted specialized in the planning of city parks and scenic boulevards, including Central Park in New York City and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. As the originator of landscape architecture, Olmsted not only designed parks, parkways, campuses, and suburbs but also established the basis for later urban landscaping. Music With the growth of cities came increasing demand for musical performances appealing to a variety of tastes. By 1900, most large cities had either an orchestra, an opera house, or both. In smaller towns, outdoor bandstands were the setting for the playing of popular marches by John Philip Sousa. Among the greatest innovators of the era were African Americans in New Orleans. Jelly Roll Morton and Buddy Bolden expanded the audience for jazz, a musical form that combined African rhythms with European instruments, and mixed improvisation with a structured format. The remarkable black com- poser and performer Scott Joplin sold nearly a million copies of sheet music of his "Maple Leaf Rag" ( 1899). Also from the South came blues music that expressed the pain of the black experience. Jazz, ragtime, and blues music gained popularity during the early 20th century as New Orleans performers headed north into the urban centers of Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago. Popular Culture Entertaining the urban masses became big business in the late 19th century. People wanted amusements as respites from their work. Popular Press Mass-circulation newspapers had been around since the 1830s, but the first newspaper to exceed a million in circulation was Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Pulitzer filled his daily paper with both sensational stories of crimes and disasters and crusading feature stories about political and economic corruption. Another New York publisher, William Randolph Hearst, pushed scandal and sensationalism to new heights (or lows). Mass-circulation magazines also became numerous in the 1880s. Advertising revenues and new printing technologies made it possible for the Ladies' Home Journal and similar magazines to sell for as little as 10 cents a copy. Amusements In addition to urbanization, other factors also promoted the growth of leisure-time activities: (1) a gradual reduction in the hours people worked, (2) improved transportation, (3) promotional billboards and advertising, and ( 4) the decline of restrictive Puritan and Victorian values that discouraged "wasting" time on play. Based on numbers alone, the most popular form of recreation in the late 19th century, despite the temperance movement, was drinking and talking at the corner saloon. Theaters that presented comedies and dramas flourished in most large cities, but vaudeville with its variety of acts drew the largest audiences. The national rail network encouraged traveling circuses such as Barnum and Bailey and the Ringling Brothers to create circus THE GROWTH OF CITIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE, 1865-1900 371 trains that moved a huge number of acts and animals from town to town, as the "Greatest Show on Earth." Also immensely popular was the Wild West show brought to urban audiences by William F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill") and headlining such personalities as Sitting Bull and the markswoman Annie Oakley. Commuter streetcar and railroad companies also promoted weekend recration in order to keep their cars running on Sundays and holidays. They created parks in the countryside near the end of the line so that urban families could enjoy picnics and outdoor recreation. Spectator Sports Professional spectator sports originated in the late 19th century. Boxing attracted male spectators from all classes, and champions such as John L. Sullivan became national heroes. Baseball, while it recalled a rural past of green fields and fences, was very much an urban game that demanded the teamwork needed for an industrial age. Owners organized teams into leagues, much as trusts of the day were organized. In 1909, when President William Howard Taft started the tradition of the president throwing out the first ball of the season, baseball was the national pastime. However, Jim Crow laws and customs prevented blacks from playing on all-white big-league baseball teams between the 1890s and 1947. Football developed primarily as a college activity, with the first game played by two New Jersey colleges, Rutgers and Princeton, in 1869. In the 1920s professional football teams and leagues were organized. Basketball was invented in 1891 at Springfield College, in Massachusetts. Within a few years, high schools and colleges across the nation had teams. The first professional basketball league was organized in 1898. American spectator sports were played and attended by men. They were part of a "bachelor subculture" for single men in their twenties and thirties, whose lives centered around saloons, horse races, and pool halls. It took years for some spectator sports, such as boxing and football, to gain middle-class respectability. Amateur Sports The value of sports as healthy exercise for the body gained acceptance by the middle and upper classes in the late 19th century. Women were considered unfit for most competitive sports, but they engaged in such recreational activities as croquet and bicycling. Sports such as golf and tennis grew, but mostly among the prosperous members of athletic clubs. The very rich pursued expensive sports of polo and yachting. Clubs generally discriminated against Jews, Catholics, and Africans Americans.

Chapter 4 - Imperial Wars and Colonial Protest, 1754 - 1774 What caused American colonists in the 1760s to become, as John Adams expressed it, "more attentive to their liberties"? The chief reason for their discontent in these years was a dramatic change in Britain's colonial policy. Britain began to assert its power in the colonies and to collect taxes and enforce trade laws much more aggressively than in the past. To explain why Britain took this fateful step, we must study the effects of its various wars for empire. Empires at War Late in the 17th century, war broke out involving Great Britain, France, and Spain. This was the first of a series of four wars that were worldwide in scope, with battles in Europe, India, and North America. These wars occurred inter- mittently over a 74-year period from 1689 to 1763. The stakes were high, since the winner of the struggle stood to gain supremacy in the West Indies and Canada and to dominate the lucrative colonial trade. The First Three Wars The first three wars were named after the British king or queen under whose reign they occurred. In both King William's War (1689-1697) and Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), the British launched expeditions to capture Que- bec, but their efforts failed. American Indians supported by the French burned British frontier settlements. Ultimately, the British forces prevailed in Queen Anne's War and gained both Nova Scotia from France and trading rights in Spanish America. A third war was fought during the reign of George II: King George's War (17 44-17 48). Once again, the British colonies were under attack from their perennial rivals, the French and the Spanish. In Georgia, James Oglethorpe led a colonial army that managed to repulse Spanish attacks. To the north, IMPERIAL WARS AND COLONIAL PROTEST, 1754-1774 69 a force of New Englanders captured Louisbourg, a major French fortress, on Cape Breton Island, controlling access to the St. Lawrence River. In the peace treaty ending the war, however, Britain agreed to give Louisbourg back to the French in exchange for political and economic gains in India. New Englanders were furious about the loss of a fort that they had fought so hard to win. The Seven Years' War (French and Indian War) The first three wars between Britain and France focused primarily on battles in Europe and only secondarily on conflict in the colonies. The European powers saw little value in committing regular troops to America. However, in the fourth and final war in the series, the fighting began in the colonies and then spread to Europe. Moreover, Britain and France now recognized the full importance of their colonies and shipped large numbers of troops overseas to North America rather than rely on "amateur" colonial forces. This fourth and most decisive war was known in Europe as the Seven Years' War. The North American phase of this war is often called the French and Indian War. Beginning of the War From the British point of view, the French provoked the war by building a chain of forts in the Ohio River Valley. One of the reasons the French did so was to halt the westward growth of the British colonies. Hop- ing to stop the French from completing work on Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) and thereby win control of the Ohio River Valley, the governor of Virginia sent a small militia (armed force) under the command of a young colonel named George Washington. After gaining a small initial victory, Washington's troops surrendered to a superior force of Frenchmen and their American Indian allies on July 3, 1754. With this military encounter in the wilderness, the final war for empire began. At first the war went badly for the British. In 1755, another expedition from Virginia, led by General Edward Braddock, ended in a disastrous defeat, as more than 2,000 British regulars and colonial troops were routed by a smaller force of French and American Indians near Ft. Duquesne. The Algonquin allies of the French ravaged the frontier from western Pennsylvania to North Carolina. The French repulsed a British invasion of French Canada that began in 1756. The Albany Plan of Union Recognizing the need for coordinating colo- nial defense, the British government called for representatives from several colonies to meet in a congress at Albany, New York, in 1754. The delegates from seven colonies adopted a plan-the Albany Plan of Union-developed by Benjamin Franklin that provided for an intercolonial government and a system for recruiting troops and collecting taxes from the various colonies for their common defense. Each colony was too jealous of its own taxation powers to accept the plan, however, and it never took effect. The Albany congress was significant, however, because it set a precedent for later, more revolutionary congresses in the 1770s. 70 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM British Victory The British prime minister, William Pitt, concentrated the government's military strategy on conquering Canada. This objective was accomplished with the retaking of Louisbourg in 1758, the surrender of Quebec to General James Wolfe in 1759, and the taking of Montreal in 1760. After these British victories, the European powers negotiated a peace treaty (the Peace of Paris) in 1763. Great Britain acquired both French Canada and Spanish Florida. France ceded (gave up) to Spain its huge western terri- tory, Louisiana, and claims west of the Mississippi River in compensation for Spain's loss of Florida. With this treaty, the British extended their control of North America, and French power on the continent virtually ended. Immediate Effects of the War Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War gave them unchallenged supremacy in North America and also established them as the dominant naval power in the world. No longer did the American colonies face the threat of concerted attacks from the French, the Spanish, and their American Indian allies. More important to the colonies, though, was a change in how the British and the colonists viewed each other. The British View The British came away from the war with a low opinion of the colonial military abilities. They held the American militia in contempt as a poorly trained, disorderly rabble. Furthermore, they noted that some of the colonies had refused to contribute either troops or money to the war effort. Most British were convinced that the colonists were both unable and unwilling to defend the new frontiers of the vastly expanded British empire. The Colonial View The colonists took an opposite view of their military performance. They were proud of their record in all four wars and developed confidence that they could successfully provide for their own defense. They were not impressed with British troops or their leadership, whose methods of warfare seemed badly suited to the densely wooded terrain of eastern America. Reorganization of the British Empire More serious than the resentful feelings stirred by the war experience was the British government's shift in its colonial policies. Previously, Britain had exercised little direct control over the colonies and had generally allowed its navigation laws regulating colonial trade to go unenforced. This earlier policy of salutary neglect was abandoned as the British adopted more forceful poli- cies for taking control of their expanded North American dominions. All four wars-and the last one in particular-had been extremely costly. In addition, Britain now felt the need to maintain a large British military force to guard its American frontiers. Among British landowners, pressure was build- ing to reduce the heavy taxes that the colonial wars had laid upon them. To pay for troops to guard the frontier without increasing taxes at home, King George III and the dominant political party in Parliament (the Whigs) wanted the American colonies to bear more of the cost of maintaining the British empire. IMPERIAL WARS AND COLONIAL PROTEST, 1754-1774 71 Pontiac's Rebellion The first major test of the new British imperial policy came in 1763 when Chief Pontiac led a major attack against colonial settlements on the western frontier. The American Indians were angered by the growing westward movement of European settlers onto their land and by the British refusal to offer gifts as the French had done. Pontiac's alliance of American Indians in the Ohio Valley destroyed forts and settlements from New York to Virginia. Rather than relying on colonial forces to retaliate, the British sent regular British troops to put down the uprising. Proclamation of 1763 In an effort to stabilize the western frontier, the British government issued a proclamation that prohibited colonists from set- tling west of the Appalachian Mountains. The British hoped that limiting settlements would prevent future hostilities between colonists and American Indians. But the colonists reacted to the proclamation with anger and defiance. After their victory in the Seven Years' War, colonists hoped to reap benefits in the form of access to western lands. For the British to deny such benefits was infuriating. Defying the prohibition, thousands streamed westward beyond the imaginary boundary line drawn by the British. (See map, page 76.) British Actions and Colonial Reactions The Proclamation of 1763 was the first of a series of acts by the Brit- ish government that angered colonists. From the British point of view, each act was justified as a proper method for protecting its colonial empire and making the colonies pay their share of costs for such protection. From the colonists' point of view, each act represented an alarming threat to their cher- ished liberties and long-established practice of representative government. New Revenues and Regulations In the first two years of peace, King George Ill's chancellor of the exchequer (treasury) and prime minister, Lord George Grenville, successfully pushed through Parliament three measures that aroused colonial suspicions of a Brit- ish plot to subvert their liberties. Sugar Act (1764) This act (also known as the Revenue Act of 1764) placed duties on foreign sugar and certain luxuries. Its chief purpose was to raise money for the crown, and a companion law also provided for stricter enforce- ment of the Navigation Acts to stop smuggling. Those accused of smuggling were to be tried in admiralty courts by crown-appointed judges without juries. Quartering Act (1765) This act required the colonists to provide food and living quarters for British soldiers stationed in the colonies. Stamp Act In an effort to raise funds to support British military forces in the colonies, Lord Grenville turned to a tax long in use in Britain. The Stamp Act, enacted by Parliament in 1765, required that revenue stamps be placed on most printed paper in the colonies, including all legal documents, newspapers, 72 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM pamphlets, and advertisements. This was the first direct tax-collected from those who used the goods-paid by the people in the colonies, as opposed to the taxes on imported goods, which were paid by merchants. People in every colony reacted with indignation to news of the Stamp Act. A young Virginia lawyer named Patrick Henry spoke for many when he stood up in the House of Burgesses to demand that the king's government recognize the rights of all citizens-including the right not to be taxed without repre- sentation. In Massachusetts, James Otis initiated a call for cooperative action among the colonies to protest the Stamp Act. Representatives from nine colo- nies met in New York in 1765 to form the so-called Stamp Act Congress. They resolved that only their own elected representatives had the legal authority to approve taxes. The protest against the stamp tax took a violent turn with the formation of the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, a secret society organized for the purpose of intimidating tax agents. Members of this society sometimes destroyed revenue stamps and tarred and feathered revenue officials. Boycotts against British imports were the most effective form of protest. It became fashionable in the colonies in 1765 and 1766 for people not to pur- chase any article of British origin. Faced with a sharp drop in trade, London merchants put pressure on Parliament to repeal the controversial Stamp Act. Declaratory Act In 1766, Grenville was replaced by another prime minis- ter, and Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act. When news of the repeal reached the colonies, people rejoiced. Few colonists at the time noted that Par- liament had also enacted a face-saving measure known as the Declaratory Act (1766). This act asserted that Parliament had the right to tax and make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." This declaration of policy would soon lead to renewed conflict between the colonists and the British government. Second Phase of the Crisis, 1767-1773 Because the British government still needed new revenues, the newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, proposed another tax measure. The Townshend Acts Adopting Townshend's program in 1767, Parlia- ment enacted new duties to be collected on colonial imports of tea, glass, and paper. The law required that the revenues raised be used to pay crown officials in the colonies, thus making them independent of the colonial assemblies that had previously paid their salaries. The Townshend Acts also provided for the search of private homes for smuggled goods. All that an official needed to conduct such a search would be a writ of assistance (a general license to search anywhere) rather than a judge's warrant permitting a search only of a specifi- cally named property. Another of the Townshend Acts suspended New York's assembly for that colony's defiance of the Quartering Act. IMPERIAL WARS AND COLONIAL PROTEST, 1754-1774 73 At first, most colonists accepted the taxes under the Townshend Acts because they were indirect taxes paid by merchants (not direct taxes on con- sumer goods). However, soon leaders began protesting the new duties. In 1767 and 1768, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania in his Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania wrote that Parliament could regulate commerce but argued that because duties were a form of taxation, they could not be levied on the colo- nies without the consent of their representative assemblies. Dickinson argued that the idea of no taxation without representation was an essential principle of English law. In 1768, James Otis and Samuel Adams jointly wrote the Massachusetts Circular Letter and sent copies to every colonial legislature. It urged the various colonies to petition Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts. British officials in Boston ordered the letter retracted, threatened to dissolve the legislature, and increased the number of British troops in Boston. Responding to the circu- lar letter, the colonists again conducted boycotts of British goods. Merchants increased their smuggling activities to avoid the offensive Townshend duties. Repeal of the Townshend Acts Meanwhile, in London, there was an- other change in the king's ministers. Lord Frederick North became the new prime minister. He urged Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts because they damaged trade and generated a disappointingly small amount of revenue. The repeal of the Townshend Acts in 1770 ended the colonial boycott and, except for an incident in Boston (the "massacre" described below), there was a three-year respite from political troubles as the colonies entered into a period of economic prosperity. However, Parliament retained a small tax on tea as a symbol of its right to tax the colonies. Boston Massacre Most Bostonians resented the British troops who had been quartered in their city to protect customs officials from being attacked by the Sons of Liberty. On a snowy day in March 1770, a crowd of colonists harassed the guards near the customs house. The guards fired into the crowd, killing five people including an African American, Crispus Attucks. At their trial for murder, the soldiers were defended by colonial lawyer John Adams and acquitted. Adams' more radical cousin, Samuel Adams, angrily denounced the shooting incident as a "massacre" and used it to inflame anti-British feeling. Renewal of the Conflict Even during the relatively quiet years of 1770-1772, Samuel Adams and a few other Americans kept alive the view that British officials were undermin- ing colonial liberties. A principal device for spreading this idea was by means of the Committees of Correspondence initiated by Samuel Adams in 1772. In Boston and other Massachusetts towns, Adams began the practice of orga- nizing committees that would regularly exchange letters about suspicious or potentially threatening British activities. The Virginia House of Burgesses took the concept a step further when it organized intercolonial committees in 1773. 74 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM The Gaspee One incident frequently discussed in the committees' let- ters was that of the Gaspee, a British customs ship that had caught several smugglers. In 1772, it ran aground off the shore of Rhode Island. Seizing their opportunity to destroy the hated vessel, a group of colonists disguised as American Indians ordered the British crew ashore and then set fire to the ship. The British ordered a commission to investigate and bring guilty individuals to Britain for trial. Boston Tea Party The colonists continued their refusal to buy British tea because the British insisted on their right to collect the tax. Hoping to help the British East India Company out of its financial problems, Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, which made the price of the company's tea-even with the tax included-cheaper than that of smuggled Dutch tea. Many Americans refused to buy the cheaper tea because to do so would, in effect, recognize Parliament's right to tax the colonies. A shipment of the East India Company's tea arrived in Boston harbor, but there were no buyers. Before the royal governor could arrange to bring the tea ashore, a group of Bos- tonians disguised themselves as American Indians, boarded the British ships, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. Colonial reaction to this incident (December 1773) was mixed. While many applauded the Boston Tea Party as a justifiable defense of liberty, others thought the destruction of private property was far too radical. Intolerable Acts In Great Britain, news of the Boston Tea Party angered the king, Lord North, and members of Parliament. In retaliation, the British government enacted a series of punitive acts (the Coercive Acts), together with a separate act dealing with French Canada (the Quebec Act). The colonists were outraged by these various laws, which were given the epithet "Intolerable Acts." The Coercive Acts (1774) There were four Coercive Acts, directed mainly at punishing the people of Boston and Massachusetts and bringing the dissidents under control. 1. The Port Act closed the port of Boston, prohibiting trade in and out of the harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for. 2. The Massachusetts Government Act reduced the power of the Massa- chusetts legislature while increasing the power of the royal governor. 3. The Administration of Justice Act allowed royal officials accused of crimes to be tried in Great Britain instead of in the colonies. 4. A fourth law expanded the Quartering Act to enable British troops to be quartered in private homes. It applied to all colonies. Quebec Act (177 4) When it passed the Coercive Acts, the British govern- ment also passed a law organizing the Canadian lands gained from France. This plan was accepted by most French Canadians, but it was resented by many in the 13 colonies. The Quebec Act established Roman Catholicism as the official IMPERIAL WARS AND COLONIAL PROTEST, 1754-1774 75 religion of Quebec, set up a government without a representative assembly, and extended Quebec's boundary to the Ohio River. The colonists viewed the Quebec Act as a direct attack on the American colonies because it took away lands that they claimed along the Ohio River. They also feared that the British would attempt to enact similar laws in America to take away their representative government. The predominantly Protestant Americans also resented the recognition given to Catholicism. BRITISH COLONIES: PROCLAMATION LINE OF 1763 AND QUEBEC ACT OF 1774 u -- Proclamation Line 1763 - - - Quebec Act 1774 O 200 400 Miles O 200 400 Kilometers Philosophical Foundations of the American Revolution For Americans, especially those who were in positions of leadership, there was a long tradition of loyalty to the king and Great Britain. As the differences between them grew, many Americans tried to justify this changing relation- ship. As discussed in Chapter 3, the Enlightenment, particularly the writings of John Locke, had a profound influence on the colonies. 76 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Enlightenment Ideas The era of the Enlightenment (see Chapter 3) was at its peak in the mid-18th century-the very years that future leaders of the Amer- ican Revolution (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams) were coming to maturity. Many Enlightenment thinkers in Europe and America were Deists, who believed that God had established natural laws in creating the universe, but that the role of divine intervention in human affairs was minimal. They believed in rationalism and trusted human reason to solve the many problems of life and society, and emphasized reason, science, and respect for humanity. Their political philosophy, derived from Locke and developed further by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had a profound influence on edu- cated Americans in the 1760s and 1770s-the decades of revolutionary thought and action that finally culminated in the American Revolution. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES: WHY DID THE COLONIES REBEL?

Chapter 4

Chapter 13 'The Union in Peril, 1848 - 1861'

Nobody disagrees about the sequence of major events from 1848 to 1861 that led ultimately to the outbreak of the Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy. Facts in themselves, however, do not automatically assemble themselves into a convincing interpretation of why war occurred when it did. Historians have identified at least four main causes of the conflict between the North and the South: (1) slavery, as a growing moral issue in the North, versus its defense and expansion in the South; (2) constitutional disputes over the nature of the federal Union and states' rights; (3) economic differences between the industrializing North and the agricultural South over such issues as tariffs, banking, and internal improvements; ( 4) political blunders and extremism on both sides, which some historians conclude resulted in an unnecessary war. This chapter summarizes the events leading up to Lincoln's election and the secession of eleven Southern states from the Union. Conflict Over Status of Territories The issue of slavery in the territories gained in the Mexican War became the focus of sectional differences in the late 1840s. The Wilmot Proviso, which excluded slavery from the new territories, would have upset the Compromise of 1820 and the delicate balance of 15 free and 15 slave states. The proviso's defeat only intensified sectional feelings. On the issue of how to deal with these new western territories, there were essentially three conflicting positions. Free-Soil Movement Northern Democrats and Whigs supported the Wilmot Proviso and the posi- tion that all African Americans-slave and free-should be excluded from the Mexican Cession (territory ceded to the U.S. by Mexico in 1848). While abolitionists advocated eliminating slavery everywhere, many Northerners who opposed the westward expansion of slavery did not oppose slavery in the THE UNION IN PERIL, 1848-1861 247 South. They sought to keep the West a land of opportunity for whites only so that the white majority would not have to compete with the labor of slaves or free blacks. In 1848, Northerners who opposed allowing slavery in the terri- tories organized the Free-Soil party, which adopted the slogan "free soil, free labor, and free men." In addition to its chief objective-preventing the exten- sion of slavery-the new party also advocated free homesteads (public land grants to small farmers) and internal improvements. Southern Position Most whites viewed any attempts to restrict the expansion of slavery as a viola- tion of their constitutional right to take and use their property as they wished. They saw the Free-Soilers-and especially the abolitionists-as intent on the ultimate destruction of slavery. More moderate Southerners favored extending the Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30' westward to the Pacific Ocean and permitting territories north of that line to be nonslave. Popular Sovereignty Lewis Cass, a Democratic senator from Michigan, proposed a compromise solution that soon won considerable support from both moderate Northerners and moderate Southerners. Instead of Congress determining whether to allow slavery in a new western territory or state, Cass suggested that the matter be determined by a vote of the people who settled the territory. Cass's approach to the problem was known as squatter sovereignty, or popular sovereignty. The Election of 1848 In 1848, the Democrats nominated Senator Cass and adopted a platform pledged to popular sovereignty. The Whigs nominated Mexican War hero General Zachary Taylor, who had never been involved in politics and took no posi- tion on slavery in the territories. A third party, the Free-Soil party, nominated former president Martin Van Buren. It consisted of "conscience" W higs (who opposed slavery) and antislavery Democrats; the latter group were ridiculed as "barnburners" because their defection threatened to destroy the Democratic party. Taylor narrowly defeated Cass, in part because of the vote given the Free-Soil party in such key Northern states as New York and Pennsylvania. The Compromise of 1850 The gold rush of 1849 and the influx of about 100,000 settlers into California created the need for law and order in the West. In 1849, Californians drafted a constitution for their new state-a constitution that banned slavery. Even though President Taylor was a Southern slaveholder himself, he supported the immediate admission of both California and New Mexico as free states. (At this time, however, the Mexican population of the New Mexico territory had little interest in applying for statehood.) Taylor's plan sparked talk of secession among the "fire-eaters" (radicals) in the South. Some Southern extremists even met in Nashville in 1850 to discuss 248 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM secession. By this time, however, the astute Henry Clay had proposed yet another compromise for solving the political crisis: • Admit California to the Union as a free state • Divide the remainder of the Mexican Cession into two territories- Utah and New Mexico-and allow the settlers in these territories to decide the slavery issue by majority vote, or popular sovereignty • Give the land in dispute between Texas and the New Mexico territory to the new territories in return for the federal government assuming Texas's public debt of $10 million • Ban the slave trade in the District of Columbia but permit whites to hold slaves as before • Adopt a new Fugitive Slave Law and enforce it rigorously In the ensuing Senate debate over the compromise proposal, the three congressional giants of the age-Henry Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina-delivered the last great speeches of their lives. (Webster and Calhoun, who were both born in 1782, died in 1850; Clay died two years later.) Webster argued for compro- mise in order to save the Union, and in so doing alienated the Massachusetts abolitionists who formed the base of his support. Calhoun argued against compromise and insisted that the South be given equal rights in the acquired territory. Northern opposition to compromise came from younger antislavery law- makers, such as Senator William H. Seward of New York, who argued that a higher law than the Constitution existed. Opponents managed to prevail until the sudden death in 1850 of President Taylor, who had also opposed Clay's plan. Succeeding him was a strong supporter of compromise, Vice President Millard Fillmore. Stephen A. Douglas, a politically astute young senator from Illinois, engineered different coalitions to pass each part of the compromise separately. President Fillmore readily signed the bills into law. Passage The passage of the Compromise of 1850 bought time for the Union. Because California was admitted as a free state, the compromise added to the North's political power, and the political debate deepened the commitment of many Northerners to saving the Union from secession. On the other hand, parts of the compromise became sources of controversy, espe- cially the new Fugitive Slave Law and the provision for popular sovereignty. Agitation Over Slavery For a brief period-the four years between the Compromise of 1850 and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854-political tensions abated slightly. However, the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act and the THE UNION IN PERIL, 1848-1861 249 publication of a best-selling antislavery novel kept the slavery question in the forefront of public attention in both the North and South. Fugitive Slave law The passage of a strict Fugitive Slave Law persuaded many Southerners to accept the loss of California to the abolitionists and Free-Soilers. Yet the enforcement of the new law in the North was bitterly and sometimes forcibly resisted by antislavery Northerners. In effect, therefore, enforcement of the new law drove a wedge between the North and the South. Enforcement and Opposition The law's chief purpose was to track down runaway (fugitive) slaves who had escaped to a Northern state, capture them, and return them to their Southern owners. The law placed fugitive slave cases under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government and authorized spe- cial U.S. commissioners to issue warrants to arrest fugitives. Captured persons who claimed to be a free African American and not a runaway slave were denied the right of trial by jury. Citizens who attempted to hide a runaway or obstruct enforcement of the law were subject to heavy penalties. Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad, the fabled network of "conductors" and "stations," was a loose network of Northern free blacks and courageous ex-slaves, with the help of some white abolitionists, who helped escaped slaves reach freedom in the North or in Canada. The most famous conductor was an escaped slave woman, Harriet Tubman, who made at least 19 trips into the South to help some 300 slaves escape. Free blacks in the North and abolitionists also organized vigilance committees to protect fugitive slaves from the slave catchers. Once the Civil War broke out, African American leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth continued to work for the emancipation of slaves and to support black soldiers in the Union cause. Books on Slavery-Pro and Con Popular books as well as unpopular laws stirred the emotions of the people of all regions. Uncle Tom's Cabin The most influential book of its day was a novel about the conflict between an enslaved man named Tom and the brutal white slave owner Simon Legree. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 by the Northern writer Harriet Beecher Stowe moved a generation of Northerners as well as many Europeans to regard all slave owners as monstrously cruel and inhuman. Southerners condemned the "untruths" in the novel and looked upon it as one more proof of the North's incurable prejudice against the Southern way of life. Later, when President Lincoln met Stowe, he is reported to have said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war." Impending Crisis of the South. Although it did not appear until 1857, Hinton R. Helper's book of nonfiction, Impending Crisis of the South, attacked slavery from another angle. The author, a native of North Carolina, used 250 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM statistics to demonstrate to fellow Southerners that slavery weakened the South's economy. Southern states acted quickly to ban the book, but it was widely distributed in the North by antislavery and Free-Soil leaders. Comparing the Free and Slave States in the 1850s Category Free States Slave States Slave States as Percentage of Free States Population 18,484,922 9,612,979 52 percent Patents for New 1,929 268 14 percent Inventions Value of Church $67,778,477 $21,674,581 32 percent Buildings Newspapers 1,790 740 41 percent and Periodicals Bank Capital $230,100,840 $109,078,940 47 percent Value of Exports $167,520,098 $107,480,688 64 percent Source: Hinton R. Helper, Impending Crisis of the South, 1857. Data from various years between 1850 and 1856. Southern Reaction Responding to the Northern literature that condemned slavery as evil, proslavery Southern whites counterattacked by arguing that slavery was just the opposite-a positive good for slave and master alike. They argued that slavery was sanctioned by the Bible and was firmly grounded in philosophy and history. Southern authors contrasted the conditions of North- ern wage workers-"wage slaves" forced to work long hours in factories and mines-with the familial bonds that could develop on plantations between slaves and master. George Fitzhugh, the boldest and best known of the pro- slavery authors, questioned the principle of equal rights for "unequal men" and attacked the capitalist wage system as worse than slavery. Among his works were Sociology for the South (1854) and Cannibals All! (1857). Effect of Law and Literature The Fugitive Slave Law, combined with the antislavery and proslavery literature, polarized the nation even more. Northerners who had earlier scorned abolition became more concerned about slavery as a moral issue. At the same time, a growing number of Southerners became convinced that the North's goal was to destroy the institution of slavery and the way of life based upon it. THE UNION IN PERIL, 1848-1861 251 National Parties in Crisis The potency of the slavery controversy increased political instability, as shown in the weakening of the two major parties-the Democrats and the Whigs-and in a disastrous application of popular sovereignty in the territory of Kansas. The Election of 1852 Signs of trouble for the Whig party were apparent in the 1852 election for president. The Whigs nominated another military hero of the Mexican War, General Winfield Scott. Attempting to ignore the slavery issue, the Whig cam- paign concentrated on the party's innocuous plans for improving roads and harbors. But Scott quickly discovered that sectional issues could not be held in check. The antislavery and Southern factions of the party fell to quarreling, and the party was on the verge of splitting apart. The Democrats nominated a safe compromise candidate, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire. Though a Northerner, Pierce was acceptable to Southern Democrats because he supported the Fugitive Slave Law. In the electoral col- lege vote, Pierce and the Democrats won all but four states in a sweep that suggested the days of the Whig party were numbered. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) With the Democrats firmly in control of national policy both in the White House and in Congress, a new law was passed that was to have disastrous con- sequences. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois devised a plan for building a railroad and promoting western settlement (while at the same time increasing the value of his own real estate holdings in Chicago). Douglas needed to win Southern approval for his plan to build a transcontinental railroad through the central United States, with a major terminus in Chicago. (Southern Democrats preferred a more southerly route for the railroad.) To obtain Southern approval for his railroad route, Douglas introduced a bill to divide the Nebraska Ter- ritory into two parts, the Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory, and allow settlers in each territory to decide whether to allow slavery or not. Since these territories were located north of the 36° 30' line, Douglas's bill gave South- ern slave owners an opportunity to expand slavery that previously had been closed to them by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Northern Democrats condemned the bill as a surrender to the "slave power." After three months of bitter debate, both houses of Congress passed Doug- las's bill as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and President Pierce signed it into law. Extremists and Violence The Kansas-Nebraska Act, in effect, repealed the Missouri Compromise that had kept a lid on regional tensions for more than three decades. After 1854, the conflicts between antislavery and proslavery forces exploded, both in Kansas and on the floor of the United States Senate. 252 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT OF 1854 118/eeding Kansas11 LJ Free Territory 11 L__J Territory Open to Slavery 0 0 500 1000 Miles 500 1000 Kilometers Stephen Douglas, the sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, expected the slav- ery issue in the territory to be settled peacefully by the antislavery farmers from the Midwest who migrated to Kansas. These settlers did in fact consti- tute a majority of the population. But slaveholders from the neighboring state of Missouri also set up homesteads in Kansas chiefly as a means of winning control of the territory for the South. Northern abolitionists and Free-Soilers responded by organizing the New England Emigrant Aid Company (1855), which paid for the transportation of antislavery settlers to Kansas. Fighting soon broke out between the proslavery and the antislavery groups, and the ter- ritory became known as "bleeding Kansas." Proslavery Missourians, mockingly called "border ruffians" by their enemies, crossed the border to create a proslavery legislature in Lecompton, Kansas. Antislavery settlers refused to recognize this government and created their own legislature in Topeka. In 1856, proslavery forces attacked the free- soil town of Lawrence, killing two and destroying homes and businesses. Two days later, John Brown, a stem abolitionist who was born in Connecticut and living in New York, retaliated. He and his sons attacked a proslavery farm set- tlement at Pottawatomie Creek, killing five settlers. THE UNION IN PERIL, 1848-1861 253 In Washington, the Pierce administration kept aloof from the turmoil in Kansas. It did nothing to keep order in the territory and failed to support honest elections there. As "bleeding Kansas" became bloodier, the Democratic party became ever more divided between its Northern and Southern factions. Caning of Senator Sumner The violence in Kansas spilled over into the halls of the U.S. Congress. In 1856, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner verbally attacked the Democratic administration in a vitriolic speech, "The Crime Against Kansas." His intemperate remarks included personal charges against South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. Butler's nephew, Congressman Preston Brooks, defended his absent uncle's honor by walking into the Senate chamber and beating Sumner over the head with a cane. (Brooks explained that dueling was too good for Sumner, but a cane was fit for a dog.) Sumner never fully recovered from the attack. Brooks' action outraged the North, and the House voted to censure him. Southerners, however, applauded Brooks' deed and sent him numerous canes to replace the one he broke beating Sumner. The Sumner-Brooks incident was another sign of growing passions on both sides. New Parties The increasing tensions over slavery divided Northern and Southern Demo- crats, and it completely broke apart the Whig party. In hindsight, it is clear that the breakup of truly national political parties in the mid-l 850s paralleled the breakup of the Union. The new parties came into being at this time-one tem- porary, the other permanent. Both played a role in bringing about the demise of a major national party, the Whigs. Know-Nothing Party In addition to sectional divisions between North and South, there was also in the mid-1850s growing ethnic tension in the North between native-born Protestant Americans and immigrant Germans and Irish Catholics. Nativist hostility to these newcomers led to the formation of the American party-or the Know-Nothing party, as it was more commonly known (because party members commonly responded "I know nothing" to political questions). The Know-Nothings drew support away from the Whigs at a time when that party was reeling from its defeat in the 1852 election. Their one core issue was opposition to Catholics and immigrants who, in the 1840s and 1850s, were entering Northern cities in large numbers. Although the Know-Nothings won a few local and state elections in the mid-l 850s and helped to weaken the Whigs, they quickly lost influence, as sectional issues again became paramount. Birth of the Republican Party The Republican party was founded in Wis- consin in 1854 as a direct reaction to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Composed of a coalition of Free-Soilers and antislavery Whigs and Democrats, its overriding purpose was to oppose the spread of slavery in the territories- not to end slavery itself. Its first platform of 1854 called for the repeal of both the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law. As violence increased in Kansas, more and more people, including some abolitionists, joined the 254 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Republican party, and it was soon the second largest party in the country. But because it remained in these years strictly a Northern or sectional party, its suc- cess alienated and threatened the South. The Election of 1856 The Republicans' first test of strength came in the presidential election of 1856. Their nominee for president was a senator from California, the young explorer and "Pathfinder," John C. Fremont. The Republican platform called for no expansion of slavery, free homesteads, and a probusiness protective tariff. The Know-Nothings also competed strongly in this election, with their candidate, former President Millard Fillmore, winning 20 percent of the popular vote. As the one major national party, the Democrats expected to win. They nom- inated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, rejecting both President Pierce and Stephen Douglas because they were too closely identified with the controver- sial Kansas-Nebraska Act. As expected, the Democratic ticket won a majority of both the popular and electoral vote. But the Republicans made a remarkably strong showing for a sectional party. In the electoral college, Fremont carried 11 of the 16 free states. People could predict that the antislavery Republicans might soon win the White House without a single vote from the South. The election of 1856 foreshadowed the emergence of a powerful political party that would win all but four presidential elections between 1860 and 1932. Constitutional Issues Both the Democrats' position of popular sovereignty and the Republicans' stand against the expansion of slavery received serious blows during the Buchanan administration (1857-1861). Republicans attacked Buchanan as a weak president. Lecompton Constitution One of Buchanan's first challenges as president in 1857 was to decide whether to accept or reject a proslavery state constitution for Kansas submitted by the Southern legislature at Lecompton. Buchanan knew that the Lecompton con- stitution, as it was called, did not have the support of the majority of settlers. Even so, he asked Congress to accept the document and admit Kansas as a slave state. Congress did not do so, because many Democrats, including Stephen Douglas, joined with the Republicans in rejecting the Lecompton constitution. The next year, 1858, the proslavery document was overwhelmingly rejected by Kansas settlers, most of whom were antislavery Republicans. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) Congressional folly and presidential ineptitude contributed to the sectional crisis of the 1850s. Then the Supreme Court worsened the crisis when it infuri- ated many Northerners with a controversial proslavery decision in the case of a slave named Dred Scott. Scott had been held in slavery in Missouri and then taken to the free territory of Wisconsin where he lived for two years before THE UNION IN PERIL, 1848-1861 255 returning to Missouri. Arguing that his residence on free soil made him a free citizen, Scott sued for his freedom in Missouri in 1846. The case worked its way through the court system. It finally reached the Supreme Court, which rendered its decision in March 1857, only two days after Buchanan was sworn in as president. Presiding over the Court was Chief Justice Roger Taney, a Southern Demo- crat. A majority of the Court decided against Scott and gave these reasons: • Dred Scott had no right to sue in a federal court because the Framers of the Constitution did not intend African Americans to be U.S. citizens. • Congress did not have the power to deprive any person of property without due process of law; if slaves were a form of property, then Congress could not exclude slavery from any federal territory. • The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it excluded slavery from Wisconsin and other Northern territories. The Court's ruling delighted Southern Democrats and infuriated Northern Republicans. In effect, the Supreme Court declared that all parts of the west- ern territories were open to slavery. Republicans denounced the Dred Scott decision as "the greatest crime in the annals of the republic." Because of the timing of the decision, right after Buchanan's inauguration, many Northerners suspected that the Democratic president and the Democratic majority on the Supreme Court, including Taney, had secretly planned the Dred Scott decision, hoping that it would settle the slavery question once and for all. The decision increased Northerners' suspicions of a slave power conspiracy and induced thousands of former Democrats to vote Republican. Northern Democrats such as Senator Douglas were left with the almost impossible task of supporting popular sovereignty without repudiating the Dred Scott decision. Douglas's hopes for a sectional compromise and his ambitions for the presidency were both in jeopardy. Lincoln-Douglas Debates In 1858, the focus of the nation was on Stephen Douglas's campaign for reelection as senator from Illinois. Challenging him for the Senate seat was a successful trial lawyer and former member of the Illinois legislature, Abra- ham Lincoln. The Republican candidate had served only one two-year term in Congress in the 1840s as a Whig. Nationally, he was an unknown compared to Douglas (the Little Giant), the champion of popular sovereignty and possibly the best hope for holding the nation together if elected president in 1860. Lincoln was not an abolitionist. Even so, as a moderate who was against the expansion of slavery, he spoke effectively of slavery as a moral issue. ("If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.") Accepting the Illinois Republicans' nomination, the candidate delivered his celebrated "house-divided" speech that won him fame. "This government," said Lincoln, "cannot endure permanently 256 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM half slave and half free," a statement that made Southerners view Lincoln as a radical. In seven campaign debates held in different Illinois towns, Lincoln shared the platform with his famous opponent, Douglas. The Republican chal- lenger attacked Douglas's seeming indifference to slavery as a moral issue. In a debate in Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln challenged Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. In what became known as the Freeport Doctrine, Douglas responded that slavery could not exist in a com- munity if the local citizens did not pass laws (slave codes) maintaining it. His views angered Southern Democrats because, from their point of view, Douglas did not go far enough in supporting the implications of the Dred Scott decision. Douglas won his campaign for reelection to the U.S. Senate. In the long run, however, he lost ground in his own party by alienating Southern Demo- crats. Lincoln, on the other hand, emerged from the debates as a national figure and a leading contender for the Republican nomination for president in 1860. The Road to Secession Outside Illinois, the Republicans did well in the congressional elections of 1858, which alarmed many Southerners. They worried not only about the anti- slavery plank in the Republicans' program but also about that party's economic program, which favored the interests of Northern industrialists at the expense of the South. The higher tariffs pledged in the Republican platform could only help Northern business and hurt the South's dependence on the export of cot- ton. Therefore, Southerners feared that a Republican victory in 1860 would spell disaster for their economic interests and also threaten their "constitutional right," as affirmed by the Supreme Court, to hold slaves as property. If this were not enough cause for alarm, Northern radicals provided money to John Brown, the man who had massacred five farmers in Kansas in 1856. John Brown's Raid at Harpers Ferry John Brown confirmed the South's worst fears of radical abolitionism when he tried to start a slave uprising in Virginia. In October 1859, he led a small band of followers, including his four sons and some former slaves, in an attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. His impractical plan was to use guns from the arsenal to arm Virginia's slaves, whom he expected to rise up in general revolt. Federal troops under the command of Robert E. Lee captured Brown and his band after a two-day siege. Brown and six of his followers were tried for treason, convicted, and hanged by the state of Virginia. Moderates in the North, including Republican leaders, condemned Brown's use of violence, but Southerners were not convinced by their words. Southern whites saw the raid as final proof of the North's true intentions-to use slave revolts to destroy the South. Because John Brown spoke with simple eloquence at his trial of his humanitarian motives in wanting to free the slaves, he was hailed as a martyr by many antislavery Northerners. (A few years later, when civil war broke out, John Brown was celebrated by advancing Northern armies singing: "Glory, glory, hallelujah! His soul is marching on.") THE UNION IN PERIL, 1848-1861 257 The Election of 1860 After John Brown's raid, more and more Americans understood that their coun- try was moving to the brink of disintegration. The presidential election of 1860 would be a test if the union could survive. Breakup of the Democratic Party As 1860 began, the Democratic party represented the last practical hope for coalition and compromise. The Demo- crats held their national nominating convention in Charleston, South Carolina. Stephen Douglas was the party's leading candidate and the person most capable of winning the presidency. However, his nomination was blocked by a combi- nation of angry Southerners and supporters of President Buchanan. After deadlocking at Charleston, the Democrats held a second convention in Baltimore. Many delegates from the slave states walked out, enabling the remaining delegates to nominate Douglas on a platform of popular sovereignty and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. Southern Democrats then held their own convention in Baltimore and nominated Vice President John C. Breckin- ridge of Kentucky as their candidate. The Southern Democratic platform called for the unrestricted extension of slavery in the territories and the annexation of Cuba, a land where slavery was already flourishing. Republican Nomination of Lincoln When the Republicans met in Chi- cago, they enjoyed the prospect of an easy win over the divided Democrats. They made the most of their advantage by drafting a platform that appealed strongly to the economic self-interest of Northerners and Westerners. In addi- tion to calling for the exclusion of slavery from the territories, the Republican platform promised a protective tariff for industry, free land for homestead- ers, and internal improvements to encourage western settlement, including a railroad to the Pacific. To ensure victory, the Republicans turned away from Senator William H. Seward, a well-known leader but more radical on slavery, to the strong debater from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln-a candidate who could carry the key Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. One cloud on the horizon darkened the Republicans' otherwise bright future. In the South, secessionists warned that if Lincoln was elected president, their states would leave the Union. A Fourth Political Party Fearing the consequences of a Republican victory, a group of former Whigs, Know-Nothings, and moderate Democrats formed a new party: the Constitutional Union party. For president, they nomi- nated John Bell of Tennessee. The party's platform pledged enforcement of the laws and the Constitution and, above all, preserving the Union. Election Results While Douglas campaigned across the country, Lincoln confidently remained at home in Springfield, Illinois, meeting with Republican leaders and giving statements to the press. The election results were predictable. Lincoln carried every one of the free states of the North, which represented a solid majority of 59 percent of the electoral votes. He won only 39.8 percent of the popular vote, however, and would therefore be a minority president. Breck- inridge, the Southern Democrat, carried the Deep South, leaving Douglas and Bell with just a few electoral votes in the border states. 258 U.S. HISTORY: PREPARING FOR THE ADVANCED PLACEMENT® EXAM Together, the two Democrats, Douglas and Breckinridge, received many more popular votes than Lincoln, the Republican. Nevertheless, the new politi- cal reality was that the populous free states had enough electoral votes to select a president without the need for a single electoral vote from the South. THE ELECTION OF 1860 TERRITORIES D Lincoln (Rep.) -Douglas (No. Dem.) D Breckinridge (So. Dem.) LJ Bell (Const. Union) Secession of the Deep South GULF OF MEXICO Electoral votes Popular votes 180 12 72 39 1,866,000 1,375,000 848,000 591,000 The Republicans controlled neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court. Even so, the election of Lincoln was all that Southern secessionists needed to call for immediate disunion. In December 1860, a special convention in South Carolina voted unanimously to secede. Within the next six weeks, other state conventions in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas did the same. In February 1861, representatives of the seven states of the Deep South met in Montgomery, Alabama, and created the Confederate States of America. The constitution of this would-be Southern nation was similar to the U.S. Constitution, except that the Confederacy placed limits on the govern- ment's power to impose tariffs and restrict slavery. Elected president and vice president of the Confederacy were Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Alexander Stephens of Georgia. THE UNION IN PERIL, 1848-1861 259 Crittenden Compromise. A lame-duck president (a leader completing a term after someone else has been elected to his or her office), Buchanan had five months in office before President-elect Lincoln was due to succeed him. Buchanan was a conservative who did nothing to prevent the secession of the seven states. Congress was more active. In a last-ditch effort to appease the South, Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky proposed a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to hold slaves in all territories south of 36° 30'. Lincoln, however, said that he could not accept this compromise because it violated the Republican position against extension of slavery into the territories. Southern whites who voted for secession believed they were acting in the tradition of the Revolution of 1776. They argued that they had a right to national independence and to dissolve a constitutional compact that no longer protected them from "tyranny" (the tyranny of Northern rule). Many of them also thought that Lincoln, like Buchanan, might permit secession without a fight. Those who thought this had badly miscalculated.